Beauty, Ugliness and the Free Play of Imagination

Mojca Küplen is a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Science in Budapest, Hungary. She completed my doctorate in Philosophy in June 2013 at the Central European University in Budapest. Her research work has so far resulted in four publications. One paper, entitled ‘Disgust and Ugliness: a Kantian Perspective,’ was published in 'Contemporary Aesthetics'. Another paper, entitled ‘Guyer’s Interpretation of Free Harmony in Kant’ was published in Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics. Her conference paper on ‘Aesthetic of Ugliness: a Kantian Perspective’ has been published in the 'Proceedings of the European Society for Aesthetics'. Her recent paper, entitled ‘Kant and the Problem of Pure Judgments of Ugliness,’ was published in 'Kant Studies Online'. Her current research project is focused on the relation between aesthetic concepts and cognition. She has presented her work in various international conference presentations and invited lectures, most notably at the American Society of Aesthetics Eastern Division Meeting in Philadelphia, European Society for Aesthetics and British Society of Aesthetics Annual Conference in Cambridge.

• Chapter 1 Introduction.- Chapter 2 Judgments of Taste and Analysis of the Problem of Ugliness in Kant’s Aesthetics.- Chapter 3 The Concept of Freedom in the Play of Imagination and Understanding.- Chapter 4 A Positive Account of the Concept of Free Play.- Chapter 5 The Explanation of Ugliness in Kant’s Aesthetics.- Chapter 6 The Notion of Disgust in Comparison to Ugliness: A Kantian Perspective.- Bibliography.

"Kuplen gives a fine-grained account of the difference between finding something ugly and finding it disgusting, claiming ... . There is a lot to learn from Kuplen's account of the logic of disgust and its place in our cognitive and affective economy. Her study ... is a significant contribution to the interpretation of Kantian aesthetics, with a refreshing focus on contemporary culture." (Ian Ground, TLS The Times Literary Supplement, the-tls.co.uk, June, 2016)