From Both Ends to the Middle: The Real Dialectic in Kant's Aesthetics

Paul Guyer (Brown University, University of Pennsylvania)

The Digital Kant-Centre NRW is pleased to invite you to a lecture by Paul Guyer (Brown University) with the following topic: "From Both Ends to the Middle: The Real Dialectic in Kant's Aesthetics" 

The lecture will take place online (via Webex) on Wednesday, 30 October 2024, from 18:00 – 19:30 CET.

Please see below for the Webex-link and an abstract of the lecture. 

The talk is part of the lecture series Digital Kant-Lectures, organized by Digital Kant-Centre NRW, which takes place on the last Wednesday of each month via Webex. For the program of the series, please see: https://kant-zentrum-nrw.de/digital-kant-lectures/

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Webex-Link: 

https://uni-siegen.webex.com/uni-siegen/j.php?MTID=m72827392a6c6d164c99f87e4df57dddf

Abstract: 

In this paper I return to the question, how can a judgment of taste be both "disinterested" (First Moment of the Analytic of the Beautiful of the Critique of the Power of Judgment) and yet "as it were a duty" (section 40)? I examine this question with special reference to the moral psychology lying behind Kant's remark in section 52 that "if the beautiful arts are not combined, whether closely or at a distance, with moral ideas . . . They then serve only for diversion . . . by which one makes oneself ever more useless and dissatisfied with oneself."