Kant's Critique of Judgment (2)

Analytic of the Beautiful - Notes

Sensation = objective presentation of an object
Feeling = subjective phenomena accompanying the presentation of an object

What inner sense likes in sensation is called the agreeable. Agreeableness is thus the immediate effect of sensation onto our inner sense. The feeling of pleasure is thus prior to judgment. What reason likes through a concept is the good. A judgment that a thing is good is made when a presentation of an object conforms to a determinate concept. The concept of the object is thus prior to judgment. In either case, the x prior to judgment is the interest which conditions the judgment.

Beauty is neither the agreeable (since here the feeling of pleasure does not make any reference to the object's effect on inner sense) nor the good (since no determinate concept is presupposed.) Rather, the judgment that the thing is beautiful is grounded in the subjective act of reflection on the object.

The agreeable is not identical with the good.

• E.g. a hamburger may be agreeable to inner sense yet reason may fervently find it unpleasant due to its lack of conformity to the concept of good food.

Both the agreeable and the good share an interest in the existence of a determinate object. Thus, both are conditioned by desire.

A judgment of taste is indifferent to the existence of a determinate object. Thus, it is not conditioned by an interest or a desire.

Agreeable    -    Beautiful   -   Good
Gratification -    Liking        -   Esteem
Animal               Human          All rational beings

Only a judgment of taste is disinterested and thus unconditioned. This implies that it is also free.

Judgment of taste judges as if beauty was a property of the object, even if in reality the judgment is merely aesthetic. Thus, aesthetic judgments of this sort has universal validity even if no concept grounds it. Here, aesthetic judgment has subjective universality.

The agreeable is only agreeable for someone. "Everyone has his own taste for agreeableness."
Beauty requires impartiality. Here, the agreement with the opinion of others is not the conditions of the validity of aesthetic judgment., since the judgment merely refers to the formal aspects of the object.

• The taste for agreeableness is shared by others by virtue of its generality. The ground for this agreement is thus sociability.
• The beautiful demands universal assent, and the ground for this demand is not sociability but the presentation of the object.

Aesthetic judgments can be divided into two kinds.

1. Taste of sense (generally valid)
2. Taste of reflection (universally valid)

Disagreement concerning tastes of reflection arise not as to whether or not such judgments are universal, but rather as to how these judgments ought to proceed when reflecting on an object. Here, the disagreement is not about the properties of the object but rather about the feelings in the subjects. Taste of reflection thus has merely subjective universality without any objective validity.

• The proper domain of aesthetic judgments is the subjective feelings of the judging persons, not the judged objects.
• Since universal aesthetic judgments are not conditioned by concepts or interests, they are singular judgments.
• However, once this judgment is made repeatedly, we can compare these instances and arrive at a general concept of the beautiful object.
• E.g. by seeing beautiful roses on multiple occasions, we can construct the concept of a beautiful rose.
• Such a concept has merely general validity for those who share the experience of judging roses.
• Since aesthetic judgments are not conditioned by concepts, we cannot appeal to concepts in order to convince others that the thing is beautiful; the best we can hope for is that the presentation of the thing to another person arouses the same feeling of pleasure which leads to the same aesthetic judgment.
• A universal aesthetic judgment is thus merely possible but not necessary.

The "universal voice" which declares beauty is an idea (more to come on this later on.)

Key Question: In a judgment of taste, does the feeling of pleasure precede the judgment, or is it the other way round?

• If pleasure comes first, then the object is agreeable, i.e. liked not by reflection but by sensation. Thus, such a judgment has only general validity, which means that it cannot be a judgment of taste.
• In a judgment of taste, the act of judging must precede the feeling of pleasure.
• Thus, what is communicated in such a judgment is neither the feeling of pleasure nor the objective aspects, but rather the subjective aspects which is accompanied in the presentation of the object, i.e. our cognitive powers and their (i.e. the imagination and the understanding's) relation.
• In such a relation, no determinate concept restricts the play of the imagination.
• Here, the free play of the imagination in relation to the understanding is what is communicated in a judgment of taste.

The harmony of the imagination and the understanding yields a formal condition for cognition. This formal aspect is reflected in the object being judged. Such a form is thus the ground for the universal communicability of the judgment of taste.

The pleasure arising out of the act of communicating this form can be explained in terms of "sociability" through empirical psychology.

In making an aesthetic judgment, the imagination and the understanding are 'tuned in' for cognition, although such a tuning is an effect (not a cause) of the presentation of an object, and hence is not an objective but rather a merely subjective aspect in the presentation.

• Thus, the universal validity of a judgment of taste only extends to the subjective formal conditions of cognition.

Pleasure = that which maintains the subjective conditions of cognition, i.e. purposiveness.
Displeasure = that which averts certain other subjective conditions.

An object is purposive without a purpose only if the actuality of the object can be explained in terms of a hypothetically posited will = purpose. Since neither a subjective nor an object purpose can enter into a judgment of taste, the ground of such a judgment is a purposiveness without a purpose.

Since the universality of a judgment of taste requires that the subject is indifferent to the actualization of the object under consideration, the object of such a judgment must not be an actual cognition but rather the merely formal conditions. i.e. the subjective aspects, of an object's actuality.

