The twofold conception of taste -- The beautiful and the agreeable -- Sensations and interests -- Some varieties of normativity.

An effort to expand and defend aspects of my reading of the Deduction of Taste. The Red Scorpion is just for fun. -/- .

What does the faculty of Understanding do during the execution of a judgement of taste? How are singular judgements of beauty related to general judgements of beauty? For what reason is beauty the symbol of morality? The first question has a tentative answer, although one not obviously congenial to Kant. The second two questions have no compelling answers.

In the Critique of Judgment , Kant presents what is possibly the most powerful aesthetic theory ever devised. It is not the clearest, and even when it comes clear, it is only after much toil. But its contradictions and complexities — apparent or real — reflect and disclose to great depth the very complexities and paradoxes that infect our artistic and aesthetic lives. Later aestheticians have with greater sophistication directed attention to the social and historical aspects of institutionalised fine (...) arts, but in terms of providing philosophic provocations to take us deep into the centres of aesthetic experience, the Critique of Judgment is unmatched — the most important work of aesthetic theory since Aristotle’s Poetics. In the minds of many of us, its supremacy in aesthetics remains unchallenged today. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the following threefold question: first, is there a genuine problem of grounding aesthetic judgement in testimony? Second, if there is such a problem, what exactly is its nature? And lastly, can Kant help us get clearer on the problem? Following Kant, I argue that the problem with aesthetic testimony is explained by norms that govern what it takes to judge a beautiful object aesthetically, rather than theoretically or practically, not by norms that govern what it (...) takes to judge aesthetically with a sufficient epistemic basis rather than without it. I thus propose a normative and aesthetic approach to testimony. (shrink)

The notion of the ‘free harmony of the faculties’ has baffled many of Kant's readers and also attracted much criticism. In this paper I attempt to shed light on this puzzling notion. By doing so, I aim to challenge some of the criticisms that this notion has attracted, and to point to its relevance to contemporary debates in aesthetics. While most of the literature on the free harmony is characterized by what I regard as an ‘extra-aesthetic approach’, I propose ‘an (...) aesthetic approach’ to the harmony. Such an aesthetic interpretation explains why aesthetic judgement, but not cognitive judgement, is based on a free agreement of the faculties in distinctively aesthetic terms. By contrast, an extra-aesthetic approach to Kant's aesthetic theory does not explain what it is in beautiful objects as beautiful that calls for a free agreement of the faculties. I argue that this approach is limited, and suggest an alternative to it by articulating the necessary reciprocity and explanatory interdependence between the form and value of beautiful objects and the form of the mental activity that underlies judgements of taste. My proposal is not only aesthetic, but also normative in its attempt to carve up a space for a distinct form of aesthetic normativity, the one that Kant describes as ‘free lawfulness’ or ‘lawfulness without a law’. I opt for a specifically normative variant of aesthetic interpretation because I believe that Kant is committed to the view of aesthetic judgement as normatively autonomous and irreducible. (shrink)

Contrary to Eckart Förster, I argue that the Opus postumum represents more of an evolution than a revolution in Kant's thought. Among other points, I argue that Kant's Selbstsetzungslehre, or theory of self-positing, according to which we cannot have knowledge of the spatio-temporal world except through recognition of the changes we initiate in it by our own bodies, does not constitute a radicalization of Kant's transcendental idealism, but is a development of the realist line of argument introduced by the "Refutation (...) of Idealism" of 1787-90; and I argue that Kant's concept of the highest good, which according to Förster was only revised to connect virtue to collective rather than individual happiness in 1790-93 and was then in any case withdrawn in the Opus postumum, was uninterruptedly focused on collective happiness from the first edition of the first Critique, and that there is no reason to believe that ever Kant retracted it. (shrink)

Kant and the Claims of Taste, published here for the first time in paperback in a revised version, has become, since its initial publication in 1979, the standard commentary on Kant's aesthetic theory. The book offers a detailed account of Kant's views on judgments of taste, aesthetic pleasure, imagination and many other topics. For this new edition, Paul Guyer has provided a new foreword and has added a chapter on Kant's conception of fine art. This re-issue will complement the author's (...) companion volume, Kant and the Experience of Freedom, which places Kant's aesthetics in its historical context and examines the fundamental connection between Kant's aesthetics and his moral theory. (shrink)

This collection of essays by one of the preeminent Kant scholars of our time transforms our understanding of both Kant's aesthetics and his ethics. Guyer shows that at the very core of Kant's aesthetic theory, disinterestedness of taste becomes an experience of freedom and thus an essential accompaniment to morality itself. At the same time he reveals how Kant's moral theory includes a distinctive place for the cultivation of both general moral sentiments and particular attachments on the basis of the (...) most rigorous principle of duty. Kant's thought is placed in a rich historical context including such figures as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Burke, Kames, as well as Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Schiller, and Hegel. Other topics treated are the sublime, natural versus artistic beauty, genius and art history, and duty and inclination. These essays (half being published for the first time) extend and enrich the account of Kant's aesthetics in the author's earlier book, Kant and the Claims of Taste (1979). (shrink)

