The only thing that would be more ponderous and difficult than trudging through Kant’s prose in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment would be attempting to put his aesthetic philosophy found within to the test. Kant delivers a paucity of practical examples to make his recondite and ostensibly inconsistent abstractions all the more difficult to assimilate. In an attempt understand and make his knowledge mine, and perhaps include commentary on the more lucid sections, this essay will attempt to define and cross-reference some of his key critical terms.

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This is the difference that marks tragedy from comedy: comedy is inclined to imitate persons below the level of our world, tragedy persons above it. . . . Comedy is, as I have said, an imitation of lower types; though it does not include the full range of badness, nevertheless to be ridiculous is a kind of deformity. The causes of laughter are errors and deformities that do not pain or injure us; the comic mask, for instance, is deformed and distorted but not painfully so. . . . The next best plot, which is said by some people to be the best, is the tragedy with a double plot like the Odyssey, ending in one way for the better people and in the opposite way for the worse. But it is the weakness of theatrical performances that gives priority to this kind, when poets write what the audience would like to happen, they are in leading strings. This is not the pleasure proper to tragedy, but rather to comedy, where the greatest enemies in the fable make friends and go off at the end, and nobody is killed by anyone. –Aristotle, The Poetics

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All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;
All Discord, Harmony not understood;
All partial Evil, universal Good:
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
–Alexander Pope, from Essay on Man, IV.281-294

Alexander Pope, a poet and catholic, betrays his neoclassicist longing for a universe that is perfectly ordered, ineffable, and beyond human understanding. His final pronouncement in Essay on Man, insists that man’s reason is no match for God’s design: that while we, perhaps arrogantly, strive for a rational understanding of the universe, are minds are not a match for God’s. We must console ourselves that the universe was designed in the best possible way, by the best of artists, and even though events will often leave us face-down in the mud or staring impotently at heaven, we must realize that it could be no other way. We live in the best of possible worlds.

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If you’re still troubled, think of things this way:
No one shall know our joys, save us alone,
And there’s no evil till the act is known;
It’s scandal, Madam, which makes it an offense,
And it’s no sin to sin in confidence. (Tartuffe, 4.5.116-120)

An overriding theme of Molière’s Tartuffe is not one of religion directly, but of that age-old concern of comme il faut, propriety, and appearance versus reality. The central problem that the play confronts is not with Tartuffe’s being a religious hypocrite (though, don’t we all just love those?), but with the fact that he uses his powers to manipulate others and — perhaps most importantly — the fact that his hypocrisy becomes known. Duping people is not evil; duping people to the point that it threatens their well-being may just be; duping them and having them find out definitely is.

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Enlightenment thinking posits:

• The existence of a stable, coherent, reasonable self
• Reason and philosophy can provide an objective, reliable, and universal foundation for knowledge
• The right use of reason produces knowledge that is True
• Reason should be emphasized over passion
• Reason itself has transcendental and universal qualities
• Reason, autonomy, and freedom are interconnected
• The right use of reason leads to freedom; uncontrolled passion leads to damnation
• Knowledge can be both neutral (i.e., grounded in universal reason, not particular “interest”) and also socially beneficial (by influencing power)
• Science is the paradigm for true knowledge: science is neutral in its methods and contents but socially beneficial in its results
• Language is in some sense transparent — a medium in and through which knowledge may be represented

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“Whatever is, is right” (Man I.294). This statement appears to contradict Pope’s raison d’être as a satirist and critic. How can the writer of this statement critique human faults? If God is omniscient, and God made the world, then the world is perfect and humans were made as well as God wanted them made — no improvement is necessary or realizable. There must be more to Pope’s syllogism that would warrant a less confusing and more profound interpretation of this ostensibly inexplicable statement. With this conclusion in his Essay on Man, Pope’s Essay on Criticism seemingly becomes moot. I am interested here in how Whatever is, is right relates to criticism and writing. Rather than negating criticism altogether, Whatever is, is right only supports the critic’s endeavor further.

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Giambattista Vico, in his imaginative search for the true Homer, uses the language of reason combined with creative speculation and inductive hypothesizing. Homer, for Vico, is a metaphor for the citizens of ancient Greece. He did not exist as a man, but as a much more powerful entity who lived in the cultural consciousness of the entire nation. Homer himself became a myth — a integral myth for the emergence of Greek polity, poetry, and philosophy.

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