The feeling of pleasure in a judgment of taste just is the consciousness that the imagination and the understanding are in a state of harmonious free play. This feeling allows us to maintain the specific harmony of our cognitive powers.

Charms (objective) and emotions (subjective) are both empirical and thus cannot serve as the ground for a judgment of taste. A pure judgment of taste is a judgment based merely on the formal purposiveness of the presentation of an object.

• Empirical aesthetic judgment = judgment concerning whether an object is agreeable or disagreeable.
• Pure aesthetic judgment = concerning beauty.
• E.g. the sensation of colour (matter) contains the frequency of the waves of light (form); a pure aesthetic judgment is grounded not in the sensation of colour per se, but rather in the purposiveness of the formal aspects of light which give rise to the cognition of colour.

Forms of beauty:

1. Shape (spatial) - Design and Composition
2. Play (temporal) - Play of shapes (dance) or play proper (music)

Apparently in Kant's time the popular view was that beauty is an imperfect version of the good. Kant sets out to refute this position.

Objective purposiveness = the aspect of an actual object which is realized on the basis of a purpose.

• The good is a concept which implies perfection.
• Perfection is a purpose.
• Since a judgment of taste cannot be grounded by a purposiveness with a purpose, the good is distinct from the beautiful.
• Moreover, perfection also cannot serve as a measure for beauty.

E.g. consider the following conversation:
"This line is perfect! (aesthetic judgment)"
"Perfect for what? (asking for the purpose)"
"I don't know, it's just perfect! (referring to a purposiveness without purpose)"
"Hey, in that case, you can't call the line perfect; you ought to say that it is beautiful! (Kant)"

Thus, the claim that the beautiful is a lesser version of the good is unfounded, since the two belong to different kinds of judgment.

Free beauty = an object is beautiful without  a concept which defines the perfection of the object.
Accessory beauty = a beauty conditioned by a determinate concept of perfection, i.e. what the object is meant to be.

• A judgment judging free beauty is a pure aesthetic judgment.
• Accessory beauty, since it is conditioned by the concept of perfection and thus by a determinate purpose, is thus a result of an empirical aesthetic judgment.
• E.g. there are many lines and structures that could be added to a building to make it beautiful, yet the concept of a church, for example, would restrict the play of our cognitive powers due to the implied concept of perfection, and thus will also hinder the realization of such free beauty in the addition of lines, structures, etc.

In accessory beauty, the beautiful plays merely a subordinate role to the good.

There can be no concept, and hence no objective rule, for determining which object is beautiful and which not.

The empirical criterion for distinguishing beauty is popularity. While this criterion cannot ground the universal validity as in free beauty, it nonetheless allows us to approximate the ideal of the beautiful.

The true criterion for judging the beautiful is not learned through imitation and habit (since such a route will only ground empirical and hence merely general validity) but rather by a spontaneous production of an idea, i.e. an "archetype of taste."

Idea = a product of reason.
Ideal = the presentation of an individual object which is adequate to the demands of an idea.

• The ideal of beauty is a harmonious state of our cognitive powers which lives up to the idea of beauty.

How do we attain to the ideal of beauty?

• An ideal can only be attained by a being who is able to invent a purpose freely yet can fix itself to purposiveness.
• The only being who satisfied this condition is a human being.

(I will skip Kant's highly unappealing exposition of the relation between morality and the ideal of beauty.)

The relation between the beautiful and liking is necessary, yet it is not an objective necessity. The object thus does not carry objective necessity; rather, here the necessity is merely exemplary, since we are unable to state the universal concept which grounds the universality of the beautiful in the object.

The subjective necessity of a judgment of taste is conditioned by the assumption that others will judge in the same way if they follow the same universal yet subjective rule of judgment (which cannot be stated explicitly in objective form.) Here, this agreement, which grounds the universality and necessity of such a judgment, is common sense.

• "Common sense" here does not refer to an empirical and contingent agreement among "vulgar" people; rather, it refers to the a priori conditions of cognition which is possible for all rational beings.

In making a judgment of taste, the imagination is free, and thus productive + spontaneous.

• E.g. in poetry, no determinate concept is given in the presentation of the "figures of speech."
• In a judgment of taste, the pleasure is derived from the furthering of our cognitive powers due to the quickening of the harmonious activity of the imagination with the understanding.

Tangent: this "quickening" explains why Dadaism and Surrealism are amazingly beautiful compared to standard Realism, precisely because the former goes far beyond any possible concept or a determinate purpose, yet nonetheless stimulates our imagination and understanding.

Anything with stiff regularity is thus counter to taste, since such an object quickly terminates the free play of the imagination.

• Tangent: modern factories and office buildings are all merely functional and thus terminates the above mentioned free play; in fact, essay-prose and the like are also insulting to our taste precisely because it minimizes free play.
• Another tangent: this also explains why sex is beautiful when the people involved lose all sense of purpose; sex becomes boring when the persons start to feel that they are following a certain "script" or purpose.
• E.g. fire is merely charming yet not beautiful, since the imagination merely indulges in fantasies aroused by the vague movements of the flames instead of apprehending their actual form. Nonetheless, since fire sustains the free play of the imagination with its complex movements, it is charming. (I don't get this at all.)