Though disinterest is not a central concept in the Kant excerpt, can this idea be understood alongside the role of an artist or do they contradict one another? In other words, is disinterest impossible for an artist to maintain, especially one that strives to create an aesthetic object?
What precisely is the free play of cognition? Is it that imagination and understanding are stimulated but never resolved due to lack of recourse to a definite concept? If so, can the beautiful (or the sublime) be read as a form of jouissance in that the subject derives pleasure in its frustration to subsume the object within a definite concept?
Does artistic beauty’s beautiful presentation of a thing imply that works of art can never be things in themselves? Only mere (re)presentations of phenomena?
Do ideological desires render disinterested aesthetic judgments an impossibility (akin to Kant’s problematics of agreeableness and goodness)?
In Book I., section I., Kant affirms that “ if we wish to decide whether something is beautiful or not, we do not use understanding to refer the presentation to the object so as to give rise to cognition; rather we use imagination to refer the presentation to the subject and his feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Hence a judgment of taste is not a cognitive judgment and so is not a logical judgment but an aesthetic one (…) [p.431]
And proceeds in the title itself of section VI to define the beautiful as “ what is presented without concepts as the object of a universal liking”.
What I wonder is what happens if we try to use this definition of the beautiful to read Eagleton’s attempt of depicting what literary criticism is and what its purpose is.
Namely, “becoming certificated in literary studies” – Eagleton describes- “ as a matter of being able to talk and write in certain ways. It is this which is being taught, examined and certificated, not what you personally think or believe, though what is thinkable will of course be constrained by the language itself.” (Eagleton p.175)
Up until this full stop, Eagleton’s idea of Literary criticism seems to collimate with the Kantian notion of the beautiful quite well. But the following line, seems to be disruptive of this unity: “You can think or believe what you want as long as you can speak this particular language. (…) Literary studies, in other words, are a question of the signifier, not of the signified” [Eagleton, p. 175]
Could one thus argue that the signifier- in its being not subjective but a shared tool- may be equalized to the Kantian notion of the beautiful, or it being separated from the signified causes the collapsing of its aesthetic value? In other words, could one argue that Eagleton is trying to frame literary criticism as a quest for a Kantian beautiful or are literary studies themselves for him an example of Kantian beauty?
If we must become “devoid of all interest,” as Kant writes, in order to produce an aesthetic judgment over what is and is not “beautiful,” when or how can we know ourselves to be rid of all subjectivities, interests, and “any private conditions”? (435). Kant appears to assume one’s ability to “[like] something and [be] conscious that [one] does so without any interest” — but to what extent is such introspection effectively plausible? (435).
When thinking about the plausibility of “disinterestedness,” I kept going back to “The Golden Age of The Working Critic” and Michelle Chihara’s defense of indulging in enjoyment — “academics want to be able to say that they like things” — as a validated mode within literary criticism (427). The fact that (the façade of) “disinterestedness” was long-equated with sophistication, lucidity, and prestige consolidates Kant’s philosophy as underpinning the very bases of literary scholarship. How can we, as literary scholars or critics, claim objectivity? Should we? Do we have to, today, in order to produce a legitimate, worthy, and “free” judgment over the aesthetic quality of a piece of literature (434)?
Considering the Critique of Judgment is a seminal text on art, how is it used in or for art criticism on specific artworks, literary works etc.? Kant makes largely general statements on universality, albeit subjective universality, himself. But how can a specific critic of a specific ‘beautiful’ work (or any viewer or reader) represent their pleasure or senses, if concepts are not part of the ‘beautiful,’ or are artworks instead ‘agreeable’ or even ‘good?’ Can criticism be represented by articulating the results of their imagination and understanding that come together in ‘free play’ (thus also avoiding concepts)?
Or does Kant render conventional art criticism impossible unless perhaps it explicitly describes the senses a particular artwork affects?
I’ll list more questions of mine tomorrow for the sake of opening further discussion, but, for now, and to bring Eagleton in a bit, it seems that he would simply disagree from the outset that aesthetic judgment in the Kantian sense is NOT trying to “do” anything with respect to the beautiful. That is, for Eagleton, it seems that even the disinterested observer of the beautiful ALWAYS, even necessarily so, has to have SOME interest in their engagement with the beautiful. Eagleton might insist that the Kantian disinterested observer really is just, say, trying to appreciate (somehow, even in a non-sensible way) the beautiful: the judgment of the beautiful isn’t merely done for the sake of doing so. Would Kant, however, disagree with this? Does disinterested aesthetic judgment engage with the beautiful simply to do so; that is to say, does aesthetic judgment’s engagement with “purposive purposelessness” entail some proto-form of “art for art’s sake”? With respect to that latter formulation, maybe that would be incorrect, because art itself, in more ways than one, may still be considered a purpose (however infinite, empty, undefined, unknowable, etc.). At any rate, is there anything that Kant might say in response to Eagleton’s claim that, indeed, all aesthetic appreciation (or, in the very particular Kantian sense, judgment) or even perception entails or implies interest, an interest which is political?