Abstract: Kant declares the judgment of beauty to be neither ‘objective’ nor ‘merely subjective’. This essay takes up the question of what this might mean and whether it can be taken seriously. It is often supposed that Kant's denials of ‘objectivity’ to the judgment of beauty express a rejection of realism about beauty. I suggest that Kant's thought is not to be understood in these terms—that it does not properly belong in the arena of debates about the constituents of ‘reality’—motivating (...) the suggestion by first considering a pair of opposing views on the question of whether Kant can be understood to develop a real alternative to realism about beauty at all. (shrink)

A number of recent studies have claimed to explain how Kant can or cannot accommodate pure judgements of ugliness in his aesthetic theory. In this paper I critically review the arguments on each side of the debate and then develop a new account of how Kant might explain the pure judgement of the ugly, namely, by appeal to the quickening of the faculties in their harmonious free play. Some implications and applications of such an explanation are then explored, including a (...) rethink of the nature of beauty and ugliness. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Kant's treatment of pure aesthetic judgement can ignore ugliness, since an analytic of the ugly, according to a recent essay by Paul Guyer, uncovers the aesthetic impurity of the criteria against which we judge ugliness. Free beauty, as Kant expounds it, does not admit a contrary, and hence a Kantian account of ugliness, such as Guyer's, must look elsewhere in order to scrabble together terms for its definition. Yet if we recognise the ugly by its unsuitability as an object of (...) pure contemplation, then we have made a disinterested judgement of free ugliness. The pleasure of the harmony of the faculties, which is a pleasure in the way the world and our faculties fit together, observes itself contradicted by ugliness. (shrink)

According to Kant, the singular judgement ‘This rose is beautiful’ is, or may be, aesthetic, while the general judgement ‘Roses in general are beautiful’ is not. What, then, is the logical relation between the two judgements? I argue that there is none, and that one cannot allow there to be any if one agrees with Kant that the judgement ‘This rose is beautiful’ cannot be made on the basis of testimony. The appearance of a logical relation between the two judgements (...) can, however, be explained in terms of what one does in making a judgement of taste. Finally, I describe an analogy between Kant's treatment of judgements of taste and J. L. Austin's treatment of explicit performative utterances, which I attribute to a deeper affinity between their respective projects. (shrink)

I try to identify the characteristic and distinguishing features of a theory of natural beauty (as opposed to the sublime) that can be found in Kant's Critique of Judgement. Lest this may seem superfluous, I argue first that, contrary to a common view, Kant's theory does not take the experience of beauty in nature as theoretically basic and that he does not deal with beauty in art only as a derivative case of aesthetic experience. I then try to understand what (...) it means to require, as Kant famously does, that beautiful nature has to look as if it were art. Does this commit him to a projectionist view, according to which we appreciate nature aesthetically only for what it really is not (namely art) rather than for what it is? Pursuing this question we find that for Kant nature can be the object of pure judgements of taste only insofar as nature can be explained scientifically, which in Kant's framework means purely mechanically. This ‘blind mechanism’ of nature plays an important role in Kant's explication of the moral significance the experience of beautiful nature has for us. (shrink)

Beauty, or at least natural beauty, is famously a symbol of the morally good in Kant's theory of taste. Natural beauty is also, we argue, a symbol of the systematicity of nature. This symbolic connection of beauty and systematicity in nature sheds light on the relation between the principles underlying the use of reflecting judgement. The connection also motivates a more general interpretive proposal: the fact that the imagination can symbolize ideas plays a crucial role in the theory of taste; (...) it is the mechanism that underlies pure judgements of taste, the operation by which the imagination ‘schematizes without a concept’. (shrink)

This commentary argues that Ted Cohen's claim that Kant confuses logical and aesthetic judgements (in ‘Three Problems in Kant's Aesthetics’, British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 42 [2002], pp. 1–12) can be countered by a somewhat different reading of Kant's argument in 8 of the Critique of Judgement. Cohen construes Kant's argument as an inductive generalization based on common properties. I suggest, instead, that Kant distinguishes between judgements of taste, which do not require concepts, and logical generalizations that are based directly (...) on experience and that do allow concepts. ‘Beauty’ is used equivocally, but that frees Kant from the charge of logical error or self-contradiction. (shrink)

An effort to lay out a kind of taxomony of conceptual relations between the domains of the sublime and the religious. Warning: includes two somewhat graphic images. -/- .

