Immanuel
Kant (1724-1804)'s Transcendental Critique of Aesthetic Judgment offered a
variety of innovations in the way scholars evaluate Art, 'reversals' or
'radical turns' as they are sometimes called. He was looking for the conditions
of mental life that create the possibility for the apprehension of beauty and
the sublime- an epistemological project
which is said to have contributed to the foundations of modern
psychology.
How is it that beauty appears in
the eyes of the beholder? It’s the result of the workings of the mental
faculties of reason, understanding and imagination, cognition and feeling.
'Transcendental" in Kant's
usage is not outside or above us, as we might conceive God to be, but within ,
the ground from which all that we perceive that is outside of us proceeds and
for which we are in the most fundamental way responsible, as individuals.
By "critique" Kant meant an analytical
investigation into the quality, quantity, relations and modalities of human
mental faculties, of an intent and scope not previously seen before. Beyond these simple assertions,
however, Kant often becomes quite obscure. Reading Kant, and many who followed
in his philosophical turn, is a confrontation with dumbfounding definition,
dizzying distinctions, diabolical doctrines and heaps of jargon. It's very
difficult to understand what Kant means by the individual 'moments of taste'
comprised in the mental faculties which constitute an aesthetic judgment. For
one, the word 'moment" is not used in the temporal sense. "Quality'
denotes a unique subjectivity which is never-the-less universal. Quantity is
pervasive, something that 'lights the whole room' not just the object we happen
to be looking at. 'Relation'
refers to the self-generating, purposeful purposelessness of the apprehension
of a beauty that surpasses the mere sense of a pleasant or gratifying
experience. Exactly what Kant means by modality I have not yet been able to
discern.
Perhaps what Kant was trying to say
in his rather pseudo -scientific manner - brushing aside the multiple
categories in his juggling act- was that art brings together the things of
nature in way that generates a sense of a new way of being or sense of wonder
and extraordinariness, expanding of the horizon of what we can think, where we
find our freedom, the dignity of self-rule and autonomy. Kant believed this -- the experience of the beautiful and the
sublime-was a matter of our feelings rather than specific knowing, an act of
the (unbound) imagination rather than of reason or understanding. The beautiful
is accepted as a complete end unto itself, having no agenda, no proofs, free of
prejudice or restraint, or any ideology.
Put in such terms Kant's critique
of aesthetic judgment seems a bit sentimental, an excessive piling up of love
for art which is belied by actual experience but, paradoxically, at the same
time, making the claim that the
perception of beauty in its broadest sense embodies no personal interest and is
a universally shared experience.
Well, our capacity to embody
paradox may be what ultimately distinguishes us from animals, so give credit
where credit is due.
No doubt we will be hearing more
about Kant as we proceed along in The Critical Tradition.
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