The Significance of Beauty: Kant on Feeling and the System of the Mind

This title is printed to order. This book may have been self-published. If so, we cannot guarantee the quality of the content. In the main most books will have gone through the editing process however some may not. We therefore suggest that you be aware of this before ordering this book. If in doubt check either the author or publisher’s details as we are unable to accept any returns unless they are faulty. Please contact us if you have any questions.

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant argues that feeling is part of the system of the mind. Judgments of taste based on feeling are a unique kind of judgment, and the feeling that is their foundation forms an independent third power of the mind. Feeling has a special role within this system in that it also provides a transition between the other two powers of the mind, cognition and desire. Matthews argues that feeling, our experience of beauty, provides a transition because it orients humans in a sensible world. Judgments of taste help overcome the difficulties that arise when rational cognitive and moral ends must be pursued in a sensible world. Matthews demonstrates how feeling, disassociated from rational activities in Kant’s earlier works, is now central in reaching rational ends and understanding humans as unified rational beings. Audience: This book would be of interest to research libraries and university libraries, philosophers, historians and aestheticians.