The Politics of Beauty: A Study of Kant's Critique of Taste

84 Pages·2022·2.565 MB·English

by  Susan Meld Shell

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This Element examines the entirety of Kant’s Critique of Taste e
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(in Part One of the Critique of Judgment) with particular l
emphasis on its political and moral aims. Kant’s critical
treatment of aesthetic judgment is both an extended theoretical
response to influential predecessors and contemporaries,
including Rousseau and Herder, and a practical intervention The Philosophy of
in its own right meant to nudge history forward at a time of
Immanuel Kant
civilizational crisis. Attention to these themes helps resolve a
number of puzzles, both textual and philosophic, including the
normative force and meaning of judgments of taste and the
relation between natural and artful beauty.
T The Politics
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About the Series Series editors
This Cambridge Elements series provides Desmond Hogan
an extensive overview of Kant’s philosophy Princeton
and its impact upon philosophy and University Susan Meld Shell
philosophers. Distinguished Kant Howard Williams
specialists provide an up-to-date summary University of Cardiff
of the results of current research in their Allen Wood sserP
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fields and give their own take on what Indiana tisre
they believe are the most significant University vinU
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ElementsinthePhilosophyofImmanuelKant
editedby
DesmondHogan
PrincetonUniversity
HowardWilliams
UniversityofCardiff
AllenWood
IndianaUniversity
THE POLITICS OF BEAUTY
’
A Study Of Kants Critique Of Taste
Susan Meld Shell
sse
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Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9781009011808
DOI:10.1017/9781009026840
©SusanMeldShell2022
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andtotheprovisionsofrelevantcollectivelicensingagreements,
noreproductionofanypartmaytakeplacewithoutthewritten
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Firstpublished2022
AcataloguerecordforthispublicationisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary.
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ISSN2397-9461(online)
ISSN2514-3824(print)
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The Politics Of Beauty
AStudyOfKant’sCritiqueOfTaste
ElementsinthePhilosophyofImmanuelKant
DOI:10.1017/9781009026840
Firstpublishedonline:August2022
SusanMeldShell
BostonCollege
Authorforcorrespondence:SusanMeldShell,[email protected]
Abstract:ThisElementexaminestheentiretyofKant’sCritiqueofTaste
(inPartOneoftheCritiqueofJudgment)withparticularemphasisonits
politicalandmoralaims.Kant’scriticaltreatmentofaestheticjudgment
isbothanextendedtheoreticalresponsetoinfluentialpredecessors
andcontemporaries,includingRousseauandHerder,andapractical
interventioninitsownrightmeanttonudgehistoryforwardatatimeof
civilizationalcrisis.Attentiontothesethemeshelpsresolveanumberof
puzzles,bothtextualandphilosophic,includingthenormativeforce
andmeaningofjudgmentsoftasteandtherelationbetweennatural
andartfulbeauty.
Keywords:Kant,beauty,aesthetics,politics,culture
©SusanMeldShell2022
ISBNs:9781009011808(PB),9781009026840(OC)
sserP ISSNs:2397-9461(online),2514-3824(print)
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Contents
1 Introduction:ReflectionandRevolution 1
2 TheElementsofBeauty 6
3 ArtisticBeauty 25
4 RhetoricandtheAntinomyofTaste 37
5 ThePoliticsofBeauty 50
6 SummaryandConclusion 68
References 70
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ThePoliticsOfBeauty 1
1Introduction:ReflectionandRevolution
Althoughtherelationbetweenpoliticsandaestheticsisasubjectofperennial
interest, the political implications of Kant’s Critique of Taste (in Part One of
the Critique of Judgment) have not previously been the focus of a sustained
study. That omission is all the more striking given Kant’s attention to the
issue, from the 1760s onward, in response to Rousseau’s famous charge that
progress in the arts and sciences was inimical to moral health and collective
human happiness. Kant’s Critique of Taste, as I here argue, represents his
definitiveresponsetoRousseau’schallenge.Idonotmeantoclaimthatthisis
all that Kant’s Critique aims to accomplish; nor do I claim to offer
a comprehensive account of his theory of taste. Still, a concentration on this
neglected theme has two distinct advantages: first, it enables one to better
locateKant’saestheticworkwithinthelargerpoliticalprogramhelaidoutin
the years following the French Revolution, from the Critique of Judgment
(1790) to the later Metaphysics of Morals (1798). Second, it brings new
clarity to two much-contested interpretive issues: namely, the relation
betweenaestheticjudgmentsofnaturalandartisticbeautyandthenormative
force and significance of aesthetic judgment as such.
