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Kant's Aesthetic Theory
... He goes further and maintains that what we apprehend in a poetic experience can be called "an expressed meaning or a significant form." He goes still further and declares that "All form is expression" 25 . The construction of a form is an integral part of what Bradley calls in the above-quoted passage about poetic creation "the gradual self-definition of meaning." ...
... 1.5 The poem and its paraphrase 23 Ibid., 14 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 18-19 26 Ibid. ...
p>This thesis is an attempt to defend the view that the value of a poem may be intrinsic: that a poem may be valuable for its own sake. Against the backdrop of the debate between A.C. Bradley and Peter Kivy, which reflects a fundamental conflict between the upholders of the intrinsic and instrumental values of poetry, the aesthetic theories of Kant, Collingwood and Heidegger are examined, and it is argued that they constitute a 'medium-centered tradition' of philosophizing about poetry. There are a detailed treatment of Kant's neglected concept of aesthetic ideas, a discussion of Collingwood's notion of 'expression' and concepts of 'medium' and 'tradition', and an elucidation of Heidegger's innovative conception of the artwork as an interplay between the world and the earth. The medium-centered approach is treated as a philosophical expression and justification of the literary critical maxim that poetry be read for its own sake. It is also shown how this approach connects the unique value of a poem with its being derived from the creative play with the medium, with its nature as a work of art. Thus, since it delineates the realm of poetry in terms of its medium, not purposes it serves or its institutional setting, it is demonstrated that this approach does justice to the peculiar genius of poetry. The theories of poetry of Kant, Collingwood and Heidegger not only save Bradley's position but open up a space for discussions of larger themes such as the claim that what a good poem offers is distinct from the readymade intellectual content.</p
... 37 Other two-judgment readings include Crawford (1974), Allison (2001), Longuenesse (2005;, and Hughes (2017). Each of these accounts differ from Guyer's in various ways. ...
This dissertation examines the relationship between the power of judgment and the faculty of feeling in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment. Chapter 1 traces the development of Kant’s account of the power of judgment from the Critique of Pure Reason to the Critique of the Power of Judgment. Chapter 2 offers an account of the relationship between feeling and judgment in aesthetic judgment and defends a novel interpretation of Kantian aesthetic judgment (the “performative view”). Chapter 3 addresses the role of feeling in empirical judgment and argues that feeling can guide empirical judgment if the judging subject aims solely at attaining empirical knowledge.
... First, the central problem of the third critique cannot be made intel- ligible if we think of this work merely as Kant's aesthetics (cf. Crawford, 1974). The central problem is instead at least two-fold and involves at the same time both: 1. reconciling the seemingly opposed views of the first and second critiques with regard to explaining the possibility of freedom in a world that can be explained scien- tifically only on the presupposition of strict causal determinacy; and 2. completing the critical part of his philosophical project such as would be necessary before he could proceed to the exposition of the doctrinal (or 'metaphysical') part of the system (cf. ...
... People may look at objects and find them visually attractive, elegant, or beautiful (Crilly et al., 2004). This positive esthetic impression has interested design researchers for decades (Berlyne, 1974) and art theorists and philosophers for centuries before them (Crawford, 1974). The term esthetics is commonly used to refer to two different concepts: ...
Both consumer researchers and product designers recognize the importance of good design for the success of products and brands. Consumer researchers are focused on understanding consumer responses to product design. Designers try to adjust products to consumers’ needs and to enhance product experience by involving consumers in the design process. The complexity of consumer responses to products has prompted both consumer and design researchers to formulate conceptual models of consumer responses to product design. This chapter will give an overview of four different perspectives that are used to describe consumer responses to product design, including the designers’ perspective centred on product aesthetics, the consumer perspective revolving around product experience, the semiotics perspective on symbolic product meaning, and the managerial perspective stressing consumer satisfaction as most important.
