Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment aims to analyze the notion of a judgment of beauty or a judgment of taste. There is a basic dichotomy between two opposed sets of features that Kant explores through his various characterizations of judgments of beauty. On one hand, judgments of beauty are based on feeling (the object is not subsumed under the concept of a purpose that it is supposed to satisfy). On the other hand however, judgments of beauty are unlike judgments of the agreeable in not involving desire for the object. So what does it mean to make a pure aesthetic judgment of the beautiful? Kant investigates whether the ‘power’ of judgment provides itself with an priori principle. This principle would assert the suitability of all nature for our faculty of judgment in general. Four Moments/Disinterested Kant wonders how fine art- or the beauty of works of art- is possible and categorizes aesthetic judgments (or ‘judgments of taste’) into four “moments.” In the “First Moment” judgments of beauty are based on feeling, specifically the feelings of pleasure (he also discusses feelings of pain). However this pleasure is what he calls “disinterested.” Meaning that the subject does not need to desire the object in order to experience pleasure from it, nor must the object generate desire. We take pleasure in something simply because it is beautiful, rather than judging it beautiful because we find it pleasurable. He argues “the satisfaction which we combine with the representation of the existence of an object is called ‘interest’”(Kant 420) while “taste is the faculty of judging of an object or a method of representing it by an entirely disinterested satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The object of such satisfaction is called beautiful... ... middle of paper ... ...functions of judging is represented by the distinction between the determinative and the reflective power of judgment Kant is looking for an answer to the question: is a judgment of taste subjective? The requisites for fine art are imagination, understanding, soul and taste. Taste has both a subjective aspect, in that is consists in a felt response to the aesthetic qualities of an object, and an objective aspect, in that we can give reasons for our aesthetic judgments. Thus, it seems, the processes of appreciation and evaluation which lead to the conclusion that an object, whether a work of art or otherwise, is beautiful, are the same in all cases, and the paradigm for those processes must be that which is furnished by the appreciation and estimation of a natural beauty free of all intervention by concepts, whether the concept of art or any more specific concept.
Furthermore, resonation can be found in Preziosi exploration of the establishment of female identification through aesthetics. Within Preziosi chapter on aesthetics he addresses main issues including “Kant’s Critique of Judgment, judgment about beauty, and perception of perfection.” Aesthetics was addressed in the perception of how the female body is formed and encased while a male looks at the female body. In this case the male would be Degas gazing at his ballerina while either sketching his model or doing a sculpture of the ballerina. Preziosi states that “there should be two kinds of theory or sciences of knowledge corresponding to each logic and aesthetics.” This concept of two kinds of theory made more apparent as every sculptor Degas made is presented as a different theory, yet the two theories are different, Degas’s artwork deals with both logic and aesthetics. Logic can be applied to Degas’s____, works of art. Where as aesthetics deals with____. Later on in Preziosi chapter on aesthetics, he brings up the issue of “the idea that sensory knowledge could have its own perfection-and, further, that an aesthetic judgment about beauty or beautiful objects.” When viewing Degas’s sculptor the
In this article Winckelmann states that the good taste in art that is present in contemporary works stems from the work of the ancient Greeks. The beauty in the modern works of artists like Raphael (especially his Madonna and child with St Sixtus and St Barbara) hold such beauty, complexity of emotion, and good taste because he draws on the ideas set up by the great ancient sculptures and society in which they lived and drew inspiration from. Winckelmann categorizes the ancients greatness into two main ideas that are necessary for contemporaries to draw from in order to reach greatness: Natural beauty and noble simplicity and quiet grandeur.
The nature of aesthetics has puzzled many, where questions and reflections about art, beauty, and taste have intersected with our understanding of what a real art experience truly is. The notion of the aesthetic experience, an experience that differs from the everyday experiences, has been given great consideration by English art critic Clive Bell and American philosopher John Dewey since the beginning of the 20th century. Both have spent much deliberation on the distinctive character of aesthetic experience; yet have complete opposing ideas on how to go about understanding aesthetic experience’s ecosystem. Bell takes a formalist approach, as he thinks that to understand everything about a work of art, one has to only look at the work of art.
Beauty is experienced through visual stimuli. The human being's intake of beauty is through both conscious and unconscious decisions. (4) (4) The question is what motivates our unconscious decisions...
Before analysing selected art works in more detail it will be worth introducing a few different definitions and hypothesis of aesthetics in art based on theories of well-known critical thinkers.
There is beauty and there is beauty. The two are not mutually exclusive, but rather represent two poles on a continuum. At one pole is the beauty that is associated with a sense of lightness and balanced order. It has a faintly decorative quality to it. At the other extreme is the much darker form of beauty that we associate with profundity and truth. This latter form of beauty I will analyze in terms of the containment of the sublime. The distinction between these two extremes of beauty has less to do with the objects under consideration, whether a flower, a sunset, a poem, a painting, or a piece of music, than it does with the attitude of the considerer of the object. That is, anything that possesses beauty of the first kind can also be viewed as possessing beauty of the second kind, if the attention of the viewer is directed appropriately. The differential across the continuum is constituted by the degree of awareness of the element of the sublime in the beautiful.
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason [2] is notoriously difficult to read and often unclear. Possibly, this is because Kant was in a hurry to complete the first edition. Schopenhauer comments on Kant's "want of adequate reflection with which he passes over such questions as: What is perception? What is concept? What is reason? What is understanding? What is object?" [1; p.434]. Kant failed to lay down a proper foundation for these fundamental notions, and this has led to ambiguities in his work.
