Description
Book SynopsisThe Kantian Aesthetic explains the kind of perceptual knowledge involved in aesthetic judgments. It does so by linking Kant''s aesthetics to a critically upgraded account of his theory of knowledge. This upgraded theory emphasizes those conceptual and imaginative structures which Kant terms, respectively, ''categories'' and ''schemata''. By describing examples of aesthetic judgment, it is shown that these judgments must involve categories and fundamental schemata (even though Kant himself, and most commentators after him, have not fully appreciated the fact). It is argued, in turn, that this shows the aesthetic to be not just one kind of pleasurable experience amongst others, but one based on factors necessary to objective knowledge and personal identity, and which, indeed, itself plays a role in how these capacities develop.In order to explain how individual aesthetic judgments are justified, and the aesthetic basis of art, however, the Kantian position just outlined has to be develop
Trade Reviewexciting and provocative * Philosophy in Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. The Transcendental Deduction; Objective Knowledge and the Unity of Self- Consciousness ; 2. Imagination and the Conditions of Knowledge ; 3. Pure Aesthetic Judgment: A Harmony of Imagination and Understanding ; 4. The Universality and Justification of Taste ; 5. Adherent Beauty and Concepts of Perfection ; 6. From Aesthetic Ideas to the Avant-Garde: The Scope of Fine Art ; 7. The Kantian Sublime Revisited