Giulia Milli

In this article, I challenge the anthropocentric reading of the Kantian sublime by examining the meaning of the «negative» aspect involved in this experience. Although the sublime in Kant discloses the rational ground of the human being and his moral «superiority», it also enlightens on the human being as a natural being with sensible limits. By stressing these twofold aspects of the sublime, this paper aims to show that the Kantian sublime cannot be conceived as anthropocentric, for it highlights a peculiar relationship between pleasure and displeasure, that can be meant as a renewed balance between human being and nature, rather than an imposition of the former over the latter. The negative pleasure in the sublime can be considered as the link between a displeasure due to human sensible limits, on the one hand, and a pleasure that refers to his rational capacity, on the other hand. Accordingly, Kant’s account of the sublime supports an environmental rather than anthropocentric reading, as it begins with an acknowledgment of nature and human limitations in relation to it, and then makes the human being aware of his moral ground.

This paper explores the moral import of Kant’s theory of the beautiful in relation to his systematic aim of bridging the gulf between nature and freedom. The aim is to preserve the importance of the beautiful – whether natural or artistic – while also accounting for Kant’s emphasis on the pre-eminence of natural beauty. Drawing on Kant’s distinction between intellectual and empirical interest in the beautiful, this paper argues that only natural beauty enables a transition to the supersensible both within the subject and externally. It concludes by examining whether intellectual interest in natural beauty might be regarded as a duty.

The preeminence of beauty of nature over beauty of art arises as a key point in Kantian aesthetics. This preeminence is justified in the possibility of reading beautiful nature from the perspective of a purposive arrangement for human being’s moral realisation, mediating between the sensible and the supersensible. Based on this premise, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between natural beauty and aesthetic ideas by assuming that the latter are the product of genius and should therefore be traced back to artistic beauty. The relationship between natural beauty and aesthetic ideas deserves attention in light of Kant’s problematic definition of beauty in general (both natural and artistic) as an expression of aesthetic ideas, a definition that risks blurring the line between natural beauty and artistic beauty. Therefore, I would like to suggest that this definition of beauty should be interpreted broadly and non-literally: beauty and aesthetic ideas, while having characteristics in common – such as the free character of imagination – also have differences that exclude overlapping or interdependence between them.