Kant and Aesthetics

[Grames]

Objective observations:

I do not have the volume Ayn Rand's Marginalia but according to the AynRandBookstore she marked up a biography of Kant (Immanual Kant: His Life and Doctrine, Friedrich Paulsen) and from an inference based on her critique of his writing style (link) she read The Critique of Pure Reason. That she would criticize The Critique of Judgment without reading it is unlikely but possible (she did critique John Rawls without reading him).

First of all, I wrote that it was an Objectivist-style definition. In other words, its style is condensed to essentials. Secondly, even though I wasn't referring to the content of the definition as being Objectivist, it nevertheless is Objectivist, contrary to your opinion.

"The Sublime is the aesthetic experience of feeling the pleasure of exhilaration or exaltation through something which stimulates a sense of fear through its horror and/or immensity of magnitude."

This definition is compatible with genus-differentia format if that is what is being referred to as an Objectivist-style definition. Rand does specifically discuss the idea of the sublime in The Fountainhead but it comes within the dialogue of Wynand so this is not exactly Rand's voice.

"I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes, the shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window—no, I don't feel how small I am—but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body."

"Gail, I don't know whether I'm listening to you or to myself." <tf_447>

"Did you hear yourself just now?"

She smiled. "Actually not. But I won't take it back, Gail."

"Thank you—Dominique." His voice was soft and amused. "But we weren't talking about you or me. We were talking about other people." He leaned with both forearms on the rail, he spoke watching the sparks in the water. "It's interesting to speculate on the reasons that make men so anxious to debase themselves. As in that idea of feeling small before nature. It's not a bromide, it's practically an institution. Have you noticed how self-righteous a man sounds when he tells you about it? Look, he seems to say, I'm so glad to be a pygmy, that's how virtuous I am. Have you heard with what delight people quote some great celebrity who's proclaimed that he's not so great when he looks at Niagara Falls? It's as if they were smacking their lips in sheer glee that their best is dust before the brute force of an earthquake. As if they were sprawling on all fours, rubbing their foreheads in the mud to the majesty of a hurricane. But that's not the spirit that leashed fire, steam, electricity, that crossed oceans in sailing sloops, that built airplanes and dams... and skyscrapers. What is it they fear? What is it they hate so much, those who love to crawl? And why?"

The way she moves from beauty and genius to the sublime does not seem congruent with Kantian sublimity as her understanding of what it means to be sublime. Jonathon might say this is beside the point as he seems primarily to be identifying Kantian sublimity in the reader's aesthetic experience.

Edited February 23, 2012 by Grames

[Grames]

The book Immanual Kant: His Life and Doctrine, by Friedrich Paulsen is available for viewing at http://www.bookprep.com/read/mdp.39015027804353 for no charge. The format is scanned pages arranged like a book. It lacks a zoom feature which makes it hard to read and can't be copy-pasted.

[Jonathan13]

I've been trying to follow along with the discussion, and Jonathan (or whomever) can correct me if I'm wrong, but...

I believe that this "Kantian sublimity" is meant to be an effect produced in the reader of a given work (in this case, let's say Atlas Shrugged)... not something which, in itself, motivates the characters.

The Sublime is what the reader feels, but may also be what the characters feel. A work of art which is said to contain the Sublime is one which stimulates that sense in the reader, just as a work of art which is said to contain Beauty is one which is beautiful to the reader (or viewer or listener), and characters may or may not experience the same Beauty that the reader has experienced, but it's not required that the characters experience Sublimity or Beauty for the artwork to qualify as Sublime or Beautiful. Their experiencing it is an added bonus. It's an enhancement of the effect.

Going back to the definition that Jonathan proffered:

"The Sublime is the aesthetic experience of feeling the pleasure of exhilaration or exaltation through something which stimulates a sense of fear through its horror and/or immensity of magnitude."

I'd take it then that, say Galt or Roark (to take two of Rand's most readily identifiable heroes) are meant to have experienced this "sense of fear" through, at least, a contemplation on the "horror and/or immensity of magnitude" of the obstacles against which they struggled.

