Beyond the third Critique: Epistemological skepticism and aesthetic consciousness

Abstract

In Chapter 1 we saw that Gadamer distinguishes too sharply between Kant's account of art and his account of natural beauty, and that, as a consequence of this, he wrongly ascribes to Kant a radically non-hermeneutic conception of natural beauty. However, the fact that Gadamer misreads Kant's notion of natural beauty does not mean that the basic orientation of his critique – the more general philosophical point that he is after – is illegitimate as such. In this second chapter, I argue that Gadamer's misreading of Kant's approach to natural beauty paves the way for a more promising critique of aesthetic subjectivism and immediacy, notions that Gadamer traces back to the paradigm of aesthetic consciousness. As opposed to the discussion of the Critique of Judgment , Gadamer's critique of aesthetic consciousness does not deal in detail with selected sections of a particular philosophical work. It does not address a specific thinker or a specific historical epoch. At stake is an attempt to clarify and make explicit the comprehensive intellectual framework by which post-Kantian aesthetics has had a tendency to be delimited. Emerging within the romantic period, aesthetic consciousness questions the rigid scientific understanding of human life and its place in nature, and emphasizes instead our capacity for spontaneity, freedom, and creativity. In drawing attention to the role of art in human life, aesthetic consciousness stresses the immediacy of aesthetic creation and experience, claiming that the work of art is presented to consciousness in terms of pure aesthetic qualities.