... The With-information Experiential Preference question was postulated to elicit ratings impacted by additional affective interpretations of the social and environmental connotations of the information. The No-information Acceptability question sought to instigate a more cognitively super-sensible (Crawford, 1974), holistic, civic-minded, other-centered, and perhaps intuitively moralistic 'ought to be or not" rating derived from the experience of a wind park. The With-information Acceptability question was postulated to elicit ratings more impacted by civic and moralistic interpretations of the information. ...
A systematic and controlled laboratory study was conducted because non-experimental studies of wind energy perceptions have produced diverse findings in disparate settings. Ninety Swiss respondents experienced carefully constructed, calibrated and projected audio-visual simulations in a laboratory setting of two wind park sizes in each of three different settings in Switzerland. They rated each for experiential preference, simulation realism and acceptability. Before the next simulation, respondents were given information about each project's energy production, bird hazards, scale and setting type and again rendered the same ratings. These information sets were mostly stratified to produce a systematic variety of experimental conditions. Respondents then answered other questions about their experiences, concerns and attitudes regarding wind parks. Regression models predicted each of the two types of ratings, both with and without the wind parks’ associated information sets. The first regression models employed technical wind park attributes and perceived simulation realism factors. Further models added factors derived from the information sets and respondents’ attitudes and opinions. These models showed that affective experiential versus acceptability perceptions have different explanatory composition and are affected differently by information. Simple experiential perceptions contribute to informed acceptability perceptions. Respondents produced lower ratings if they saw simulations as unrealistic, particularly for experiential preferences. Setting types were not reliable predictors across all four rating types. Information and attitudes tended to improve the explanation of acceptability ratings more than they explained experiential ratings. Energy production was a weak factor, and bird hazard information a potent factor, in explaining both experiential and acceptability ratings.
... El primero lo forman intérpretes que sostienen que la Dialéctica es en realidad una compleción de la Deducción, pues esta es insuficiente para legitimar la pretensión de los juicios de gusto y solo se concreta a través de la Dialéctica. En este grupo se encuentran autores como Crawford (1974), Brandt (1989), Elliot y Guyer (Rind 2000, 67). El segundo agrupa a quienes sostienen que la Deducción está completa en sí misma y que la Dialéctica tiene una tarea distinta; en este grupo podemos colocar las interpretaciones de Allison (2001) y Wenzel (2005. ...
... The sublime object may appear formless (a sea storm) or it may assume form (a giant whale) but due to its enormous size it is beyond human perception. All in all, the beholder is unable to " unify its elements […] in sense intuition " (Crawford 1974, p.99). However, the individual is aware of this inability. ...
The sublime exists in nature, human nature and the supernatural. It forms a cross-section between the subjective-internal and the objective-external, which for a character results in transcendence of their earthly and, above all, eccentric being. Herman Melville’s 'Moby-Dick' is indubitably a masterpiece that causes the reader to ponder in awe the sublime meaning of life whilst not providing finite elucidation, since “[w]onderfullest things are ever the unmentionable” (Melville 2003).
This paper focuses on different concepts of sensus communis and their relationship with the conditions of political reality. An attempt is made to show that Gadamer’s and Arendt’s political conception of sensus communis is too dependent on political conditions and the homogeneity and unity of the community, and thus cannot exist under post-political conditions. The paper seeks to defend Immanuel Kant’s aesthetic conception of sensus communis, demonstrating that the disinterested judgment of beauty exists regardless of political circumstances. Based on this, the paper reviews practices existing in post-politics that attempt to use the aesthetic understanding of sensus communis for the purposes of political unity. It also draws attention to the understanding of sensus communis in different contexts, arguing that the concept and its interpretation often become obscured across various contexts.
