Category Archives: Kant
>Oscar Wilde and "The Critic as Artist"
>Oscar Wilde’s The Critic as Artist (Excerpted in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2nd Edition) represents an interesting synthesis of many of the ideas I have heretofore been exploring. In a strict sense, he seems to be interested … Continue reading
Kant and Schiller on "The Pirate Bay"
Kant says of Taste: Taste is the faculty for judging an object or a kind of representation through a satisfaction or dissatisfaction without any interest. The object of such a satisfaction is called beautiful (The Norton Anthology of Theory and … Continue reading
>Hegelian Dialectic: The Master and the Slave
>Hegel’s interest in the dialectic lies in his attempt to codify the process by which human’s come to self-consciousness, to an understanding of themselves. Thus, he begins his Master-Slave Dialectic with the assertion that “Self-consciousness exists…only in being acknowledged,” and … Continue reading
>Schiller’s Aesthetic Education
>I recently took issue with Kant for insisting that an aesthetic education was possible, while entirely avoiding any actual explanation of such an education. I have found, in Schiller’s Aesthetic Education of Man (excepted in The Norton Anthology of Theory … Continue reading
>Reception in Distraction, or the Habitual Aesthetic
>Walter Benjamin is extremely interested in the phenomenon he calls “reception in distraction” (The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproduciblity and Other Writings on Media, Harvard University Press, 2008, p. 40). He sees this sort of … Continue reading
Some Conceptions of the Sublime
Kant’s description of the Sublime is given short shrift in his Critique of the Power of Judgment (at least so far as it is anthologized in my Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism). Mostly, his understanding of the Sublime has … Continue reading
>Kant’s Beauty
>This post concerns the selections by Kant in the 2nd edition of the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. The selection is taken from Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment, which I understand to be his ‘3rd Critique’. I … Continue reading
Practical Aesthetics 