Kant and the Experience of Freedom: Essays on Aesthetics and Morality

Kant and the Experience of Freedom: Essays on Aesthetics and Morality by Guyer, Paul. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780521568333.

This collection of essays by one of the preeminent Kant scholars of our time transforms our understanding of both Kants aesthetics and his ethics. Guyer shows that at the very core of Kants aesthetic theory, disinterestedness of taste becomes an experience of freedom and thus an essential accompaniment to morality itself. At the same time he reveals how Kants moral theory includes a distinctive place for the cultivation of both general moral sentiments and particular attachments on the basis of the most rigorous principle of duty. Kants thought is placed in a rich historical context including such figures as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Burke, Kames, as well as Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Schiller, and Hegel. Other topics treated are the sublime, natural versus artistic beauty, genius and art history, and duty and inclination. These essays extend and enrich the account of Kants aesthetics in the authors earlier book, Kant and the Claims of Taste (1979).