“Space,” as a fundamental conceptual term, has been frequently and widely applied within various disciplines, such as sociology, architecture, philosophy, math, art, and so forth. In pictorial art, the term “space” is often used as a lens to understand specific concepts or artworks. This study aims to explain and describe pictorial spatial construction in paintings by applying various approaches. However, in the field of formalist analysis over the past century, except for a few formalist critics who have engaged with pictorial space, few have attempted to use creative methodologies to systematically analyze how pictorial space is constructed in the painting, particularly in works by contemporary painters. Therefore, to fill in this lacuna in the research, this study utilizes new formal analytical methods to analyze and explain spatial construction in paintings. In terms of the method of analysis, this study analyzes a sample of Western contemporary paintings and utilizes the approaches of the overlap of the abstract and the figurative, parallel narratives existing in multiple spaces, and the juxtaposition of different material dimensions, respectively, to rethink the method of spatial construction in the painting. The result concludes that paintings are an essential research object within visual art. The construction of image space is rich and includes multiple layers of meaning. The overlapping of abstract space (sensibility) and figurative space (rationality), as well as the coexistence of this contradictory system, enables artists to discover more possibilities when creating works and effectively enrich visual effects and textures in their paintings.
My goal in this paper is to develop a Kantian account of the normative force of aesthetics reasons. While Kant himself would likely side with contemporary theorists who deny that aesthetic considerations, on their own, give rise to oughts and obligations, I argue that Kant’s theory nevertheless gives us resources for explaining the normative force of aesthetic reasons. On this account, while aesthetic properties (in particular, beauty) give us merely enticing or inviting reasons, these reasons acquire greater normative force in the context of aesthetic communities. Insofar as we are members of such communities, we take on special obligations to attend to, appreciate, and preserve particular beautiful objects.
Organized around eight themes central to aesthetic theory today, this book examines the sources and development of Kant's aesthetics by mining his publications, correspondence, handwritten notes, and university lectures. Each chapter explores one of eight themes: aesthetic judgment and normativity, formal beauty, partly conceptual beauty, artistic creativity or genius, the fine arts, the sublime, ugliness and disgust, and humor. Robert R. Clewis considers how Kant's thought was shaped by authors such as Christian Wolff, Alexander Baumgarten, Georg Meier, Moses Mendelssohn, Johann Sulzer, Johann Herder, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Edmund Burke, Henry Home, Charles Batteux, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire. His resulting study uncovers and illuminates the complex development of Kant's aesthetic theory and will be useful to advanced students and scholars in fields across the humanities and studies of the arts.
O objectivo último do nosso artigo é fazer emergir os méritos, a pertinência e até a urgência da teoria estética proposta por Kant, da sua beleza, para a nossa arte e para o nosso tempo. Para tal, depois de apresentarmos o juízo de gosto kantiano como estreitamente ligado ao prazer, ao desinteresse e à contemplação e de descrevermos a atitude de hostilidade da parte da posteridade de Kant para com uma beleza entendida como contemplação desinteressada e prazenteira, explicitaremos a relação íntima entre a caracterização do juízo de gosto como juízo estético universalmente válido a priori e o inteiro projecto kantiano e, finalmente, mergulharemos no sentido mais profundo do prazer desinteressado e contemplativo inerente à experiência estética da beleza.
In this book, Lara Ostaric argues that Kant's seminal Critique of Judgment is properly understood as completing his Critical system. The two seemingly disparate halves of the text are unified under this larger project insofar as both aesthetic and teleological judgment indirectly exhibit the final end of reason, the Ideas of the highest good and the postulates, as if obtaining in nature. She relates Kant's discussion of aesthetic and teleological judgment to important yet under-explored concepts in his philosophy, and helps the reader to recognize the relevance of his aesthetics and teleology for our understanding of fine arts and genius, the possibility of pure judgments of ugliness, Kant's philosophy of history, his philosophy of religion, and his conception of autonomy. Ostaric's novel and thoroughly integrative presentation of Kant's system will be of interest not only to Kant scholars but also to those working in religious studies, art history, political theory, and intellectual history.
The harmonious free play of the imagination and understanding is at the heart of Kant’s account of beauty in the Critique of the Power of Judgement , but interpreters have long struggled to determine what Kant means when he claims the faculties are in a state of free play. In this article, I develop an interpretation of the free play of the faculties in terms of the freedom of attention. By appealing to the different way that we attend to objects in aesthetic experience, we can explain how the faculties are free, even when the subject already possesses a concept of the object and is bound to the determinate form of the object in perception.
Kant claims that we demand the agreement of others when making judgements of taste. I argue that this claim is part of an explanation of how the phenomenology of familiar aesthetic judgements supports his contention that judgements of taste are universal. Kant's aesthetic theory is plausible only if we reject the widespread contention that this demand is normative. I offer a non-normative reading of Kantian judgements of taste based on a close reading of the Analytic and Deduction, then argue against the three prominent normative interpretations, which force us to attribute to Kant a position that he did not accept.
Two dominant interpretations of Kant's notion of adherent beauty, the conjunctive view and the incorporation view, provide an account of how to form informed aesthetic assessments concerning artworks. According to both accounts, judgments of perfection play a crucial role in making informed, although impure, judgments of taste. These accounts only examine aesthetic responses to objects that meet or fail to meet the expectations we have regarding what they ought to be. I demonstrate that Kant's works of genius do not fall within either of these categories. The distinguishing features of these works, namely, originality and exemplarity, become unrecognizable on these interpretations because originality and exemplarity lie in the work's ability to exceed one's expectations concerning its form and content. They contribute to artistic beauty through alternative transformation methods distinct from that of abstraction, namely, concept expansion and repudiation. These additional accounts of transformation lead to a rather surprising outcome: works of genius turn out to be paradigm cases where one can and indeed ought to form informed pure judgments of taste.
In the preceding chapters we have been introduced to four classical theories of art. In spite of their mutual differences these theories nevertheless have one characteristic in common. They tell us how we should consider or define art. Time and again they assume that the own point of view reveals the essence of art in an unproblematic way. The theories give us a decisive answer to the fundamental question “what, actually, is art?”. This also explains why they are so exclusive. They identify art respectively with “imitation”, “expression”, and “form” and/or “a synthesis of form and expression”, without leaving any room for nuance or ambiguity. The theories previously discussed can also be considered as providing us with a well-defined norm art should meet. These theories thus have very specific normative implications. We have already seen how each of these theories has served certain artists as a guideline in their artistic quest, but their normative implications, however, reach much further. On close inspection, these theories offer us different criteria for judging individual works of art. In this respect, they are relevant for the critical appraisal of artworks, especially within art criticism.
This essay argues that, contrary to the prevailing view according to which reflection in Kant's aesthetic judgment is interpreted as ‘the logical actus of the understanding’, we should pay closer attention to Kant's own formulation of aesthetic reflection as ‘an action of the power of imagination’. Put differently, I contend in this essay that the rule that governs and orders the manifold in aesthetic judgment is imagination's own achievement, the achievement of the productive synthesis of the ‘fictive power’ (Dichtungsvermögen), entirely independent of the understanding. While this view does not entail that the faculty of the understanding is not necessary in aesthetic reflection, a stronger emphasis on the role of imagination in aesthetic reflection allows us to realize that its schematizing and interpretive activity, while consistent with, goes well beyond the discursive demands of the understanding insofar as it intimates the supersensible ground of freedom that manifests itself as ‘the feeling of life’. Therefore, I show in this essay that the imagination's unique interpretive power has a special role in completing Kant's critical system by facilitating the connection of the sensible to the supersensible, which further helps us appreciate imagination's practical as opposed to merely cognitive significance.
art;aesthetic;artistic objects;theorists;conceptual artists
Whereas the Analytic shows that in using judgements concerning the beautiful we lay claim to ‘universality’ and ‘necessity’, the Deduction is directed towards giving a justification of such claims. The ‘universality’ in question is the demand to everyone’s assent; the ‘necessity’ is the ‘ought’ which is governed by a rule which we take to apply to those who fail to assent. Although Kant often thinks of this rule in terms of something which connects one person’s reaction to another’s in a single case of judgement, if the Deduction is to be complete, it must also deal with such a rule in so far as it relates various judgements made at different times by the same person.
