Had Kant done this, he would have surpassed Leibnitz and Baumgarten; he
would have equalled Vico.
Kant did not identify the Beautiful with art. He established what he
called "the four moments of Beauty," amounting to a definition of it.
The two negative moments are, "That is beautiful which pleases _without
interest_"; this thesis was directed against the sensualist school of
English writers, with whom Kant had for a time agreed; and "That is
beautiful which pleases without a concept," directed against the
intellectualists. Thus he affirmed the existence of a spiritual domain,
distinct from that of organic pleasure, of the useful, the good, and the
true. The two other moments are, "That is beautiful which has the form
of finality without the representation of an end," and "That is
beautiful which is the object of universal pleasure." What is this
disinterested pleasure that we experience before pure colours, pure
sounds, and flowers? Benedetto Croce replies that this mysterious domain
has no existence; that the instances cited represent, either instances
of organic pleasure, or are artistic facts of expression.
Kant was less severe with the Neoplatonicians than with the two schools
of thought above mentioned. His _Critique of Judgment_ contains some
curious passages, in one of which he gives his distinction of form from
matter: "In music, the melody is the matter, harmony the form: in a
flower, the scent is the matter, the shape or configuration the form.
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