Kant's Aesthetic Theory Research Articles

Aesthetic Normativity in Freiburg

Abstract Aesthetic normativity continues to be of interest in contemporary aesthetics, and significant contributions to the topic can be found in neo-Kantianism. This article examines the account of aesthetic normativity presented by Jonas Cohn (1869–1947), a member of the Southwestern school of neo-Kantianism and author of a 1901 book on aesthetics. Cohn's Kantian-Hegelian theory of aesthetic normativity deserves more examination than it has so far received. Even if one does not accept all of its main arguments, Cohn's theory offers an interesting alternative to the third Critique's account of the universal validity of aesthetic judgments, and it reveals how Kant's aesthetic theory was appropriated at the turn of the century. Since a number of objections can be raised against Cohn's account, however, at the end of the paper I raise several of them.

Universality Without Normativity: Interpreting the Demand of Kantian Judgements of Taste

ABSTRACTKant 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.

Kant's Philosophy of Communication

Kant's Philosophy of Communication

Seventy-Five Years of Kant … and Counting

There have been more articles on Kant's aesthetics in the history of the Journal than on the next four leading figures in the history of aesthetics combined. I argue that this is because Kant's aesthetic theory consists of multiple levels of theory that makes it accessible to and important for multiple approaches to the subject itself. Continuing issues for both Kant interpretation and for aesthetics in general arise at each of these levels, including the plausibility of the claim to universal validity in judgments of taste, the nature of the free play of the imagination in aesthetic experience, the character of aesthetic pleasure, the proper objects of aesthetic judgment, and the moral significance of aesthetic experience.

A Kantian Hybrid Theory of Art Criticism: A Particularist Appeal to the Generalists

Noel 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.

Is akantianMusical Formalism Possible?

In this article, I consider whether a suitably stripped-down version of Kant's aesthetic theory could nevertheless provide philosophical foundations for musical formalism. I begin by distinguishing between formalism as a view about the nature of music and formalism as an approach to music criticism, arguing that Kant's aesthetics only rules out the former. Then, using an example from the work of musicologist and composer Edward T. Cone, I isolate the characteristics of formalist music criticism. With this characterization in mind, I conclude by showing that even if Kant's aesthetic theory is reduced to its most fundamental claims, the logic of formalist music criticism precludes its practice within even a kantian perspective.

Erotics or Hermeneutics?

ABSTRACTAlthough grounded in different philosophical traditions, Alexander Nehamas and Hans-Georg Gadamer each return to Plato's idea of the beautiful, to kalon, in order to reclaim the relevance of beauty for our understanding of art today. Their appeal to Plato challenges the reign of aesthetics that both see inaugurated by Kant's aesthetic theory. Nehamas criticizes the Kantian notion of “disinterest” as a “pleasure bereft of desire” in order to reassert the passionate longing that draws us toward art. Gadamer criticizes Kant's analysis for the way it divides the aesthetic from the cognitive, thereby alienating art and beauty from any claim to knowledge or truth. So Nehamas emphasizes the import of Platonic erōs to a phenomenological account of our experience of beauty. Love, so understood, elides any easy distinction between the sensual and spiritual, between the desire to possess and the passion to know—just as beauty cannot be captured in distinctions between what is and what appears. Gadamer draws out precisely the ontological dimension of the beautiful as self-presentation. In so doing he revives the intimacy of beauty and truth, alētheia, as the movement into unconcealment by which something comes forth into its presence. In the end, I suggest appropriating Nehamas's phenomenological analysis of the erotic to Gadamer's ontological understanding of the alethic in order to renew the relation of erōs and kalon into an account that recalls this Platonic legacy for a contemporary hermeneutics of art.

Method and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Art

This paper is concerned with the question of the proper place of substantial general metaphysics in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. For reasons articulated in writings from the 1950s, analytic aesthetics denies that there is any relation of dependence and regards the intrusion of metaphysics into reflection on art as not merely superfluous but also methodologically inappropriate. Against this I argue (1) that analytic aesthetics in its circumscription of the bounds of the discipline is not metaphysically neutral, (2) that it is vulnerable to the challenge of scientific naturalism, and (3) that a case for the necessity of metaphysics in aesthetics and the philosophy of art can be made on the grounds of the constitutive opacity of art and the aesthetic from the standpoint of ordinary consciousness. The analytic reception of Kant's aesthetic theory, I argue, supports this conclusion.