We have seen quite clearly that, when using standard concepts of the nature of the aesthetic, it is difficult to conceive how theological aesthetics could be a sensible, let alone significant, enterprise. For it has commonly been assumed since the time of Kant that part of the point in calling something aesthetic at all is to say or imply that, in this respect at least, it is not to be evaluated in terms of religion or morality (or indeed in the light of scientific or pragmatic considerations). Insofar as something is appreciated for aesthetic reasons, it is to be appreciated for its own sake, not for the good it can do or the understanding or devotion it can enhance. Or so the usual thinking goes.
Über dem Gedankengang der dritten Kritik liegt ein stiller Zauber. Die erste Kritik konstituierte die Gesetze einer mechanischen Natur zur Einheit von Erfahrung. Die kategorische Willensmaxime der KpV bildete einen höchsten Zweck, der es nur dadurch war, dass er als Ideal der gelebten Wirklichkeit widersprach. Die KU legt unserem wahrnehmenden Weltsinn den Zweck wieder vor Augen. Im schönen Kunstwerk und in der Zweckmäßigkeit der organischen Natur erfahren wir Unendliches in irdischer Gestaltung. Hinter den diffizilen logischen Distinktionen dieses Werkes zur Neubestimmung der teleologischen Determination gegenüber deren langer ontologisch-theologischer Tradition leuchtet der Glanz dieser genussvoll wahrnehmenden und ästhetisch bildenden menschlichen Weltaneignung und Schöpfung einer kulturellen Welt. Hegel rühmte an der KU, dass sie Natur und Kunstschönes als »eine der Mitten erkannt« habe, die den Gegenatz des abstrakt in sich beruhenden Geistes und der nur äußerlich von diesem bestimmten Natur zur Einheit zurückgeführt habe.
Noël Carroll proposes a generalist theory of art criticism, which essentially involves evaluations of artworks on the basis of their success value, at the cost of rendering evaluations of reception value irrelevant to criticism. In this article, I argue for a hybrid account of art criticism, which incorporates Carroll's objective model but puts Carroll-type evaluations in the service of evaluations of reception value. I argue that this hybrid model is supported by Kant's theory of taste. Hence, I not only present an alternative theory of metacriticism, which has the merit of reinstating the centrality of reception value in art critics’ evaluations, but also show that, contrary to a common conception, Kant's aesthetic theory can house a fruitful account of art criticism. The benefit of this hybrid account is that, despite being essentially particularist, it should be appealing even to generalists, including Carroll.
Über dem Gedankengang der dritten Kritik liegt ein stiller Zauber. Die erste Kritik konstituierte die Gesetze einer mechanischen Natur zur Einheit von Erfahrung. Die kategorische Willensmaxime der KpV bildete einen höchsten Zweck, der es nur dadurch war, dass er als Ideal der gelebten Wirklichkeit widersprach. Die KU legt unserem wahrnehmenden Weltsinn den Zweck wieder vor Augen. Im schönen Kunstwerk und in der Zweckmäßigkeit der organischen Natur erfahren wir Unendliches in irdischer Gestaltung. Hinter den diffizilen logischen Distinktionen dieses Werkes zur Neubestimmung der teleologischen Determination gegenüber deren langer ontologisch-theologischer Tradition leuchtet der Glanz dieser genussvoll wahrnehmenden und ästhetisch bildenden menschlichen Weltaneignung und Schöpfung einer kulturellen Welt. Hegel rühmte an der KU, dass sie Natur und Kunstschönes als »eine der Mitten erkannt« habe, die den Gegenatz des abstrakt in sich beruhenden Geistes und der nur äußerlich von diesem bestimmten Natur zur Einheit zurückgeführt habe.
