Aesthetics

Aesthetics may be defined narrowlyas thetheory of beauty, or more broadly as that together with
the philosophy of art. The traditional interestin beautyitself broadened, in the eighteenthcentury,
to include the sublime, and since 1950 or so the number of pure aesthetic concepts discussed in
the literature has expanded even more. Traditionally, the philosophy of art concentratedon its
definition, but recentlythis has not been thefocus, with careful analyses of aspects of art largely
replacingit. Philosophical aesthetics is hereconsidered tocenter on these latter-day
developments. Thus, after a surveyof ideas aboutbeautyand related concepts, questions about
the value of aesthetic experience and the varietyof aesthetic attitudes will be addressed, before
turningto matters which separateart from pure aesthetics, notably thepresence of intention.
That will lead to a survey of some of the main definitions of art which have beenproposed,
together with an account of therecent de-definitionperiod. The concepts of expression,
representation, and thenature of artobjects will then be covered.

T able of Contents
1.Introduction

2.Aesthetic Concepts

3.Aesthetic Value

4.Aesthetic Attitudes

5.Intentions

6.Definitions of Art

7.Expression

8.Representation

9.Art Objects

10.References and Further Reading

1. Introduction

The full field of what might be called

aestheticsis a very large one. There is even now a four-
volume encyclopedia devoted to the full range of possible topics. The core issues in Philosophical
Aesthetics, however, are nowadays fairly settled (see the book edited by Dickie, Sclafani, and
Roblin, and the monographby Sheppard, among many others).

Aesthetics in this central sense has been said to start in the early eighteenth century, with the
series of articles on
ThePleasures of the Imaginationwhich the journalist Joseph Addison wrote
in the early issues of the magazine The Spectator in 1712. Before this time, thoughts by notable
figures made some forays into this ground, for instance in the formulation of general theories of
proportion and harmony, detailed most specifically in architecture and music. But the full
development of extended, philosophical reflection on Aesthetics did not begin to emerge until the
widening of leisure activities in the eighteenth century.

By far the most thoroughgoing and influential of the early theorists was Immanuel Kant, towards
the end of the eighteenthcentury. Therefore it is important, first of all, to have some sense of how
Kant approached the subject. Criticisms of his ideas, and alternatives to them, will be presented
later in this entry, but through him we can meet some of the key concepts in the subject by way of
introduction.

Kant is sometimes thought of as a formalist in art theory; that is to say, someone who thinks the
content of a work of art is not of aesthetic interest. But this is only part of the story. Certainly he
was a formalist about the pure enjoyment of nature, but for Kant most of the arts were impure,
because they involved a concept.Even the enjoyment of parts of nature was impure, namely
when a concept was involved as when we admire the perfection of an animal body or a human
torso. But our enjoyment of, for instance, the arbitrary abstract patterns in some foliage, or a
color field (as with wild poppies, or a sunset) was, according to Kant, absent of such concepts; in
such cases, the cognitive powers were in free play. By design, art may sometimes obtain the
appearance of this freedom: it was then Fine Art but for Kant not all art had this quality.

In all, Kants theory of pure beauty had four aspects: its freedom from concepts, its objectivity, the
disinterest of the spectator, and its obligatoriness. By concept,Kant meant end,or purpose,
that is, what the cognitive powers of human understanding and imagination judge applies to an
object, such as with it is a pebble,to take an instance. But when no definite concept is involved,
as with the scattered pebbles on a beach, the cognitive powers are held to be in free play; and it is
when this play is harmonious that there is the experience of pure beauty. Thereis also objectivity
and universality in the judgment then, according to Kant, since the cognitive powers are common
to all who can judge that the individual objects are pebbles. These powers function alike whether
they come to such a definite judgment or are left suspended in free play, as when appreciating the
pattern alongthe shoreline. This was not the basis on which the apprehension of pure beauty was
obligatory, however. According to Kant, that derived from the selflessness of such an
apprehension, what was called in the eighteenth century its disinterest.This arises because pure
beauty does not gratify us sensuously; nor does it induce any desire to possess the object. It
pleases,certainly, but in a distinctive intellectual way. Pure beauty, in other words, simply holds
our mind s attention: we have no further concern than contemplatingthe object itself. Perceiving
the object in such cases is an end in itself; it is not a means to a further end, and is enjoyed for its
own sake alone.

