as an era of tolerance and humanism, while simultaneously encouraging
racism. Philosophers—most influentially, Immanuel Kant and Moses
Mendelssohn—established one of the focal points of the Enlightenment
as the abolition of superstition and prejudice.14 Beauty became a focal
point of philosophical, thought and social consciousness, but in
conjunction with the age-old topos of its being synonymous with moral
virtue. The publication of Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft focuses on beauty,
but it also sought to establish an awareness of the crafted nature of
superstition, and, to a lesser degree, of prejudice as a socially motivated
phenomenon. Kant established both concepts as "unenlightened"
because adherence to either belief means blindness and superstition
"[fordert] gar als Obliegenheit, das Bedurfnis von andern geleitet zu
werden" (Kant 1996). Despite Kant's defining beauty as a judgment of
taste and thus unmasking society's deliberately postulated paradigm of
beauty, he fails to address physiognomy and the prejudices it generates.
Most enlightenment philosophers prefer the idea that all the
positive attributes of beauty find their negative correlation in ugliness. As
the opposite of beauty, these philosophers leave largely unanswered the
question of whether ugliness is synonymous with immorality.
Philosophers like Kant, Burke and Schiller concede some ground to
ugliness; begrudgingly they allot it a few positive attributes. Nowhere is
14 In his essay on Enlightenment, Mendelssohn wrote about the misuse of enlightenment leading to a
weakening of morality. Culture is necessary in order to combat superstition and prejudice. (Mendelssohn
2002)
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