Thursday entry (for 4/1/10): Aesthetics in the Eye of the Beholder

Passages from Defining Art, Creating the Canon

Crowther, Paul. Defining Art, Creating the Canon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Page 68:

“Kant observes: ‘We can easily see that, in order for me to say that an object is beautiful, and to prove that I have taste, what matters is what I do with this presentation within myself, and not the [respect] in which I depend on the object’s existence.’

Kant’s point here, is that our pleasure in beauty (which he also describes as a mode of ‘pure aesthetic judgment’) is a function of how the object appears to the senses. What kind of thing the object is; its relevance for our practical interests; indeed, whether the object is real or not; are questions which have no necessary bearing on our enjoyment of its mere appearance. Through its rootedness in the immediate sensible particular our pleasure can be characterized as disinterested.

Disinterestedness is, on these terms, a logical characteristic which separates pure aesthetic judgments from those of the agreeable and the good. Pure aesthetic judgments are, in logical terms, indifferent to the real existence of the object.

It is, however, important to be clear about the scope and significance of this claim. In respect of it, Kant has been very badly served by subsequent tradition. As we have already seen in Chapter 1, formalists such as Monroe Beardsley and Clive Bell (and others who I have no previously mentioned, such as Edmund Bullough and Harold Osborne) have, in effect, interpreted the disinterested aspect of aesthetic judgment, as though it were in essence psychological – a kind of detached attitude or mental stance wherein one purges oneself of all considerations deriving from ‘real existence’. Many critics of disinterestedness such as George Dickie, Richard Shusterman, and manifold Marxist and feminists theoreticians, have interpreted it in similar terms.

This has led some of them to the view that there simply ‘aint no such thing’ or, indeed (in the case of Marxists), that the very idea of a detached ‘disinterested’ standpoint, is itself ideologically ‘interested’ to the highest degree.

Now there are elements in Kant – such as his additional characterization of the pure aesthetic judgment as ‘contemplative’ – which lend some weight to this interpretative tradition. These, however, pale into insignificance alongside Kant’s – wholly valid – logic of negation. The key logical significance of the pure aesthetic judgment lies in what it does not presuppose in order to be enjoyed.

To take a pleasure in the way things appear to the sense is just that. We may find that our being in a position to experience such pleasure has required a certain path through life; it may also be that lots of factual knowledge and practical considerations impinge upon our pleasure. However, such factors are not logical preconditions of our enjoying beauty: there are contingent elements. We do not have to take account of them in appreciating formal qualities for their own sake.

On these terms, then, the aesthetic experience of beauty is autonomous in logical terms. This is its definitive trait. However, such experiences occur under historically specific circumstances which means that their significance is mediated. By virtue of both the context in which it occurs and the kind of objects which bear it, beauty can be ethically and politically neutral or rendered negative or positive."