An Examination of Kant’s Aesthetic Theory
By
Robin Phillips
In this essay I would like
to explore how satisfactory is Kant’s account of aesthetic experience? To
explore that question I would like to consider some of the central aspects of
Kant’s aesthetic philosophy.[1]
I will then point out two problems with the theory before finally returning to
the opening question.
Kant’s account of aesthetic
experience is part of his broader attempt to understand the basis for all human
judgments. Aesthetic judgements are distinguished from two other kinds of
judgements, namely knowledge judgements and moral judgements. Each kind of
judgement has a mode of consciousness to which it corresponds. The mode of
knowledge obviously represents judgements of knowledge, while the mode of desire
represents moral judgements and the mode of feeling represents aesthetic
judgments.
What then does Kant mean
when he relates aesthetic judgements to the state of feeling? He means that
aesthetic judgements are not cognitive but subjective. His reason for this is
grounded on a discussion of beauty. (It is a limitation of Kant’s account that
beauty and the aesthetic are discussed more or less interchangeably.) When we
experience something beautiful, Kant maintains that we are not experiencing
anything about the object itself; rather, we are experiencing our own feelings
of delight. As he writes,
If we wish to discern whether anything is
beautiful or not…we refer the representation to the Subject and its feeling of
pleasure or displeasure…. This denotes nothing in the object, but is a feeling
which the Subject has of itself…[2]
Though we experience nothing
objective about an object itself when we judge that it is beautiful, seeing as
we are experiencing something about ourselves – namely the delight we feel in
perceiving a certain object –the experience of beauty still feels as if we
were making a knowledge claim about an objective state of affairs. As he says,
“without concept and subjectively grounded we speak of beauty ‘as if it were a
quality of the object.’”[3]
So aesthetic judgements –
or, to use Kant’s terminology, ‘judgements of taste’ – are not cognitive but
contemplative since their “character stands with the feeling of pleasure and
displeasure.”[4] This kind of
pleasure is distinguished from two other kinds of delight: the delight in what
is agreeable and delight in what is good. In the case of these other delights,
the delight is directed towards an object or action that actually exists. In
judgements of taste, on the other hand, Kant argues that there is no
corresponding desire and hence it is irrelevant whether the object in question
actually exists or not. When we behold a beautiful landscape, for example, our
aesthetic reaction is not contingent on the real existence of the land being
represented.[5]
Related to this is the sense
in which delight in the beautiful, as opposed to delight in the agreeable and
the good, is disinterested. By ‘disinterested’ Kant means that one’s
taste is not affected by personal considerations such as advantage or
disadvantage. Disinterestedness exists once all personal non-aesthetic
considerations are extracted. A personal non-aesthetic consideration would be
that my little boy is performing in the ballet, or that I inherit the income
from these portraits. Once all such considerations are abstracted, judgement is
completely free and impartial since it is not affected by any personal bias and
is, to quote from Kant, “independent of our personal conditions…”[6]
There is another sense in which these judgements are free, and that is the
sense in which they are free from concepts, rational grounds and “any definite
thought whatever…”[7] In
judgements of knowledge the activity of our mind is determined by definite
concepts and the rational structures that govern objective thought; similarly,
in moral judgements our mind is moved by the concept of goodness. In aesthetic judgements, on the other hand,
there is an indefinite interaction between the imagination and the
understanding that is independent of any concept. If we affirm that Constable’s
The Haywain is beautiful, it is not because we have in our minds a
concept of beauty, but because we experience certain pleasurable sensations
when we view it.
Given this apparently
subjectivist account of aesthetics, one might expect to find Kant lapsing into
a kind of relativism whereby the possibility of any consensus about good taste
is an a priori impossibility. Kant’s strategy here is to try to show
that although judgements of taste are subjective, there is another sense in
which they are objective or ‘universally valid.’ Put another way, he tries to
show that there is a universal ‘common sense’ of aesthetics. He finds evidence
for this in how our aesthetic judgments ‘behave.’ We implicitly expect others
to agree with us if they have good taste, and when they agree with our tastes
we feel that it is more than mere coincidence.
