Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Theory of Aesthetics
• Kant is an 18th century German philosopher
whose work initiated dramatic changes in
philosophy.
• As an “Enlightenment” thinker, he holds our
mental faculty of reason in high esteem.
– He believes that it is our reason that invests
the world we experience with structure.
– He believes that it is the “faculty of
judgment” that enables us to have
experience of beauty and grasp those
experiences as part of an ordered, natural
world with purpose.”
The Central Problems of
“The Critique of Judgment”
• Kant defines “judgment” as the
“subsumption” of a particular under a
universal.
– The faculty of understanding is that which
supplies concepts (universals), and reason is
that which draws inferences (constructs
syllogisms, for example),
– Then judgment 'mediates' between the
understanding and reason by allowing
individual acts of subsumption to occur.
The distinction between determinate
and reflective judgments I
In the determinate judgment, the concept is
sufficient to “determine” the particular
– The concept contains sufficient information
for the identification of any particular
instance of it.
The reflective judgment is a more difficult
philosophical issue because
– The judgment has to proceed without a
concept, sometimes in order to form a new
concept.
The distinction between determinate
and reflective judgments II
Kant’s conundrum:
How could a judgment take place without
a prior concept?
That is:
– How are new concepts formed?
– And are there judgments that neither
begin nor end with determinate
concepts?
Kant's Aesthetics
The Judgment of the Beautiful I
The Critique of Judgment begins with an account
of beauty.
Kant argues that such aesthetic judgments (or
'judgments of taste') must have four key
distinguishing features.
– First, they are disinterested – we take
pleasure in something because we judge it
beautiful rather than the other way around.
• If we judge something pleasurable
because it is beautiful, it is more like the
judgment of what is agreeable.
Kant's Aesthetics
The Judgment of the Beautiful II & III
– Second and third, such judgments are both
universal and necessary.
• We may say beauty is in the eye of the
beholder, but that’s not how we act.
• There is no objective property of a thing
that makes it beautiful.
–For Kant necessity and universality
are a product of features of the human
mind – what he calls “common sense”
Kant's Aesthetics
The Judgment of the Beautiful IV
– Fourth, through aesthetic judgments,
beautiful objects appear to be 'purposive
without purpose‘
• An object’s purpose is the concept
according to which it was made
• Beautiful objects should affect us as
though they have a purpose, although no
particular purpose can be found.
Kant differs from Hume I
The key ideas for Hume were:
(i) There is a definite human nature -- thus
beauty could, within limits, be universal in
scope;
(ii) Beautiful objects [and our responses to
them] involved sense or feeling, and were not
cognitive;
(iii) Any 'natural' responses to beauty were
generally overlaid by individual and communal
experiences, habits and customs.
Kant differs from Hume II
• Hume’s main disagreement with
rationalist thought on aesthetics was in
the second of these ideas.
(ii) Beautiful objects [and our responses to
them] involved sense or feeling, and were not
cognitive
• Kant believed that there was a basic
distinction between
– intuitive or sensible presentations and
– the conceptual or rational on the other.
Kant: 'how are judgments
about beauty possible‘ I
The First Moment:
Aesthetic judgments are disinterested.
• Interest = a link to real desire and action
• There are two types of interest:
– by way of sensations in the agreeable
– and by way of concepts in the good.
• Only aesthetic judgment is free or pure of any
such interests.
– Even more: the existence of the beautiful
object is irrelevant.
– Kant is founder of “Formalist Aesthetics”
Kant: 'how are judgments
about beauty possible‘ IIa
The Second Moment:
Aesthetic judgments behave universally
• They involve an expectation or claim on
the agreement of others –
– just 'as if' beauty were a real property of the
object judged.
Kant: 'how are judgments
about beauty possible‘ IIb
“I at least implicitly demand universality in the
name of taste.” The way that my aesthetic
judgments 'behave' is key evidence here:
– that is, I tend to see disagreement as
involving error somewhere, rather than
agreement as involving mere coincidence.
– Being reflective judgments, aesthetic
judgments of taste have no adequate concept
(at least to begin with), and therefore can
only behave as if they were objective.
• Introduces the concept of “free play” of our
cognitive faculties to help explain this.
Kant: 'how are judgments
about beauty possible‘ IIIa
The Third Moment:
purpose and purposiveness
An object's purpose is the concept according to
which it was manufactured;
– Kant claims that the beautiful has to be
understood as purposive, but without any
definite purpose. [definite purpose =
external or internal – meant to do vs. be
like.
– Kant argues that beauty is equivalent neither
to utility nor perfection, but is still purposive.
Kant: 'how are judgments
about beauty possible‘ IIIb
Beauty in nature, then, will appear as
purposive with respect to our faculty of
judgment, but its beauty will have no
ascertainable purpose. Indeed, this is
why beauty is pleasurable.
Kant: 'how are judgments
about beauty possible‘ IV
The Fourth Moment:
Aesthetic Judgments as being 'necessary'
• ‘necessary' effectively means, 'according to
principle'. [SEE HIS ETHICS]
• Everyone must assent to my judgment,
because it follows from this principle.
– But this necessity is of a peculiar sort: it is
'exemplary' and 'conditioned'.
The Deduction of Taste I
• Kant argues that judgment itself, as a faculty,
has a fundamental principle that governs it.
– This principle asserts the purposiveness of
all phenomena with respect to our
judgment.
• This is because the beautiful draws particular
attention to its purposiveness; but also
because the beautiful has no concept of a
purpose available, so that we cannot just apply
a concept and be done with it.
The Deduction of Taste II
• He is arguing that the kinds of 'cognition' (i.e.
thinking) characteristic of the contemplation of
the beautiful are not, in fact, all that different
from ordinary cognition about things in the
world.
• What’s he doing here?
– The key idea is that of a harmony among
the faculties of cognition.
– The Judgment of Taste is important because
it provides purposive without purpose, thus
providing a model of that harmony.
The Sublime
For Kant, the other basic type of aesthetic
experience is the sublime. The sublime
names experiences, like violent storms or
huge buildings, which seem to overwhelm
us.
– The problem for Kant here is that this
experience seems to directly contradict the
principle of the purposiveness of nature for
our judgment.
– Kant's solution is that, in fact, the storm or
the building is not the real object of the
sublime at all. Instead, what is properly
sublime are ideas of reason.
Fine Art and Genius
Kant argues that art can be tasteful (that
is, agree with aesthetic judgment) and
yet be 'soulless' - lacking that certain
something that would make it more than
just an artificial version of a beautiful
natural object.
– What provides soul in fine art is an aesthetic
idea.
– It is the talent of genius to generate
aesthetic ideas.