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What is it that we encountered with in our aesthetic experience of natural beauty? Does nature "figuratively speaks to us in its beautiful forms", 2 to use Kant's phrasing in the third Critique, or is it merely our way of interpreting nature whether this be its purpose or not? Kant does not answer these questions directly. Rather, he leaves the ambiguity around them by his repeated use of terminology of ciphers when it comes to our aesthetic experience in nature. This paper examines Kant's terminology of ciphers in the Critique of Judgment and demonstrate through it the intimate link aesthetic experience in natural beauty has with human morality. A link whose culmination point is embodied in the representation of beauty as a symbol of morality.
Sightseeing in the poorest quarters of southern hemisphere cities has been observed occurring in Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai and many other cities. The increasing global interest in touring poor urban environments is accompanied by a strong morally charged debate; so far, this debate has not been critically addressed. This article avoids asking if slum tourism is good or bad, but instead seeks a second-order observation, i.e. to investigate under what conditions the social praxis of slum tourism is considered as good or bad, by processing information on esteem or dis-esteem among tourists and tour providers. Special attention is given to any relation between morality and place, and the thesis posited is that the moral charging of slum tourism is dependent on the presence of specific preconceived notions of slums and poverty. This shall be clarified by means of references to two empirical case studies carried out in (1) Cape Town in 2007 and 2008 and (2) Mumbai in 2009.