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Living Freedom: The Heautonomy of the Judgement of Taste

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2023

Zhengmi Zhouhuang
Zhengmi Zhouhuang*
Affiliation:
Center for Studies of Values and Culture, School of Philosophy, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
*
Email: zhouhuangzhengmi@hotmail.com
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Abstract

Different from the autonomy of understanding in cognition and the autonomy of practical reason in praxis, the heautonomy in the judgement of taste is reflexive. The reflexivity consists not only in the fact that the power of judgement legislates to its own usage but also, and more importantly, it legislates to itself through its own operative process. This normativity, based on the self-referential structure of pure aesthetic judgement and the a priori principle of subjective, internal purposiveness, can be regarded as a self-discovering and self-flourishing principle that organically grows out of the aesthetic experience and, at the same time, regulates its growth in return. In this scenario, aesthetic freedom can be identified as a third kind of freedom different from Kant’s transcendental freedom and practical freedom – a flexible and living freedom with spontaneous legislation, but not bound by any determinate laws.

Keywords

Kantfreedomtastejudgementheautonomyinternal purposivenessorganism
Type
Article
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 2024 , pp. 81 - 102
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Kantian Review

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