danielshrugged

I am happy and worn out to report that I have spent the past 6 weeks reading Kant's Critique of Judgment (for a class which I chose), so that I can finally contribute to discussions such as this. I have another couple of weeks of reading left, and then I will have read the whole book from cover to cover. Aside from this his third critique, I have also read portions of the Critique of Pure Reason (in preparation for the Critique of Judgment).

Thoyd Loki is 100% correct. Since I am reading Kant's work in which he discusses aesthetics, take this example. Ayn Rand called Kant the father of modern art; yet I am convinved that Kant would have hated Picasso, Pollock, and everything in between. I would not be all that surprised if he would have had problems even with impressionism. Obviously Ayn Rand did not, when reading Kant, come across some statement of his which approves of non-representational art. Philosophical detection is not so easy. What Ayn Rand DID do, I assume, is to focus on, as the essential, Kant's denial of any objective principle for evaluating beauty. Taken in this light, Kant's claims which might seem to exclude modern art do not matter, culturally.

I apologize if my writing has been negatively influenced by too much reading of Kant.

EDIT: I did not mean to say that Kant's denial of an objective standard of beauty is the ONLY important clue to Kant's role as father of modern art. It's also crucial to examine, for example, his comments on (artistic) geniuses [e.g., artistic genius is innate] and on interest in art as arising only in society.