Kant tries to give a
theoretical grounding for “presupposing the existence of a common sense”[8]
through a complex explanation of the mechanics involved in aesthetic judgements.
He argues that because our aesthetic judgements occur through the
self-perpetuating interaction of the Imagination and the Understanding, the
Understanding can ensure that the Imagination’s activity is regulated so that,
whilst free, it is not chaotic or unintelligible, while the Imagination can
stimulate the Understanding in a cascade of indefinite thought. Now because the
same faculties are required in general for all theoretical cognition (since
Kant believed he had proved that Imagination and Understanding also interact
when operating in the knowledge mode) as well as the universal communicability
and validity of any mental state in which they are involved, Kant is enabled to
argue that aesthetic judgment rest on the same conditions present in all cognition,
which is why such judgements feel like cognition and why they possess the same
universal communicability and validity as cognitive knowledge. This conclusion,
together with the fact that all rational beings have mental structures that are
formally similar, provides Kant with the rational justification needed to
postulate the existence of this aesthetic common sense by which universal
agreement on matters of taste can (in theory) be expected. So, to state the
matter in a nut shell, Kant is saying that the mental activity involved in
aesthetic judgements is sufficiently similar to cognition to enable it to
attain some of the useful accessories of objective knowledge (i.e., a
universal common sense) while not being sufficiently similar to objective knowledge
to actually inform us about the world in which we live (thus leaving beauty, at
the end of the day, confined to our own minds).
Two more aspects
of Kant’s aesthetic philosophy must be mentioned before I begin my critique.
Kant taught that an object’s purpose is the concept according to which it was
made. This can involve either an utilitarian purpose, as when a thing is
deigned to perform a specific function, or an internal purpose, as when a thing
is designed according to perfection. An object is purposive to the extent that
it appears to have been designed for such a purpose. Now, because we have
already seen that for Kant beauty is not governed by a concept, it follows that
beauty is without purpose. Nevertheless Kant recognized that beautiful objects
affect us as if they had a purpose, for they appear to have been
designed for something. Hence the famous phrase, “purposive without purpose.”
Beautiful things have the form of purposeiveness without having a specific
purpose. Kant thinks that this explains why beauty is pleasurable, since he has
defined pleasure in terms of a feeling arising on the achievement of a purpose
or the recognition of a purposeiveness.
Kant’s treatment
of aesthetics has been criticized on various grounds. Dewey argued that our
aesthetic responses do not stem from a mode of experience that is fundamentally
separate from everyday life, as Kant, like other theorists, implicitly assumed.[9]
Dickie has likewise argued that it is unhelpful to apply terms to aesthetic
experience that imply that it represents a special kind of act or state of
consciousness.[10] Though such
criticisms offer interesting material for thought, it is on other grounds that
I wish to form my own criticism.
To start with, I would like
to point out that given the fact that Kant’s critique of aesthetic judgements
was something he needed to deal with if his architectonic critique of all human
judgements was to be complete, it is hardly surprising to find aesthetic
experience described in such a way as to fit the confines of Kant’s metaphysics
while failing to fit the reality of human experience.
