Moran Godess-Riccitelli

In §42 of the Critique of Judgment, Kant claims that nature "figuratively speaks to us in its beautiful forms". Based on Kant's careful choice of words, it can be assumed that this description is not merely a figure of speech, but a genuine attempt on Kant's part to find in nature the possibility of perceiving the meaning of beauty in accordance with the way in which human beings respond aesthetically to it. This raises several questions: What exactly does nature express in its beautiful forms? Do the beautiful forms in nature have semantic power, or is it just our way of interpreting nature? And if nature is indeed speaking to us in its beautiful forms, how do we know how to respond to that expression in a way that is consistent with the meaning embodied in those forms? This paper proposes to examine our aesthetic dialogue with nature through the expression and response it embodies. By analyzing the enigmatic language in which natural beauty "speaks" to us in "ciphers," "hints," "traces," and "signs," on the one hand, and the ways in which we must be attentive to and recognize these hints and signs in order to provide a response to such beautiful forms, on the other. I argue that our aesthetic dialogue with the beauty of nature, if successful, has a moral significance. The purpose of this paper, then, is to show how this moral significance emerges from our aesthetic dialogue with nature.

What is it that we encountered with in our aesthetic experience of natural beauty? Does nature “figuratively  speaks  to us in its beautiful forms”, 2  to use Kant’s phrasing in the third  Critique , or is it merely our way of  interpreting  nature whether this be its purpose or not? Kant does not answer these questions directly. Rather, he leaves the ambiguity around them by his repeated use of terminology of ciphers when it comes to our aesthetic experience in nature. This paper examines Kant’s terminology of ciphers in the  Critique of Judgment  and demonstrate through it the intimate link aesthetic experience in natural beauty has with human morality. A link whose culmination point is embodied in the representation of beauty as a symbol of morality.

The aim of this paper is to present Immanuel Kant's conception of the highest good, arguing that what animates and undergirds this conception is an understanding of our aesthetic experience in nature. The interesting point I wish to dwell on is that even though we have no way of knowing the highest good, nor to imagine its realization, in the sense of representing it in intuition, Kant argues that we must at least be able to believe it is possible to realize.

What is it that we encountered with in our aesthetic experience of natural beauty? Does nature "figuratively speaks to us in its beautiful forms" (CJ, 5:301), to use Kant's phrasing in the third Critique, or is it merely our way of interpreting nature whether this be its purpose or not? Kant does not answer these questions directly. Rather, he leaves the ambiguity around them by his repeated use of terminology of ciphers when it comes to our aesthetic experience in nature. This paper examines Kant's terminology of ciphers in the Critique of Judgment and demonstrate through it the intimate link aesthetic experience in natural beauty has with human morality. A link whose culmination point is embodied in the representation of beauty as a symbol of morality.

This paper addresses Immanuel Kant’s controversial moral duty to realize the highest good in the natural world as the ideal object of morality. The main problem is that the realizability of the highest good does not derive directly from Kant’s rationale that duty indicates possibility. Hence Kant argues that we need the postulates of practical reason as transcendental conditions of the highest good.2 I argue that for this solution to actually work it needs to address the question of our moral motivation to strive to realize the highest good in nature. For this, we need the power of imagination that provides us with two kinds of presentations (Darstellungen): objective and subjective purposiveness. I demonstrate these two presentations through the idea of culture and our aesthetic experience in natural beauty respectively, as they are presented in Kant’s third Critique. I wish to argue that only by presenting a structure of possibility in imagination, the necessary connection Kant makes between the realizability of the highest good and the postulate of God gains practical meaning within nature.

One of the most challenging themes in Kant's moral theology is the necessary connection he makes between the realizability of the highest good and the moral proof for the existence of God. The vast majority of scholarly work on this link relies on Kant's discussion of the postulates in his Critique of Practical Reason. In this paper, I argue that this line of interpretation is insufficient because it does not address the question of our moral motivation to strive to realize the highest good in nature. I propose a reexamination of this connection from the aesthetic standpoint as it is presented in Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment. In particular, I focus on the notion of 'moral faith' and 'God' in the aesthetic nexus. My purpose is to demonstrate the significance of our aesthetic experience in nature for the ability to present the highest good as realizable; thus, to provide moral faith a practical meaning within nature.

One of the most challenging doctrines in Immanuel Kant’s philosophy is what has come to be known as his “moral theology” (aka: ethicotheology). In particular, there is much controversy about how to interpret Kant’s moral argument for the existence of God, which underpins this doctrine. The vast majority of scholarly work on this argument relies on Kant’s discussion of the postulates of practical reason in his ‘First’ and ‘Second’ Critiques, where he argues that although it is theoretically impossible to know or prove God, the postulate of God’s existence is a necessary presupposition for our practical adherence to the moral law. In this paper, I propose a reexamination of the moral proof of God from the aesthetic standpoint as it is presented in Kant’s ‘Third Critique’. In particular, I focus on the feeling of “moral faith” by demonstrating its affinity with the aesthetic experience of beauty in nature.

One main quandary that emerges in the context of Immanuel Kant's moral ideal, The Highest Good, is that on the one hand Kant sets it as a moral demand, that is, as a principle that must be comprehended as an attainable end for man in practice while, on the other hand, it is set as a moral ideal, i.e. as something that cannot be concretized and realized within the empirical world.
The main goal of this paper is to argue for the realizability of the moral ideal by means of the principle of reflective judgment as a form of judgment that in fact clarifies human limitation. I assert that the very recognition of this limitation constitutes the possibility for hope in that ideal, or for striving towards it, and that this striving is the only way that the moral ideal can be concretized. I examine man’s recognition of self-limitation as a response to the moral demand to realize the moral ideal and the necessity of the power of imagination for this, used reflectively.