Abstract
The aim of this essay is to articulate the central elements of Kant’s aesthetic theory and to demonstrate in what way they have been essential for the development of modern art, especially for our appreciation of abstract images. Even though Kant’s aesthetic theory of art did not actually represent any radical departure from the standards of representation that dominated the art theory and practice of his time, his conception of aesthetic appreciation as embedded in the notion of the free harmony and in the idea of a disinterested pleasure due to the purposive form of the object was nevertheless revolutionary in that it emancipated the form from the content of the object and thereby allowed the possibility to understanding and appreciating art irrespectively to what it represents.
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Notes
- 1.
References to Immanuel Kant are given in the text to the volume and page number of the standard German edition of his collected works: Kants gesammelte Schriften (KGS). References to the Critique of Pure Reason are to the standard A and B pagination of the first and second editions. References are also given, after a comma, to the English translation of Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
References
References to Immanuel Kant are given in the text to the volume and page number of the standard German edition of his collected works: Kants gesammelte Schriften (KGS). References to the Critique of Pure Reason are to the standard A and B pagination of the first and second editions. References are also given, after a comma, to the English translation of Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
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Kuplen, M. (2021). Immanuel Kant and the Emancipation of the Image. In: Purgar, K. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Image Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71830-5_6
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