Ideas from 'Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic' by Immanuel Kant [1790], by Theme Structure

[found in 'Critiques of Aesthetic and Teleological Judgement' by Kant,Immanuel (ed/tr Meredith,James Creed) [OUP 1952,0-19-824589-0]].

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21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 1. Aesthetics
Kant gave form and status to aesthetics, and Hegel gave it content
                        Full Idea: Kant gave form and status to aesthetics, and Hegel endowed it with content.
                        From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Roger Scruton - Recent Aesthetics in England and America p.3
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 2. Aesthetic Attitude
The aesthetic attitude is a matter of disinterestedness
                        Full Idea: The aesthetic attitude is defined by Kant in terms of disinterestedness.
                        From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Richard Wollheim - Art and Its Objects 54
                        A reaction: This is presumably, mainly, to explain our enjoyment of the miseries of tragedy. We just give ourselves up to a merry jig by Haydn.
Only rational beings can experience beauty
                        Full Idea: Kant is surely right that the experience of beauty, like the judgements in which it issues, is the prerogative of rational beings.
                        From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Roger Scruton - Beauty: a very short introduction 1
                        A reaction: I'm not sure how Scruton can say that Kant is 'surely right'. It is an interesting speculation. Are we to dogmatically affirm that bees get no aesthetic thrill when they spot a promising flower? Something in their little brains attracts them.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 3. Taste
With respect to the senses, taste is an entirely personal matter
                        Full Idea: With regard to the agreeable, the principle Everyone has his own taste (of the senses) is valid.
                        From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], CUP 7 5:212), quoted by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 1
                        A reaction: This is a preliminary concession, and he goes on to defend more objective views of taste.
When we judge beauty, it isn't just personal; we judge on behalf of everybody
                        Full Idea: It is ridiculous if someone justifies his tast by saying 'this object is beautiful for me'. . .If he pronounces that something is beautiful, then he expects the very same satisfaction of others: he judges not merely for himself, but for everyone.
                        From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], CUP 7 5:213), quoted by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 1
                        A reaction: For Kant this would also be the hallmark of rationality - that we expect, or hope for, a consensus when we express a rational judgement. But this expectation is far less in cases of beauty. We do not expect total agreement from very tasteful people.
Saying everyone has their own taste destroys the very idea of taste
                        Full Idea: To say thast 'Everyone has his special taste' would be to dismiss the very possibility of aesthetic taste, and to deny that there could be aesthetic judgement 'that could make a rightful claim to the assent of everyone'.
                        From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], CUP 7 5:213), quoted by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 2.2
                        A reaction: I am a great believer in the objectivity of taste (within sensible reason). But the great evidence against it is the shifting standards of taste over the centuries. Nineteenth century collectors wasted fortunes on inferior works, it seems to us.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 4. Beauty
The beautiful is not conceptualised as moral, but it symbolises or resembles goodness
                        Full Idea: Kant insists that the beautiful must not be tainted with the good (that is, not conceptualised in any way which would bring it into the sphere of moral judgement) yet he says that the beautiful symbolises the good, it is an analogy of the good.
                        From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Iris Murdoch - The Sublime and the Good p.209
                        A reaction: Kant evidently wanted a very pure view of the aesthetic experience, drained of any overlapping feelings or beliefs. I'm not sure I understand how the beautiful can symbolise or be analogous to the good, while being devoid of it.
Kant saw beauty as a sort of disinterested pleasure, which has become separate from the good
                        Full Idea: Kant, in his third critique, defined beauty in terms of a certain kind of disinterested pleasure;….this is the basis for a declaration of independence of the beautiful relative to the good.
                        From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §23.1
                        A reaction: This is a rebellion against the Greeks, especially Plato, and prepares the ground for the idea of 'art for art's sake'. Personally, I'm with Plato.
Beauty is only judged in pure contemplation, and not with something else at stake
                        Full Idea: If the question is whether something is beautiful, one does not want to know whether there is something that is or that could be at stake, for us or for someone else, in the existence of the thing, but rather how we judge it in mere contemplation.
                        From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], CUP 2 5:204), quoted by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 2.3
                        A reaction: This evidently denies that function has anything to do with beauty, and seems to be a prelude to 'art for art's sake'. But a running cheetah cannot be separated from the sheer efficiencey and focus of the performance.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 6. The Sublime
The mathematical sublime is immeasurable greatness; the dynamical sublime is overpowering
                        Full Idea: Kant distinguished the 'mathematical' and 'dynamical' sublime. The former involves immeasurable greatness (or smallness) such that we cannot even present them to ourselves. The latter is of something large and overpowering, which we can morally resist.
                        From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 13
                        A reaction: Presumably Cantor revealed the full extent of the mathematical sublime ('heaven', according to Hilbert). We await the comet that destroys the Earth to fully experience the other one.
The sublime is a moral experience
                        Full Idea: The sublime is understood by Kant as a moral experience.
                        From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], 28-9) by Sebastian Gardner - Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason 09 'Judgment'
                        A reaction: Gardner give the source in Kant. I can't accept that the initial experience of the sublime is moral in character. It could easily acquire a moral character after contemplation by someone who had such inclinations.
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 5. Objectivism in Art
Aesthetic values are not objectively valid, but we must treat them as if they are
                        Full Idea: The 'Critique of Judgement' argues, then, not for the objective validity of aesthetic values, but for the fact that we must think of them as objectively valid.
                        From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §11.7
                        A reaction: The trouble with these transcendental arguments of Kant is that they render you powerless to discuss the question of whether values are actually objective. We are all trapped in presuppositions, instead of testing suppositions.
The judgement of beauty is not cognitive, but relates, via imagination, to pleasurable feelings
                        Full Idea: In order to understand whether or not something is beautiful, we do not relate the representation by means of understanding to the object for cognition, but relate it by means of the imagination ..to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or displeasure.
                        From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], CUP 1 5:203), quoted by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 2.1
                        A reaction: This is to distinguish the particular type of judgement which counts as 'aesthetic' - the point being that it is not cognitive - it is not a matter of knowledge and facts, but a cool judgement made about a warm feeling of pleasure. I think.