Geistand Communication in Kant's Theory of Aesthetic Ideas

AbstractIn hisCritique of the Power of Judgement, Kant explicates the creation of works of fine art (schöne Kunst) in terms of aesthetic ideas. His analysis of aesthetic ideas claims that they are not concepts (Begriffe) and are therefore not definable or describable in determinate language. Nevertheless, Kant claims that aesthetic ideas are communicable via spirit (Geist), a special mental ability he associates with artistic genius. This paper argues that Kant's notion ofGeistis central to his analysis of fine art's expressive power. The notion ofGeistconstitutes a conceptual link between Kant's aesthetic theory and that of G. W. F. Hegel, for whose analysisGeistis the subject.

Kant's aesthetic theory: the beautiful and agreeable

Kant's aesthetic theory: the beautiful and agreeable

The Moral Efficacy of Aesthetic Experience: Figures of Meaning in the Moral Field

This paper proposes to analyse the process that makes paths of action meaningful. It argues that this process is one of "figuration". The term "figuration" intends to outline how the experience of moral meaning is one that already positively marks out a field and to identify and analyse the mechanisms used for such marking and selection. It is my contention that these mechanisms predate the persuasion to a moral path; they are the process through which this path is constructed as meaningful. This thesis is elucidated through an analysis of the tactics of meaning in Kant's moral theory. Kant turns to aesthetics as a means of corroboration for his moral theory, but he also attempts to limit the scope of the interactions between his aesthetic and moral theory. For instance, when he writes on the topic of form in aesthetic taste or outlines the technical specifications of aesthetic judgment, it is arguably the arcane peculiarities of his system that are met. For this reason, Kant insists on the merely analogical relations between beauty and morality. However, it is also possible to see how certain aspects of Kant's aesthetic theory execute wider, and potentially more important, functions for his practical philosophy, such as providing meaningful orientation for the ascetic moral attitude of his duty-ethics. In this respect, certain figures of Kant's aesthetic theory may well be viewed as complementing the dependence in his moral philosophy, in the important sections on moral pedagogy and methodology, on appeals to heroic models and stories as ways of shaping and inculcating the moral disposition. This paper considers these aspects of interaction between Kant's aesthetic and moral philosophies as both (1) a problem for the consistency of his philosophy given his avowed exclusion of aesthetic and religious elements of meaning in his duty-ethics; and (2) as a case study for the new, schematic analysis of "moral figuration" outlined in the paper.

Kant's Aesthetic Theory: The Beautiful and Agreeable

Kant's Aesthetic Theory: The Beautiful and Agreeable

W. G. Sebald: The Pleasure and Pain of Beauty

ABSTRACTBeauty plays a central but ambivalent role in Sebald's writings. Echoing Kant's aesthetic theory, Sebald's texts emphasise the disinterested and free nature of aesthetic pleasure, but they also argue that this pleasure is increasingly threatened in the modern age, as the human relationship towards nature becomes informed by a desire for domination and exploitation. In a cross‐reading of Sebald's literary works and his essays on Adalbert Stifter and Gottfried Keller, this article shows how Sebald's own texts attempt to resist this development. By highlighting the beauty of the natural world, they prepare the ground for renewed appreciation, but also for encounter and compassion. Yet the beauty thus displayed is often situated within the context of suffering and death, and by depicting it, Sebald's texts risk becoming complicit with the very structures which they try to undermine. A similar complicity between pleasure and domination also shapes the realm of man‐made artefacts. Sebald's texts attempt to escape this double‐bind in passages which abandon conventionally realist representation in favour of more abstract tableaux of beautiful patterns and colours. This movement towards abstraction serves to shield beauty from the dictates of instrumental reason, fostering an aesthetic pleasure which remains open to compassion.

Communicative Implications of Kant's Aesthetic Theory

Research Article| January 01 2009 Communicative Implications of Kant's Aesthetic Theory Thomas Hove Thomas Hove Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Philosophy & Rhetoric (2009) 42 (2): 103–114. https://doi.org/10.2307/25655345 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Thomas Hove; Communicative Implications of Kant's Aesthetic Theory. Philosophy & Rhetoric 1 January 2009; 42 (2): 103–114. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/25655345 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressPhilosophy & Rhetoric Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2009 The Pennsylvania State University2009The Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Art as Cognitio Imaginativa: Gadamer on Intuition and Imagination in Kant's Aesthetic Theory

