Displeasure in the Ugly: Does Kant Allow for Negative Aesthetic Judgements on Nature?

Abstract In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant very rarely speaks of the ugly and, relatedly, displeasure. It is therefore controversial whether he allows for negative judgements of taste. On closer inspection, the problem is even two-fold because Kant also speaks of something being non-beautiful. However, he leaves open whether the non-beautiful is identical to the ugly. Thus, it needs to be clarified whether Kant allows for aesthetic judgements that judge an object as non-beautiful and whether he allows for those that judge it as ugly. In this article, I will develop an answer to these questions. In doing so, however, I will focus on Kant’s aesthetics of nature and disregard his aesthetics of art. Everything depends on how we interpret what Kant calls the ‘key to the critique of taste’ in §9. I will develop a reading of this key, which I will distinguish from some other readings. On the basis of this interpretation, I will finally argue that Kant indeed allows for negative aesthetic judgements on nature and that these judgements can attribute to an object not only the predicate of the non-beautiful but also that of the ugly.