Immanuel Kant Character Analysis

What is the meaning of ascetic ideals?

But, as I feared, the contrary was always the case and so, from the very beginning, we get from our philosophers definitions upon which the lack of any refined personal experience squats like a big fat stupid worm, as it does on Kant's famous definition of the beautiful. ‘That is beautiful,’ says Kant, ‘which pleases without interest.’

Without interest?! Compare this definition with this other one, made by an ‘artist,’ an ‘observer’ truly capable of aesthetic appreciation—by Stendhal, who once called the beautiful une promesse de bonheur.

Every animal […] strives instinctively after the most favourable conditions: those under which it can exert its full strength, and experience its greatest feeling of power; every animal also instinctively abhors (and with an acute sense ‘surpassing all reason’) any kind of disruption or hindrance which obstructs or could obstruct his path to this optimum (it is not his way to ‘happiness’ of which I speak, but his path to power, to action, the most powerful action, and in point of fact in many cases his way to misery).

We know the three great catch-words of the ascetic ideal: poverty, humility chastity; and if we look closely at the lives of all the great productive, creative intellects, we will find these present again and again, in some measure.

There is only a seeing from a perspective, only a ‘knowing’ from a perspective, and the more emotions we express concerning a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our ‘idea’ of that thing, our ‘objectivity.’

What is the meaning of ascetic ideals?

But, as I feared, the contrary was always the case and so, from the very beginning, we get from our philosophers definitions upon which the lack of any refined personal experience squats like a big fat stupid worm, as it does on Kant's famous definition of the beautiful. ‘That is beautiful,’ says Kant, ‘which pleases without interest.’

Without interest?! Compare this definition with this other one, made by an ‘artist,’ an ‘observer’ truly capable of aesthetic appreciation—by Stendhal, who once called the beautiful une promesse de bonheur.

Every animal […] strives instinctively after the most favourable conditions: those under which it can exert its full strength, and experience its greatest feeling of power; every animal also instinctively abhors (and with an acute sense ‘surpassing all reason’) any kind of disruption or hindrance which obstructs or could obstruct his path to this optimum (it is not his way to ‘happiness’ of which I speak, but his path to power, to action, the most powerful action, and in point of fact in many cases his way to misery).

We know the three great catch-words of the ascetic ideal: poverty, humility chastity; and if we look closely at the lives of all the great productive, creative intellects, we will find these present again and again, in some measure.

There is only a seeing from a perspective, only a ‘knowing’ from a perspective, and the more emotions we express concerning a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our ‘idea’ of that thing, our ‘objectivity.’