ion”.6 Recognition of this fact enables us to transcend the framework opposing intuition and concept (as well as the contrast of sensible and intellectual intuition based upon it). Once the privilege of immediacy is rejected, intuition need not be confined to the sensible given in perception. Hence, Gadamer concludes, “the concept of intuition is not really defined by its relation to the sensible”.7 Gadamer carries this conclusion over to art as well. The basis of the arts, he claims, is not to be found in the immediacy of sensible givenness, but rather in the presentation of the imagination (RB 160/KA 192). By aligning intuition with imagination instead of perception, Gadamer sees himself as following Kant’s lead in the third Critique. He appeals to the Kantian imagination, first, because it suggests a concept of intuition that does not endorse the dogma of immediate givenness. Intuition is not simply given, but must be built up through the encounter with the work of art. This prompts Gadamer to emphasize the power of imagination to synthesize intuitions and, in the case of art, to do so in novel combinations quite independent of a given object. Although a sensible particular, the work of art is a synthetic whole that communicates a totality of sense. Here it becomes possible to speak of the work of art as an ‘invitation to intuition’ that provokes much thought, but without allowing its meaning to be fully rendered in determinate concepts. By accepting such an invitation the spectator becomes essentially involved as one who is engaged with the work and participates in the process by which the intuitions are formed into an image. This re-evaluation of intuition is central to Gadamer’s retrieval of the Kantian imagination. As I argue below, this concept of intuition as a formative process is decisive for Gadamer’s attempt to reconstruct intuition as the function of imagination. Freed from the dogma of sensible immediacy, the originality of intuition is liberated by its appropriation to the productivity of imagination. Gadamer appeals to the Kantian imagination, second, because it invokes an experience of art that is not determined by concepts. According to the Kantian analysis this experience expresses an accord of the cognitive faculties that is not governed by a given concept. Being ‘without a concept’ means that the harmony achieved between imagination and understanding is free or spontaneous rather than determined. In ordinary cognition, where intuitions are subsumed by concepts, understanding rules over imagination. But in the experience of beautiful art, where imagination is released from conceptual constraints, it is the reverse. Here imagination produces a synthesis of intuitions that is not determined by the understanding and its concepts. Through the process of image-formation something comes to presence in the encounter with the work of art. Nevertheless, Gadamer is concerned that the role of intuition and imagination in the experience of art is misconstrued if it is utterly severed from language and concepts. “We live in the logos, and the logos, the linguistic

Communicative Implications of Kant's Aesthetic Theory

Communicative Implications of Kant's Aesthetic Theory

A Universality Not Based on Concepts: Kant's Key to the Critique of Taste

‘Beautiful is what, without a concept, is liked universally.’ Thus ends the second Moment of the Analytic of the Beautiful in Kant's Critique of Judgment.What could yield a non-conceptual universality? Kant finds this in the harmonious ‘free play’ of the mental powers, which he characterizes as a mental state that is both non-cognitive and inherently universally valid. In general, any interpretation of Kant's aesthetic theory will depend on the view of its relationship to cognition. This relationship itself should be understood in reference to Kant's notion of the mental state (or activity of the cognitive powers) in judging generally, as presented in the Critique of Judgment.

LA ESTÉTICA DE KANT: EL ARTE EN EL ÁMBITO DE LO PÚBLICO

El articulo busca valorar el papel que tiene la teoria estetica de Kant con relacion al arte. A manera de introduccion se ubica a Kant en el contexto de su epoca: en el espiritu y sensibilidad que comparte con sus contemporaneos. Aunque esta sujecion pueda alejar a su teoria de la manera como actualmente apreciamos el arte, lo importante es reparar en el nucleo de su propuesta: la autonomia de lo estetico, con lo que Kant asume una posicion radicalmente distinta a las que lo precedieron. Esta autonomia es luego revisada en el presente estudio a la luz de la intersubjetividad. Se trata de mostrar como la teoria kantiana de lo estetico, centrada en ofrecer una solucion a la cuestion de la legitimidad de los juicios esteticos, reafirma, via la intersubjetividad puesta de manifiesto en juicios esteticos y obras de arte, el espacio publico del arte.

Reply to the Comments of Longuenesse and Ginsborg

In this discussion I respond to some of the criticisms raised by Béatrice Longuenesse and Hannah Ginsborg to my account of Kant's aesthetic theory presents in Kant's Theory of Taste.

Aesthetic Judging and The Intentionality of Pleasure

I point out some unclarities in Allison's interpretation of Kant's aesthetic theory, specifically in his account of the free play of the faculties. I argue that there is a tension between Allison's commitment to the intentionality of the pleasure involved in a judgment of beauty, and his view that the pleasure is distinct from the judgment, and I claim that the tension should be resolved by rejecting the latter view. I conclude by addressing Allison's objection that my own view fails to accommodate judgments of non-beauty or ugliness.