The playful negotiation of interests: Kant in conversation with Fried and Winnicott.

Kant’s idea of aesthetic disinterestedness is still significant as a challenge to the view that we are condemned to determination by interests. Although Kant may appear to argue that we must in fact wholly exclude all interests, his position is best understood as proposing this as an ideal. Nonetheless, even this could invite either cynicism or complacency. Drawing on Kant’s idea of the “play of the faculties” and building on the distinction between having, and being determined by, an interest, I propose an alternative understanding of disinterestedness as a playful negotiation of interests. Both Michael Fried’s “absorption”-requiring separation from the world-and Donald Winnicott’s “play”-a form of contemplation requiring interruption-contrastively inform my thinking of a dynamical relation between disinterestedness and interests. In conclusion, I argue that the capacity for playful negotiation is a necessary condition for the possibility of the rational assessment of interests.