It is because Morality requires we rise above ourselves that such an exercise in selfless attention
becomes obligatory. Judgments of pure beauty, being selfless, initiate one into the moral point of
view. Beauty is a symbol of Morality,and
The enjoyment of nature is the mark of a good soul
are key sayings of Kant. The shared enjoyment of a sunset or a beach shows there is harmony
between us all, and the world.

Among these ideas, the notion of disinteresthas had much the widest currency. Indeed, Kant
took it from eighteenth century theorists before him, such as the moral philosopher, Lord
Shaftesbury, and it has attracted much attention since: recently by the French sociologist Pierre
Bourdieu, for instance. Clearly, in this context disinteresteddoes not mean uninterested,and
paradoxically it is closest towhat we nowcall our interests,that is, such things as hobbies, travel,
and sport, as we shall see below. But in earlier centuries, one s interestwas what was to one s
advantage, that is, it was self-interest,and so it was the negation of that which closely related
aesthetics toethics.

2. Aesthetic Concepts

The eighteenth century was a surprisingly peaceful time, but this turned out to be the lull before
the storm, since out of its orderly classicism there developed a wild romanticism in art and
literature, and even revolution in politics. The aesthetic concept which came to be more
appreciated in this period was associated with this, namely sublimity, which Edmund Burke
theorized about in his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful.The sublime was connected more with pain than pure pleasure, according to Burke,
since threats to self-preservation were involved, as on the high seas, and lonely moors, with the
devilish humans and dramatic passions that artists and writers were aboutto portray. But in these
circumstances, of course, it is still
delightful horror,as Burke appreciated, since one is insulated
by the fictionalityof the work in question from any real danger.

Sublimeand beautifulare only two amongst the many terms which may be used to describe
our aesthetic experiences. Clearly there are ridiculousand ugly,for a start, as well. But the
more discriminating will have no difficulty also finding something maybe fine,or lovelyrather
than awfulor hideous,and exquisiteor superbrather than grossor foul.Frank Sibley
wrote a notable series of articles, starting in 1959, defending a view of aesthetic concepts as a
whole. He said that they were not rule- or condition-governed, but required a heightened form of
perception, which one might call taste, sensitivity, or judgment. His full analysis, however,
contained another aspect, since he was not only concerned with the sorts of concepts mentioned
above, but also with a set of others which had a rather different character. For one can describe
works of art, often enough, in terms which relate primarily to the emotional and mental life of
human beings. One can call them joyful,melancholy, serene,witty,vulgar,and humble,
for instance. Theseare evidently not purelyaesthetic terms, because of their further uses, but they
are still veryrelevant to many aestheticexperiences.

Sibleys claim about these concepts was that there were no sufficient conditions for their
application. For many conceptssometimes called closedconcepts, as a resultboth necessary
and sufficient conditions for their application can be given. To be a bachelor, for instance, it is
necessary to be male and unmarried, though of marriageable age, and together these three
conditions are sufficient. For other concepts, however, the so-called openones, no such
definitions can be given although for aesthetic concepts Sibleypointed out there were still some
necessary conditions, since certain facts can rule out the application of, for example, garish,
gaudy,or flamboyant.

The question therefore arises: how do we make aesthetic judgments if not by checking sufficient
conditions? Sibleys account was that, when the concepts were not purely perceptual they were
mostly metaphoric. Thus, we call artworks dynamic,or sad,as before, by comparison with the
behaviors of humans with those qualities. Other theorists, such as Rudolph Arnheim and Roger
Scruton, have held similar views. Scruton, in fact, discriminated eight types of aesthetic concept,
and we shall look at some of the others below.

