Kant on the Possibility of Ugliness

As it is presented in some of the literature, Kant's account of aesthetic judgement precludes him from accounting for the possibility of ugliness. For instance, in 'Why Kant Finds Nothing Ugly', Shier argues that 'within Kant's aesthetics, there cannot be any negative judgments of taste.' 1 And in 'Kant's Problem with Ugliness', Thomson claims that 'Kant's aesthetic theory precludes ugliness'. 2 A number of reasons have been put forward to explain why there can be no ugliness for Kant. Some have to do with his account of experience in general; others with his definition of beauty as free play between imagination and understanding. Of course, the real source of the problem is that the Critique of the Power of Judgment does not actually discuss ugliness, so commentators are left with the task of filling in the gaps. 3 Starting from the premise that ugliness should be defined as the contrary of beauty, I will argue that Kant's account of aesthetic judgement commits him not only to the existence of the ugly, but to the distinction between two kinds of ugliness. 4 To support this claim, I will show that beauty as he defines it can be negated in two ways, one that gives rise to impure ugliness and the other to pure ugliness. 5 I will examine them in turn, first by showing that impure ugliness is the contrary of beauty insofar as it contravenes our interests and produces a desire to dispose of it, whereas beauty is necessarily disinterested for Kant. I will then use Kant's account of pure beauty to carve a space for pure ugliness: it will present all the characteristics that make it 'pure' while replacing the characteristics that make it beautiful with the ones that make it ugly.