Kenneth F. Rogerson

For some time now ethical debates have been fought on a field whose boundaries are the historical theories of Kant's deontology and Mill's utilitarianism. Recently, however, several have chosen to leave the battlefield entirely—to suggest, in various ways, that both of the major ethical theories share a common, flawed outlook. Thomas Nagel, for example, has argued that founding ethics on the sole ground of interpersonal obligations unnecessarily “fragments” human value. Such an account has the effect of pitting one species of human value against other quite legitimate values. Or approaching the matter from quite another direction, Philippa Foot also holds that morality, as a system of interpersonal obligations, is too limiting. However, she proposes to counter the advancing forces of modern ethics by championing an Aristotelian doctrine of virtue.

The purpose of this paper is to give an interpretation of what Kant takes to be the moral importance of aesthetic experience. On my interpretation aesthetic experience pleases since, in general, it is the experience of our finding an object first the aim of our reflective judging efforts. However, satisfying such an aim only makes sense within Kant 's further account of beauty as the expression of aesthetic ideas. In the end I hold that on Kant 's account it is only because beauty can express aesthetic ideas that aesthetic experience can be of moral importance