Moral Anthropology in Kant's Aesthetics and Ethics: A Reply to Ameriks and Sherman

Abstract

Ameriks has conveniently summarized his discussion under four headings. These are the Non-Conceptuality claim, that aesthetic experience as such requires no concepts; the Independence Claim, that the deduction of taste is independent of any appeal to morality; the Assistance Claim, that aesthetic experience can assist morality; and the Requirement Claim, that aesthetic experience is actually required by morality. Ameriks differs with me about three of these four claims: (1) he rejects my acceptance of the NonConceptuality Claim, arguing that Kant's aesthetic theory need not be understood as postulating the freedom of the imagination from constraint by concepts in paradigmatic cases of aesthetic response, but rather postulates the freedom of the imagination in the use of concepts; (2) he agrees with me in rejecting the Assistance Claim, but differs with me on the issue of whether the deduction of pure judgments of taste needs any assistance at all, finding it a more adequate defense of the intersubjective validity of aesthetic judgments than I do; (3) while agreeing with me on the Assistance Claim he differs with me on the Requirement Claim, arguing that while can see the cultivation of taste as conducive to morality cannot see it as itself required by morality. I will comment briefly on each of these three issues. (1) The Non-Conceptuality Claim. Ameriks characterizes me as accepting at face value the standard reading of Kant's explanation of aesthetic response, which interprets Kant's notion of the free play of imagination and understanding as the claim that our response to beauty involves our faculty of concepts but no particular concepts. He objects that there are so many systematic difficulties with this interpretation that should instead interpret Kant's analysis as requiring only that we avoid traditional 'determinate' concepts or deductions from alleged 'perfections'. However, he also states that there may be little more than a terminological difference between us on this point. My