Despitethe profusionofinsightful scholarly workonKant’saesthetics and
politics, little has been written on their interrelation. The dramatic exception
that proves the rule is Hannah Arendt, whose Lectures on Kant’s Political
Philosophy replaces his most overtly “political” philosophic work, namely,
the Doctrine of Right (which she dismisses as a product of senility), with his
critiqueofaestheticjudgment,whichshetendstoreadasthepoliticalworkthat
sserP Kantwouldorshouldhavewritten(Arendt,1992).Tobesure,thereareobvious
ytisre practicalimplicationsofKant’saesthetictheorytowhichhehimselfexplicitly
vin points,andthathavebeendulynotedintheliterature.Theseinclude,butarenot
U
eg limited to, the “discipline” of weaning us from our dependence on crudely
d
irbm sensualpleasureandmakingournaturaldrivetosociabilitymoredecorousand
a
C y “civilized,” with implications for political life that are seemingly obvious. At
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en thesametime,thepreciserelationbetweenKant’saestheticsandhispractical
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o d philosophymoregenerallyisoneoftheoutstandingunsettledscholarlyissues
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silb currentlybeingdebated,withsomeclaimingthatthenormativebasisofKantian
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P 0 aestheticsisultimatelymoralandotherstreatingsuchconcernsasincidentalto
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86 Kant’scentralargument.
2
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90 Inconflating,indefianceofKant’sowntext,the“commonsense”ofaesthetic
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87 judgmentwithonedirectlypertinenttopolitics,Arendt(1992:64–72)mayhave
9
/710 beenrespondingtoWalterBenjamin’sfamousjuxtapositionoffascism,under-
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2 ThePhilosophyofImmanuelKant
politicizationofaesthetics.Ashe writesat theend of “Art in the AgeofIts
TechnicalReproducibility”:“‘Fiatars–pereatmundus’,saysFascism,and,
asMarinettiadmits,expectswartosupplytheartisticgratificationofasense
perceptionthathasbeenchangedbytechnology....Thisisthesituationof
politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by
politicizing art” (Benjamin, 1968:242). Arendt had good reason to seek
a more moderate, republican alternative to these two horns, and evidently
thought she had found it in the unwritten Kantian text she attempted to
compose. But there are alternative political lessons to be drawn from
Kant’sCritiqueofTastethatarebothtruertoKant’smeaningandultimately
more compelling, as I will argue, than those drawn either by Arendt or by
somelater,moretextuallyfaithfulscholars.1
The sections that make up this study aim to chart the political conse-
quences Kant hoped would flow from a critical doctrine of taste. (I mainly
exclude Kant’s treatment of the sublime, on whose political implications
much has indeed been written, which is only indirectly the object of judg-
ments of “taste” – e.g., in “beautiful” representations of the sublime.)
