On Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment and Tête de Femme
In Kant's third Critique, he states that aesthetic judgment gives us pleasure without our interest derives from the possible pleasures we are offered by the aesthetic object. Kant went further and distinguish the beautiful from the agreeable and the good. The agreeable is the delight that a person may possess when he finds the object agreeable, which offers him the subjective feeling that he prefers. For example, Kant says a man likes the wind instruments while someone else likes string instruments. It is not a free choice for the subject. In fact, for a person to develop the agreeable feelings toward an object, per Kant, the consideration appears to be sensuous and impure. A person who likes the instrument endorses the 'instrumentality' of the aesthetic object. The function of the instrument serves a purpose available only to one person. Let's consider another case: Tim likes chocolate ice cream, and I like taro ice cream. There is no common ground to claim the validity of any choice here. After all, they are just personal preferences. Although when I make a judgment and use my sentiment to arrive at what appeals most to me, the feeling falls short of the universality. What entirely appeals to my gratification is nothing but my individual concentration. Tim would never apprehend the feeling only I can have for taro ice scream and vice versa. The good is the delight that one may find an object approved. This person will then see the objective worth in the object he is approving as the good. Something is morally good is approved as the good. For instance, moral philosophers like Plato and Aristotle approve the ultimate goodness that all humans should achieve. Kant is no different than his predecessors with Categorical Imperatives (CI). The ultimate goodness for Plato is the wisdom, a love of philosophy, as one who receives it will act morally upon his life. Aristotle suggests moral training throughout one's life. So, according to this view, we find pleasure in object X if and only lif object X serves moral purposes. In this case, we equate the beautiful object with the morally good object. However, Kant finds another type of delight free from previously mentioned pleasures. The beauty, on the contrary, is the free delight since the judgment needs not the approval from either sense or reason. Per Kant, this pleasure appears most when we encounter natural objects.
I think the analysis of the judgment of the beauty manifests the possibility that the existence of the object (of this delight) is not necessarily in the intuitions, space and time. For the object to be perceived by us, its appearance must be present in our intuition so that our sensibility ably gives us this representation. Another perspective is to look at the object as a practical reason, in which the object becomes a concept. In the former case, if we employ only the sense, then we will enjoy the comfort derived from the quality of the object. This judgment is immediately agreeable. What perhaps we could grasp is the content or inherent quality in the object. The quality is agreeable to us insofar as it serves us well. Food and drink belong to this category. Thomas Leddy (2012) in his book The Extraordinary in the Ordinary points out that functionalists often consider an object agreeably beautiful when they locate the convenience of the being-considered object. Regardless of an object being natural or not, I think Hume, a hardcore functionalist, thinks the object is beautiful when he finds it agreeable. But the convenience is not offered to all. If Tim bought his bed and he claimed that his bed is agreeably comfortable, I could not have any right to contest it. In fact, the comfort the bed generated is only comfortable for him. I can never draw pleasure out of his private feeling. I don't have that access because I'm a different person than Tim. About the good, although it is tempting to say that functionalists might claim: an object X is beautiful if X is morally good. It is not always true at least with Hume and Kant. Hume might justify the beautiful status of X when X is good according to moral sentiments. For Kant, morality is something abstract and belongs to human rationality alone. An oversimplified model of Kantian morality with implications of Kantian motivation is as follows: sense varies, so morality varies. For Kant, the spectrum of sentiments exists. Emotional experiences are equated with posteriori. But CI is a priori and universally valid across every experience. Kant would endorse Batman's no-killing rule. Nonetheless, the purpose of this minor point is to show that Humean functionalists would justify the beautiful status of an object according to the moral feelings, whereas Kant would argue for a different location of moral reasoning. When we employ reason, we will have the delight of the goodness. Both cases, agreeableness and goodness, grant us an interest in the object. According to the third Critique, the judgment of beauty is distinctively different due to a free play between our faculty of imagination and understanding. Consequentially, we see that a beautiful object must not necessarily be present in either sensibility or reason since these two faculties at best give us the agreeable and the good.
Kant is correct at this point if we apply this judgment of beauty in cubist-style paintings. For instance, let's consider the artwork Tête de Femme or Head/Face of a Woman by Pablo Picasso in 1962. One can say that this image does not resemble a woman's face in reality. In fact, I might agree with this person if I respond to this artwork with my understanding of how a woman's face looks and then compare this reality with the painting. Per Kant, this type of judgment employs the faculty of understanding and my reason cannot give me the delight in the beautiful. But when I also look at this painting without considering that conceptual knowledge, I should see the delight of the beautiful in Picasso's cubism. The image of my aesthetic judgment is not the image of the woman's face I usually see in everyday life. This representation becomes something else beyond its intention. Picasso's artwork intentionally is Jacques Roque's portrait. This representation is not even a visual representation of anyone. Thus, this aesthetic experience makes me see the aspect of the features quite different and apart from any concepts present in basic intuitions. In session 45, when Kant discusses art and nature, he says, "the finality in its form must appear just as free from the constraint of arbitrary rules as if it were a product of mere nature." The radical judgment of beauty is problematic under circumstances. Kant sometimes thinks of the notion of disgust, free beauty, and dependent beauty. A paradox here arises when a judgment of beauty can issue a feeling of disgust. Kant never developed a well thought out explanation for the feeling of disgust. We can discuss these notions and the appropriate type of judgment of beauty. Nevertheless, my concern here is that the artistic representation in our imagination does not need to be real. The pleasure we get from this image as Kant suggests is disinterested. Hence, I should see Tête de Femme as if the appearance is not real, does not exist in "space and time" before I could determine its beauty.
