Purposiveness, Time, and Unity: A Reading of Kant's Critique of Judgement

FAIN: FA-37510-03

Rachel E. Zuckert
Rice University (Houston, TX 77005-1827)

No project description available

Media Coverage

Rachel Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the Critique of Judgment (Review)
Author(s): Fred Rauscher
Publication: Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Date: 2/10/2012
Abstract: Kant on Beauty and Biology is a bold and remarkable book. Zuckert takes a sweeping approach to Kant's thought while still engaging in detailed textual exegesis and debate with the secondary literature. Hardly a page goes by without reference to part of the literature (at least the English language part of it) on the various topics touched upon by her analysis. She deftly moves from issue to issue, anticipating and answering objections, to defend what to some will seem at first to be implausible claims. I am not entirely convinced of all the details, but I completed the book with a revised view of Kant's Critique of Judgment and its place in Kant's system.
URL: http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24005-kant-on-beauty-and-biology-an-interpretation-of-the-critique-of-judgment/

Zuckert, Rachel. Kant on Beauty and Biology (Review)
Author(s): Michael Rohlf
Publication: Review of Metaphysics
Date: 12/1/2008
Abstract: Most interpreters approach the work as a collection of separate discussions about aesthetics, various topics in the philosophy of science, and their relations to other topics in Kant's system. Many regard Kant's principle of purposiveness as too vague to impart any substantive unity to his treatment of these topics, and some argue that what coherence the work has derives from elsewhere. Rachel Zuckert, however, opposes such piecemeal approaches. Like Hannah Ginsborg and Cristel Fricke, Zuckert argues that the principle of purposiveness does provide a substantive basis for a unified interpretation, but Zuckert has written the only book that treats the entire Critique of Judgment as a unified work. She develops an original interpretation both of the principle of purposiveness and of how it unifies Kant's overall argument. It is a rich, often ingenious book that makes an important contribution to Kant studies.

Purposiveness without a Purpose (Review)
Author(s): Alix Cohen
Publication: Metascience
Date: 7/1/2009
Abstract: There is no doubt that Zuckert achieves her aim in a way that should open up interesting debates in Kant scholarship. For, by grounding her interpretation of the concept of
purposiveness without a purpose’ on Kant’s account of our judgments about organisms, Kant on Beauty and Biology should lead to a re-evaluation of traditional understandings of this concept in aesthetic judgment.

Rachel Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the Critique of Judgment (Review)
Author(s): Robert Wicks
Publication: British Journal for the History of Philosophy
Date: 12/1/2009
Abstract: Review of above book.

Kant’s Notion of Intrinsic Purposiveness in the Critique of Judgment: A Review Essay (and an Inversion) of Zuckert’s Kant on Beauty and Biology (Review)
Author(s): John Zammito
Publication: Kant Yearbook
Date: 1/1/2009
Abstract: Review essay.

Rachel Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the Critique of Judgment (Review)
Author(s): Mark Fisher
Publication: Journal of the History of Philosophy
Date: 1/1/2009
Abstract: Zuckert has succeeded in providing a novel, provocative, and potentially attractive alternative to other available interpretations of the CJ. She also seems to be right about several important issues, including the importance of Kant’s criticism of the Leibnizean- Wolffian tradition in aesthetics and teleology, not only for the project of the CJ itself, but also for the historical transition in German thought from the pre-Kantian metaphysics of perfection to the post-Kantian metaphysics of the subject. Even those who agree with her general criticisms of the standard view, however, are likely to find Zuckert’s positive claims concerning Kant’s principle of judgment, and the transition in his own view of subjectivity, to be more suggestive than conclusive.

Associated Products

Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Judgment (Book)
Title: Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Judgment
Author: Rachel Zuckert
Abstract: Kant's Critique of Judgment has often been interpreted by scholars as comprising separate treatments of three uneasily connected topics: beauty, biology, and empirical knowledge. Rachel Zuckert's book interprets the Critique as a unified argument concerning all three domains.
Year: 2007
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780521172332

Prizes

Monograph Prize
Date: 10/20/2008
Organization: American Society for Aesthetics
Abstract: Awarded for an outstanding monograph published in philosophical aesthetics.

“The Purposiveness of Form: A Reading of Kant’s Aesthetic Formalism,” (Article)
Title: “The Purposiveness of Form: A Reading of Kant’s Aesthetic Formalism,”
Author: Rachel Zuckert
Abstract: Against critics of Kant's aesthetic formalism, either on aesthetic or on interpretive grounds, I provide a new interpretation of Kant's conception of beautiful form. On this view, Kant understands form not as a set of spatio-temporal properties, but as the organic unity of the object experienced as beautiful.
Year: 2006
Primary URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/76
Primary URL Description: access to the journal via project muse
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of the History of Philosophy
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

“Boring Beauty and Universal Morality: Kant on the ‘Ideal of Beauty,’” (Article)
Title: “Boring Beauty and Universal Morality: Kant on the ‘Ideal of Beauty,’”
Author: Rachel Zuckert
Abstract: I argue that Kant’s account of the “ideal of beauty” in paragraph 17 of the Critique of Judgment is not only a plausible account of one kind of beauty (“boring” beauty), but also that it can address some of our moral qualms concerning the aesthetic evaluation of persons, including our psychological propensity to take a person’s beauty as representative of her moral character.
Year: 2005
Primary URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/sinq20/current
Primary URL Description: journal website
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Inquiry
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

“Kant’s Sublime Rhetoric,” (Article)
Title: “Kant’s Sublime Rhetoric,”
Author: Rachel Zuckert
Abstract: Kant’s moral philosophy is often understood as a purely theoretical, meta-ethical enterprise, meant to provide a rational, philosophical grounding for moral norms, and to refute philosophical arguments that might undermine such norms. I argue that Kant is also engaged in a different, morally persuasive enterprise -- to persuade readers to be moral. Kant does so by using a “rhetoric of the sublime,” by engaging in abstract philosophical reasoning, and by eschewing the colorful language, metaphors, examples of nobility, etc. that might, traditionally, be parts of such a persuasive, rhetorical enterprise. Kantian abstraction is, rather, exhortative by frustrating sensibility, and thereby revealing the transcendent character of morality and practical rationality.
Year: 2007
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/immanuel-kant-german-professor-and-world-philosopher-deutscher-professor-und-weltphilosoph/oclc/317403764&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: world cat listing
Access Model: print book
Format: Other
Publisher: Wehrhohn

“Kant’s Double Justification of Taste,” (Article)
Title: “Kant’s Double Justification of Taste,”
Author: Rachel Zuckert
Abstract: I address an interpretive problem posed by Kant’s Critique of Judgment: how to read Kant’s claim at the end of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment that judgments of taste may “only” be justified on grounds that taste has moral import, given the fact that Kant has previously provided a cognitive deduction for such judgments. I argue that this claim ought to be read as a response to a second justificatory question prompted by Kant’s systematic concerns, and thus as consistent with – indeed consequent upon -- Kant’s cognitive deduction of taste.
Year: 2008
Primary URL: http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/20287?rskey=qcnXyp&result=6
Primary URL Description: publisher website
Access Model: print book
Format: Other
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

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