Section2(“TheElementsofBeauty”[CJ#1–40])takesuptheearliestand
mostcommonlystudiedsectionsoftheCritiqueofTaste,includingboththe
“deduction” of taste at #38 and Kant’s discussion of our “empirical” and
“moral” interests in the beautiful. Sections 3 and 4 (“Artistic Beauty”
[CJ #41–52] and “Rhetoric and the Antinomy of Taste” [CJ #53–57])
consider Kant’s treatment of fine art in greater detail. Rather than either
downplay these sections (like Guyer in his earlier work) or make it the
sse central focus of Kant’s doctrine of taste (like Crawford), I argue that
rP y judgments of artistic beauty make a distinctive normative claim, requiring
tisre itsownindependent“deduction,”andthatsuchtaste(unlikeatasteforfree
v
inU beautiesofnature)developsonlyunderspecificsocialconditions.Assuch,
e
g
dirb judgments of artistic beauty have a normative character that is distinctly
ma their own (and hence not exhausted by Kant’s earlier deduction of pure
C
yb e judgmentsofnaturalbeauty).Section5(“ThePoliticsofBeauty”[CJ#58–
n
iln 60]) discusses the final sections of the Critique of Taste, including both
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deh beautyas“symbol”andthepeculiarrelation,asitseemstoKantduringthe
silbu earlymonthsoftheFrenchRevolution,betweentasteandthesolutiontothe
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4 problemofestablishingastate.
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0 Insum:thisismainlyastudyofPartOneoftheCritiqueofJudgment(minus
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01 Kant’s treatment of the sublime). Unlike other such studies, mine especially
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/7 focusesonwhatKantaimedtoaccomplishpracticallyandpoliticallythrough
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ThePoliticsOfBeauty 3
suchacritique(insofarasthiscanbeestablishedonthebasisofthetextitself).
Moreover, unlike many who have touched on the latter topic,2 I try to take
seriouslythemoralandpoliticalharms,aswellasbenefits,thatflowfromthe
advanceofcivilizationandculture.Sounderstood,Kant’sCritiqueofTaste,as
Iwillargue,isitselfapractical/politicalinterventionmeanttoredirecttastein
amorepositivecivilandmoraldirection.Idonotclaimthistobetheprimary
aimoftheCritiqueofTaste;noriswhatfollowsintendedasacomprehensive
studyofKant’saccountofbeauty.Still,asIhopetoshow,viewingtheCritique
of Taste through such a lens not only reveals a degree of comprehensive
philosophic rigor and coherence not otherwise easily appreciated; it also
suggests that Kant’s Critique of Taste may harbor untapped resources for
understandingandimprovingourowncivicandaestheticculture.3
This study is also distinguished from many others4 in claiming that the
normativestandardoftastemaybeeitherconstitutiveorregulative,depending
onwhethernaturalorartisticbeautyismainlyatissue.Theconstitutivestandard
applies to “pure judgments of taste” that presuppose a capacity shared by all
humanbeingscapableofmakingobjectiveepistemicjudgments.Theregulative
standard, by way of contrast, mainly applies, as I will argue, to a taste for
exemplaryworksofart.Unlikethecapacityforandexerciseofpurejudgments
of natural beauty, the latter sort of taste must be cultivated, a process that is
partly dependent on the progress of civilization and that gives rise to an
“antinomy” that must be critically resolved if taste is to realize, rather than
frustrate,itsmorallypreparatorymission.Moreover,unlikepurejudgmentsof
tasteforfreebeauties(ofnature),whichonlyconcernthefreeplayofimagin-
sse ationandunderstanding,tasteintheregulativesensecruciallyinvolvesreason
rP y aswell.5Italsopresupposesa“creative”expansionoftheimagination(beyond
tisre thatinvolvedinpurejudgmentsoftaste)thatgivesrisetobothnewopportun-
v
in
U ities for spiritual enlivening (e.g., through the art of poetry) and new dangers
e
g
dirb (e.g.,throughthemisuseofrhetorictobeguileratherthanelevate).
m
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yb 2 Forexample,Sweet(2013),Murray(2015);butcompareKalar(2017)andOtabi(2018).
en 3 Considerinthis regardboth ClementGreenberg’schampioningofabstract expressionismon
ilno putatively(andfalsely)“Kantian”grounds,andArthurDanto’scounter-championingof“con-
deh ceptualism”ongroundsthatweremoreKantianthanhehimselfevidentlyrecognized.Onthese
silb andothermisappropriationsofKant’saestheticswithinthecontemporaryartworld,seeCazeaux
u
P (2021),Guyer(2021),andCostello(2007).
