Taste, sociability and mental disease in Kant
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5380/sk.v23i3.100274Keywords:
Kant, mental disease, taste, sociabilityAbstract
In both the “Introduction” and the “Study” accompanying his translation of the pre-critical essays from 1764, Vinicius de Figueiredo argues that the Observations present an early anthropological formulation of the cosmopolitan ideal of the Enlightenment such as we find in Kant’s mature philosophy. The present work maintains that this assertion also applies to the Essay on the maladies of the head, despite the influence of Rousseau’s thought that we find in its initial and final pages. Based on analyses of the onomastics developed in this writing, as well as of correlated passages from the Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view, I intend to show that Kant’s characterization of mental disorders highlights the harm they cause to free action in civil society, thereby linking pathology to sociability.
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