In “NATURE AS A MIGHT”, Kant states: “Even was has something sublime about it if it is carried on in an orderly way and with respect for the sanctity of the citizens’ rights. At the same time it makes the way of thinking of a people that carries it ok in this way all the more sublime in proportion to the number of dangers in the face of which it courageously stood its ground. A prolonged peace, on the other hand, tends to make prevalent a mere[ly] commercial spirit, and along with it base selfishness, cowardice, and softness, and to debase the way of thinking of that people.” (454)
Earlier in his discussion, he mentions how parts of nature are also aesthetically sublime, not because nature is fearful, but because it produces strength in us. However, how can war, something “man-made” or caused by man, be sublime in the same sense that a volcano (or volcanic eruption) would be considered sublime? How is it that two things of different kinds have basically the same weight? In my understanding, the sublime to him also has to do with magnitude and the ability of our imagination to elevate said “object”, since the object itself is not sublime.
On 458, Kant (a physicist) says that art differs from science the way practical ability differs from theoretical ability, “can” vs. “know.” He gives the example of Camper’s shoe, perfectly described, perfectly imaginary. Is this a stable distinction? Art also begins with distinctly known rules—linear perspective, say—while science requires imagination (imagine the sun as a star that does not revolve around the world). The great pyramids are equal products of practical and theoretical ability, and are not exactly products of free artistic genius, at least not on the part of a single individual.
Most importantly, no way of knowing subdues the sublime and progresses towards the infinite like science, which provides us “a basis outside ourselves” (Earthrise) and also, in our contemporary moment, tells us more about ourselves than we might care to know (fMRI, human genome, psychology).
Is science merely in service of art, as in the case of architecture? What other relationships might science and art have? Is there a place where the two meet?
Elsewhere Kant characterizes science as a “systematic art,” but that is beyond the scope of this question!
The agreeable is based on a “private feeling,” such that one’s judgement is “confined to his own person” (435). From here, Kant concludes that “Everyone has his own taste (of sense)” (435). In contrast, one calls something beautiful only when “he requires the same liking from others… he speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things” (436). Judgements about the beautiful, Kant writes, “are put forward as having a general validity (as being public)” (436). My urge is to read this as a radical intervention. The critic here becomes a democratic function, a tool for social consensus. But what kind of “public” does Kant imagine?
What value does Kant’s aesthetic theory offer us today, given that our art world(s) are dictated by the interests of the market? How can we concieve of a disinterested aesthetic today––can we? Or is this merely a notion that we should appreciate in its historical context?
In other words, after the avant-garde(s), can we imagine such a thing as a Kantian ideal of disinterested, universally pleasing art anymore, or does this idea belong in the past?
What do we make of Kant’s idea of “common sense” of the critic? Don’t we all have different sensory make-ups, and thus different things will appear pleasing to different people?
1. Would it be helpful or fun to move as a class through the ‘four moments’ with an object/thing of represented beauty? How would we decide which object/thing to use? Is the act of deciding an indication of “inclination or appetite,” (452) which therefore disqualifies the object/thing as beautiful?
2. Beauty is an object’s form of purposiveness insofar as it is perceived in the object without the presentation of a purpose (443).
Beauty is what without a concept is cognized as the object of a necessary liking (444).
In relation to the different qualities of good and agreeable, do these two explications have to do more with the sense of overwhelming that accompanies the sublime? Dominance, might, and the law of respect (451) in relation to nature seem to me a better example of purposeless purposiveness than unspecified art objects which deserve subjectively universal praise.
3. There is clearly a distance between Kant’s attempt at an ‘a priori’ proof of aesthetic judgement and Eagleton’s discussion of the impossibility of universal subjectivity. Is this distance representative of the progression of the tradition of theory, in that we now ‘know’ that Kant’s proof is futile, or are the two different points of view regarding conclusiveness representative of competing schools of thought?
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12 Comments
Francesca
Though disinterest is not a central concept in the Kant excerpt, can this idea be understood alongside the role of an artist or do they contradict one another? In other words, is disinterest impossible for an artist to maintain, especially one that strives to create an aesthetic object?
