Immanuel Kant Kritik der Urteilskraft The Critique of Judgement

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Immanuel KantKritik der Urteilskraft (The
Critique of Judgement)

• Semester 2 Lecture 1.

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Overview

• Presentations
• Assignments
• Kant (The Critique of Judgement)

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Immanuel Kant (b. 22 April1724 d. 12 Feb 1804)

• German Idealism
• Rationalist aesthetics (Descartes Baumgarten
  Lessing)
• Philosophical Idealism (Critical Idealism - Kant
  Objective Realism - Schelling Hegel)
• Towards Romanticism (Schopenhauer Nietzsche)
• Kants work was influenced by writers in the
  Enlightenment (Locke Rousseau).
• The three Critiques (human knowledge, morality,
  judgement) are his most influential works.
• Profound influence on the history of aesthetics.

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Overview of Kants philosophy

• Previous philosophy believed that the limit on
  what human beings can know is determined by what
  there is.
• Kant developed this perspective
• Knowledge is dependent upon our senses, brains,
  and central nervous system.
• Therefore, there are two limitations on what we
  can know
• What exists
• What we have the means of experiencing
• The world as it appears to us world of phenomena
• The world of things as they are in themselves
  noumenal world

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Free will and Ethics

• Human beings have free will and it is
  demonstrable
• His solution was that free acts of will do not
  take place in the phenomenal world, but in the
  noumenal world.
• It is empirical fact that we have moral concepts,
  convictions, and it is impossible for most of us
  to disregard them. Therefore we must have a
  choice otherwise morality is meaningless.
• If we believe in this choice then it is possible
  that material objects are not solely controlled
  by science. Therefore there must be a
  non-empirical realm.

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Kants vision

• To provide a theory of aesthetic judgement the
  culmination of the other two critiques.
• The first (human knowledge) experience of the
  natural world through our senses a mechanistic
  system. This is the knowledge of appearances,
  not reality. We only know things as they appear
  to us, not as they are in themselves.
• The second (morality) questions moral freedom in
  the light of a mechanistic system. The basis of
  morality (and freedom) was not self-realisation,
  but duty.

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The Critique of Judgement

• Aimed to explore the cognitive status of
  aesthetic judgements (of the sublime and
  beautiful) and teleological judgements (of
  purpose).
• Divided into 2 books
• Analytic of the beautiful
• Analytic of the sublime.
• 60 sub-sections in total
• http//etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/k/kant/immanu
  el/k16j/

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Analytic of the beautiful

• Judgement of Taste - two distinctions
• Aesthetic judgements
• Logical judgements
• Taste must be devoid of interest
• Interest is that pleasure which we associate with
  a representation of the existence of some object
  Book 1 Section 2
• Therefore judgements of taste are very different
  from judgements of the good or pleasurableness.

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Analytic of the beautiful continued

• Judgements of pleasure
• Whatever gratifies the senses when they react to
  it Book 1 Section 3
• Judgements of the good
• A thing is good if it pleases purely as a
  rational concept Book 1 Section 4

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Comparison of the beautiful with the pleasurable
and the good.

• Pleasurable judgements relate to personal
  emotion
• To each his own taste (Book 1 Section 7)
• This is not true if something is described as
  beautiful
• if he states that something is beautiful, he is
  implying that others will find the same pleasure
  in it, he is not merely a personal and
  independent assessment but one that is binding on
  everyone elseTo this extent, then, it cannot be
  said each has his own taste. This would be
  tantamount to claiming that taste does not exist
  at all, I.e. no aesthetic judgement could be made
  that called on everyone to accept it. Book 1
  Section 7

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Pure judgements of taste

• Interest of any kind spoils the judgement of
  taste
• Physical attraction (charm) and emotional appeal
  do not lead to pure judgements of taste.
• The design is the actual object of any pure
  judgement of taste, as is the composition (second
  level).
• Beauty enhanced by colours/sounds. Attract
  attention to the object.
• No sensation is, in short, the substance of
  aesthetic judgement Book 1 Section 14.

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Analytic of the beautiful summary so far

• Objects are beautiful when they satisfy a
  disinterested desire
• Objects of beauty have no specific purpose and
  judgements of beauty are not personal but
  universal
• People making aesthetic judgements adopt a
  disinterested attitude whereby s/he abstracts all
  the particular desires and goals that distinguish
  him/her from other people.
• Kant was concerned with judgements of taste

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Perceptions of the fine arts

• Pleasurable arts are those intended for
  enjoyment. (e.g. Tafelmusik)
• Fine art is a manner of representation that is an
  end in itself Book 2 Section 44

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The aesthetic value of the fine arts

• In rational terms music is of less value than
  any other of the fine arts Book 2 Section 53
• The form of music harmony melody is
  mathematically determined and therefore taste
  can lay claim to the right to judge on behalf of
  all men
• However, is music the least among the fine arts
  as it plays merely with the emotions?

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A final thought

• Music moves from emotions to indefinite ideas
  the formative arts move from definite ideas to
  emotions. The formative arts create lasting
  impressions, music creates only transient ones.
  The impressions of the former can be recalled and
  enjoyed by the imagination the impressions of
  the latter vanish altogether, or, if they are
  involuntarily recalled by the imagination, are
  more tiresome than pleasurable. Besides which,
  music to some extent lacks good breeding in that
  it obtrudes unnecessarilyforcing itself on them,
  as it were, and thus restricting the freedom of
  those who are not a party to the music-making.
  This is something that the visual arts do not,
  for it is only necessary to avert the eye if one
  wishes not to become involved.