Let me try to clarify by pointing out that there is a difference between my use of the term "sense of fear" and the term "fear." The concept of Sublimity, even going back prior to Kant, is not one in which the person experiencing the Sublimity actually experiences fear. Rather, he experiences only a sense of fear. In other words, he doesn't feel that he is in immediate danger, but senses that the phenomena being observed are powerful and capable of immense destruction. So, when people stand, say, at the precipice of a great chasm, or view a massive deluge from a position of safety, their experience of the Sublime would be through a "sense of fear" as opposed to being through actual "fear": they would appreciate the massiveness and/or destructive power on an emotional level, and have a sense -- a feeling -- of the threat and danger that it could present to them if they were not on safe ground at the moment.

But, for instance, when Roark was asked by Toohey what Roark thought of him, Roark answered that he didn't think of Toohey. And I believe him.

I don't believe him. It's clear that Roark is aware of the destructive influences around him and is affected by them. He knows, for example, that "no committee, public or private" will hire him, and he takes action to subvert their right to not hire him. He knows, and feels, that they present a danger to him, and are in fact powerful enough to be preventing him from doing what he wants to do. His actions betray the fact that he does think of the destructive power that others have over him and his career -- he doesn't ignore them, but resorts to the dishonesty and fraud of passing off his work as someone else's, and he does so in order to work on a project to which he states his strong moral objections. So, someone who acts against his own stated ethics so as to subvert the destructive forces that he faces cannot honestly be said to "not think" of those forces.

It is a great line, though, and a great tactic, to tell a destroyer that his efforts are having no effect, even though it's a lie.

So, yeah... I'd buy an argument that a reader of Rand's fiction might experience the sublime as we're discussing it; after all, the reader certainly is forced to consider the scale of the evils against which the heroes struggle (even if we ultimately decide that this evil is actually toothless). But I'm not convinced that the characters spend any time worrying about the power of their opposition, or thereby experience the requisite fear/terror.

I think the characters are very concerned about the destructive power that they're facing. Galt, for example, speaks of people using "terror in place of proof," of using "fear as your weapon" and of "the horrors they practice." He says that "horrors are their ends," and that "their bloodiest horrors are unleashed to punish the crime of thinking." He speaks of "the terror of unreason," and of his enemies being "expert at contriving means of terror," and of "giving you ample cause to feel the fear." (He says these things from a position of safety -- in other words he is describing a "sense of fear" which has inspired him to rise above it).

J

[Jonathan13]

The way she moves from beauty and genius to the sublime does not seem congruent with Kantian sublimity as her understanding of what it means to be sublime. Jonathon might say this is beside the point as he seems primarily to be identifying Kantian sublimity in the reader's aesthetic experience.

I can't tell for sure, from the quotes that you posted from The Fountainhead, if Rand was referring to the philosophical concept of Sublimity, or if she was using something closer to a layman's version of the term. If she believed that the Sublime was about feeling how small one is compared to the magnitude and/or power of a given phenomenon -- that one's "best is dust before the brute force of an earthquake" -- then she wasn't grasping Kant's notion of Sublimity, or any other thinker's. The Sublime is not about feeling tiny and insignificant, but of feeling strong and bold. It's the feeling which Rand describes (through Wynand) as "the spirit that leashed fire, steam, electricity, that crossed oceans in sailing sloops, that built airplanes and dams... and skyscrapers."

Btw, thanks for posting the quotes. I hadn't remembered the "smallness before nature" paragraph.

J

Edited February 24, 2012 by Jonathan13

[Plasmatic]

Rearden in Atlas Shrugged

"He was seeing the enormity of the smallness of the enemy who was destroying the world. He felt as if, after a journey of years through a landscape of devastation, past the ruins of great factories, the wrecks of powerful engines, the bodies of invincible men, he had come upon the despoiler, expecting to find a giant—and had found a rat eager to scurry for cover at the first sound of a human step. If this is what has beaten us, he thought, the guilt is ours."

