We are glad to give notice of the opening of a Call for Papers for the Special Issue of Giornale di Metafisica on Kant’s Critical System and the Status of Art.
Guest Editors: Gabriele Gava (University of Turin), Giulia Milli (University of Pavia), and João Lemos (University of Turin).
Deadline for submission: August 31, 2026.
Below you can find the text of the Call.
***
Giornale di Metafisica invites submissions for a special issue on Kant’s Critical System and the Status of Art. The submissions should not exceed 35,000 characters (incl. notes and bibliography) and be prepared for anonymous peer review. Languages accepted are English, Italian, and German.
Articles should be submitted by the 31st of August 2026 by email to giornaledimetafisica@gmail.com (cc: angelo.cicatello@unipa.it, gabriele.gava@unito.it, giuliamaria.milli01@universitadipavia.it, and joaorodrigueslemos@gmail.com)
Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment has been subject of increasing attention and research in recent decades. It is widely recognized that the third Critique brought about a turning point in philosophical aesthetics with the introduction of an autonomous principle for aesthetic judgments, namely the principle of purposiveness without purpose.
However, Kant’s theory of artistic beauty has received less attention in the critical literature, and several of its aspects require careful analysis. The present volume proposes an innovative perspective on Kant’s theory of art. It aims to investigate the systematic implications of Kant’s comments on real art (that is, the arts, artworks, and artists of which Kant was aware), in order to clarify Kant’s conception of art and its status within the Kantian critical system. In the literature, in fact, one finds few references to Kant’s observations on Raphael’s School of Athens, to his comparisons between Milton and Klopstock, and to what Kant had to say about the music of Rameau. These have sometimes been treated as anecdotal details reflecting Kant’s personal taste, but they have not been considered in their metaphysical or systematic implications. This has resulted in a fundamental gap in research: the numerous discussions of real art known to Kant remain largely explored, and their significance – particularly with regard to Kant’s conception of art and its status within the Kantian critical system – has not yet been investigated. This is the fundamental gap that the present volume seeks to fill.
The Giornale di Metafisica invites submissions that consider the nature and status of artistic beauty in Kant’s philosophy, starting from an analysis of the examples of real art discussed by Kant throughout the entire corpus of his works, including not only the critical texts but also the pre-critical works, lectures, reflections, and other minor writings. The editors are particularly interested in contributions addressing themes such as the following: whether the principle of purposiveness without purpose applies not only to natural beauty but also to the fine arts, and whether this implies that artistic beauty also plays a vital mediating function within the Kantian philosophical framework – namely between nature and freedom; whether artistic beauty, as the product of genius, can be the object of a pure, and thus free, aesthetic judgment; and whether genius, the cornerstone of Kant’s theory of art, might have a role that goes beyond the theory of art alone, revealing consequences both for the third Critique as a whole and for the overall architecture of the critical enterprise.
