Editorial

The well-tempered Reason: On the Principle of Taste in Philosophy and Other Kantian Essays

28 march, 2022≈ 2 min read

Authors

Leonel Ribeiro dos Santos

Synopsis

The idea that gives title and tone to this volume is taken from the first essay, which points out the various aspects of the profound aesthetic transformation of Philosophy carried out in and by Kant’s philosophy. The importance of the Taste metaphor-principle is highlighted as a notion upon which eighteenth-century aesthetic thought and discourse is constructed in its most qualified expression, but also as a shaping principle of philosophical thought in general, which gives it an unmistakable feature, recognizable in the language and in the way of understanding the production of thought and the nature of Philosophy itself and its peculiar poetics. The first four essays explain the effects of this “shift to Aesthetics” as it did in and through Kant’s philosophy. A second group of essays develops little-visited aspects of Kantian moral and political thought. And the last four essays show the fruitfulness of the philosophical polemics, whether presenting Kant as an interpreter and critic of other ancient and contemporary philosophers, or showing little-known interpretations of Kant’s philosophy itself, which have some relation with other essays integrated in the volume.