Kant and the Feeling of Life: Beauty and Nature in the Critique of Judgment

Kant and the Feeling of Life positions Kant’s concept of life as a guiding thread for understanding not only Kant’s approach to aesthetics and teleology but the underlying unity of the Critique of Judgment itself. The ＂feeling of life,＂ which Kant describes as affecting us in various ways--as animating, enlivening, and quickening the mind--lies at the heart of Kant’s philosophical project, but it has remained understudied for a theme of such centrality. This volume brings together, for the first time, essays focused on the topic of life in Kant’s work, providing a wealth of perspectives and analyses ranging from the Critique of Judgment to Kant’s early aesthetics, his social and political philosophy, his work connected to the body and health, and his moral theory.

Jennifer Mensch is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western Sydney University. She is the author of Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy.