18th-century German philosophy

Kant on Freedom and Radical Evil in Infancy

by Joseph Cannon

forthcoming in the Proceedings of the XIth International Kant Congress, De Gruyter

The Moral Value of Artistic Beauty in Kant

by Joseph Cannon

Published in Kantian Review (16.1 March 2011), with comment by Paul Guyer and reply by the author

In § 42 of the third Critique, ‘On the intellectual interest in the beautiful,’ Kant claims that it is ‘always the... more In § 42 of the third Critique, ‘On the intellectual interest in the beautiful,’ Kant claims that it is ‘always the mark of a good soul’ (5:298) to take an ‘immediate interest’ in natural beauty because it indicates a moral interest in harmony between nature and moral freedom. In the same pages, however, he denies the possibility of a similarly morally significant interest in artistic beauty. This paper argues that according to his own theory of fine art Kant ought not to deny this value to artistic beauty. In the pages that immediately follow his discussion of immediate interest Kant defines artistic beauty as the joint product of a ‘natural gift’ of genius and a freely exercised discipline of skill and taste. This commits him to the claim that artistic beauty embodies and expresses a harmony between nature and freedom in the productive act of a human being, and thus to the claim that one can take an immediate and morally significant interest in artistic beauty, just as much as in natural beauty.