Sensible Signs of the Supersensible: On the Intellectual Interest in Natural Beauty

In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant famously defines “interest” (Interesse) as “the satisfaction that we combine with the representation of the existence [Existenz] of an object” (CJ, §2, 5:204). Judgments of taste are marked by their disinterestedness: they are indifferent to the empirical or rational desire for an object’s existence. Yet in §42, Kant introduces a striking exception: an intellectual interest in the beauty of nature, suggesting that aesthetic experience may, under certain conditions, relate positively to the idea of existence, not as desire, but as moral attunement.
This paper explores the conceptual tension between disinterestedness and intellectual interest by examining Kant’s nuanced use of the terms Existenz and Dasein, and the way these notions shape his account of aesthetic judgment. I argue that while Existenz denotes the kind of empirical or desired object that aesthetic judgment must exclude, Dasein refers to a morally inflected form of existence, one that elicits not empirical inclination, but a distinctive form of responsiveness.
The intellectual interest in natural beauty arises, for Kant, when we come to see nature not merely as pleasing in form, but as providing a hint (Wink) of a deeper harmony, one that resonates with our moral vocation. In this light, aesthetic experience serves as a sensible sign of the supersensible: since nature’s beautiful forms gives us a hint of this harmony, through the idea of subjective formal purposiveness that underlies this assumption, we take pleasure in their existence.
In this sense, aesthetic experience becomes an activity in which sensibility gestures beyond itself, toward our moral and rational capacities. This interpretive trajectory reaches its culmination in §60, where Kant links aesthetic abilities to the idea of humanity itself. There, he claims that our aesthetic responsiveness to nature prepares us to regard ourselves as beings capable of moral
vocation. Aesthetic judgment, though formally grounded in sensible nature, reveals a structure of human nature that is both finite and open to the supersensible.
By tracing the interplay between intellectual interest and the idea of humanity, this paper proposes that Kant’s account of aesthetic experience offers a unique understanding of the sensible: as a reflective mode of engagement in which we encounter nature not as mere appearance or object of use, but as bearing a meaning whose existence we can take pleasure in, both disinterestedly and as satisfying our intellectual interest.