Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T23:23:28.790Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Subjectivity and Sociality in Kant’s Theory of Beauty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2018

Brent Kalar
Brent Kalar*
Affiliation:
University of New Mexico
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Kant holds that it is possible to quarrel about judgements of beauty and cultivate taste, but these possibilities have not been adequately accounted for in the dominant interpretations of his aesthetics. They can be better explained if we combine a more subjectivist interpretation of the free harmony of the faculties and aesthetic form with a type of social constructivism. On this ‘subjectivist-constructivist’ reading, quarrelling over and cultivating taste are not attempts to conform to some matter of fact, but rather to reconcile subjective perceptions through mutual interchange governed by the regulative goal of constructing a universal community of agreement.

Keywords

beautyharmony of the facultiesfree playaesthetic formsubjectivismconstructivismaesthetic argumentcultivation of tasteart criticism
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 2018 , pp. 205 - 227
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allison, Henry E. (2001) Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ameriks, Karl (2003) Interpreting Kant’s Critiques. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Burr, Vivian (2003) Social Constructionism. 2nd edn. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cohen, Ted (1982) ‘Why Beauty is a Symbol of Morality’. In Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer (eds), Essays in Kant’s Aesthetics (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press), pp. 221–236.Google Scholar
Crawford, Donald (1974) Kant’s Aesthetic Theory. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Ginsborg, Hannah (2015) The Normativity of Nature: Essays on Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Guyer, Paul (1997) Kant and the Claims of Taste. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Guyer, Paul (2005) Values of Beauty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janaway, Christopher (2003) ‘Kant’s Aesthetics and the “Empty Cognitive Stock”’. In Paul Guyer (ed.), Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment: Critical Essays (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), pp. 67–86.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1902–) Kants gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Königlich Preußischen (later Deutschen) Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin: Georg Reimer, subsequently de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1992) Lectures on Logic. Trans. and ed. J. Michael Young. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1998) Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2000) Critique of the Power of Judgment . Ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kulenkampff, Jens (1990) ‘The Objectivity of Taste: Kant and Hume’. Noûs, 24, 93–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mothersill, Mary (1991) ‘The Antinomy of Taste’. In Ralf Meerbote (ed.), Kant’s Aesthetics (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview), pp. 75–85.Google Scholar
Savile, Anthony (1987) Aesthetic Reconstructions: The Seminal Writings of Lessing, Kant, and Schiller. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Tuna, Emine Hande (2016) ‘A Kantian Hybrid Theory of Art Criticism: A Particularist Appeal to the Generalists’. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 74, 397–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watkins, Brian (2011) ‘The Subjective Basis of Kant’s Judgment of Taste’. Inquiry, 54, 315–336.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zuckert, Rachel (2013) ‘Is there Kantian Art Criticism?’. In Stefano Bacin, Alfredo Ferrarin, Claudio La Rocca and Margit Ruffing (eds), Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht. Akten des XI. Kant-Kongresses 2010, vol. 4 (Berlin: de Gruyter), pp. 343–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar