Vindications and Seductions: On Feminism and <i>The Radical Aesthetic</i>

Abstract Isobel Armstrong celebrates what she calls “the radical aesthetic” as a vehicle for feminist commitments, rejecting, in the process, a Kantian emphasis on judgment. This essay compares her approach with Frances Ferguson's in Solitude and the Sublime (1992), which launches its vindication of Kantian method from a feminist critique of Edmund Burke's empiricist aesthetics. Following Ferguson, I argue that Kantian formal idealism is also radical in a way that accommodates and activates feminist critique.