Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

1. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Immanuel Kant’s analysis of aesthetic judgments is found in the first part of the third critique in the Critique of Judgment (1790). How can aesthetic judgments be universally valid?

2. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): The Critique of Judgement (1790) is the foundational treatise in modern philosophical aesthetics No integration of aesthetic theory into a complete philosophical system predates Kant’s third Critique. It’s importance and influence upon aesthetics can’t be overestimated.

3. 4 questions that make up the domain of philosophy: What can I know? Developed from 1st Critique and is concerned about judgment (theoretical philosophy); What should I do? Developed from 2nd Critique. This is the critique of practical reason (practical philosophy). It is the application/discovery of the laws of human freedom. It is reason in its practical use (nothing but our will or what is known as faculty of desire);

4. 4 questions that make up the domain of philosophy: 3. For what may I hope? Questionable of 3rd Critique? 4. What is man? (which is answered the above three).

5. Monroe Beardsley writes: “Nowhere in the history of Modern Philosophy is the Parable of the Talents better illustrated than in the achievement of Kant (1724-1804): it is astonishing that a thinker who turned the course of metaphysical. Epistemological, and ethical inquiry irrevocably in new directions should also have been capable of working out an aesthetic theory, which, in its originality, subtlety, and comprehensiveness, would mark a turning point in this field as well.…Most especially, he hoped to provide a theory of intersubjective validity, and escape the temptations of skepticism and relativism; and he believed this could be accomplished only be giving a deeper interpretation of art and its values, by establishing for it a more intimate connection with the basic cognitive faculties of the mind” (Aesthetics, pg. 210).

6. Overview: 1. Until the late 1780’s Kant did not consider aesthetics to be a valid area of philosophy. 2. But Kant’s drive for a complete system of philosophy led him to consider whether a critical examination whether the faculty of feeling pleasure might be a third area of philosophy that would join metaphysics (theoretical philosophy) and practical philosophy (ethics) in being based on a priori principles.

7. Overview: 3. The Critique of Practical Reason put for a priori conditions for making objective, universally valid moral judgments. He states that “categories” are the a priori conditions of making judgments (understanding). 4. The question for the Critique of Judgement, is whether there are a priori conditions for making judgments based on pleasure. 5. Kant takes as his paradigm the type of judgment everyone believes is based on feeling pleasure, namely the judgment that X is beautiful.

8. Overview of terms: Sensibility, understanding, Ordinary Experience, and Judgment: 6. Critical is understanding that Kant’s epistemology and metaphysics is based on a division between “sensibility” and “understanding”: a. Sensibility is the passive ability to be affected by things by receiving sensations (this is not yet at the level of thought or experience in any meaningful sense). b. Understanding is non-sensible; it is discursive and works with general concepts: it is the active faculty of producing thoughts.

9. Overview: Sensibility, understanding, and Ordinary Experience: c. Ordinary experience is the synthesis of the two powers of the mind: the material of sensation coming to be grasped as ordered under a concept, thus resulting in a thought (or judgment). d. Judgment is the experience that results in a claim or assertion about something, or even more generally, an awareness that something is the case. The judgment that something is beautiful he calls a “judgement of taste.” e. Faculty of judgment gives us a principle of reflection:

10. Critique of Judgment’s beginning section is titled, “Analytic of the Beautiful” which is divided into 4 “Moments”: It is through these four moments that you will determine what is pleasurable (which is what is immediately given) and then follows the reflective question of what is beautiful (which may not be immediately experienced). What is the nature of the pleasure we are feeling? The 4 moments will help us make this determination.

11. We judge the pleasure to determine whether it is beautiful. Whether reflection is an intentional conscious activity or not is up for the scholarly debate. He makes a distinction between aesthetic judgments of sensation (that is pleasure) but that is not the same kind of pleasure. There are different kinds of pleasure though we experience it one way.

12. Critique of Judgment’s beginning section is titled, “Analytic of the Beautiful” which is divided into 4 “Moments”: It is through these four moments that you will determine what is pleasurable (which is what is immediately given) and then follows the question what is beautiful (which may not be immediately experienced).

13. Aesthetic Judgments (aesthetics of taste) Have 4 Aspects (‘moments’):

14. Summary of the 1st Moment: • Disinterested Pleasure: • We take pleasure in object X because we judge it beautiful. • It is not a judgment of beauty because we find it to be pleasurable. Rather, this type of judgment is a judgment of agreeableness (e.g., I like fresh spinach).

