Kant and the starry sky, night
Author: Dobrovolskaya Gayane
hardboard/oil 80cm x 40cm 2011
The artwork is framed
The left part of the triptych "Cosmos"
"…Two things fill the soul always with a new and more powerful surprise and reverence, the more often and more often we reflect on them - this starry sky above me and the moral law in me. Both of which I do not need to look for and only assume that something is wrapped in darkness or lying beyond my horizons; I see them in front of me and directly connect them with the consciousness of my existence…
.. The first look at an infinite number of worlds, as it were, destroys my meaning as an animal creature, which again must give to the planet (only a point in the universe) the matter from which it arose, after this matter for a short time is unknown in what way it was endowed with life force. The second, on the contrary, infinitely uplifts my value as a thinking being, through my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animal nature and even of the whole sensible world… "
(Kant Immanuel "Critique of Practical Reason, " 1788)
"…Two things fill the soul always with a new and more powerful surprise and reverence, the more often and more often we reflect on them - this starry sky above me and the moral law in me. Both of which I do not need to look for and only assume that something is wrapped in darkness or lying beyond my horizons; I see them in front of me and directly connect them with the consciousness of my existence…
.. The first look at an infinite number of worlds, as it were, destroys my meaning as an animal creature, which again must give to the planet (only a point in the universe) the matter from which it arose, after this matter for a short time is unknown in what way it was endowed with life force. The second, on the contrary, infinitely uplifts my value as a thinking being, through my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animal nature and even of the whole sensible world… "
(Kant Immanuel "Critique of Practical Reason, " 1788)