An Introduction to Kant's Aesthetics: Core Concepts and Problems

199 Pages·2005·0.85 MB·English

by  Christian Helmut Wenzel

AN INTRODUCTION TO
KANT’S AESTHETICS
Core Concepts and Problems
Christian Helmut Wenzel
An Introduction to Kant’s Aesthetics

An Introduction to
Kant’s Aesthetics
Core Concepts and Problems
Christian Helmut Wenzel
© 2005 by Christian Helmut Wenzel
BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
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First published 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1 2005
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wenzel, Christian Helmut.
An introduction to Kant’s aesthetics : core concepts and problems / Christian
Helmut Wenzel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-3035-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4051-3035-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-3036-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4051-3036-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804—Aesthetics. 2. Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804. Kritik
der Urteilskraft. 3. Aesthetics. 4. Judgment (Logic) 5. Judgment (Aesthetics)
6. Teleology. 7. Aesthetics, Modern—18th century. I. Title.
B2799.A4W46 2005
111¢.85—dc22 2005009258
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Contents
Foreword by Henry E. Allison viii
Acknowledgments xi
About This Book xii
Note on the Translation xiv
Introduction 1
The Aesthetic Dimension Between Subject and Object 1
The Meaning of “Aesthetic” 4
Categories as a Guide 8
The “Moments” of a Judgment of Taste 13
1 Disinterestedness: First Moment 19
Disinterestedness as a Subjective Criterion 19
Three Kinds of Satisfaction: Agreeable, Beautiful, Good 23
2 Universality: Second Moment 27
The Argument from Self-Reflection: Private, Public, Universal 27
Subjective Universality 31
A Case of Transcendental Logic 35
Singular “but” Universal 39
How to Read Section 9 46
3 Purposiveness: Third Moment 54
Purpose without Will, Purposiveness without Purpose 54
Purposiveness and Form: Charm versus Euler 60

vi
Of “Greatest Importance”: Beauty and Perfection 65
Beauty: Free, Dependent, and Ideal 69
4 Necessity: Fourth Moment 77
Exemplary Necessity 77
Kant’s Interpretation of the sensus communis 81
The Deduction 86
5 Fine Art, Nature, and Genius 94
Fine Art and Why It Must Seem like Nature 94
Genius and Taste 98
Genius and Aesthetic Ideas 101
6 Beyond Beauty 106
The Sublime 106
Beauty as the Symbol of Morality 113
The Analytic, the Dialectic, and the Supersensible 120
7 Two Challenges 128
Can Kant’s Aesthetics Account for the Ugly? 128
Can there be Beauty and Genius in Mathematics? 133
Summary and Overview 141
Before Kant 141
Kant’s Aesthetics 142
After Kant 146
Glossary 149
Bibliography 157
Index 171
Correspondances
La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L’homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l’observent avec des regards familiers.
Comme des longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.
Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d’enfants,
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,
– Et d’autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,
Ayant l’expansion des choses infinies,
Comme l’ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l’encens,
Qui chantent les transports de l’esprit et des sens.
Charles Baudelaire
Correspondences
Nature is a temple whose living pillars
Utter at times confused words;
Man passes there through forests of symbols
That watch him with familiar eyes.
Like long echoes confounding distantly
Into oneness, unfathomable and dark,
Vast as the night, vast as light,
Scents, sounds and colors correspond.
Scents fresh as babies’ skin,
Soft as oboes, as meadows green
– and others, broken, triumphant, rich,
Expansive as infinite things,
Amber, musk, incense and myrrh,
That sing the ecstasies of spirit and of sense.
(Translation by
Joseph Swann and C. H. Wenzel)
Foreword
It has been said that Kant probably never saw a great painting or piece of sculp-
ture; indeed, this is quite likely, inasmuch as he spent his entire life in and around
Königsberg in East Prussia. It is also clear that he had no great appreciation of
music and that the only art form with which he had an extensive familiarity was
literature. Nevertheless, this did not prevent him from producing what is gener-
ally regarded as one of the most important contributions to aesthetics in the
history of modern thought. This is contained in the Critique of the Aesthetic Power
of Judgment, which is the first part of the Critique of the Power of Judgment(or, in
some English versions, the Critique of Judgment) of 1790. Unfortunately, however,
this work is almost as forbidding to the uninitiated as it is rewarding to those able
to penetrate its almost legendary obscurity.
There are a number of reasons for this obscurity, not least of which are the
inherent difficulty of the issues involved and the unfamiliar technical terminol-
ogy in which Kant expresses his views. The main reason, however, which also
largely explains the terminological difficulties is that the Critique of the Power of
Judgment is the capstone of an all-encompassing “critical system,” which Kant
developed in the 1780s. In fact, it is the third of three “Critiques,” the first two
being the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, second edition 1787) and the Critique of
Practical Reason (1788), which is why it is often referred to simply as the “third
Critique.” Accordingly, much of what Kant has to say in this work cannot be
understood without some grasp of the larger project of which it is an integral
part.
In addition to contributing to the difficulty in understanding Kant’s aesthetic
theory, this theory’s tight connection with his overall critical project is also
directly responsible for two of its most distinctive features. First, as the title of
the third Critique suggests, Kant’s aesthetics is oriented more toward questions
of aesthetic judgment, namely, the grounds and warrant for claiming that an
object of nature or art is beautiful (or sublime), than toward questions of the