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48 4 “Regulative” readings include, for example, Crawford (1974), Longuenesse (2006), and
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20 Matherne(2019).Forsomealternativecombined readingsseeSaville(1987),Kemal(1992),
9
00 and Dobe (2010). According to Guyer (1979:327) and Stoner (2019) Kant leaves the matter
1
87 unsettled.
9/7 5 Thesignificanceofthisaddition(and henceanessential difference between thetwo sortsof
1
01 aestheticjudgment)tendstobeoverlooked;anexceptionisCrowther(2010:142)whoneglects,
.01 however,thecontinuingimportanceoftherelationbetweenimaginationandunderstanding(as
/gro wellasreason)injudgmentsoffineart.
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4 ThePhilosophyofImmanuelKant
The sections that follow take their initial bearings from the oft noted but
insufficiently pondered coincidence of the Storming of the Bastille in
July1789–alongwithitsimmediatepoliticalcontextandaftermath–andthe
months in which Kant completed the Critique of Judgment, installments of
which he sent off to the printer between January and March 1790. As John
Zammito (1992) has convincingly argued, building on the earlier work of
GiorgioTonelli(1966),muchofthelattersectionsofPartOne,aswellasthe
bulk of Part Two, were written after May 1789 and some, including the final
version of the “Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment” and a greatly expanded
concluding section of Part Two, were not completed until early 1790. By
May 1789, much had already happened in France, including the publication
of Abbé Sieyès’ influential pamphlet What Is the Third Estate? in January of
that year, followedbythe king’s call forelections ofdelegates tothe Estates-
General(whichhadnotmetforoveracentury)andtheParisriotsinApril;May
and June witnessed the meeting of the Estates-General followed by its trans-
formation,undertheself-declaredauthorityoftheThirdEstate,intoaNational
AssemblywhichLouisXVIofficiallyrecognizedinlateJune.Formaladoption
by the Assembly of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
would follow in August. By December 1789, the Assembly had appropriated
thepropertyoftheChurchforthenation’suse,introducedtheassignat(aform
ofcurrencybasedonthevalueofconfiscatedChurchproperty),andopenedup
publicofficetoProtestants.
Kant’s avid interest in revolutionary developments in France is common
knowledge.Accordingtoonecontemporaryreport,hewassocaughtupthathe
sse “wouldhavewalkedformilestogetthemail”(Kuehn,2001:343);andhewould
rP y lateradmit,inanunpublisheddraft,toa“feverish”enthusiasmforthelatestnews
tisre (Refl-E19:604).ThatKanthadeventsinFrancefirmlyinmindashecompleted
v
in
U PartTwooftheCritiqueofJudgmentisstronglysuggestedbyhisreference,in
e
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dirb a striking footnote, to the recent transformation of a great people into a state
ma “organized”alongrepublicanlines,andcopyingalmostverbatimthewordsofthe
C
y
b e Abbé, who writes in What Is the Third Estate? of the constitutional laws that
n
iln can emanate from the will of a nation as of two kinds, some “determin[ing]
o
deh the organization and the functions of the legislative body; the others ... the
silbu organization and functions of the various executive bodies” (Sieyès, 2002:53).
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4 Itseemslikely,then,asZammito(1992:334)argues,thattheFrenchRevolution
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20 contributedtoageneralreorientationinKant’shistorical,political,andreligious
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1 thinkingtowhichthethirdCritiquebearssignalwitness.
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/7 In Part One of the Critique of Judgment, the evidence is admittedly less
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1.0 conclusive and more subtle, as we shall see. But, in any case, the political
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