OUGD601 - RESEARCH - Philosophy of The Arts: Kant

- Kant's The Critique of Judgement, work on aesthetics published in 1790.
- Earlier in his philosophical career, he had thought that aesthetic appreciation was purely subjective, simply a matter of pleasure.
- Appreciating the beautiful is an act of mind ad well as a matter of sensuous feeling, and that is why it is correct to speak of aesthetic judgement.
- The Critique of Judgement - Kant places aesthetic judgement between the logically necessary and the purely subjective. Though the proposition 'this is beautiful' does indeed have the appearance of a cognitive judgement, that is a judgement of how things are, Kant agrees with Hume that expressing such a judgement 'cannot be other than subjective'; that is, arising from a feeling of approval.
- But in contrast to Hume, he rejects the view that the experience of beauty is merely subjective. This is because, although Hume thinks that the attribution of 'beauty' to an object reflects a sentiment or feeling within us, Kant is aware that this is not how it seems to us.

"[the person who declares something to be beautiful] can find as reason for his delight no personal conditions to which his own subjective self might alone be party...[and therefore]...must believe that he has reason for demanding a similar delight from everyone. Accordingly he will speak of the beautiful as if beauty were a quality of the object and the judgement logical...although it is only aesthetic and contains merely a reference of the representation of the object to the subject".

- In plainer language, the idea is this: while it is true that beauty needs to be appreciated subjectively, when we see beautiful things we are aware that the pleasure we derive from them is not a function of something peculiar to us. Beauty is subjective, but it is not merely personal, as the expression of a preference is when we refer to something of which we happen to be especially fond.

REFERENCE: Graham, G. (2005) Philosophy Of The Arts: An Introduction To Aesthetics. London and New York: Routledge.