The Observations and the Remarks -- The Observations -- Forms of the sublime, and the grotesque -- Virtue -- The Remarks : history and background -- Four senses of freedom -- Enthusiasm : the passion of the sublime -- The judgment of the sublime -- Preliminary issues -- The mathematical and the dynamical sublime -- A third kind : the moral sublime -- Dependent and free sublimity -- The monstrous and the colossal -- Sublimity elicited by art -- Moral feeling (...) and the sublime -- The moral feeling of respect -- Sublimity as presupposing freedom -- Sublimity as supporting morality -- Various senses of interest and disinterestedness -- Interest -- First-order and second-order interests -- Empirical and morally based interests -- Aesthetic enthusiasm -- Enthusiasm in the corpus -- Affect -- Enthusiasm as morally ambiguous -- Enthusiasm as an aesthetic feeling of sublimity -- "Without enthusiasm nothing great can be accomplished" -- Conclusion : Kantian enthusiasm and the revelation of freedom -- Eenthusiasm for the idea of a republic -- The charge against Kant -- Means and ends -- Freedom and the idea of a republic -- The consistency of Kant's position -- Sublimity's basis in freedom -- The transition to freedom. (shrink)

Paul Crowther, in his book, The Kantian Sublime (1989), works to reconstruct Kant's aesthetics in order to make its continued relevance to contemporary aesthetic concerns more visible. The present article remains within the area of Crowther's "cognitive" sublime, to show that there is much space for expanding upon Kantian varieties of the sublime, particularly in art.

It might at first seem that the senses (the five traditionally recognized conduits of outer sense) would have very little to contribute to an investigation of Kant's aesthetics. Is not Kant's aesthetic theory based on a relation of the higher cognitive faculties? Much however can be revealed by asking to what degree sight is essential to aesthetic judgment (of beauty and the sublime) as Kant describes it in the 'Critique of Judgment.' Here the sublime receives particular attention.

This collection of essays by one of the preeminent Kant scholars of our time transforms our understanding of both Kant's aesthetics and his ethics. Guyer shows that at the very core of Kant's aesthetic theory, disinterestedness of taste becomes an experience of freedom and thus an essential accompaniment to morality itself. At the same time he reveals how Kant's moral theory includes a distinctive place for the cultivation of both general moral sentiments and particular attachments on the basis of the (...) most rigorous principle of duty. Kant's thought is placed in a rich historical context including such figures as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Burke, Kames, as well as Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Schiller, and Hegel. Other topics treated are the sublime, natural versus artistic beauty, genius and art history, and duty and inclination. These essays (half being published for the first time) extend and enrich the account of Kant's aesthetics in the author's earlier book, Kant and the Claims of Taste (1979). (shrink)

The concept of the “sublime” has been discussed by a few philosophers. According to German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), the sublime refers to something “absolutely great,”1 such as the vast Sahara Desert or an earthquake, that surpasses one’s ability to comprehend with one’s reason. The sublime brings a mixture of anxiety and pleasure to those experiencing it: anxiety from the conflict between reason and imagination, and pleasure from the awareness of the supremacy of human reason. While Kant focuses on sublime (...) nature, French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) concentrates on sublime art, such as avant-garde art, which presents “the existence of something unpresentable”2 and confronts us with .. (shrink)

A crucial feature of Kant's critical-period writing on the sublime is its grounding in moral psychology. Whereas in the pre-critical writings, the sublime is viewed as an inherently exhausting state of mind, in the critical-period writings it is presented as one that gains strength the more it is sustained. I account for this in terms of Kantian moral psychology, and explain that, for Kant, sound moral disposition is conceived as a sublime state of mind.

Review of Robert Clewis, _The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom_.

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.

This paper offers a restatement of the basic project of Hannah Arendt's Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, tries to trace its theoretical motivation, and presents some criticisms of Arendt's interpretation of Kant's Critique of Judgment. Arendt's political philosophy as a whole is an attempt to ground the idea of human dignity on the publicly displayed 'words and deeds' that con stitute the realm of human affairs. This project involves a philo sophical response both to Plato's impugning of the dignity of (...) the polis and to Hegel's founding of modern historicism. The Kant Lectures bring this philosophical project to its completion because the enact ment of public deeds presupposes a company of judging spectators who draw meaning from the spectacle by judging and appreciating what is enacted. But this conception, precisely because it relates so deeply to Arendt's own theoretical impulse, leads to a sometimes onesided and misleading reading of Kant. Key Words: aesthetic judgment • dialogue/communication • Hannah Arendt • Immanuel Kant • political judgment. (shrink)

The twofold conception of taste -- The beautiful and the agreeable -- Sensations and interests -- Some varieties of normativity.

It is a common thought that mathematics can be not only true but also beautiful, and many of the greatest mathematicians have attached central importance to the aesthetic merit of their theorems, proofs and theories. But how, exactly, should we conceive of the character of beauty in mathematics? In this paper I suggest that Kant's philosophy provides the resources for a compelling answer to this question. Focusing on §62 of the ‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment’, I argue against the common view (...) that Kant's aesthetics leaves no room for beauty in mathematics. More specifically, I show that on the Kantian account beauty in mathematics is a non-conceptual response felt in light of our own creative activities involved in the process of mathematical reasoning. The Kantian proposal I thus develop provides a promising alternative to Platonist accounts of beauty widespread among mathematicians. While on the Platonist conception the experience of mathematical beauty consists in an intellectual insight into the fundamental structures of the universe, according to the Kantian proposal the experience of beauty in mathematics is grounded in our felt awareness of the imaginative processes that lead to mathematical knowledge. The Kantian account I develop thus offers to elucidate the connection between aesthetic reflection, creative imagination and mathematical cognition. (shrink)