ix
nature of art. Although Kant did deal with the latter and, in the process, pro-
pounded a very influential theory of artistic creativity and genius, in his mind at
least, this was secondary to the “critique of taste,” which was the original title
that Kant assigned to the work that was eventually to become the third Critique.
In short, Kant’s is more a “reception” than a “creation aesthetic.”
Second, Kant’s overall aesthetic theory is embedded in a set of questions
regarding knowledge, morality, and even metaphysics. And, to complicate
matters even further, it is combined with the Critique of Teleological Power of Judg-
ment, which is the second part of the third Critique. All of this adds immeasur-
ably to the richness and importance of Kant’s account, but at the same time it
reinforces the need for some guide to assist the reader who lacks sufficient knowl-
edge of the intricacies of Kant’s thought.
Although there has been no shortage of interpretive studies of Kant’s aes-
thetics in the recent literature (including one by myself), there is really nothing
of which I am aware that is both addressed to the reader with little or no prior
knowledge of Kant’s thought and thoroughly grounded in the texts. These are
the main virtues of Christian Wenzel’s brief work. His discussion is accessible,
informed, and, given the modest size of the book, remarkably comprehensive.
In fact, Wenzel has something useful to say about virtually every aspect of Kant’s
aesthetic theory. To be sure, in no case does he provide the last word – nor does
he pretend to do so – but he does supply an excellent overview of this theory, as
it is presented in the third Critique. Particularly notable in this regard are the glos-
sary in which the key technical terms are explained and the reference to “further
reading” following each section. Whereas the former will be of benefit to the
reader who is confronting Kant for the first time, the latter will be of value to
those who wish to pursue a particular topic or issue in greater depth.
Finally, it must be noted that, in spite of the modesty of its ambitions,
Wenzel’s book makes a significant contribution to the literature at two points.
One is the topic of ugliness. Like most writers on aesthetics, at least those of his
time, Kant’s focus was on judgments of beauty (both natural and artistic) and he
has very little to say about the ugly. The problem, however, is that it seems that
a theory of aesthetic judgment oughtto account for the possibility of judgments
of ugliness as well as beauty. Wenzel tackles this issue head on, arguing that
Kant’s theory of taste can account for judgments of ugliness, as indeed it must.
The second topic on which Wenzel has something interesting to say concerns
Kant’s theory of genius. Notoriously, Kant claimed that genius is limited to the
domain of art and, therefore, that great mathematicians and scientists – Leibniz
and Newton are the paradigms – cannot truly be called geniuses because their
discoveries were the result of the application of determinate rules, whereas the
creation of a great work of art is not. Arguing as a mathematician (he has a doc-
torate in mathematics as well as in philosophy), Wenzel points out that some-