Alex L
What precisely is the free play of cognition? Is it that imagination and understanding are stimulated but never resolved due to lack of recourse to a definite concept? If so, can the beautiful (or the sublime) be read as a form of jouissance in that the subject derives pleasure in its frustration to subsume the object within a definite concept?
Does artistic beauty’s beautiful presentation of a thing imply that works of art can never be things in themselves? Only mere (re)presentations of phenomena?
Do ideological desires render disinterested aesthetic judgments an impossibility (akin to Kant’s problematics of agreeableness and goodness)?
Irene
In Book I., section I., Kant affirms that “ if we wish to decide whether something is beautiful or not, we do not use understanding to refer the presentation to the object so as to give rise to cognition; rather we use imagination to refer the presentation to the subject and his feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Hence a judgment of taste is not a cognitive judgment and so is not a logical judgment but an aesthetic one (…) [p.431]
And proceeds in the title itself of section VI to define the beautiful as “ what is presented without concepts as the object of a universal liking”.
What I wonder is what happens if we try to use this definition of the beautiful to read Eagleton’s attempt of depicting what literary criticism is and what its purpose is.
Namely, “becoming certificated in literary studies” – Eagleton describes- “ as a matter of being able to talk and write in certain ways. It is this which is being taught, examined and certificated, not what you personally think or believe, though what is thinkable will of course be constrained by the language itself.” (Eagleton p.175)
Up until this full stop, Eagleton’s idea of Literary criticism seems to collimate with the Kantian notion of the beautiful quite well. But the following line, seems to be disruptive of this unity: “You can think or believe what you want as long as you can speak this particular language. (…) Literary studies, in other words, are a question of the signifier, not of the signified” [Eagleton, p. 175]
Could one thus argue that the signifier- in its being not subjective but a shared tool- may be equalized to the Kantian notion of the beautiful, or it being separated from the signified causes the collapsing of its aesthetic value? In other words, could one argue that Eagleton is trying to frame literary criticism as a quest for a Kantian beautiful or are literary studies themselves for him an example of Kantian beauty?
Alice Ascoli (she/her)
If we must become “devoid of all interest,” as Kant writes, in order to produce an aesthetic judgment over what is and is not “beautiful,” when or how can we know ourselves to be rid of all subjectivities, interests, and “any private conditions”? (435). Kant appears to assume one’s ability to “[like] something and [be] conscious that [one] does so without any interest” — but to what extent is such introspection effectively plausible? (435).
When thinking about the plausibility of “disinterestedness,” I kept going back to “The Golden Age of The Working Critic” and Michelle Chihara’s defense of indulging in enjoyment — “academics want to be able to say that they like things” — as a validated mode within literary criticism (427). The fact that (the façade of) “disinterestedness” was long-equated with sophistication, lucidity, and prestige consolidates Kant’s philosophy as underpinning the very bases of literary scholarship. How can we, as literary scholars or critics, claim objectivity? Should we? Do we have to, today, in order to produce a legitimate, worthy, and “free” judgment over the aesthetic quality of a piece of literature (434)?
Joanna
Considering the Critique of Judgment is a seminal text on art, how is it used in or for art criticism on specific artworks, literary works etc.? Kant makes largely general statements on universality, albeit subjective universality, himself. But how can a specific critic of a specific ‘beautiful’ work (or any viewer or reader) represent their pleasure or senses, if concepts are not part of the ‘beautiful,’ or are artworks instead ‘agreeable’ or even ‘good?’ Can criticism be represented by articulating the results of their imagination and understanding that come together in ‘free play’ (thus also avoiding concepts)?
Or does Kant render conventional art criticism impossible unless perhaps it explicitly describes the senses a particular artwork affects?
Alex Riedel
I’ll list more questions of mine tomorrow for the sake of opening further discussion, but, for now, and to bring Eagleton in a bit, it seems that he would simply disagree from the outset that aesthetic judgment in the Kantian sense is NOT trying to “do” anything with respect to the beautiful. That is, for Eagleton, it seems that even the disinterested observer of the beautiful ALWAYS, even necessarily so, has to have SOME interest in their engagement with the beautiful. Eagleton might insist that the Kantian disinterested observer really is just, say, trying to appreciate (somehow, even in a non-sensible way) the beautiful: the judgment of the beautiful isn’t merely done for the sake of doing so. Would Kant, however, disagree with this? Does disinterested aesthetic judgment engage with the beautiful simply to do so; that is to say, does aesthetic judgment’s engagement with “purposive purposelessness” entail some proto-form of “art for art’s sake”? With respect to that latter formulation, maybe that would be incorrect, because art itself, in more ways than one, may still be considered a purpose (however infinite, empty, undefined, unknowable, etc.). At any rate, is there anything that Kant might say in response to Eagleton’s claim that, indeed, all aesthetic appreciation (or, in the very particular Kantian sense, judgment) or even perception entails or implies interest, an interest which is political?