[Grames]

From Wikipedia on catharsis:

Catharsis is a term in

dramatic art

that describes the "emotional cleansing" sometimes depicted in a play as occurring for one or more of its characters, as well as the same phenomenon as (an intended) part of the audience’s experience. It describes an extreme change in emotion, occurring as the result of experiencing strong feelings (such as sorrow, fear, pity, or even laughter). It has been described as a "purification" or a "purging" of such emotions.

[1]

More recently, such terms as

restoration, renewal,

and

revitalization

have been used when referencing the effect on members of the audience.

[

citation needed

]

The

Greek

philosopher

Aristotle

was the first to use the term

catharsis

with reference to the

emotions

– in his work

Poetics

. In that context, it refers to a sensation or literary effect that, ideally, would either be experienced by the characters in a play, or be wrought upon the audience at the conclusion of a

tragedy

; namely, the release of pent-up emotion or energy.

In his works prior to

Poetics,

Aristotle had used the term

catharsis

purely in its medical sense (usually referring to the evacuation of the

katamenia

—the

menstrual

fluid or other reproductive material).

[2]

Here, however, he employs it as a medical

metaphor

.

F. L. Lucas

maintains, therefore, that

purification

and

cleansing

are not proper translations for

catharsis

; that it should rather be rendered as

purgation

. "It is the human soul that is purged of its excessive passions."

[3]

The very similar phenomenon of Kantian sublimity is either subsumed under the concept of catharsis or is on par with it and both subsumed under some more abstract concept encompassing all variations of aesthetically stimulating a tension and then a release of that tension.

Edited February 24, 2012 by Grames

[Jonathan13]

Rearden in Atlas Shrugged

"He was seeing the enormity of the smallness of the enemy who was destroying the world. He felt as if, after a journey of years through a landscape of devastation, past the ruins of great factories, the wrecks of powerful engines, the bodies of invincible men, he had come upon the despoiler, expecting to find a giant—and had found a rat eager to scurry for cover at the first sound of a human step. If this is what has beaten us, he thought, the guilt is ours."

Thanks, Plasmatic. That's a great example of Rand's Kantian Sublimity.

J

[Jonathan13]

The very similar phenomenon of Kantian sublimity is either subsumed under the concept of catharsis or is on par with it and both subsumed under some more abstract concept encompassing all variations of aesthetically stimulating a tension and then a release of that tension.

Interesting. I'll have to think about how I'd categorize Catharsis and Sublimity in relation to each other.

J

[Jonathan13]

Earlier Thomas demanded that I provide side-by-side quotes from Kant and Rand to support my view that they have similarities in their aesthetics.

I'll start with their views on art's function and the reason that man needs it.

Kant observes "the natural need of all human beings to demand for even the highest concepts and grounds of reason something that the senses can hold on to, some confirmation from experience or the like."

He was saying the same thing that Rand was saying:

"Man’s profound need of art lies in the fact that his cognitive faculty is conceptual, i.e., that he acquires knowledge by means of abstractions, and needs the power to bring his widest metaphysical abstractions into his immediate, perceptual awareness."

"Art brings man’s concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly, as if they were percepts."

"Metaphysics—the science that deals with the fundamental nature of reality—involves man’s widest abstractions. It includes every concrete he has ever perceived, it involves such a vast sum of knowledge and such a long chain of concepts that no man could hold it all in the focus of his immediate conscious awareness. Yet he needs that sum and that awareness to guide him—he needs the power to summon them into full, conscious focus. That power is given to him by art."

"...permitting him to contemplate his abstractions outside his own mind, in the form of existential concretes."

"Art gives him that image; it gives him the experience of seeing the full, immediate, concrete reality of his distant goals."

"...he needs a moment, an hour or some period of time in which he can experience the sense of his completed task, the sense of living in a universe where his values have been successfully achieved."

"...without the assistance of art, ethics remains in the position of theoretical engineering: art is the model-builder..."

"Each art fulfills the function of bringing man’s concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allowing him to grasp them directly, as if they were percepts."

I'll post more similarities as my time and interest permit.

