Moritz

The nature of the beautiful consists in the fact that its inner essence lies outside the limits of the power of thought, originating in its own coming-to-be.

Moritz concludes that aesthetic judgments cannot be grounded in determinate concepts and that artistic creation cannot be guided by determinate concepts.

The essence of beauty lies outside ordinary conceptual thought and therefore cannot be captured in descriptive language.

Kant reaches the same conclusions from a subjectivist account grounded in the free play of cognitive powers.

Even a brilliant verbal description such as Winckelmann's description of the Apollo Belvedere rips apart the wholeness of the work of art.

The beautiful cannot be described in words, because verbal description of beauty damages rather than aids contemplation of the beautiful work of art.

Moritz reaches these conclusions from an aesthetics of truth, wherein a beautiful object intimates the order of the world-whole that is beyond ordinary mental grasp.

Moritz's conclusions about aesthetic judgment and artistic genius resemble Kant's conclusions but are reached for fundamentally different reasons.

The power of thought cannot ask why a beautiful thing is beautiful, because beauty's inner essence lies outside the limits of conceptual thought.

What lies outside the limits of conceptual thought cannot be interrogated by conceptual thought.

What rips apart the wholeness of a work of art is more damaging than useful to its contemplation.

A subjectivist account of free play of cognitive powers and a truth-based account of the world-whole are distinct and non-equivalent foundations.