Thursday, January 3, 2013

Poetic Justice and Reflective Moral Judgment

While the object of the observation 'X deserved that', either a happy or an unhappy event, is often characterized as 'poetic justice'. and is a source of pleasure to the detached observer, it is a Judgment that cannot be classified as 'Aesthetic' in Kant's system.  For, regardless of the 'poetic' rubric, it is not an attribution of Beauty to a work of Art.  Furthermore, as pleasurable, and as referring to a singular event, it cannot be classified as 'Teleological' in the system, either.  Instead, it is a 'Moral' Judgment, but one that is distinct from 'X deserves such-and-such', in which a specific consequence is derived from a given general rule.  Thus, it is not a 'Determinate' Judgment, according to the system.  Rather, since it supplies a singular natural event with a possible purposive rule that governs its occurrence, the Judgment is 'Reflective', in the system.  In other words, so-called 'poetic justice' is the object of what, according to Kant's system is a Reflective Moral Judgment, even if he seems to overlook the possibility of that kind of Judgment.

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