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Pleasure and Fit in Kant's Aesthetics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2011

Kenneth F. Rogerson
Kenneth F. Rogerson
Affiliation:
Florida International University, Miami
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Extract

In the third Critique Kant shifts the focus in his enquiry from the status of factual statements in the Critique of Pure Reason and the grounding of moral imperatives in the Critique of Practical Reason to investigating two methods of considering the world which go beyond the strictly verifiable. This is a move from evaluating the interplay of a ‘determinate’ set of facts and intellectual preconditions to forming what Kant calls ‘reflective’ judgements on these facts. There are two major questions which the Critique of Judgement tackles. On the one hand Kant ambitiously considers how we might properly interpret a set of facts as comprising a larger teleological system and, on the other hand, he is interested in the seemingly quite separate issue of the appreciation of objects as beautiful. It is this latter issue which shall concern us here. Consistent with the reflective stand in the third Critique, Kant argues from the very outset that beauty is not an empirical concept with which we might describe the world. Beauty is not objective in the sense that size, colour or weight might be. Objective properties of this kind belong to the world of scientific understanding. Instead, he holds that judgements of aesthetic merit should be based upon the subjective pleasure we take in experiencing works of art and natural objects.

Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 2 , March 1998 , pp. 117 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © Kantian Review 1998

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References

Notes

1 See Guyer, Paul, Kant and the Claims of Taste (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 8Google Scholar, 100–116, 151–160 and Crawford, Donald, Kant's Aesthetic Theory (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974), pp. 69–74.Google Scholar Note that Crawford offers a further history of this line of interpretation.

2 Ginsborg, Hannah, ‘On the key to Kant's critique of taste’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 72 (1991), 290–313.Google Scholar Henry Allison argues a similar position. See Allison, , ‘Pleasure and harmony in Kant's theory of taste: Critique of the causal reading’, in Parret, H. (ed.), Kants Aesthetik/Kant's Aesthetics/L'esthétique de Kant (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, forthcoming).Google Scholar Allison's most recent thoughts on Kant's aesthetic theory can be found in Kantian Review, 1 (1997), 53–81. See also Karl Ameriks's account of Ginsborg's position. Ameriks, , ‘New views on Kant's Judgement of Taste’, in Parret, (ed.), Kants Aesthetik.Google Scholar

3 Actually, we judge an object to be ‘purposive without purpose’ and this judging engenders the mental state of ‘free harmony’.

4 Henry Allison argues the contrary position that recognizing free harmony by a feeling is a harmless extension of the first Critique position. See Allison, ‘Pleasure and harmony’.

5 See Guyer, , Kant and the Claims of Taste, pp. 28Google Scholar, 102–3, and 170–4.

6 See Rogerson, Kenneth F., ‘Kant's notion of free harmony’, Southwest Philosophy Review, 3 (1986), 93–103Google Scholar, and Kneller, Jane, ‘The interests of disinterest’, in Robinson, Hoke (ed.), Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1995), pp. 777–86.Google Scholar

7 For an account of the history of the third Critique see Zammito, John H., The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).Google Scholar See especially pp. 7, 121–3, and 264.

8 See Allison, ‘Pleasure and harmony’.

9 See Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals (Ak 4: 459–63) for this sort of discussion.

10 See §6, Ak 186–8.

11 See Ak 187–8 where Kant recognizes that the categories will constitute a harmony of the faculties.

12 See Ameriks, Karl, ‘New views on Kant's judgement of taste’, especially the discussion at pp. 442–3.Google Scholar

13 See Guyer, Paul, ‘Formalism and the theory of expression in Kant's aesthetics’, Kant-Studien, 1 (1977), 63–4Google Scholar; Crawford, Donald, Kant's Aesthetic Theory (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 1974), p. 121Google Scholar; and Elliot, R. K., ‘The unity of Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgement’, British Journal of Aesthetic, 8 (1968), 248.Google Scholar

14 See the following for more complete accounts of Kant's doctrine of expression of ideas: Kemal, Salim, Kant's Aesthetic Theory (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 95–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 135–7; Makkreel, Rudolf A., Imagination and Interpretation in Kant (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 111–129Google Scholar; and Rogerson, Kenneth F., Kant's Aesthetics (Lantham, MD: The University Press of America, 1986), pp. 95–107.Google Scholar

15 See Guyer, Paul, ‘Formalism and the theory of expression in Kant's aesthetics’, pp. 56–7Google Scholar as a commonly held position of rejecting expression as criterial.

16 For a discussion of this issue see Rogerson, Kenneth F., ‘Art and nature in Kant's aesthetics,’ in Funke, G. (ed.), Akten des Siebenten Internationalen Kant-Kongresses (Bonn: Bouvier, 1991), pp. 736–44.Google Scholar

17 Thanks to the two anonymous referees for the Kantian Review and a special thanks to the editor, Howard Williams.