The Figurative Language of Nature

Expression and Meaning in Kant's Aesthetic Judgment

Abstract

Drawing on the intimate connection between beauty and morality in Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment, the aim of this paper is to elucidate Kant's doctrine of the moral meaning that natural beauty is said to carry for us in the act of aesthetic judgment. I propose that the key to this meaning to be the expressive nature of beauty. "Expression" is to be analyzed in terms of the way in which nature, according to Kant, is something that "figuratively speaks to us in its beautiful forms" when we experience it aesthetically. I argue that there is a connection to be drawn between what is expressed in the judgment of natural beauty and the moral meaning of the judgment of natural beauty. This connection is made by the intellectual interest that the person of good moral character takes in in the presentation of beauty in nature. It is an interest in the realization of our highest moral end.