Über dem Gedankengang der dritten Kritik liegt ein stiller Zauber. Die erste Kritik konstituierte die Gesetze einer mechanischen Natur zur Einheit von Erfahrung. Die kategorische Willensmaxime der KpV bildete einen höchsten Zweck, der es nur dadurch war, dass er als Ideal der gelebten Wirklichkeit widersprach. Die KU legt unserem wahrnehmenden Weltsinn den Zweck wieder vor Augen. Im schönen Kunstwerk und in der Zweckmäßigkeit der organischen Natur erfahren wir Unendliches in irdischer Gestaltung. Hinter den diffizilen logischen Distinktionen dieses Werkes zur Neubestimmung der teleologischen Determination gegenüber deren langer ontologisch-theologischer Tradition leuchtet der Glanz dieser genussvoll wahrnehmenden und ästhetisch bildenden menschlichen Weltaneignung und Schöpfung einer kulturellen Welt. Hegel rühmte an der KU, dass sie Natur und Kunstschönes als »eine der Mitten erkannt« habe, die den Gegenatz des abstrakt in sich beruhenden Geistes und der nur äußerlich von diesem bestimmten Natur zur Einheit zurückgeführt habe.
What makes molecules beautiful? It may be their simplicity, a symmetrical structure. Or it may be their complexity, the richness of structural detail that is required for specific function. Sometimes the beauty of a molecule may be hidden, to be revealed only when its position in a sequence of transformations is made clear. Novelty, surprise, utility also playa role in molecular aesthetics, which is the subject of this contribution.
The penultimate chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason is entitled ‘The Architectonic of Pure Reason’. Kant here describes an architectonic as ‘the art of constructing systems’ and as a system is what makes knowledge scientific, an architectonic is ‘the doctrine of the scientific in our knowledge’ (A832/B860). A system is ‘the unity of the manifold modes of knowledge under one idea’ and as an idea is a rational concept of a whole, the notion of system is one with the idea of reason in its most extensive deployment. ‘The scientific concept of reason contains, therefore, the end and the form of that whole which is congruent with this requirement’ (A832/B860). For the idea to be realised it is necessary to resort to a schema devised in accordance with the idea of reason which is identical with philosophy in general. As Kant puts it:
… philosophy is the science of the relation of all knowledge to the essential ends of human reason (teleologia rationis humanae) and the philosopher is… himself the lawgiver of human reason.
(A839/B867)
The Prolegomena contains Kant’s most explicit statement of what the Critical Philosophy is supposed to accomplish theoretically. In the first sentence of the Prolegomena we find Kant saying
These Prolegomena are for the use… of future teachers, and even the latter should not expect that they will be serviceable for the systematic exposition of a ready-made science, but merely for the discovery of the science itself (Ak: Intro., 255; Bk: 3).
Kant had carefully studied some central texts of Leibniz, including the Monadology (in its Latin translation as Principia philosophiae),the Theodicy,the New Essays on Human Understanding and the correspondence with Clarke.82 Kant himself possessed a definite hermeneutic attitude in his reading of previous thinkers. So we find that not only did he claim to understand Plato’s thought better than Plato himself did,83 but he says the same about Leibniz. At the end of his interpretation of Leibniz in On a Discovery According to which Any New Critique of Pure Reason Has Been Made Superfluous by an Earlier One, Kant denounces historians of philosophy who “neglect the key to the interpretation […] They are thus incapable of recognizing beyond what the philosophers actually said, what they really meant to say.”84 Let these words serve as a caveat. The present study focuses upon Kant’s interpretation and transformation of Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason culminating in the Critique of Pure Reason. Reading Leibniz purely for his own sake would be a different project. Before we listen to Kant, however, let us bring Leibniz himself before us in his words from the Monadology and Theodicy:
Aesthetics is the artistic quality of a design that contributes to an enhanced appreciation or experience. Aesthetics in instructional design refers to mainly visual aspects that contribute to the learning experience. This chapter discusses the marginal role aesthetics has had in the field, provides a theoretical and historical narrative of aesthetics, and suggests an increasing need to integrate aesthetics due to its potential impact on learning. Throughout history, aesthetics has added value to many design fields. Relating visual aesthetics back to its philosophical, artistic, and educational roots can provide a basis for its value to instructional design.
Forfatterprofessionen har mistet legitimitet, men kan fremmes ved hjælp af en grøn omstilling, der omfatter hele kulturlivet. Omstillingen forudsætter nytænkning og satsning på kulturprodukter med længere levetid, der kan tjene som samfundsmæssige forbilleder og i kraft af deres eksemplariske funktion opdrage til bæredygtighed ved at være en del af et grønt oplysnings- og dannelsesprojekt.
