Part Two of Notes on Kant's Critique of Judgment Introductory material and analysis pertaining to selections from Intro. III-IV, collected in Art and its Significance, ed. Ross, 93-98. Contents (of notes):
IV) Textual Analysis: On The Analytic of the Beautiful (cf., Ross, pp.98-113) [Read in Conjunction with Kant’s “First Book: Analytic of the Beautiful,” in Ross, pp.98-113] Aesthetics … comes from the Greek verb aisthesthai, “to perceive;” it is the study of art and beauty. It asks questions like: what is the beautiful? Is there universal beauty, or is all beauty relative? How do we judge beauty? Are judgments of taste universal? What is art? Who makes art, the genius or anyone/thing? What is the difference between beauty and the sublime? Etc. How Taste Differs … Kant divides Faculties of Cognition from the Faculties of Desire. The former judge knowledge through understanding; the latter judge beauty through the feeling of pleasure or pain. Typically, to know X we refer its representation to the Object through Understanding (does ‘representation X’ match ‘object X’?). However, to judge beauty, we refer the representation to the subject through Imagination (does ‘representation X’ provoke pleasure?) “The judgment of taste is therefore not a judgment of cognition, and is consequently not logical but aesthetical, by which we understand that whose determining ground can be no other than subjective” (Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, Analytic of the Beautiful, §1. Note: I will quote several different translations, but all will be quite similar; here, for Ross, see page 98). A subjective ground, however, does not mean that taste is relative! Outline: Introduction & |
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