iThink
A Kant rant
A KANT RANT: DO YOU UNDERSTAND KANT? NEITHER DO I! OSCAR CLARKE (UPPER SIXTH) Immanuel Kant, contrary to the Python adage, was an incredibly stable and clear-headed individual. So regimented and regular were his walks, in fact, that the townspeople of Königsberg used to set their watches by his movements. He only ever missed his daily constitutional twice: once whilst being infatuated with Rousseau’s latest philosophical hot take, Émile, and the other to obtain news about the French Revolution - so I think we can forgive him these but two discrepancies. This obsessively organised Prussian also has quite a lot to say about philosophy, and aesthetics in particular. He is probably the greatest philosopher of all time and the father of modern aesthetics and, if you disagree with me, you can run away and hide under your copy of The Republic - let’s hope the Form of the half rate philosopher saves you! Now Kant, like every other philosopher, liked to talk about beauty. What it is. Why we are invariably drawn to it. How things possess it (if they do at all). As the final instalment in his famous trilogy, Kant published the Critique of Judgment (1790), following on from his Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and his magnum opus, the Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Despite all of his genius, he really was not a creative book title-er (anything is a word if I try hard enough).
The Critique of Judgment was, as final instalments usually are, slightly less well received than the original - although topping the Critique of Pure Reason is hard to do, considering it is modern philosophy’s most seminal work. Now, the 3rd Critique focused on aesthetics (aesthetics being the branch of axiology – the study of value - that focuses on beauty, art and taste) which was a break from tradition, with the others focusing on metaphysics and epistemology.
Kant begins this arduous, impenetrable, verbose, and generally unreadable 450page brick* of fancy German words by setting out how he analyses a judgement of beauty under four headings called ‘Moments’: *To prospective Kant readers: This is not an exaggeration for comedic effect. Trying to read the Critique of Pure Reason gave me a migraine and I only got 60 pages in… you have been warned!
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