In Introduction to Aesthetics, G.W.F. Hegel’s opening paragraphs describe the spacious realm of the beautiful, the relationship of beauty in both nature and art, and the limitation and defense of aesthetics. Hegel addresses that the proper way to express the meaning of aesthetics is to refer to it as Philosophy of Fine Art, however, once adopting this expression humans, “exclude the beauty of nature” (Hegel). As humans, it has become a way of life to use our senses to help describe the beauty of nature, animals and other people in our world. According to Hegel, “beauty of art is higher than nature” (Hegel) and it is the art that is created by the spirit that stands above that of nature. Nature is an incomplete substance and the, “realms of nature have not been classified and examined from the point of view of beauty” (Hegel). Therefore, there is a difference between the beauty of nature and
David Hume’s essay “Of the Standard of Taste” addresses the problem of how objects are judged. Hume addresses three assumptions about how aesthetic value is determined. These assumptions are: all tastes are equal, some art is better than others, and aesthetic value of art is defined by a person’s taste(from lecture). However, Hume finds the three beliefs to be an “inconsistent triad”(from lecture) of assumptions. If all taste is equal but taste defines the aesthetic value, how can it be that some art is good and others bad? Wouldn’t all art be equal if all taste is equal? Hume does not believe all objects are equal in their beauty or greatness. He states that some art is meant to endure, “the beauties, which are naturally fitted to excite agreeable sentiment, immediately display their energy”.(text pg 259) So how will society discern what is agreeable and what is not? Hume proposes a set of true judges whose palates are so refined they can precisely define the aesthetic value of something.
AA theory by Clive Bell suggests the pinpoints the exact characteristic which makes a work true art. According to Bell, an artwork must produce “aesthetic emotion” (365). This aesthetic emotion is drawn from the form and formality of an artwork rather than whether or not it is aesthetically pleasing or how well it imitates what it is trying to depict. The relation of objects to each other, the colors used, and the qualities of the lines are seemingly more important than what emotion or idea the artwork is trying to provoke. Regardless of whether or not the artwork is a true imitation of certain emotions, ideals, or images, it cannot be true art unless it conjures this aesthetic emotion related to formality (367).
In this paper, I investigate the overall Enlightenment role that Kant conceived for aesthetic experience, and especially, of the beautiful. (1) I argue for an interpretation of Kant's aesthetics whereby the experience of the beautiful may play the same functional role in the invisible church of natural religion as Scripture does for the visible churches of ecclesiastical religions. Although aesthetic experience, for Kant, is autonomous by virtue of its disinterestedness, seemingly paradoxically, this very autonomy enables the beautiful, potentially, to serve profound moral and Enlightenment aims within his system. For Kant, because we are both rational and animal, we require embodiments of moral ideas, and thus, the experience of the beautiful is necessary in order to f...
It is difficult to define or explain the artistic impulse, even today, and it is even more difficult to pinpoint the one point in history when human beings developed a desire for aesthetically pleasing objects. However, several trends that have endured for thousands of years, particularly the decoration of vessels, textiles, and jewelry, and the creation of drawings and sculpture even today when they are no longer the easiest way to tell a story, leads me to believe that there is something in the human spirit that has always sought out the beautiful, whether in concord or conflict with the practical. And although the role of art and artists has changed drastically in the past and will likely continue to do so in the future, there will always be an impulse, whether admired and supported or looked down upon by society, to make life just a little bit brighter.
The affect-oriented sense we attribute to an aesthetic experience arises when we consider a distinctive quality whose purpose is to focus on some of the features that affect our emotions. In this interpretation, the immediate response of an aesthetic work can be intended to deliver joy and pleasure to the viewer. “A vaguely more explicit candidate is pleasure, delight, or enjoyment. One way of crafting this sort of view might be to say that something is an aesthetic experience only if it is pleasurable” (2002: 148). This approach excludes the possibility that we might attain an experience also through a tedious, not pleasurable, effect.
This is the state of contemplating a subject with no other purpose than appreciating it. For most authors, thus, the aesthetic attitude is purposeless: we have no reason to engage in it other than finding aesthetic enjoyment. Aesthetically, we appreciate beauty by using our senses by appreciating fine art in a museum say the Mona Lisa, taking a walking in garden filled with our favorite flowers and trees, devouring our favorite meal; or even finding an oasis in the dessert. Nevertheless, our imagination can also aid with our aesthetic attitude. Finding ourselves happy when we think of our family and friends is a beautiful thing, love is beauty, and beauty is love.
At an essential human level there is recognition of beauty and creation, as Plotinus believed. There is potential for subjectivity in art and personal preference, but the principles of universality and the ability to incite emotion set apart fine art. Beauty, in the traditional concept, is irrelevant to fine art. What is beautiful changes and is subjective, so the artist does not have to capture what is beautiful in the traditional sense, but rather an idea or concept that possesses merit. Art may not be beautiful but can still possess meaning, such as Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa.” Though the subject itself may not be objectively pretty, capturing the expression and mystery makes the painting itself valuable and meaningful. Beauty in fine art is not a matter of the physical image as much as the expression, message, or emotion it incites. For that reason, beauty can be frightening or sad, as well as happy and peaceful. In fine art, the artist seeks not to capture the beauty of an object or item, but the feeling that viewing this brings. This is the concept of experiencing what the artist feels and thinks, beyond the physical work