Murray - The Possibility of Culture: Pleasure and Moral Development in Kants Aesthe

BRADLEY MURRAY

Series editors: Dominic McIver Lopes, University of British Columbia, and Berys Gaut, University of St Andrews

Blackwells New Directions in Aesthetics series highlights ambitious single- and multiple-author books that confront the most intriguing and pressing problems in aesthetics and the philosophy of art today. Each book is written in a way that advances understanding of the subject at hand and is accessible to upper-undergraduate and graduate students.

1. Interpretation and Construction: Art, Speech, and the Law
   by Robert Stecker
2. Art as Performance
   by David Davies
3. The Performance of Reading: An Essay in the Philosophy of Literature
   by Peter Kivy
4. The Art of Theater
   by James R. Hamilton
5. Cultural Appropriation and the Arts
   by James O. Young
6. Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature
   ed. Scott Walden
7. Art and Ethical Criticism
   ed. Garry L. Hagberg
8. Mirrors to One Another: Emotion and Value in Jane Austen and David Hume
   by Eva Dadlez
9. Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor
   by John Morreall
10. The Art of Videogames
    by Grant Tavinor
11. Once-Told Tales: An Essay in Literary Aesthetics
    by Peter Kivy
12. The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach
    by Aaron Meskin and Roy T. Cook
13. The Aesthetics of Wine
    by Douglas Burnham and Ole Martin Skilles
14. The Possibility of Culture: Pleasure and Moral Development in Kant's Aesthetics
    by Bradley Murray

This edition first published 2015
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Murray, Bradley, 1980
The possibility of culture : pleasure and moral development in Kant's aesthetics / Bradley Murray.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-95065-4 (cloth)
1. Kant, Immanuel, 17241804. 2. Aesthetics. 3. Ethics. I. Title.
B2799.A4M87 2015
111.85092dc23
2015000032

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: The Apotheosis of Homer, 1827, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. c DeAgostini/Superstock

To my parents, Diane Murray and Eric Murray

I was very fortunate to have had the opportunity to present early versions of the chapters of this book to the Aesthetics Reading Group at the University of British Columbia. I received many insightful comments which led me to rethink a number of my ideas about Kants aesthetics. I have also benefited from the feedback that I received from three anonymous reviewers commissioned by Wiley-Blackwell. I have done my best to address the points raised by all who have read the manuscript closely, and I hope that they will find my attempts at improving it to be at least somewhat satisfying. I would especially like to thank Dominic McIver Lopes for the many challenging and helpful ideas with which he presented me as this project was taking shape.

Citations of Kants texts indicate an abbreviated title, along with the volume and page number of the Academy edition of Kants writings (Kants Gesammelte Schriften, Akademie Ausgabe [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1900]). Unless otherwise noted, translations are from the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) (Ca).