The Moral Importance of the Beautiful in Kant

The Moral Importance of the Beautiful in Kant

I argue for an interpretation of Kant's aesthetics whereby the experience of the beautiful plays the same functional role in the invisible church of natural religion as Scripture does for the visible churches of ecclesiastical religions. Thus, I contend, the links that Kant himself implies between the aesthetic and the moral (in the third Critique and the Religion) are much stronger than generally portrayed by commentators. Indeed, for Kant, experience of the beautiful may be necessary in order to found what Kant views as the final end of morality — the ethical community — since human moral psychology requires embodiments of moral ideas. Finally, I seek to modify Martha Nussbaums' argument in Poetic Justice (1995) for the increased use of the literary imagination as a means for improving public moral reasoning in this country, with the Kantian insight that aesthetic autonomy is the key to any aesthetic-moral link.

In this paper, I investigate the overall Enlightenment role that Kant conceived for aesthetic experience, and especially, of the beautiful. (1) I argue for an interpretation of Kant's aesthetics whereby the experience of the beautiful may play the same functional role in the invisible church of natural religion as Scripture does for the visible churches of ecclesiastical religions. Although aesthetic experience, for Kant, is autonomous by virtue of its disinterestedness, seemingly paradoxically, this very autonomy enables the beautiful, potentially, to serve profound moral and Enlightenment aims within his system. For Kant, because we are both rational and animal, we require embodiments of moral ideas, and thus, the experience of the beautiful is necessary in order to f...

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...and Kant" Philosophical Forum Vol. XX, No. 3, Spring 1989, pp.211-229.

II. Works Consulted

Austin, Michael "Art and Religion as Metaphor" British Journal of Aesthetics 35:2, April 1995.

Cohen, Ted "Why Beauty is a Symbol of Morality" in Essays in Kant's Aesthetics eds. Cohen and Guyer (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982).

Guyer, Paul Kant and the Experience of Freedom: Essays on aesthetics and morality (Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1993).

Korsgaard, Christine M. Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1996).

O'Neill, Onora Constructions of reason: Explorations of Kant's practical philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1989).

Schaeffer, Jean-Marie L'Art de L'Age Moderne (Paris: Gallimard, 1992).

Wood, Allen W. "Rational theology, moral faith, and religion" in Paul Guyer ed. Cambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1992).