Consider, in
this regard, “this definition of the beautiful…as an object of delight apart
from any interest.”[11]
I would like to suggest that it is possible to apprehend the beautiful purely
cognitively and without feelings of pleasure. For example, I may be attending
an opera by a composer of whom I am madly jealous. I recognize the beauty of
the composition but hate the opera in direct proportion to its beauty. In that
case, I would have recognized the beauty apart from any feeling of delight. Or
suppose a man surveys the beauty of a former girl-friend, recognizing
cognitively that she is beautiful while simultaneously hating the very beauty
that once seduced him. One might suggest that such examples are irrelevant
since they involve the kind of non-aesthetic considerations that Kant said
should be abstracted in order for a judgement to be disinterested. But that is
precisely the point: these judgements (of the kind I have imagined) are not disinterested
and not accompanied by any feeling of delight, yet still there is a
recognition of beauty. Therefore, though beauty is usually accompanied by
pleasurable feelings, this cannot be made into a necessary condition of beauty.[12]
I would argue
further that the very idea of ‘disinterested’ pleasure is problematic. Kant’s
addresses judgements that occur under ideal conditions, by which he means
conditions in which taste is truly disinterested, meaning independent of any
“inclination of the Subject…”[13]
But do such conditions actually exist in the real world? It is easy enough to
abstract from one’s judgement such obvious and explicit conditions as that I
like the symphony because my daughter is playing second cello. But how do we
know that there is not an assemblage of diffuse pre-cognitive conditions that
continually affect all our tastes? When I consider that we are complex beings
with an assemblage of inclinations and conditions that precede conscious
awareness, I feel justified in urging that we can never be completely sure
whether the conditions required for disinterestedness can ever be obtained.
When one views a painting or listens to a piece of music, one does so as a whole
person; consequently, one’s taste may be affected by a conglomeration of
factors to which our subjective self is party, such as personality, education,
individual inclination, cultural influences, character, past experience and, as
Plato would point out, moral disposition. With regard to the later, namely the
role that morality has in affecting our tastes, it has been too little
recognized that aesthetic tastes are often symptomatic of the direction in
which our soul is moving. One may have much to lose if one surrenders to
beauty, like a morbid, angry man who refuses to open his window to hear the
birds sing, or a grief-stricken woman who refuses to take a walk amongst the
autumnal colours because she does not want to be comforted.
Less conscious
motives can be postulated as accounting for the demise of beauty in the contemporary
art scene. David Clayton has observed that
Our situation today shows
that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do
truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from
her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious
vengeance.
Clayton goes on to link the rejection of beauty with the
rejection of love and virtue. The notion of there being a moral dimension to
art is an important idea, but it can only be explored by first realizing that
aesthetic judgements are not disinterested as Kant argued. Aesthetic tastes
cannot be disengaged from the totality of who we are as people.
Bibliography
Immanuel Kant, selections from ‘Critique of Judgement’ in Theories of Art & Beauty (Milton Keynes, The Open University, 1991).
Dickie, ‘The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude’ in Theories of Art & Beauty (Milton Keynes, The Open University, 1991).
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, Meredith, J.C. (trans.), Oxford University Press (1973 edition).
Diané Collinson, Philosophical Aesthetics: An Introduction (Blackwell Publishers in Association with the Open University, 1992).
Endnotes
[1] Due to the restriction of space, I will not be mentioning Kant’s views on form and colour, his account of genius and certain other more practical aspects of his aesthetic philosophy.
[2] Kant, Theories of Art & Beauty, p. 193.
[3] Kant, Critique of Judgement, p. 51.
[4] Kant, Kant, Theories of Art & Beauty, p. 198.
[5] It is hard to see how this idea about the irrelevance of the real existence of a thing is much use in arts such as music, poetry, ballet, architecture, etc..
[6] Kant, Critique of Judgement, p. 51.
[7] Ibid, p. 176.
[8] Kant, Theories of Art & Beauty, p. 203.
[9] Ibid, pp. 232-247. See also Diané Collinson, pp. 150-156.
[10] See Dickie’s ‘The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude’ in Theories of Art & Beauty, pp. 266-268. Also, Collinson, pp. 161-165.
[11] Theories of Art & Beauty, p. 199.
[12] I have criticized the definition of beauty given by Kant at the beginning of the Second Moment on the basis of necessary conditions. It might be possible (though I shall not attempt to do so) to also criticize this definition from the standpoint of sufficient conditions. We would need to ask whether there are other activities, totally unconnected to aesthetics, that offer disinterested delight. But I will not pursue that idea here. Another idea that cannot be pursued here is that if, as I have suggested, we can and do perceive beauty by cognitive means, then does that imply that there is a definite concept of beauty that can be defined objectively? Such a question, though important, cannot be explored here.
[13] Kant, Theories of Art & Beauty, p. 200.
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