Abstract
Human beings orient themselves in the world via judgments; factual, moral, prudential, aesthetic, and all kinds of mixed judgments. Particularly for normative orientation in complex and contested contexts of action, it can be challenging to form judgments. This paper explores what one can reasonably expect from a theory of the power of judgment from a Kantian approach to ethics. We reconstruct practical (prudential and moral) judgments on basis of the self-reflexive capacities of human beings, and argue that for the subject to see himself as committed to prudential goods it is necessarily implied that he understands himself as committed to moral judgment. However, to understand the normativity of understanding oneself as a being with practical commitments at all, the aesthetic judgment is introduced: the power of judgment in its pure form of selfreflexivity. We claim that aesthetic reflection and judgment is conditional on the possibility for human beings to enter the space of reasons, and therewith for practical self-understanding as such. The paper concludes with a preliminary sketch of different conceptual possibilities in fleshing out the role of the power of judgment in its aesthetic employment in developing mixed judgments.
Highlights
This paper explores what one can reasonably expect from a theory of the power of judgment from a Kantian approach to ethics
We will attempt to make a preliminary sketch of what would be expected from a Kantian theory of mixed moral judgment in complex circumstances, where we especially focus on the anticipated consequences of giving aesthetic reflection a prominent place in a theory of judgment
The aim is not to start with these; and in that sense we understand the endeavor in line with a ‘transcendental philosophy of mind’ (Makkreel 1984: 311), ‘a priori psychology’. (Waxman 2014: 4), or ‘transcendental phenomenology’ (Beyleveld and Ziche, this volume). Second, such a transcendental approach does not see the human being as an entity that is abstracted from its historical, social, and linguistic horizons: any attempt to understand the power of judgment needs to assume that when there is judgment there is a judging subject, and this implies assuming that there is a horizon in which objects of judgment can have significance to this subject
Summary
The paper has its basic starting point in the idea that all knowledge must come in judgments (Kant 1998: A68-69; B93-94), but that the capacity to judge should not primordially be understood to concern what we can know. (Waxman 2014: 4), or ‘transcendental phenomenology’ (Beyleveld and Ziche, this volume) Second, such a transcendental approach does not see the human being as an entity that is abstracted from its historical, social, and linguistic horizons: any attempt to understand the power of judgment needs to assume that when there is judgment there is a judging subject, and this implies assuming that there is a horizon in which objects of judgment can have significance to this subject. In a specific sense we understand universalism here in a perspectivist way: the challenge lies in reconstructing the universality in the formal structure of the self-reflexivity in judging, whereby it in the first place becomes possible to understand what it implies for the subject to develop and communicate his own perspective on anything at all That means that it concerns the perspective of each human being and what is presupposed in order for him to understand his own judgments. The methodological approach is in basis characterized by the attempt to distinguish between necessary form and possible content: the former is explored as foundational ground for claims about the power of judgment with universal aspiration, the latter is abstracted from in order to leave open room for differentiation and discussion
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