3. Aesthetic Value

We have noted Kant s views about the objectivity and universality of judgments of pure beauty,
and thereare several ways that these notionshave been further defended. Thereis a famouscurve,
for instance, obtained by the nineteenth century psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, which shows how
human arousal is quite generally related to complexity of stimulus. We are bored by the simple,
become sated, even over-anxious, by the increasingly complex, while in between there is a region
of greatest pleasure. The dimension of complexity is only one objective measure of worth which
has been proposed in this way. Thus it is now known, for instance, that judgments of facial beauty
in humans are a matter of averagenessand symmetry. Traditionally, unity was taken to be central,
notably by Aristotlein connection with Drama, and when added to complexity it formed a general
account of aesthetic value. Thus Francis Hutcheson, in the eighteenth century, asserted that
Uniformity in variety always makes an object beautiful.Monroe Beardsley, more recently, has
introduced a third criterionintensityto produce his three General Canonsof objectiveworth.
He also detailed some Special Canons.
Beardsley called the objective criteria within styles of Art Special Canons.These were not a
matter of somethingbeinggood of its kind and so involvingperfection of a concept in the sense of
Kant. They involved defeasible good-makingand bad-makingfeatures, more in the manner
Hume explained in his major essay in this area, Of the Standard of Taste(1757). Tosay a work of
art had a positive quality like humor, for instance, was to praise it to some degree, but this could
be offset by other qualities which made the work not good as a whole. Beardsley defended all of
his canons in a much more detailed way than his eighteenth century predecessor however:
through a lengthy, fine-grained, historical analysis of what critics have actually appealed to in the
evaluation of artworks. Also, he explicitly made the disclaimer that his canons were the only
criteria of value, by separating these objective reasonsfrom what he called affectiveand
geneticreasons. These two other sorts of reasons were to do with audience response, and the
originatingartist and his times, respectively, and either
The AffectiveFallacyor TheIntentional
Fallacy,he maintained, was involved if these were considered. The discrimination enabled
Beardsley tofocus on the artwork and its representational relations, if any, to objects in the public
world.

Against Beardsley, over many years, Joseph Margolis maintained a Robust Relativism.Thus he
wanted to say that aptness, partiality,and non-cognitivismcharacterize art appreciation,
rather than truth,universality,and knowledge.He defended this with respect to aesthetic
concepts, critical judgments of value, and literary interpretations in particular, saying, more
generally, that works of art were culturally emergent entitiesnot directly accessible, because of
this, to any faculty resembling sense perception. The main debate over aesthetic value, indeed,
concerns social and political matters, and the seemingly inevitable partiality of different points of
view. The central question concerns whether there is a privileged class, namely those with
aesthetic interests, or whether their set of interests has no distinguished place, since, from a
sociological perspective, that taste is just one amongst all other tastes in the democratic economy.
The sociologist Arnold Hauser preferred a non-relativistic point of view, and was prepared togive
a ranking of tastes. High art beat popular art, Hauser said, because of two things: the significance
of its content, and the more creative nature of its forms. Roger Taylor, by contrast, set out very
fully the leveller
spointof view, declaringthat Aidaand The Sound of Musichave equal value
for their respective audiences. He defended this with a thorough philosophical analysis, rejecting
the idea that there is such a thing as truth corresponding to an external reality, with the people
capable of accessing that truth having some special value. Instead, according to Taylor, there are
just different conceptual schemes, in which truth is measured merelyby coherenceinternal to the
scheme itself. Janet Wolff looked at this debate more disinterestedly, in particular studying the
details of the opposition between Kant and Bourdieu.

4. Aesthetic Attitudes

Jerome Stolnitz, in the middle of the last century, was a Kantian, and promoted the need for a
disinterested, objective attitude to art objects. It is debatable, as we saw before, whether this
represents Kant s total view of art, but the disinterested treatment of art objects which Stolnitz
recommended was very commonly pursuedin his period.

Edward Bullough, writing in 1912, would have called disinterested attentiona distanced
attitude, but he used this latter term to generate a much fuller and more detailed appreciation of
the whole spectrum of attitudes which might be taken to artworks. The spectrum stretched from
people who over-distanceto people who under-distance.People who over-distance are, for
instance, critics who merely look at the technicalities and craftwork of a production, missing any
emotional involvement with what it is about. Bullough contrastedthis attitudewith what he called
under-distancing,where onemight get toogripped by the content. Thecountry yokel who jumps
upon the stage to save the heroine, and the jealous husband who sees himself as Othello
smothering his wife, are missing the fact that the play is an illusion, a fiction, just make-believe.
Bullough thought there was, instead, an ideal mid-point between his two extremes, thereby
solving his antinomy of distanceby deciding there should be the least possible distance without
its disappearance.
George Dickie later argued against both disinterestand
distancein a famous 1964 paper, The
Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude.He argued that we should be able toenjoy all objectsof awareness,
whether pure aestheticor moral. In fact, he thought the term aestheticcould be used in all
cases, rejecting the idea that there was some authorized way of using the word just to apply to
surface or formal features the artwork as a thing in itself. As a result, Dickie concluded that the
aesthetic attitude, when properly understood, reduced to just close attention to whatever holds
ones mind in an artwork, against the tradition which believed it had a certain psychological
quality, or else involvedattention just to certain objects.