J

[Jonathan13]

For anyone who is interested, George H. Smith (a.k.a "Mr. Atheism") had a lot of interesting things to say about Kant, his similarities to Rand, and Objectivists' misinterpretations of him, on the "Logical Leap" thread over at OL, starting about here, and continuing here, here, here, here, here, here, here, etc.

J

[Grames]

I want to know why or how Richard Rorty approved of David Kelley's PhD dissertation and defense if the standard Randian reading of Kant, which leads off that work in introducing the "the primacy of existence" versus "the primacy of consciousness", is so idiosyncratic and plain wrong? Presuming Rorty is not a Randian, my theory is that the Randian critique of Kant starts off with the standard understanding of Kant employed by subsequent philosophers and commentators even if other understandings are possible.

If Rand is wrong on Kant, it is not just Rand alone among philosophers who has misunderstood Kant.

[Dante]

Well, if Dante and Mr. 13 are not Kantians posing as Objectivists or Kantian trolls, then I will apologize for the implication that you were. However, if you are going to uphold Kant as an advocate of reason, then I think you need to check your premises.

Oh good, I'm a Kantian now. I haven't even posted in this topic yet. >.<

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

It utterly amazes me that 13 and possibly Dante (and a few others I'm sure) consider that Ayn Rand contradicted herself when she required intelligibility in art (since they claim music does not convey anything intelligible) and that architecture is not an art form (though Miss Rand clearly said that it was and why), when miss Rand was quite clear on all of these topics; and yet, they want to defend Kant, who was unintelligible in his philosophy and advocated that we don't observe existence at all with the senses and must use "pure reason" disconnected from the facts in order to have real knowledge. I don't think Ayn Rand contradicted herself, but even if she did, it doesn't invalidate her philosophy; it would just mean that she was mistaken on some topics (which, again, I say is untrue of her anyhow). Kant contradicted all of existence. **Maybe** he had an insight here and there about certain things (after all a lier has to be right some of the time in order to live at all), but it doesn't mean that his esthetics was true (true to reality as a theory). And Ayn Rand was quite clear that it was a respect for reasoning *from the facts* (rationality, which Kant was no fan of) that led to Romanticism. The whole idea of a concritized abstraction (central to art) is a complete anathema to Kant's whole approach to anything.

Kant is the founder of modern art quite directly and even indirectly when others realized what he was getting away with and after he disarmed the rational man with his gibberish; just as Plato (through Plotinus and Augustine) was the founder of the Dark Ages because he advocated that real truth is not to be found in the investigation of things available via the senses and non-contradictory identification of the facts (logic). If the senses do not convey anything at all about existence (which Kant held) then anything goes, so long as it is an offense to the senses (which modern art certainly is).

Edited February 25, 2012 by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Also, I looked up a few articles on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy regarding Kant's aesthetics and the sublime, and the only thing they really mention is his idea that man's mind has dominion over nature -- that the sublime is experience when man feels an overpowering of nature (fear of things like like volcanoes and such), and yet realizes that he is actually safe from them by the use of his mind. The problem is that he does not concretize this idea further, like making references to reason leading to inventions that lead to man's survival (like the practical arts, i.e. ship building, for example). So it is really like everything else in Kant, a huge floating abstraction, not made real by referencing specific accomplishments of man over nature. Yes, the reading can fill in the blanks, but this doesn't mean that this is what Kant meant, since he doesn't make himself clear with actual references to existence and man's place in it.

So, it is quite possible that certain readers where inspired by this idea, and created art that concretized that abstraction (of man's dominion over nature via an application of reason); but since Kant did not give those types of examples (of the practical arts), then it is false to give him credit for that movement.

[Dante]

It utterly amazes me that 13 and possibly Dante (and a few others I'm sure) consider that Ayn Rand contradicted herself when she required intelligibility in art...

When have I ever, ever opined about Rand contradicting herself on art? My only post in this thread was to point out the first time you brought me up for no reason. Didn't we just learn to be careful about attributing views to people that they don't actually hold over in the Checking Premises thread?

