09/15/2025
Our first lecture in the Fall Philosophy Colloquium series
will be this Friday September 19 from 3-5pm in AH 301. Our speaker is Colin McQuillan, Professor of Philosophy at St. Mary University, San Antonio. Title and abstract below. Those interested in participating in a meeting of the Houston Circle for the Study of the History of Philosophy from Antiquity to Modernity on Sept 20 to discuss Dr McQuillan's work in progress with him should contact Dr Hattab at [email protected] for details.
Aesthetics and Logic: The Elements of Kant's Critique
Abstract: Today it might seem like aesthetics and logic have little in
common – aesthetics is thought to concern art, beauty, criticism, and taste, while logic seeks to identify the conditions of valid
inference. However, in eighteenth-century Germany, when aesthetics was first introduced as a new part of philosophy, they were seen as “sister sciences.” In this paper, I will argue, first, that
understanding the relationship between aesthetics and logic in
eighteenth-century Germany is necessary to understand the origin of modern aesthetics, and, second, that this relationship explains the structure of one of the most influential works of modern European philosophy – Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), whose ‘Transcendental Doctrine of Elements’ consists of a ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ and a ‘Transcendental Logic.’
