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Were there interactions between the development of Kant's aesthetics and the development of his moral philosophy? How did Kant view pleasure and displeasure and what role did they play in the formation of his system of the faculties? In this book, Alexander Rueger situates Kant's account of pleasure and displeasure in its eighteenth-century context, with special attention to Leibniz, Wolff, Crusius, and Mendelssohn. He traces the development of Kant's views on pleasure from the 1770s to his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment in 1790, and shows that throughout, Kant understood pleasure as the satisfaction of faculty interests. The significance of this theory for the completion of Kant's critical system in the third Critique is discussed in detail. Rueger's study illuminates both the role of pleasure and displeasure in Kant's thought, and their important connections to the power of judgment.

Summary

In the third Critique Kant presented the completed system of the higher faculties of the mind, consisting of the understanding, the power of judgment, and practical reason. This chapter discusses, first, the meaning of ‘completeness’ in this context and analyzes Kant’s argument that a new faculty is required to complete the system. Here, a first (‘architectonic’) sense in which judgment mediates between nature and freedom is identified. Second, I identify a necessary condition for inclusion of a faculty in the system: a faculty has to play a constitutive role with respect to either cognition (understanding) or morality (practical reason) or the feeling of pleasure and displeasure (power of judgment). Finally, I trace the development of Kant’s views on pleasure and judgment in the metaphysics lectures from the 1770s, where we find that each faculty is associated with a characteristic sort of pleasure in the successful operation of the faculty.

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Kant on Pleasure and Judgment

2 - The Completion of the System of the Powers of the Mind, 1770–1790

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2 results

Kant on Pleasure and Judgment

2 - The Completion of the System of the Powers of the Mind, 1770–1790

Summary