[Jonathan13]

It utterly amazes me that 13 and possibly Dante...

I don't know why you keep dragging Dante into this, especially right after he told you that he hasn't even posted an opinion on this topic.

...consider that Ayn Rand contradicted herself when she required intelligibility

in art (since they claim music does not convey anything intelligible)...

Music does not present objectively intelligible subjects and meanings as Rand required in art. She said so herself. She said that it does not have an objective "conceptual vocabulary," that listeners cannot identify, to themselves or to others, which of a work of music's effects are in the music and which are contributed by the listeners' consciousnesess, and she said that tastes in music must be treated as a subjective matter. It therefore does not qualify as art by her criteria.

...and that architecture is not an art form (though Miss Rand clearly said that it was and why)...

Actually, Rand did not say why architecture was an art form. She gave no explanation for why she allowed it to qualify despite saying that it "does not re-create reality," and she offered no explanation of how its non-mimetic, non-representational, abstract forms could be expressive and intelligible by any objective standard.

...yet, they want to defend Kant...

I'm not "defending Kant," but just rejecting your falsehoods. Likewise, if you were to say that Hitler was a female capitalist from India who advocated pacifism, I wouldn't be "defending Hitler" if I argued that your statement was false.

...who was unintelligible in his philosophy and advocated that we don't observe existence at all with the senses and must use 'pure reason' disconnected from the facts in order to have real knowledge.

You claim that Kant was unintelligible in his philosophy, and yet in the same sentence you claim to have identified what his philosophy was?! Do you not understand what the word "unintelligible" means?

Anyway, I think you should read the posts on Kant by George Smith that I linked to above. He explains how Objectivists like you have misunderstood Kant.

I don't think Ayn Rand contradicted herself...

If saying that something which "does not re-create reality" can qualify as a member of a class of things which "re-create reality" is not a contradiction to you, just what in the hell could possibly qualify as a contradiction?!!!

...but even if she did, it doesn't invalidate her philosophy; it would just mean that she was mistaken on some topics...

Finally, we agree on something!! If her aesthetics contains errors, then her aesthetics contains errors. Nothing more.

Kant contradicted all of existence. **Maybe** he had an insight here and there about certain things (after all a lier has to be right some of the time in order to live at all), but it doesn't mean that his esthetics was true (true to reality as a theory). And Ayn Rand was quite clear that it was a respect for reasoning *from the facts* (rationality, which Kant was no fan of) that led to Romanticism. The whole idea of a concritized abstraction (central to art) is a complete anathema to Kant's whole approach to anything.

You don't know what you're talking about.

Kant is the founder of modern art quite directly and even indirectly when others realized what he was getting away with and after he disarmed the rational man with his gibberish; just as Plato (through Plotinus and Augustine) was the founder of the Dark Ages because he advocated that real truth is not to be found in the investigation of things available via the senses and non-contradictory identification of the facts (logic). If the senses do not convey anything at all about existence (which Kant held) then anything goes, so long as it is an offense to the senses (which modern art certainly.

Again, I would suggest that you read the posts by George that I linked to above, and actually learn something about Kant before continuing to give your opinions.

J

Edited February 25, 2012 by Jonathan13

[Jonathan13]

When have I ever, ever opined about Rand contradicting herself on art? My only post in this thread was to point out the first time you brought me up for no reason. Didn't we just learn to be careful about attributing views to people that they don't actually hold over in the Checking Premises thread?

Attributing views to people that they don't actually hold appears to be Thomas' standard, ingrained modus operandi. He does it with Kant, he does it with me, he does it with Hsieh, and now he's doing it with you.

J

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

My apologies to Dante. Yes, I guess it takes a while to learn a lesson just realized.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Attributing views to people that they don't actually hold appears to be Thomas' standard, ingrained modus operandi. He does it with Kant, he does it with me, he does it with Hsieh, and now he's doing it with you.

