Free Beauty, Dependent Beauty, and Art

Abstract

Kant's considerable influence in aesthetics largely derives from his account of pure judgments of taste (beauty). This is not entirely inappropriate, since Kant himself gives this account a special status in his own aesthetics. For example, only pure judgments of taste receive (or are capable of receiving) a transcendental deduction of their possibility. However, to focus exclusively on Kant's general account of pure judgments of taste entails ignoring a good deal of the complexity of Kant's aesthetic theory.1 This is so even if we are exclusively concerned with Kant on taste and beauty. Kant recognizes, and gives special treatment to, four classes of beautiful objects: free dependent beauty in art, beauty in nature. Kant also recognizes two kinds of judgments of taste: pure judgments of taste (the object of which is always free beauty) and impure judgments of taste (the objects of which is always dependent beauty). In making the distinction between free and dependent beauty (two kinds of beauty, in Kant's words) in section 16 of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Kant acknowledges that not all appreciation of beauty is captured by the notion of a pure aesthetic judgment.2 Later in the Critique (section 48), Kant suggests that most art is properly appreciated as possessing dependent thereby suggesting that a proper understanding of the appreciation of most art is not captured by the notion of a pure judgment of taste. These claims about dependent beauty have important implications for aesthetic education. The most obvious implication concerns the nature and object of aesthetic appreciation. If instances of aesthetic appreciation were identical to pure judgments of taste, they would be restricted to pleasure