---------------------
Thomas Leddy was my professor at San Jose State University. I had a wonderful time there in his seminar in Plato, continental aesthetics, and the philosophy of art. We had a myriad of conversations regarding art, paintings, and philosophy. I learned from him a lot. He authored The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (2012).
I think the analysis of the judgment of the beauty manifests the possibility that the existence of the object (of this delight) is not necessarily in the intuitions, space and time. For the object to be perceived by us, its appearance must be present in our intuition so that our sensibility ably gives us this representation. Another perspective is to look at the object as a practical reason, in which the object becomes a concept. In the former case, if we employ only the sense, then we will enjoy the comfort derived from the quality of the object. This judgment is immediately agreeable. What perhaps we could grasp is the content or inherent quality in the object. The quality is agreeable to us insofar as it serves us well. Food and drink belong to this category. Thomas Leddy (2012) in his book The Extraordinary in the Ordinary points out that functionalists often consider an object agreeably beautiful when they locate the convenience of the being-considered object. Regardless of an object being natural or not, I think Hume, a hardcore functionalist, thinks the object is beautiful when he finds it agreeable. But the convenience is not offered to all. If Tim bought his bed and he claimed that his bed is agreeably comfortable, I could not have any right to contest it. In fact, the comfort the bed generated is only comfortable for him. I can never draw pleasure out of his private feeling. I don't have that access because I'm a different person than Tim. About the good, although it is tempting to say that functionalists might claim: an object X is beautiful if X is morally good. It is not always true at least with Hume and Kant. Hume might justify the beautiful status of X when X is good according to moral sentiments. For Kant, morality is something abstract and belongs to human rationality alone. An oversimplified model of Kantian morality with implications of Kantian motivation is as follows: sense varies, so morality varies. For Kant, the spectrum of sentiments exists. Emotional experiences are equated with posteriori. But CI is a priori and universally valid across every experience. Kant would endorse Batman's no-killing rule. Nonetheless, the purpose of this minor point is to show that Humean functionalists would justify the beautiful status of an object according to the moral feelings, whereas Kant would argue for a different location of moral reasoning. When we employ reason, we will have the delight of the goodness. Both cases, agreeableness and goodness, grant us an interest in the object. According to the third Critique, the judgment of beauty is distinctively different due to a free play between our faculty of imagination and understanding. Consequentially, we see that a beautiful object must not necessarily be present in either sensibility or reason since these two faculties at best give us the agreeable and the good.
Kant is correct at this point if we apply this judgment of beauty in cubist-style paintings. For instance, let's consider the artwork Tête de Femme or Head/Face of a Woman by Pablo Picasso in 1962. One can say that this image does not resemble a woman's face in reality. In fact, I might agree with this person if I respond to this artwork with my understanding of how a woman's face looks and then compare this reality with the painting. Per Kant, this type of judgment employs the faculty of understanding and my reason cannot give me the delight in the beautiful. But when I also look at this painting without considering that conceptual knowledge, I should see the delight of the beautiful in Picasso's cubism. The image of my aesthetic judgment is not the image of the woman's face I usually see in everyday life. This representation becomes something else beyond its intention. Picasso's artwork intentionally is Jacques Roque's portrait. This representation is not even a visual representation of anyone. Thus, this aesthetic experience makes me see the aspect of the features quite different and apart from any concepts present in basic intuitions. In session 45, when Kant discusses art and nature, he says, "the finality in its form must appear just as free from the constraint of arbitrary rules as if it were a product of mere nature." The radical judgment of beauty is problematic under circumstances. Kant sometimes thinks of the notion of disgust, free beauty, and dependent beauty. A paradox here arises when a judgment of beauty can issue a feeling of disgust. Kant never developed a well thought out explanation for the feeling of disgust. We can discuss these notions and the appropriate type of judgment of beauty. Nevertheless, my concern here is that the artistic representation in our imagination does not need to be real. The pleasure we get from this image as Kant suggests is disinterested. Hence, I should see Tête de Femme as if the appearance is not real, does not exist in "space and time" before I could determine its beauty.
---------------------
Thomas Leddy was my professor at San Jose State University. I had a wonderful time there in his seminar in Plato, continental aesthetics, and the philosophy of art. We had a myriad of conversations regarding art, paintings, and philosophy. I learned from him a lot. He authored The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (2012).
Comments
Post a Comment