ABSTRACT
Throughout the previous chapters, I have developed a concept of the ethical dimension of art by drawing out the full significance of Kant’s aesthetic theory for his moral theory, concerning in particular, the role of imagination and indeterminacy in moral motivation. The way an object exhibits this ethical dimension is demonstrated in art’s reception, understood under pragmatist theories of language and meaning, as involving enjoyment, reflection and subjectivity honed inter-subjectively. The conception of art that results, while indebted to Kantian aesthetics, reveals in turn the extent to which pragmatist theories of meaning and language advance key aspects of Kant’s aesthetic theory. In this concluding chapter, I locate this conception of art in relation to absolutism and noncognitive formalism, to which it represents an alternative. After revisiting the grounds of this conception of art in internal realism, I present a conception of community symbiotic with it.