15. Quality or Universal Pleasure: • Second and third, such judgments are both universal and necessary. This means roughly that it is an intrinsic part of the activity of such a judgment to expect others to agree with us. Although we may say 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder', that is not how we act. Instead, we debate and argue about our aesthetic judgments - and especially about works of art -and we tend to believe that such debates and arguments can actually achieve something. Indeed, for many purposes, 'beauty' behaves as if it were a real property of an object, like its weight or chemical composition. But Kant insists that universality and necessity are in fact a product of features of the human mind (Kant calls these features 'common sense'), and that there is no objective property of a thing that makes it beautiful.

17. Summary of the 4th Moment: • Beautiful objects appear to be 'purposive without purpose' (sometimes translated as 'final without end'). Therefore, an object's purpose is the concept according to which it was made (e.g., the concept of a bird house in my mind). • Thus, an object is purposive IF it appears to have a purpose. In other words, Object X appears to have been designed. • It is part of the experience of beautiful objects that should affect us as IF they had a purpose, although no particular purpose is actually found.

18. Kant’s Definition of the beautiful derived from the First Moment: • What are the grounds through which we can say what is beautiful? Consider the following definition of the First Moment: • “Taste is the faculty of estimating an object or a mode of representation by means of a delight (satisfaction) or aversion (dissatisfaction) apart from any interest. The object of such a delight is called beautiful.

19. First Moment is Quality or Disinterested Pleasure: First Moment is Quality or Disinterested (or free/pure) Pleasure: In order to call an object beautiful one must judge it to be “the object of an entirely disinterested satisfaction or dissatisfaction” (§ 1). When beauty is affirmed of the object there is additional content to this satisfaction, namely the ability of the object to provide satisfaction to those who judge it disinterestedly. How? When you make an aesthetic judgment, you refer the experiential content to your own subjective state. Therefore, judgments of taste are a subset of that type of judgment that says something is pleasurable to apprehend; they are subjective, not objective judgments.

20. First Moment is Disinterested Pleasure: It is a disinterested pleasure because of the following reasons: 1. It is not based on any personal interest; it is free for it does not force us to assent; 2. The pleasure we feel in finding something beautiful is not a pleasure based upon a vested interest. 3. It is not a pleasure based on finding that it fulfills a moral requirement. 4. It is not based on an interest in the existence of an object; it is merely free contemplation and reflection; this is one reason why the judgment of taste is different from other judgments. In other words, it is not a cognitive judgment; it is “free satisfaction.”

21. First Moment is Disinterested Pleasure: “A judgment upon an object of our delight may be wholly disinterested but withal very interesting, i.e., it relies on no interest, but it produces one. Of this kind are all pure moral judgements. But, of themselves judgements of taste do not even set up any interest whatsoever. Only in society is it interesting to have taste-a point which will be explained in the sequel.” SS 2.

22. Second Moment is Universal Pleasure or Quantity: Second moment is universal pleasure or Quantity, §§ 6-9). His conclusion is as follows: Subjective Universality: “The beautiful is that which apart from concepts is represented as the object of a universal satisfaction” (§ 6). Crawford states, “Just as the First Moment is that one judges something to be beautiful based on the pleasure one feels in apprehending it, the Second Moment “enshrines our belief that the pleasure in the beautiful is not wholly subjective but has some basis that justifies our thinking that others should find the object beautiful as well, while recognizing that not everyone will in fact agree with us” (pg. 54).

23. Second Moment is Universal Pleasure or Quantity: Kant says, “the judgement of taste itself does not postulate the agreement of everyone” (§ 8). Something is beautiful all should agree. If we say something is pleasing to us not all will agree. Coffee beans are beautiful (all will agree) but not everyone finds coffee beans to be pleasant.

24. Second Moment: Universal Pleasure or Quantity: Kant’s defense is two-fold: Concept of disinterestedness & semantic considerations. First, he turns to the concept of disinterestedness. If one believes the pleasure in finding X beautiful is not owing to any vested interest, then one will naturally conclude that the pleasure does not depend on any private conditions. As a result, the judgments of taste, accompanied with no vested interest, must claim validity for everyone § 6.

25. Second Moment: Universal Pleasure or Quantity: Secondly, Kant appeals to Semantic Considerations: “to say ‘this object is beautiful for me’ is laughable, while it makes perfect sense to say ‘It is pleasant to me’…not only as regards the taste of the tongue, the palate, and the throat, but for whatever is pleasant to anyone’s eyes and ears” (cf. § 7). To say that X is beautiful is linguistically to claim universality for one’s judgment.

