28 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



19. 



Kant's 

 theory of 

 disin- 

 terested 

 pleasure. 



20. 



Sublime. 



portant problem in all philosophy. To the conception 

 of the good and of moral obligation, which constitute the 

 supreme interest of life, he opposed that which pleases 

 us without any ulterior or personal interest. The beauti- 

 ful, according to him, is an object and source of disin- 

 terested pleasure. By this view, however, he suppressed 

 an aspect of the question which was taken up by later 

 thinkers, and is now familiar to us the aspect accord- 

 ing to which both the beautiful and the good have their 

 origin psychologically in the idea of value or worth 

 which we attach to things or actions, and which points 

 to the existence of certain standards possessed by the 

 human mind. According to these we judge external 

 things and human actions, and assign to them a certain 

 value. The difference between the sesthetical and the 

 ethical value is this, that the latter always implies and 

 is accompanied by a sense of obligation. 



A second series of discussions, to which Lotze refers, 

 turned upon the subdivision of the beautiful. For 

 instance, how is the beautiful distinguished from that 

 which is merely pleasant and agreeable ? to what extent 

 and why does utility please ? These discussions led to 

 what has been termed Utilitarianism and Eudaemonism 

 in aesthetics and in questions of art. One of the favourite 

 points of discussion was that regarding the difference 

 between the Sublime arid the Beautiful. On this subject 

 Edmund Burke had published, in 1756, his celebrated 

 ' Essay.' It was translated and much read in Germany, 

 and became suggestive to Kant, as well as independently 

 to Schiller, who both framed theories based upon this 

 distinction. 



