Aesthetics and Art

Lecture 5 PHIL 2618 Professor David Macarthur Immanuel Kant:

Modern Aesthetics is Footnotes to Kant Pure vs Accessory Beauty • Pure beauty – judged “without a concept” (of the

object’s purpose, end or perfection). Cp. The

rationalist conception of beauty of Wolff. • Art is an accessory or dependent beauty. It involves

various concepts: e.g., of art; of the category of art.

• But both pure and accessory beauty must induce a

“free play” of the imagination and understanding,

even if it is more constrained in the latter case.

• In the case of art this is occasioned by trying to see

how this ‘content’ is related to this form.

Kant on Art • Art vs Nature: art, unlike nature, is a product

of human intention and skill.

• Art vs Science: art is a practical ability;

science theoretical.

• Art vs Mere Craft: art is inherently satisfying;

it involves a higher degree of skill/talent.

• The last distinction is dubious. Better to

appeal to the lack of a predetermined end

(Collingwood).

Kant on Fine Art • Fine Art vs Mechanical Art: fine art aims to

arouse pleasure whereas mechanical art is

useful for a preconceived purpose [craft].

• Fine Art vs Agreeable Art: agreeable art aims at

arousing pleasure through mere sensation; fine

art aims at arousing reflective pleasure through

representations (“ways of cognizing”).

Cp. Collingwood on art proper vs pseudo-art.

Tension: art & nature • For something to be art we must be conscious

of it as art. We must see it under the concept of

art and, also, under some category of art.

BUT • Kant argues that for something to be art it must

seem like nature (spontaneous, unstudied,

unintentional). • Suggestion: Art must be both intentional and

seemingly not intentional at the same time! • Is there an insight here? Aesthetic Ideas • Genius is the twofold imaginative capacity

to discover and express “aesthetic ideas”,

which are peculiarly stimulating images.

• They are imaginative intuitions for which we

have no adequate concept.

• Kant contrasts aesthetic ideas with

“rational ideas” which are concepts for

which we have no adequate intuition. A feeling that cannot adequately be put

into words • Kant writes, ”by an aesthetic idea, however,

I mean that representation of the

imagination that occasions much

thinking though without it being possible

for any determinate thought, i.e., concept,

to be adequate to it, which, consequently,

no language fully attains or can make

intelligible.” Kantian Beauty vs Ordinary Beauty

• Remember that ‘the fine art’ = the beautiful arts.

• For Kant, beauty is the expression of aesthetic

ideas. • That is, beauty (as Kant sees it) involves taking

pleasure in the free play of imagination and

understanding inspired by an artwork (or nature).

• Suggestion beyond Kant: the term ”beauty” is

popularly used to designate a pleasant sensory look

or sound – appealing to the taste of sense not the

aesthetic taste of reflection. • “The poet ventures to make sensible rational

ideas of invisible beings, the kingdom of the

blessed, the kingdom of hell, eternity,

creation, etc., as well as to make that of which

there are examples in experience, e.g., death,

envy, and all sorts of vices, as well as love,

fame, etc., sensible beyond the limits of

experience, with a completeness that goes

beyond anything of which there is an example

in nature.” Art & Paradox • Artists give a sensible form to rational ideas

(e.g. of God, heaven, hell) which, however,

cannot be adequately captured in sensible

terms. • Moreover, artists attempt to give sensible form

to certain important human experiences (e.g.

death, love, fame) but with a completeness

that transcends all experience.

• NOTE: both projects are deeply paradoxical.

Going beyond Kant • Suggestion: perhaps engaging in a fruitful

paradox is the source of art’s open-endedness

of interest for us.

• The idea is that we can be endlessly fascinated

by a compelling but irresolvable paradox. Artistic Genius • Definitive characterization: “the exemplary

originality of the subject’s natural

endowment in the free use of his cognitive

faculties.” • The imagination must be “free”, that is, not

pinned down by concepts of the

understanding – but, somehow, still be in

harmony with its powers of conceptualizing.

Freedom • Genius consists in the ability to come up with

ideas that artworks express (present?

suggest?) and imaginative means for their

expression.

• The relation between content and form

manifests the freedom of the imagination of

the artist but must also leave room for, and

stimulate, the freedom of the imagination of

the audience. Leonardo Da

Vinci Michelangelo

Buonarotti Shakespeare Wolfgang

Mozart George Eliot Henri Matisse Samuel

Beckett Paula

Rego Art and Sociability • Why does art “foster the free flow of

conversation”? • The freedom of aesthetic response and

judgment is tied to its capacity to express

one’s true self, that part of oneself that is

most free, hence most truly one’s own.

Aesthetic Intimacy • Perhaps this is the beginning of an

explanation of the peculiar intimacy of

shared aesthetic judgment. • The lack of guaranteed agreement makes

the surprizing discovery of de facto

agreement under the artistic conditions of

freedom all the more satisfying and

rewarding. (cf. Cavell) The Paradox of Originality • Kant: originality is the capacity for producing

something for which no determinate rule can be given.

Problem: “original nonsense.” • The paradox of originality:

- If something is absolutely “new” and totally unique

then it risks being incomprehensible. Meaning often

depends on seeing the present use as a continuation or

extrapolation from past uses.

- But if it isn’t new or unique it risks being a copy, an

imitation of something else hence not original at all.

The Problem of Art • The problem of art is to produce something

new, unique, distinctive (a creation of the

imagination) which offers something to be

understood (content?) – yet something that is

not reducible to whatever content one has so

far found. • If it were, then the content could have been

conveyed differently in various ways and the

content would be the end, the communication

of it a mere means. Art as Product or Process? • Collingwood and Kant both claim that art is

not about achieving a predetermined end.

• But Kant goes deeper in suggesting that art

is not about achieving ANY end at all.

• It is, rather, a matter of a process of

engagement, a feeling responsiveness to

sensuously embodied ideas – ideally

without end.

Sensuous Content? • It is at this point that one wants to say art is

not just communicated content (e.g.

speech) but content in a sensuous form: art

is en-formed content (Danto says

“embodied meaning”).

• BUT talk of a fixed or determinate “content”

is misleading given the proliferation of

meanings that artworks stimulate in

different viewers.

Not Content but Contentfulness • The Kantian way of thinking is not that there

is a fixed and determinate meaning or

“content” to be understood. • The emphasis falls, rather, on there being an

open-ended imaginative and feeling

engagement with meaningful form – perhaps in the manner of a fruitful paradox. 51作业君版权所有