Katalin Makkai - Kants Critique of Taste: The Feeling of Life

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Katalin Makkai 2021

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First published 2021

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ISBN 978-1-108-49779-4 Hardback

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Many individuals and institutions have helped me through this project, on which I have worked, on and off, for a long time. I have learned a great deal from conversations with my students in courses taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, and Bard College Berlin. I have also benefited from discussions with audiences at Simon Fraser University, Barnard College, Columbia University, the CUNY Graduate Center, Kenyon College, a conference on beauty at Auburn University, and several meetings of the American Society for Aesthetics, where I presented early versions of parts of this book, and with participants in a congenial Kant-Kurs held at the University of Siegen. It is a pleasure to thank Pirachula Chulanon in print for his excellent research assistance. I am grateful to Barnard College and Bard College Berlin for their support of my work.

Over countless conversations, my dear friend Rachel Zuckert gave indispensable feedback on drafts of these chapters. I cannot thank her enough for her suggestions and advice, always wildly intelligent, sensible, and kind, and for her unflagging encouragement, without which this book would be only a gleam in my eye. I have been buoyed by the support of Kelly Dean Jolley, Michael Kelly, Fred Neuhouser, and Charles Parsons. Richard Moran has been a wonderful mentor and a great friend, and I have drawn heavily on what I have learned from his writing and in conversation. I wish that I could give a copy of this book to Stanley Cavell as a token of my gratitude for all that he has given me as a thinker, teacher, mentor, and friend.

I spent quite a few summers working toward this book in San Francisco, and I credit the progress I made to the happiness of life in the company of sta, Dore Bowen, Rebecca Groves, and Rebecca McLennan. During Anne-Galle Argys impromptu gift of a stay in her Paris flat, the manuscript turned a decisive corner. Gabriele Zipf and Manfred Roeder cheered me on in Berlin, by the sea, in the mountains, and on a river, and heroically endured questions about Kants German.

I thank Hilary Gaskin, Hal Churchman, and Thomas Haynes at Cambridge University Press for their expert and impeccable guidance and generous support. I am grateful to Divya Arjunan and her Production Team at SPi Global for their meticulous work and patience. My thanks go also to the anonymous readers who reviewed my manuscript.

An earlier version of was published as Kant on Recognizing Beauty, European Journal of Philosophy 18, no. 3 (2010). The argument has been somewhat reworked. I am grateful to the journal for permission to reprint.

I dedicate this book to Zsuzsanna Bencsth-Makkai, Mihly Makkai, Katalin Bencsath, Mihaly Mezei, Maria Bencsath, and John Douwes, sok szeretettel s hlval.

Kants Critique of Pure Reason is cited by the page numbers of the first (A) and second (B) editions. Kants other works are cited by title or abbreviated title and by volume and page number of Kants gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Reimer, later de Gruyter, 1902), also known as the Akademie edition. FI is the abbreviated title of the first, originally unpublished, introduction to the Critique of Judgment . CJ abbreviates the title of the Critique of Judgment .

Quoted translations of Kants writings are based on the Cambridge University Press translations specified in the Bibliography. I have often modified the translations, and often silently.

References by name to sections of Kants works are capitalized (e.g., the Analytic of the Beautiful), and references to the corresponding subject matter are lowercased (e.g., the analytic of the beautiful).

I recognize the phenomenon that Smith is describing, and I share the sense of its significance, its being worth articulating and reflecting upon. Judging by the essays reception, I am not alone. I expect that I am also not alone in finding Smiths characterization of her transformation to ring a certain bell. Kants Critique of Judgment springs to mind, since there Kant too, and famously, writes of an aesthetic attunement. The association could be superficial, two writers having hit upon the same appealing term to capture ideas that ultimately have little in common. But in my view there is a genuine and interesting affinity between Smiths and Kants visions of aesthetic attunement.