L’etica alla prova dell’arte. Individualità e umanità tra volontà e sentimento in Hermann Cohen

The text deals with the problem of the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in Cohen’s thought by analyzing the main theoretical places in which it is treated. First of all, the problem arises in the formulation of the Ethics of Pure Will, where Cohen works assiduously to define the boundaries of the two fields and the concepts that link them. It is again addressed in the presentation of the Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls where Cohen shows the ethical power of the expressiveness of the pure feeling. In this twofold work, he rethinks the main tenets of Kantian Third Critique, excluding the judgement of taste from the aesthetic sphere and obliterating the notion of common sense. Within the Kantian formulation, these two theoretical knots introduce an element of instability into the scaffolding of Kant’s edifice, which allows us to think of an alternative model for the constitution of sociality. Their exclusion from Cohen’s aesthetic discourse does not seem to definitively avert the threat that the possibility of a non-normative ethics, independent from the development of the pure will of Ethics, represents for the solidity of the systematic project.