Paraskevi Gkana-Alberico (She/Her)
In “NATURE AS A MIGHT”, Kant states: “Even was has something sublime about it if it is carried on in an orderly way and with respect for the sanctity of the citizens’ rights. At the same time it makes the way of thinking of a people that carries it ok in this way all the more sublime in proportion to the number of dangers in the face of which it courageously stood its ground. A prolonged peace, on the other hand, tends to make prevalent a mere[ly] commercial spirit, and along with it base selfishness, cowardice, and softness, and to debase the way of thinking of that people.” (454)
Earlier in his discussion, he mentions how parts of nature are also aesthetically sublime, not because nature is fearful, but because it produces strength in us. However, how can war, something “man-made” or caused by man, be sublime in the same sense that a volcano (or volcanic eruption) would be considered sublime? How is it that two things of different kinds have basically the same weight? In my understanding, the sublime to him also has to do with magnitude and the ability of our imagination to elevate said “object”, since the object itself is not sublime.
Serena
[[Apologies for my lateness!]]
On 458, Kant (a physicist) says that art differs from science the way practical ability differs from theoretical ability, “can” vs. “know.” He gives the example of Camper’s shoe, perfectly described, perfectly imaginary. Is this a stable distinction? Art also begins with distinctly known rules—linear perspective, say—while science requires imagination (imagine the sun as a star that does not revolve around the world). The great pyramids are equal products of practical and theoretical ability, and are not exactly products of free artistic genius, at least not on the part of a single individual.
Most importantly, no way of knowing subdues the sublime and progresses towards the infinite like science, which provides us “a basis outside ourselves” (Earthrise) and also, in our contemporary moment, tells us more about ourselves than we might care to know (fMRI, human genome, psychology).
Is science merely in service of art, as in the case of architecture? What other relationships might science and art have? Is there a place where the two meet?
Elsewhere Kant characterizes science as a “systematic art,” but that is beyond the scope of this question!
Jodie Kahan (she/her)
[also sorry for lateness!]
The agreeable is based on a “private feeling,” such that one’s judgement is “confined to his own person” (435). From here, Kant concludes that “Everyone has his own taste (of sense)” (435). In contrast, one calls something beautiful only when “he requires the same liking from others… he speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things” (436). Judgements about the beautiful, Kant writes, “are put forward as having a general validity (as being public)” (436). My urge is to read this as a radical intervention. The critic here becomes a democratic function, a tool for social consensus. But what kind of “public” does Kant imagine?
Coco Fitterman
[Also apologies for the late post!]
What value does Kant’s aesthetic theory offer us today, given that our art world(s) are dictated by the interests of the market? How can we concieve of a disinterested aesthetic today––can we? Or is this merely a notion that we should appreciate in its historical context?
In other words, after the avant-garde(s), can we imagine such a thing as a Kantian ideal of disinterested, universally pleasing art anymore, or does this idea belong in the past?
What do we make of Kant’s idea of “common sense” of the critic? Don’t we all have different sensory make-ups, and thus different things will appear pleasing to different people?
Peter
Hi y’all, apologies for posting late.
1. Would it be helpful or fun to move as a class through the ‘four moments’ with an object/thing of represented beauty? How would we decide which object/thing to use? Is the act of deciding an indication of “inclination or appetite,” (452) which therefore disqualifies the object/thing as beautiful?
2. Beauty is an object’s form of purposiveness insofar as it is perceived in the object without the presentation of a purpose (443).
Beauty is what without a concept is cognized as the object of a necessary liking (444).
In relation to the different qualities of good and agreeable, do these two explications have to do more with the sense of overwhelming that accompanies the sublime? Dominance, might, and the law of respect (451) in relation to nature seem to me a better example of purposeless purposiveness than unspecified art objects which deserve subjectively universal praise.
3. There is clearly a distance between Kant’s attempt at an ‘a priori’ proof of aesthetic judgement and Eagleton’s discussion of the impossibility of universal subjectivity. Is this distance representative of the progression of the tradition of theory, in that we now ‘know’ that Kant’s proof is futile, or are the two different points of view regarding conclusiveness representative of competing schools of thought?
Elizabeth Alsop (she/her)
Alex R’s Presentation Notes! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-MoOvgsn3GoJtxSj2wkFMVWuU1LoqX9eBElIx3rvDmc/edit?usp=sharing