Towards a Kantian Theory of Judgment: the Power of Judgment in its Practical and Aesthetic Employment
Human beings orient themselves in the world via judgments; factual, moral, prudential, aesthetic, and all kinds of mixed judgments. Particularly for normative orientation in complex and contested contexts of action, it can be challenging to form judgments. This paper explores what one can reasonably...
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Published in | Ethical theory and moral practice Vol. 18; no. 5; pp. 943 - 956 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Dordrecht
Springer
01.11.2015
Springer Netherlands Springer Nature B.V |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Human beings orient themselves in the world via judgments; factual, moral, prudential, aesthetic, and all kinds of mixed judgments. Particularly for normative orientation in complex and contested contexts of action, it can be challenging to form judgments. This paper explores what one can reasonably expect from a theory of the power of judgment from a Kantian approach to ethics. We reconstruct practical (prudential and moral) judgments on basis of the self-reflexive capacities of human beings, and argue that for the subject to see himself as committed to prudential goods it is necessarily implied that he understands himself as committed to moral judgment. However, to understand the normativity of understanding oneself as a being with practical commitments at all, the aesthetic judgment is introduced: the power of judgment in its pure form of selfreflexivity. We claim that aesthetic reflection and judgment is conditional on the possibility for human beings to enter the space of reasons, and therewith for practical self-understanding as such. The paper concludes with a preliminary sketch of different conceptual possibilities in fleshing out the role of the power of judgment in its aesthetic employment in developing mixed judgments. |
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ISSN: | 1386-2820 1572-8447 |
DOI: | 10.1007/s10677-015-9641-1 |