If enthusiasm is a form of sublimity, the account of the morally based interest in sublimity that was presented in the previous chapter applies to it. If enthusiasm is grounded in a moral predisposition and in freedom, it can be the object of a morally based interest. Insofar as enthusiasm functions as a sign of humanity's capacity for morality, Kant is committed to the view that one can and should take a morally based interest in it. It is to Kant's account of aesthetic enthusiasm that we now turn.

As we have seen, Kant describes enthusiasm (Enthusiasm) as the “idea of the good with affect” (KU 5:272). He claims that it “is aesthetically sublime because it is a stretching [Anspannung] of the powers through ideas, which give the mind a momentum that acts far more powerfully and persistently than the impetus given by sensory representations” (KU 5:272). I refer to this kind of enthusiasm as aesthetic enthusiasm, and submit that it can sometimes qualify as an aesthetic feeling of the sublime – a possibility that is opened up by Kant's calling enthusiasm “aesthetically sublime.” In characterizing enthusiasm in this way, I am arguing that it belongs to subset 2 of the sublime of mental states (section 2.3.1).

Three points are called for at the outset. First, as we have seen, Kant actually has two conceptions of enthusiasm, one aesthetic and the other practical or having to do with desires, intentions, and agency (ApH 7:254; cf. 314).