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4 - Kant’s Theory of the Feeling of Pleasure and Displeasure (II)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2024

Alexander Rueger
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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Summary

In this chapter I present my reconstruction of Kant’s theory in more detail. One important aspect is Kant’s insistence that the feeling of pleasure is not to be understood as a sensation, occasioned or caused by the representation of an object and separate from the sensations that are involved in the representation. I analyze Kant’s often neglected argument for this claim in § 3 of the Critique and conclude that his view is best understood as an ‘attitudinal’ theory: if a representation satisfies the a priori principle or interest of a faculty, we adopt an attitude of preferring or desiring to have that representation in our mind; equivalently, we say that the representation is purposive for the faculty. In this way the transcendental definition of pleasure, which characterizes the feeling as the tendency of a representation to be maintained in the mind, and the theory of pleasure as interest satisfaction are combined.

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Kant on Pleasure and Judgment
A Developmental and Interpretive Account
, pp. 62 - 84
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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