26. Second Moment: Universal Pleasure or Quantity: Other factors to consider on Quantity: 1. Implied universality is not based on concepts of objects or even empirical ones. 2. It is not objective but subjective universality. 3. There are no rules whereby everyone is forced to recognize X as beautiful (cf. §8, 34). 4. Judgments of taste are based on the feelings of pleasure; they cannot be proven since they are not based on concepts or rules.

27. Second Moment: Universal Pleasure or Quantity: 5. The feeling of pleasure itself is universally communicable only if it is based not on mere sensation but rather on a state of mind that is universally communicable. Since the only universally communicable states of mind are cognitive states, somehow the pleasure in the beautiful must be based on cognition. We have to remember that the judgment of taste is not cognitive in the defining sense of making reference to a concept or a particular cognitive state of mind, but only “cognition in general.”

28. Second Moment: Universal Pleasure or Quantity: Stated differently, when a judgment is made, how can we claim that it is universal? Beardsley writes (Aesthetics, pg. 215): “Aesthetic satisfaction, the enjoyment of beauty, can be traced back to, or grounded in, some condition of the mind that we know to be universally possible, then the claim to universality in the judgment of beauty can be vindicated. He continues to say:

29. Second Moment: Universal Pleasure or Quantity: Only some connections with knowledge will serve-not with any particular knowledge, but knowledge in general. Here Kant draws upon the conclusions of his first Critique…All rational beings are capable of cognition, which requires the connectibility of two faculties, imagination (to gather together the manifold of sense-intuition) and understanding (to unity these representations by means of concepts). But these acts [harmony between imagination and understanding] presuppose an indeterminate general relationship-an underlying harmony of the two cognitive faculties.

30. Second Moment: Universal Pleasure or Quantity: Now, when they are idling, so to speak, not seriously directed to the pursuit of knowledge, these faculties can play at knowledge, in a sense, enjoying the harmony between them without being tied down or bound by particular sense-intuitions or particular concepts. There arises a state of mind in which there is a ‘feeling of the free play of the representative powers in a given representation with reference to a cognition in general’ (p. 64).

31. Second Moment: Universal Pleasure or Quantity: In this state, the mind take intense pleasure or satisfaction in the harmony of the two cognitive faculties. This pleasure is precisely the experience of beauty. He object we judge beautiful is one whose form, or principle of order, causes a ‘more lively play of both mental powers’ and a keen awareness of their harmony (p. 66). Since all rational beings are capable of achieving this state of mind, under these conditions, beauty is shareable by all.”

32. All rational beings are capable of cognition:The universal enjoyment of beauty is grounded in the pleasurable harmony of the two cognitive faculties: . The pleasure between the two faculties is the universal experience of beauty

33. Third Movement: Relations or Forms of Purposeviness Relations explains what is being related to in the judgment that something is beautiful: the content of the judgment of taste. Two issues to consider: 1. A pure judgment of taste cannot be based on pleasures of charm or emotion (§ 13), empirical sensations as colors or pleasing tones (§ 14), or definite concepts (§ 16), but only formal properties.

34. Third Movement: Relations or Forms of Purposeviness These formal properties are spatial and temporal relations as revealed in spatial delineation or design of figures and temporal composition of tones (§ 14). Ornamentation or elements of charm or emotion may attract us to beautiful elements, but judging them purely in terms of beauty requires us to abstract from these elements and reflect only on their form. To this way he promotes a formalist aesthetics (Crawford, “Aesthetics” 55-56).

35. Third Movement: Relations or Forms of Purposeviness 2. Second issue to consider is his understanding of “purpose”: Kant defines concept of purpose as “that whose concept can be regarded as the ground of the possibility of the object itself.”

36. Third Movement: Relations or Forms of Purposeviness To contend that the coffee scoopers has a purpose is to state that the concept of their being the way they are, having the form they have, came first and is the cause of their existence. They were intended to be the way they are because we “place the cause of their existence” (§ 10) In other words, the scoopers form makes sense because we understand what they are supposed to be; they have a purpose. But experiencing the scooper’s beauty is different from apprehending its form as reflecting a definite purpose.

