Imaginative Exhibition in Morality

Abstract

Abstract This chapter aims to show that in Kant’s framework one of the main ways in which we morally use our imagination is as the faculty of exhibition. After addressing some initial reasons to worry that Kant can accord imagination, as the faculty of exhibition, a substantive role in our moral lives, it makes the case for why he nevertheless regards imaginative exhibition as something that is morally valuable. To this end, the chapter canvasses various ways in which Kant thinks our imagination morally serves us by making moral ideas sensible through indirect and direct modes of exhibition. In the indirect vein, it considers the moral value of the exhibition of moral ideas in our aesthetic engagement with beauty, art, and sublimity. And in the direct vein, it discusses the moral value of the exhibition of moral ideas through moral ideals, moral examples, and moral perception.