The Journal of Aesthetic Education

Introduction

Undoubtedly one of the most fascinating aspects of Kant's aesthetics is the link that the Königsberg philosopher establishes between aesthetic judging and the idea of being-together and being-in-community. This connection is developed through a subtle analysis of aesthetic communicability or shareability (Mitteilbarkeit). A judgment of beauty, what Kant terms "a pure judgment of taste,"—that is, a judgment "that is not influenced by charm or emotion (though these may be connected with a liking for the beautiful), and whose determining basis is therefore merely the purposiveness of the form" (CJ, §13, 223)¹—does not postulate everyone's agreement. Yet Kant claims that it does require this agreement from everyone.

The judgment of the sublime, on the other hand—which is not based on pure pleasure but on a "mixture" of pleasure and displeasure, on a rapid alternation of repulsion from, and attraction to, the same object" (CJ, §27, 258), or, as Kant writes, on "a displeasure that we present at the same time as purposive" (CJ, §27, 259)—also "demands" universal validity. But this "demand" (or "call," as Kant sometimes writes) is not as immediate (or unmediated) as in the pure judgment of taste. The universal shareability that is proper to the judgment of the sublime passes through the moral law. According to Jean-François Lyotard, this implies that "the sublime feeling is [End Page 17] neither moral universality nor aesthetic universalization, but is, rather, the destruction of one by the other in the violence of their differend. This differend cannot demand, even subjectively, to be communicated to all thought."² Whatever the exact meaning of these words may be, the gist seems to be that Kant's analysis of the judgment of the sublime implies the impossibility of any sort of genuine togetherness.

I shall argue that this is too rash a conclusion and that a more "plastic" and pragmatic conception of "being-in-community" can be deduced from Kant's idea of the universal shareability of the judgment of the sublime—a conception lacking in Lyotard's characterizations of togetherness. In this article I merely hint at possible ways to connect the possibility of the communicability of the sublime and this more pragmatic conception of togetherness. I will try to show why Lyotard is wrong to suppose that Kant's analysis of the judgment of the sublime testifies to a crisis of being-together. If Kant's account really pertains to some sort of crisis, it may well be to the crisis of the highly contentious idea that being-together ought to be based on some harmony of feeling(s) or shared essence(s). To understand the gist and scope of Kant's complex analysis, however, we shall have to study first how pure aesthetic judgments that are grounded in the subject's pure feeling of pleasure and/or displeasure (Lust oder Unlust) can establish universally valid norms or an Idea of aesthetic solidarity without appeal to conceptual rules or rational laws. Only afterwards can we get a better view of Lyotard's misinterpretation of Kant's ideas on togetherness.

The Feeling of the Beautiful: Solidarity in statu nascendi

Admiring a still life by Cézanne, one could say, "Look, that's an apple," which is a determinant judgment employing concepts. However, judging that the painting is beautiful occurs without the employment of any concepts and is completely disinterested; it reflects on the pure feeling of pleasure, which surges on the occasion of a particular empirical sensation. Our judgment is a pure judgment of taste only if the following conditions are true:

1. 1. The pleasure grounding it is not motivated by any (empirical, ethical, theoretical, or practical) interest.

2. 2. The subjective purposiveness of the pleasure we experience is not known (in contrast to the agreeable that we experience when we satisfy a desire or need).

3. 3. The judgment is singular—"this sunset in Urbana is beautiful" is an...