J

That's a gross overgeneralization. And the fact that I was wrong about Hsieh's views on brainless children and mis-attributed a view to Dante does not imply that I am wrong about Kant -- it's a non-sequiter. And, no, I don't care to read a defense of Kant.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Art, in Objectivism, is about concretizing an abstraction -- of using physical means to convey an abstraction. Music does this via melody, which can be considered an object (one thing in reality) in the sense that a string of notes played the right way does convey a sense of life response in the listener.

"Music gives man’s consciousness the same experience as the other arts: a concretization of his sense of life. But the abstraction being concretized is primarily epistemological, rather than metaphysical; the abstraction is man’s consciousness, i.e., his method of cognitive functioning, which he experiences in the concrete form of hearing a specific piece of music. A man’s acceptance or rejection of that music depends on whether it calls upon or clashes with, confirms or contradicts, his mind’s way of working. The metaphysical aspect of the experience is the sense of a world which he is able to grasp, to which his mind’s working is appropriate."

Architecture does the same thing but via an arrangement of physical attributes of a building. For example, the wide open spaces of the interior of a cathedral and of Grand Central Station conveys spectacular grandness and man's dominion over the physical. There is not necessarily a specific practical functionality to such grand open spaces (a roof over one's head would keep the rain out), but the grandeur of man is concretized by such large rooms. A more personal example is the difference between my parent's entryway versus my sister's entryway. Both houses require a set of stairs to get to the second floor. However, at my parent's house, the stairs are right at the front entrance with a closet just off to the left -- one walks in and the house feels small (maybe cozy to some). At my sister's house, the stairs are on the back side of the living room, giving one much more a sense that the house is big and spacious. Now, as far as practicality is concerned, both stairways perform the function of making it possible to get upstairs, but their arrangement and the rooms convey different abstractions as one walks in.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

I wholeheartedly agree with this analysis of Kant's methodology that Ayn Rand said (see lexicon under Kant):

"Kant originated the technique required to sell irrational notions to the men of a skeptical, cynical age who have formally rejected mysticism without grasping the rudiments of rationality. The technique is as follows: if you want to propagate an outrageously evil idea (based on traditionally accepted doctrines), your conclusion must be brazenly clear, but your proof unintelligible. Your proof must be so tangled a mess that it will paralyze a reader’s critical faculty—a mess of evasions, equivocations, obfuscations, circumlocutions, non sequiturs, endless sentences leading nowhere, irrelevant side issues, clauses, sub-clauses and sub-sub-clauses, a meticulously lengthy proving of the obvious, and big chunks of the arbitrary thrown in as self-evident, erudite references to sciences, to pseudo-sciences, to the never-to-be-sciences, to the untraceable and the unprovable—all of it resting on a zero: the absence of definitions. I offer in evidence the Critique of Pure Reason."

[added on edit] This alone, even without an explicit esthetics, would lead to modern art. And since his esthetics was very empty (no real theory of the nature of art), then he said nothing to counter-act the effects of his methodology.

From Ayn Rand on modern art:

"Decomposition is the postscript to the death of a human body; disintegration is the preface to the death of a human mind. Disintegration is the keynote and goal of modern art—the disintegration of man’s conceptual faculty, and the retrogression of an adult mind to the state of a mewling infant.

To reduce man’s consciousness to the level of sensations, with no capacity to integrate them, is the intention behind the reducing of language to grunts, of literature to “moods,” of painting to smears, of sculpture to slabs, of music to noise."

Edited February 25, 2012 by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Kant – Critique of Judgement [Notes]

http://philosophy.eserver.org/kant/critique-of-judgment.txt

Search for “SS 14 Exemplification.” Where he supposedly concretizes what he is talking about without giving any examples of art from his day – no mention of any particular painting, sculpture, music, building; so it remains a floating abstraction and therefore very difficult to pin down into the specifics. He says that the beauty of these things is merely in the (physical)form and is just a matter of aesthetic taste.

“Aesthetic, just like theoretical (logical) judgements, are divisible

into empirical and pure. The first are those by which agreeableness or

disagreeableness, the second those by which beauty is predicated of an

object or its mode of representation. The former are judgements of

sense (material aesthetic judgements), the latter (as formal) alone

judgements of taste proper.

