E-LOGOS 2015, 22(1):5-14 | DOI: 10.18267/j.e-logos.409

How Beauty Disrupts Space, Time and Thought: Purposiveness Without a Purpose in Kant's Critique of Judgment

Stuart Dalton
Philosophy & Humanistic Studies Department, 021-A White Hall, Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, CT 06810, USA, 203-837-3282, email: daltons@wcsu.edu

Keywords: Kant, Kantian Aesthetics, Critique of Judgment, Third Critique, Analytic of the Beautiful, Purposiveness.

In this essay I explore the phenomenon of "purposiveness without a purpose" in Kant's account of aesthetic judgments. I begin by considering what Kant means by purposiveness in general, and then I analyze the specific "purposiveness without a purpose" that belongs to aesthetic judgments. I analyze the purposiveness without a purpose of the beautiful first in terms of space and then in terms of time. The essay concludes with a consideration of how purposiveness without a purpose makes beauty resistant to thought.

Prepublished online: August 1, 2015; Published: June 1, 2015  Show citation

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Dalton, S. (2015). How Beauty Disrupts Space, Time and Thought: Purposiveness Without a Purpose in Kant's Critique of Judgment. E-LOGOS, 22(1), 5-14. doi: 10.18267/j.e-logos.409
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