To Know Beauty Exactly: The Aims of Eros and Aesthetic Judgment

Abstract Edith Landmann-Kalischer’s essays on aesthetics are a remarkable achievement that deserve widespread attention. Here I raise two related problems for her blend of Kantian hedonism with late nineteenth-century enthusiasm for the psychological sciences. First, I argue that she misconstrues the nature of beauty by maintaining that it is possible for it to be the object of science. Second, I argue that her hedonism prevents her from adequately accounting for the dynamics of aesthetic engagement. Unlike many hedonists, she recognizes the need for dynamic engagement, but the details she provides are misplaced. I provide alternate accounts of both what sort of feature beauty is and of the dynamic nature of aesthetic engagement.