20. Aesthetics and Morality in Kant and Confucius: A Second Step

In the framework of his transcendental philosophy Kant strictly separates morality from aesthetics. The pleasure in the good and the pleasure in the beautiful are two different kinds of pleasure (zwei Arten des Wohlgefallens). As a consequence, a moral act as such cannot be beautiful. Only in a second step does Kant indicate possible connections between morality and aesthetics in his comments on aesthetic ideas, symbolism, the sensus communis, and education in general. In Confucius by contrast, we do not find such a radical separation between beauty and morality. He talks of humaneness (ren, 仁) and ritual (li, 禮). Projecting Kantian notions into the Analects, “beauty” seems to slide between the two and “moral” acts appear to be beautiful. One might wonder whether Confucius missed a point, or whether Kant overdid the separation. Or maybe both conceptions, of morality as well as of beauty, cannot so easily be translated from one philosophical tradition, or mind, to the other, and there is nothing like ren and li in Kant. In this essay I ask whether there is an “inner” and an “outer” in Confucius, and I introduce Kant’s notion of “subjective purposiveness” and relate it to the Confucian notions of dao (道) and tian (天) as well as to ren and li. Reading the Analects, one easily feels that Confucius trusts in certain correlations between the inner and the outer, where I think here of the inner as moral feeling or ren (humaneness, benevolence) and of the outer as li (ritual). We should practice (outer) rituals to acquire the right (inner, moral) attitudes. One feels this suggestion is based on the belief that outer performances can make us aware of inner feelings for human values. Of course, there is no guarantee: “The Master said, Clever words and a pleasing countenance—little humaneness [ren]