Kant on Beauty and Biology An Interpretation of the 'Critique of Judgment' [Hardcover]

A wide-ranging and original interpretation of Kant's Critique of Judgment.Kants Critique of Judgment has often been interpreted by scholars as comprising separate treatments of three uneasily connected topics: beauty, biology, and empirical knowledge. Rachel Zuckerts book interprets the Critique as a unified argument concerning all three domains.Kants Critique of Judgment has often been interpreted by scholars as comprising separate treatments of three uneasily connected topics: beauty, biology, and empirical knowledge. Rachel Zuckerts book interprets the Critique as a unified argument concerning all three domains.Kant's Critique of Judgment has often been interpreted by scholars as comprising separate treatments of three uneasily connected topics: beauty, biology, and empirical knowledge. Rachel Zuckert's book interprets the Critique as a unified argument concerning all three domains. She argues that on Kant's view, human beings demonstrate a distinctive cognitive ability in appreciating beauty and understanding organic life: an ability to anticipate a whole that we do not completely understand according to preconceived categories. This ability is necessary, moreover, for human beings to gain knowledge of nature in its empirical character as it is, not as we might assume it to be. Her wide-ranging and original study will be valuable for readers in all areas of Kant's philosophy.Introduction; 1. The problem: unity of the diverse; 2. Reflective judgment and its principle: preliminary remarks; Part I. Teleological Judgment: 3. The critique of teleological judgment: purposiveness is the 'highest formal unity'; 4. A merely subjective principle: time and the 'peculiarities of our intellects'; Part II. Aesthetic Judgment: Introduction; 5. Beautiful objects: subjectively purposive form; 6. Aesthetic pleasure: the feeling of subjective, projective temporality; 7. The free harmony of the faculties: purposiveness as the principle of aesthetic Beurteilung; 8. The justifical��