An Analysis of Kant’s pre-Critical Approach towards the Sublime and the Beautiful

GroundedThe present article deals with one of Kant’s most significant pre-Critical text, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1764), from the viewpoint of Kant’s methodology and conceptual means in dealing with the most important subjects of aesthetics in eighteenth-century, the beautiful and the sublime. Our main purpose is to demonstrate that albeit being inspired by his predecessors and contemporaries both in Britain and Germany in matters of taste (also our main presumption), Kant adopted a genuine approach in Observations. Through an in-depth analysis of the text we have endeavoured to show that the reasons for this originality are firstly, Kant’s specific observational, empirical method combined with his trying to find a universal principle for ethics, and secondly, Kant’s persistent concerns about ethics, anthropology and pedagogy presented by a taxonomic structure – issues present in the pre-Critical period and central to Kant’s philosophy all through the critical period. Our analysis is based on a close reading of the text, revealing its formal structure, leading to the conclusion that Observations is for the most part a taxonomically structured text on anthropology and ethics than aesthetics. Otherwise put, through aesthetics Kant is dealing with central issues in ethics and anthropology, i.e. highest principle of morality, the sexes, human temperaments and the ends of nature. We hope to succeeded in shedding a light on another aspect of the transcendental Kant: the empirical one