Is there a negative judgment of taste? Disgust as the real ugliness in Kant's aesthetic

Starting from the recent debate on the role of ugly in Kant’s aesthetics and according to Paul Guyer and Reinhard Brandt, in this essay I state that in Kantian perspective any negative judgment of taste can exist. The ugly is in fact always reduced to the beauty and the principle of purposiveness doesn’t allow any pure negative aesthetic judgment. The disgust, on the contrary, seems to be the real opposite of the beauty, the irreducible ugly. In this writing I demonstrate that, with its presence, the disgust ensures the bounds of the Kantian aesthetics against the contra-purposiveness

Metaphor and boundary

The use of metaphors play in Kantian thought a fundamental role. In my paper I argue that Reimarus’ Logic could be considered as a source for Kant's use of some metaphors. In his Logic, in fact, Reimarus anticipates the geographical metaphor by which it is possible to distinguish between limits and boundary, to draw the map of reason and to put her in front of a court. The aim of my analysis is to show that Reimarus’ Logic could be considered as a turning point in Wolffian philosophy on the topic of the definition of experience in relation to unity of the system

Introduction to the Focus on disgust

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"Kant in biology": introduzione

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Arte e tabù: il disgusto e i limiti della rappresentazione

Referring to the notion of representation, I will argue the idea that disgust continues to constitute a limitation for art and that the presence of the disgusting can be read through the Freudian notion of taboo. The indulgence of artistic creation in disgust, in fact, would confirm the fact that only what is domesticated, thus what does not arouse authentic disgust, can be assimilated by art. On the contrary, authentic disgust remains taboo insofar as it indicates the absolutely other, the unassimilable, a non-domesticated animality extraneous to the process of civilization. It is, after all, what classical aesthetics had already shown and that today can be reread in Freudian terms

Is it possible to overcome disgust? An ambivalent emotion

A growing interest for the emotion of disgust has recently arisen in international contexts acrossseveral fields of research. A general definition of disgust will be primarily assumed: by disgust I understand a total rejection that generates a motion of repulsion and removal of an object that is in the proximity of the subject, without constituting a real danger. In reference to the notion of taboo, I will first of all assume its ambivalence. The emotion of disgust, essentially natural and cultural at the same time, as a typical trait of the process of human civilization that distinguishes humans from animals. At variance with other theories of disgust, I will argue that it is not possible to theoretically articulate the overcoming of disgust, but that it is possible to educate about this emotion through artistic experience. On this ground, an ethics of disgust will be outlined, which starts from the acknowledgement of one of our most bodily emotions

Introduzione

This issue gathers the interventions presented on occasion of a joint conference organised by the Department of Cultural Heritage of University of Milan and the Department of Social Sciences of the University of Parma from 14-16 October 2016 concomitantly to Expo Milan Fair. The focus of the conference, which reflects in the present publication, was ‘taste and disgust’ in Aesthetics and in the arts — seen from an interdisciplinary perspective that goes beyond a strictly academic discourse and on to the investigation of its socio-cultural repercussions