37. Third Movement: Relations or Forms of Purposeviness For this would consider the scoopers as something that gratifies us through sensation (therefore, serving only our individual, subjective purposes), or as serving an objective, useful purpose; neither of these satisfy the condition that a judgment of taste is neither based on concepts or vested interests. Rather, Kant’s essential claim is that we find an object to be purposive in its form though we do not conceptualize a definite purpose; and this harmony in its form contradicts a harmony in our cognitive powers (imagination and understanding) in our reflection on the object which harmonizes itself the pleasure we experience when we find an object beautiful (§12) (Ibid., 56).

38. The form of the object is connected a priori with the feeling of the harmony of the two cognitive faculties; and the feeling of this harmony is the disinterested pleasure itself. . Sensual pleasure like colors may contribute to the aesthetic pleasure, but not constitute it, since the latter is concerned with form, not quality.

39. The form of the object is connected a priori with the feeling of the harmony of the two cognitive faculties; and the feeling of this harmony is the disinterested pleasure itself. . “ To seek for a principle of taste which shall furnish, by means of definite concepts, a universal criterion of the beautiful, is fruitless trouble; because what is sought is impossible and self-contradictory.” ~ Kant, § 17, pg. 84

40. The form of the object is connected a priori with the feeling of the harmony of the two cognitive faculties; and the feeling of this harmony is the disinterested pleasure itself. . Beardsley makes a very good point: “If aesthetic pleasure were merely empirical, the stimulation of an inner or outer sense, as the empiricists thought, this inquiry might be feasible, though the criterion found would only be probable, not necessary. Or if aesthetic pleasure were dependent upon a concept of some kind, as the rationalists thought, then such a criterion might be determined a priori, and applied by reason to mark out beautiful objects and demonstrate their beauty. However, aesthetic pleasure is neither sensuous nor intellectual, but something else (cf. §58)” (Aesthetics, 217).

41. Fourth Moment: Modality • The fourth aspect of the judgment of taste is its modality: and that is necessity. • “The beautiful we think as having a necessary reference to satisfaction” (§; p. 91).

42. Fourth Moment: Modality • The necessity is not indisputably true, for no one who makes a judgment of taste can guarantee that all others will agree. • Kant calls it “exemplary”- a particular judgment that invites universal assent: it “claims that every one ought to give his approval to the object in question and also describe it as beautiful” (§ 19; p. 92). • But it also promises agreement on the part of all those who correctly relate the object to their own cognitive faculties.

43. Fourth Moment: Modality • The necessity or “obligatoriness”, implicit in the judgment of taste presupposes a “common sense”-the state of mind “resulting from the free play of our cognitive powers”. • Do we have any reason for presupposing such a common sense? Yes, because it is a necessary condition of the “shareability” or “communicability” of knowledge itself, and this is assumed by all philosophical inquiry that is not skeptical (§ 21; cf. § 32).

44. The Critique of Aesthetic Judgment:Part I, Third Critique of Critique of Judgment 1. An overview: How can aesthetic judgments be subjective and yet universally valid? 2. Two types of aesthetic judgment: a. Pure Judgments of Taste; b. Sublime Judgments. The most critical difference between them is whereas the beautiful is grounded in the spatial and temporal form of objects, limited to space and time, the sublime depends upon the sense of limitlessness which is evoked by the unimaginably vast (the mathematically sublime) and the overwhelmingly powerful (the dynamically sublime).

45. The Sublime: Our experience of the sublime is only partly aesthetic because, unlike the beautiful, it needs to be mediated by ideas of reason and morality. ex. Starry heavens is mathematically sublime because reason is exalted by enabling us to think of what lies outside the reach of the imagination as a totality. ex. Dynamically sublime: consider a a storm at sea. Here we may be reminded of our worth as moral beings in contrast to the weakness of our empirical selves. In both cases, an otherwise unpleasing experience is tempered by feelings of admiration and respect.

46. In Conclusion: • Therefore, to find object X beautiful, whether it be natural or man-made, is to take pleasure in it simple on account of how it looks or sounds. Thus, judgments of beauty or judgments of taste (as he calls it) are based on the feelings of pleasure or displeasure which denote nothing in the object and so cannot be other than subjective. Such judgments can be neither true nor false, since to discriminate on the basis of feeling alone is to contribute nothing to knowledge. The most they can aspire to is a kind of intersubjective validity.

47. In Conclusion: • In the four moments of the ‘Analytic of the Beautiful’, Kant attempts to define beauty in terms of the type of pleasure it affords. From this emerges that beauty is a perceptual form whose subjective finality is felt as a disinterested, universally communicable and necessary pleasure. Its finality assures us that its worth contemplating for its own sake, although it is only through feeling this feature can be apprehended (A Companion to Aesthetics, 251).