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Kantian Aesthetic Theory



I'm writing about this because I'm not sure I understand it.

Corrections of my stupidity are more than usually welcome.

Five points:

1. "Taste," for Kant, is the act of deciding whether something is or isn't beautiful. (Not "sublime," another matter I'll stay away from here.)

2. For something to be beautiful, it must offer "disinterested satisfaction." Presumably, a heterosexual man who finds a woman "beautiful" has an "interest" in mind, consciously or not. Because it is not DIS interested, then sexual appeal is NOT "beauty" in the Kantian sense.  On the other hand an image of abstract art, or perhaps a musical motif, may be considered beautiful, and those are both a better candidates for satisfying the test of disinterest than our beautiful woman in the "male gaze."

3. The fact that one takes pleasure (that is, the grounds of one's taste) is not completely subjective. If I find a musical motif beautiful I will typically think that others OUGHT to find it beautiful as well. This is "subjective universality."

4. The pleasure one takes in beauty is cognitive. I know something about the motif, or I am claiming to know something about it, when I say that it is beautiful.

5. What is it that we are claiming to know? This is tricky. But Kant was saying that in finding a work of art beautiful I am deeming it purposive; even though I have no purpose in mind when deeming it so. If I had a purpose in mind, after all, that might compromise the idea of disinterestedness. Its purpose might very well intersect with purposes of mine (as with plainly didactic art if I agree, or disagree, with the message). But in that case, it isn't even a candidate for being beautiful at all. So the art -- or flower or whatever -- has to be purposive in general, not specifically. I guess.

Kant scholars: how am I doing?
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