In this paper I analyze Malcolm Budd’s “aesthetic” approach to nature that claims that the right way to appreciate nature is “as being nature” and not as being art. I study his dependence on Kant’s free beauty and I try to show that free beauty is a theoretical device derived from the unavoidable dependent beauty. Besides, following Joseph Margolis’ philosophy, I intend to show that “nature as nature” is also a cultural artifact.
p>The paper elaborates the theory of imagination in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Judgment . From the first Critique to the third Critique , the imagination emerges under different titles such as reproductive, productive or transcendental imagination. The paper shall try to decide whether its functions suggested in the first Critique and its performance in the third Critique are contradictory or developmental with respect to Kant’s critical philosophy. Thus, it will examine of the power and the scope of the imagination in the first Critique and of its status and performance in the third Critique.
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German-speaking aestheticians of the nineteenth century followed various paths of inquiry stimulated by Kant's Critique of Judgment. One path leads in a formalist direction, through Johann Friedrich Herbart and Robert Zimmermann; the other leads in an empathist direction, from Johann Gottfried Herder's rejection of Kant through Hegel, Friedrich Theodor and Robert Vischer, Karl Köstlin, and Johannes Volkelt. Eduard Hanslick, in arriving at his own destination, travels some distance on both paths, collecting along the way, on the one hand, Kant's rigorous focus on the phenomenon and purposive form, eschewing "charms and emotions"; and on the other hand, Hegel's focus on art's spirituality, its "ideal content," in characterizing the specifically musical, which for Hanslick embodies a "full share of ideality." Clustered ideologically around Kant, Hegel, and Hanslick in closer or more distant orbit are the aforementioned authors whose writings chronicle the fortunes of formalism in the 1800s.
Several prominent philosophers of art have worried about whether Kant has a coherent theory of music on account of two perceived tensions in his view. First, there appears to be a conflict between his formalist and expressive commitments. Second (and even worse), Kant defends seemingly contradictory claims about music being beautiful and merely agreeable, that is, not beautiful. Against these critics, I show that Kant has a consistent view of music that reconciles these tensions. I argue that, for Kant, music can be experienced as either agreeable or beautiful depending on the attitude we take toward it. Although it is tempting to think he argues that we experience music as agreeable when we attend to its expressive qualities and as beautiful when we attend to its formal properties, I demonstrate that he actually claims that we are able to judge music as beautiful only if we are sensitive to the expression of emotion through musical form. With this revised understanding of Kant's theory of music in place, I conclude by sketching a Kantian solution to a central problem in the philosophy of music: given that music is not sentient, how can it express emotion?
Kant's characterisation of judgements of taste, as expressing a disinterested pleasure and as being independent of concepts, defines the framework in which he attempts to justify or ‘deduce’ their claim to universal and necessary validity. In §38 of the Critique of Judgement , the ‘official’ deduction, the problem is to find a balance between the aim of grounding the judgements' validity on their relation to cognition and the danger of collapsing these aesthetic judgements into cognitive ones. Apparently, Kant's intention is to show that even though judgements of taste are not cognitive judgements, they are close enough to the conditions employed in all cognition to legitimize their claim to universal validity. Yet, in §59 of the Dialectic Kant seems to attempt another justification, this time by relating judgements of taste to morality. The problem now is to specify this relation so as to avoid reducing aesthetic to moral judgements. The justificatory projects in §38 and §59 are usually considered to be quite different. My aim in this paper is to clarify the relation between the two projects on the basis of an interpretation of what the pleasurable state of mind consists in, that is, the free harmonious play of the faculties in which everyone ought to share in the presence of beautiful objects. In the light of this interpretation I shall give a reconstruction of the argument of §38 which reveals its connection and contrast with §59.
The theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Theodor Adorno both conceive culture as legitimating the inequalities of modern societies. But they postulate different mechanisms of legitimation. For Bourdieu, modern culture is a class culture, characterized by socially ranked symbolic differences among classes that make some seem superior to others. For Adorno, modern culture is a mass culture, characterized by a socially imposed symbolic unity that obscures class differences behind a facade of leveled democracy. In his later writings, however, Bourdieu’s theory converges with that of Adorno. He too begins to privilege the high culture of intellectuals over mass culture by employing the universal standard of autonomy from economic interests. But there remains one vital difference between these theories. Bourdieu grounds the origins of a critical, autonomous culture in specific social structures, while Adorno grounds it in technology.
In 1764, Kant published his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime and in 1790 his influential third Critique, the Critique of the Power of Judgment. The latter contains two parts, the ‘Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment’ and the ‘Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment’. They reveal a new principle, namely the a priori principle of purposiveness (Zweckmäßigkeit) of our power of judgment, and thereby offer new a priori grounds for beauty and biology within the framework of Kant's transcendental philosophy. They also unite the previous two Critiques, the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason. Besides contributing to general and systematic aspects within his transcendental philosophy, Kant's aesthetics also offers new insights into old problems. It deals with feeling versus experience, subjectivity versus objectivity, disinterested pleasure, aesthetic universality, free and adherent beauty, the sensus communis, genius, aesthetic ideas, beauty as the symbol of morality, beauty of nature versus beauty of art, the sublime, and the supersensible. In this article I will limit myself to this critical aesthetics of Kant. But I will also discuss the ugly and the possibility of beauty in mathematics and see whether Kant's theory can successfully explain or deal with them. I will also compare his theory with philosophical ideas from a very different tradition, namely from Confucius, not only as a challenge to Kant's theory, but also because there is a growing interest from the Chinese side in combining ideas from Confucius and Kant, an interest that might well become influential in both East and West during the 21st century.
For Kant, the form of a subject's experience of an object provides the normative basis for an aesthetic judgement about it. In other words, if the subject's experience of an object has certain structural properties, then Kant thinks she can legitimately judge that the object is beautiful—and that it is beautiful for everyone. My goal in this paper is to provide a new account of how this ‘subjective universalism’ is supposed to work. In doing so, I appeal to Kant's notions of an aesthetic idea and an aesthetic attribute, and the connection that Kant makes between an object's expression of rational and the normativity of aesthetic judgements about it.
Beauty has received sparse attention from emotion theorists, some of whom have argued that aesthetic pleasure is cognitive in nature and too "disinterested" to be emotional. This view is supported by research suggesting that aesthetic pleasure is based on processing fluency. The authors review recent findings in the psychology of aesthetics and present two arguments. First, processing fluency explains the mild pleasure associated with simple or familiar objects, but it cannot account for the more intense pleasure associated with complex or novel objects. Immediately recognizing an object tends to be mildly pleasant, whereas sensing the prospect of successfully representing a complex object can be exhilarating. Second, to explain how these forms of aesthetic pleasures differ, a theory must go beyond cognitive dynamics. The authors' affect-based model of emotion differentiates aesthetic pleasures in terms of epistemic goals. Pretty, fluently processed stimuli implicate prevention goals that maintain and protect knowledge. Beautiful, novel stimuli implicate promotion goals that reshape and expand knowledge. The emotional nature of interest and awe are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
There are two familiar strategic approaches to Kant's Critique of Judgement which commentators have not always found easy to combine. One would regard the work as fitting snugly into Kant's enterprise as the keystone that absorbs the forces of his theoretical and practical philosophies, uniting them and itself into a single sound structure. That Kant saw it this way is obvious from his Introduction to the Critique. But the other approach has sometimes seemed more fruitful: start with the Analytic of the Beautiful and take it not as the completion but as the beginning of something, a treatise which, in offering possibly the fullest and most rigorous account of the autonomy of aesthetic judgement, plays a foundational role in the discipline now known as aesthetics. On this approach questions concerning morality and the unity of Kant's philosophy can be set aside for attention later, if ever.
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