Two dominant interpretations of Kant's notion of adherent beauty, the conjunctive view and the incorporation view, provide an account of how to form informed aesthetic assessments concerning artworks. According to both accounts, judgments of perfection play a crucial role in making informed, although impure, judgments of taste. These accounts only examine aesthetic responses to objects that meet or fail to meet the expectations we have regarding what they ought to be. I demonstrate that Kant's works of genius do not fall (...) within either of these categories. The distinguishing features of these works, namely, originality and exemplarity, become unrecognizable on these interpretations because originality and exemplarity lie in the work's ability to exceed one's expectations concerning its form and content. They contribute to artistic beauty through alternative transformation methods distinct from that of abstraction, namely, concept expansion and repudiation. These additional accounts of transformation lead to a rather surprising outcome: works of genius turn out to be paradigm cases where one can and indeed ought to form informed pure judgments of taste. (shrink)

It is difficult to exaggerate the extent to which Kant has influenced contemporary ethics. Whether or not one is sympathetic to his moral theory, one cannot ignore it, or the various ethical theories which draw their inspiration from it. Debates which have centred on Kantian themes include debates about whether moral requirements are categorical imperatives, whether they have an overriding authority, whether the various moral judgements we make can be codified, the role of duty in moral motivation, whether there are (...) moral actions which are beyond the call of duty, the relation of morality to autonomy, and the very nature of moral judgement. The pervasiveness of Kant's influence makes it very difficult to write anything comprehensive on his relation to contemporary ethics, and I do not intend to attempt such an ambitious task here. Rather, in what follows I shall focus mainly on three distinctive features of Kant's ethics, which correspond roughly to the three chapters of the Groundwork. (shrink)

Is there tension in a view of the conditions of being in a proper position to make aesthetic evaluations that is committed to aesthetic autonomy and norms of exposure? I define ‘aesthetic autonomy’ in terms of the Kantian idea that in order to make a proper aesthetic evaluation, one must rely on oneself rather than on any outside source. I define ‘norms of exposure’ in terms of the Humean idea that practice and aesthetic education are conditions of proper aesthetic evaluation. (...) Prima facie, these two commitments point toward competing accounts of whether exposure is a condition of being in a position to make proper aesthetic evaluations. However, I argue that a closer look at the Kantian position reveals that aesthetic exposure is a condition of being able to make aesthetic evaluations in an autonomous way in the Kantian framework. (shrink)

In ‘Aesthetics Problems of Modern Philosophy’ Stanley Cavell proposes, first, that Kant's characterization of judgments of beauty may be read as a Wittgensteinian grammatical characterization, and, second, that the philosophical appeal to ‘what we say and mean’ partakes of the grammar of judgment of beauty. I argue first that the expression of the dawning of an aspect partakes of the grammar of judgments of beauty as characterized by Kant, and may also be seen—on a prevailing way of thinking about concepts (...) and how they relate to their instances—to have the same kind of significance that judgments of beauty have according to Kant. And then I argue that there are good reasons for being suspicious of the prevailing conception of concepts, and therefore good reasons for being suspicious of the proposed understanding of the significance of aspect perception—an understanding that has attracted many readers of Wittgenstein's remarks on aspects. This leads me to suggest that it is actually the philosophical appeal to ordinary language that has the kind of significance that the Kantian picture attributes to judgments of beauty and to the seeing of aspects. In this way, I offer a way to vindicate Cavell's second proposal. (shrink)

My plan in this article is to begin by raising the question of the point of judgements of beauty, and then to examine Kant's account of beauty in the third Critique from the perspective opened up by that question. Having raised the question of the point, I will argue, first, that there is an implied answer to it in Kant's text, and, second, that the answer is ultimately unsatisfying in that it falsely assumes that there is a ‘need’, or ‘task’, (...) or ‘purpose’, that we all necessarily share, to conceptualize all that encounters us in our experience, and fit it into one unified and comprehensive system. It is only against this assumption of our transcendental cognitive interest that Kant can so much as seem to have a real story to tell about where the value that we claim for things in calling them ‘beautiful’ derives from. This, in effect, means that to the extent that Kant offers us any answer at all to the question of the point of judgements of beauty, that answer testifies to his general neglect of the question of the point of judgements. And my purpose is to draw attention to that neglect, and to begin to assess its significance for Kant's transcendental project in general and for his conception of beauty in particular. (shrink)

My research into Virtual Reality technology and its central property of immersion has indicated that immersion in Virtual Reality (VR) electronic systems is a significant key to the understanding of contemporary culture as well as considerable aspects of previous culture as detected in the histories of philosophy and the visual arts. The fundamental change in aesthetic perception engendered by immersion, a perception which is connected to the ideal of total-immersion in virtual space, identifies certain shifts in ontology which are relevant (...) to a better understanding of the human being. This understanding was achieved through a broad inquiry into the histories of Virtual Reality, philosophy, and the visual arts and has lead to the formulation of an aesthetic theory of immersive consciousness indicative of immersive culture. The primary subject of this discourse is immersion then: an experience which will be identified within the dissertation as the indispensable characteristic of Virtual Reality. The understanding of immersion arrived at here will be used to fashion a synchronous theory of art particularly informed by encounters and concepts of immersion into virtuality. To sufficiently address this subject in a scholarly fashion, I have researched, found and accumulated aesthetic and philosophic examples of immersive tendencies, as found within the histories of art and philosophy, which subsequently contributed towards the articulation of what I have come to call immersive consciousness. As a result of formulating such an immersive consciousness, a good deal of the basis for the questioning of the Western ontological tradition has been found in the Western tradition itself when we look with new eyes and ask new uncertain questions. Moreover, this immersive consciousness will be used to propose some abstract questions encircling today's electronic-based culture. Through the structuring of the argument within the thesis - and overtly within the conclusion - I have articulated a non-teleological creative strategy which provides the basis for an unconstraining integration of noologies (ways of semblancing the thinking process). This strategy provides a means of exemplifying - and for honoring - various methods of thinking. This structuring strategy is consistent with the 'hacker ethic' as defined by Steven Levy, as a demand that access to computers - and anything which might teach us something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. To follow this strategy, this dissertation has set out to understand how topical conceptions of virtual immersion connect to pre-existing systems of thought as revealed in art as they have extended out of antecedent ontological self-understandings, historical human self-understandings which have evidenced themselves in the elaboration of technological objectives. To do this I have forged a certain rhizomatic paternity/maternity for Virtual Reality within this dissertation by joining choice immersive examples of simulacra technology into mental connections with the relevant examples culled from the histories of art, architecture, information-technology, sex, myth, space, consciousness and philosophy. (shrink)