Gnostikant

Evidence that Hamann had Kant right: In explaining taste as a common sense, he notes that this common sense of beauty can be arrived at by a process of stripping off whatever belongs to our perception and prejudice. That is, we put “ourselves in the position of every one else, as a result of a mere abstraction from the limitations which contingently affect our own estimate.” How can we abstract our judgment from our own limitations? This is “effected by so far as possible letting go of the element of matter, i.e., sensation, in our general state of representative activity, and confining attention to the formal peculiarities of our representation or general state of representative activity.” When contemplating nature, we contemplate “the beautiful forms of nature” and have “to put to one side the charms which she is wont so lavishly to combine with them.”