A judgement of taste, therefore, is only pure so far as its

determining ground is tainted with no merely empirical delight. But

such a taint is always present where charm or emotion have a share

in the judgement by which something is to be described as beautiful.”

In other words, one has to make aesthetic judgements without referring to the fact that one has an emotional reaction to a work of art; and beautiful artworks are always tainted with an emotional reaction as to their charm -- which implies that it ought to be rejected on the grounds that it is not “pure art” following his idea of “pure reason”.

“Emotion-a sensation where an agreeable feeling is produced merely by

means of a momentary check followed by a more powerful outpouring of

the vital force-is quite foreign to beauty. Sublimity (with which

the feeling of emotion is connected) requires, however, a different

standard of estimation from that relied upon by taste. **A pure

judgement of taste has, then, for its determining ground neither charm

nor emotion, in a word, no sensation as matter of the aesthetic

judgement.**” [emphasis added]

This is a complete rift between art and valuing the artwork (between mind and value, or between reason and man’s life); a complete separation of the nature of art from man’s reaction to it. I’ve heard a lot of modern artists in person and in their writings that artwork conveying a particular object in reality (like a painting of a man) is mere technique and not something to be praised because it is mere technique and is done simply for the charm of the image. They got it from Kant. If one is going to throw out the charm of the image, then one is left with nothing by smears on canvas. Likewise for the other arts.

“But I have already stated that an

aesthetic judgement is quite unique, and affords absolutely no (not

even a confused) knowledge of the object. It is only through a logical

judgement that we get knowledge. The aesthetic judgement, on the other

hand, refers the representation, by which an object is given, solely

to the subject, and brings to our notice no quality of the object, but

only the final form in the determination of the powers of

representation engaged upon it. The judgement is called aesthetic

for the very reason that its determining ground cannot be a concept,

but is rather the feeling (of the internal sense) of the concert in

the play of the mental powers as a thing only capable of being felt.”

This is a very good description of non-objective art – containing no knowledge of any object. Contrast this with a painting of an apple which does require the knowledge of the apple, what it is and what it looks like in the concretization of the concept “apple” according to Ayn Rand’s theory of art, the Objectivist aesthetics. In other words, insofar as a work of art contains or gives evidence of what the object *is* and how man understands it, it is not art, according to Kant.

[Ninth Doctor]

For anyone who is interested, George H. Smith (a.k.a "Mr. Atheism") had a lot of interesting things to say about Kant, his similarities to Rand, and Objectivists' misinterpretations of him, on the "Logical Leap" thread over at OL, starting about here, and continuing here, here, here, here, here, here, here, etc.

And, no, I don't care to read a defense of Kant.

This is about as brazen as it gets. You’re simply not open to evidence. It’s the mentality that’s ready for a Führer.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

I hate to be spamming this thread without waiting for specific replies, but I have another insight regarding his view of art. One has to keep in mind his metaphysics and his epistemology to realize that Kant's view of art is quite consistent with his fundamentals.To Kant, that which we observe (the phenomenal) is not real reality (the noumena), and this world we perceive is merely a projection of the human mind (his "Copernican Revolution"), therefore any art based upon that which we observe is merely a projection of a projection, and an emotion reaction to such art would be a projection of a projection of a projection. To Kant, the more we focus on the phenomenal, the more removed we are from real reality. So, while Kant can assess that such and such a painting is beautiful and charming, this is no real concern of his because it isn't about reality in the first place.

Edited February 25, 2012 by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

This is about as brazen as it gets. You’re simply not open to evidence. It’s the mentality that’s ready for a Führer.

This is total bullshit when I have been referring to Kant's explicit philosophy with specific quotes. If you want to present the facts about Kant, since you seem hell-bent on defending him, here is the link to his Critique of Judgement. You can find the passages to support your claims by doing a text search via your browser. Until and unless you are willing to be factual, and making outrageous claims about my motivations re the above, then I won't be discussing to topic you further until you point to specific quotes from Kant to make your case.