Kant proposed that we divide thought into two broad categories: seeing, observing and describing which he called speculative reason and appreciating, loving and approving, which he called practical reason. Thus logic, science and mathematics were contrasted to ethics, religion and aesthetics, though aesthetics as requiring accurate description seemed to point to something else called judgment which requires both descriptive and appreciative heuristics. Thus Kant built the container into which the romantics poured the most marvelous draught. The expansion of the appreciative modes of being defined a horizon Kant was certainly well aware of, yet could only hint at, thanks to the titanic challenge of re-inventing all the vocabularies of his ancestors. In this world the human truly lives, they claimed, and never looked back.
February 19, 2013 by m4u
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