Sunday, December 16, 2012

Contemplation, Satiation, Excitation

At #24 of the Critique of Judgment, Kant characterizes the contemplation of Beauty as "restful".  In contrast, at #12, he portrays that contemplation as not so restful, but, rather, as accompanied by an effort to "keep us in the state of having the representation" of the beautiful object.  There is no casual vacillation between the two passages: in the first, the 'pleasure' experienced is satiation, while in the second, it is excitation.  So, once it is recognized that the impulse to keep the representation continues as an effort to share it with others, then it becomes clearer that the universalizability that is, according to Kant, a characteristic of the experience of Beauty, is a wishful product of excitation.  In other words, Kant's theory augments the long tradition that esteems Contemplation teleologically, i. e. as private satiation.

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