Adherent Beauty and the Scope of Perfection

This chapter considers Kant's distinction between adherent and free beauty. It shows that whilst not compelling, his structure of argument is at least consistent and, indeed, contains two crucial insights; namely, that beauty must sometimes take second place to perfection, and is thence of conditional rather than absolute value; and that judgements of perfection can themselves be aesthetic in character. An argument is offered in defence of this first claim. It is then argued that there is a better way than Kant's of grounding the second claim. The disinterestedness and freedom whereby Kant...

This chapter considers Kant's distinction between adherent and free beauty. It shows that whilst not compelling, his structure of argument is at least consistent and, indeed, contains two crucial insights; namely, that beauty must sometimes take second place to perfection, and is thence of conditional rather than absolute value; and that judgements of perfection can themselves be aesthetic in character. An argument is offered in defence of this first claim. It is then argued that there is a better way than Kant's of grounding the second claim. The disinterestedness and freedom whereby Kant defines the pure aesthetic judgement, can also hold, in a modified way, for some judgements of perfection. The theory is developed through consideration of a range of different examples.