Abstract

An initial consideration of Diderot's Letter on the Blind provides a heuristic device with which to examine Kant's aesthetic theory as presented in the Critique of Judgment for evidence of a privileging of sight and a corresponding proscription of touch. I argue that the exposition of his aesthetic theory---as opposed to the theory itself, i.e., that which stands on the principles he identifies---does indeed exhibit a certain oculocentrism, but that the theory itself does not allow him to privilege sight nor rule out of touch as avenues for the appreciation of beauty and the sublime. On the basis of this discrepancy, I am then able to examine a wide range of aesthetic phenomena which, even if overlooked by Kant himself, are fully compatible with the principles of his theory. As a result, I greatly expand upon the aesthetic phenomena Kant considers under the rubric of the beautiful and the sublime while I remain faithful to his theory. The concept of "form" is central to Kant's thought, and by centering on the role of the senses, my examination of Kant's aesthetic theory is also able to make clear what Kant there means by "form of the object"; it refers to the spatio-temporal shape of the object, and as such must be distinguished from the "form of purposiveness" attributed to that form of the object in a judgment of beauty. In addition, the contentious concept of "accessory beauty" is finally made clear through a detailed analysis. These insights then serve to illuminate Kant's theory of art . I close the dissertation by invoking Diderot's Letter once again in order to show that Kant's own theory of artistic production offers an additional base for arguing that he cannot consistently rule out touch. The dissertation ends with a few final reflections upon the relation between the aesthetic and the human for Kant