Art is not the only object to draw interest of this pleasurable kind: hobbies and travel are further
examples, and sport yet another, as was mentioned briefly above. In particular, the broadening of
the aesthetic tradition in recent years has led theorists to give more attention to sport. David Best,
for instance, writing on sport and its likeness to art, highlighted how close sport is to the purely
aesthetic. But he wanted to limit sportto this, and insisted it had no relevance to ethics. Best saw
art forms as distinguished expressly by their having the capacity to comment on life situations,
and hence bringin moral considerations. No sport had this further capacity, he thought, although
the enjoyment of many sports may undoubtedly be aesthetic. But many art formsperhaps more
clearly called craft-formsas a result also do not comment on life situations overmuch, for
example, dcor, abstract painting, and non-narrative ballet. And there are many sports which are
pre-eminently seen in moral, character-buildingterms, for example, mountaineering, and the
various combat sports (like boxing and wrestling). Perhaps the resolution comes through noting
the division Best himself provides within sport-forms, between, on the one hand, taskor non-
purposivesports like gymnastics, diving, and synchronized swimming, which are the ones he
claims are aesthetic, and on the other hand the achievement,or purposivesports, like those
combat sports above. Task sports have less artin them, since they are not as creative as the
purposive ones.

5. Intentions

The traditional form of art criticism was biographical and sociological, taking into account the
conceptions of the artist and the history of the traditions within which the artist worked. But in
the twentieth century a different, morescientific and ahistorical form of literary criticism grewup
in the United States and Britain: The New Criticism. Like the Russian Formalists and French
Structuralists in the same period, the NewCritics regarded what could be gleaned from the work
of art alone as relevant to its assessment, but their specific position received a much-discussed
philosophical defense by William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley in 1946. Beardsley saw the
position as an extension of The Aesthetic Pointof View ; Wimsatt was a practical critic personally
engaged in the new line of approach. In their essay The Intentional Fallacy,Wimsatt and
Beardsley claimed the design or intention of the artist is neither available nor desirable as a
standard for judging the success of a work of literary art.It was not always available, since it was
often difficult to obtain, but, in any case, it was not appropriately available, according to them,
unless there was evidence for it internal to the finished work of art. Wimsatt and Beardsley
allowed such forms of evidence for a writer s intentions, but would allow nothing external to the
given text.

This debate over intention in the literary arts has raged with full force into more recent times. A
contemporary of Wimsatt and Beardsley, E.D. Hirsch, has continued to maintain his
intentionalistpoint of view. Against him, Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels have taken up
an ahistorical position. Frank Cioffi, one of the original writers who wrote a forceful reply to
Wimsatt and Beardsley, aligned himself with neither camp, believing different cases were best
readsometimes just as, sometimes other than as, the artist knowingly intended them. One
reason he rejected intention, at times, was because he believed the artist might be unconscious of
the full significance of the artwork.

A similar debate arises in other art forms besides Literature, for instance Architecture, Theater,
and Music, although it has caused less professional comment in these arts, occurring more at the
practical level in terms of argument between puristsand modernizers.Purists want to
maintain a historical orientation to these art forms, while modernizers want to make things more
available for contemporary use. The debate also has a more practical aspect in connection with
the visual arts. For it arises in the question of what devalues fakes and forgeries, and by contrast
puts a special value on originality. There have been several notable frauds perpetrated by forgers
of artworks and their associates. The question is: if the surface appearance is much the same,
what especial valueis therein thefirst object?Nelson Goodman was inclined to think that one can
always locate a sufficient difference by looking closely at the visual appearance. But even if one
cannot, there remain the different histories of the original and the copy, and also the different
intentions behind them.

The relevance of such intentions in visual art has entered very prominently into philosophical
discussion. Arthur Danto, in his 1964 discussion of The Artworld,was concerned with the
question of howthe atmosphere of theory can alter howwe see artworks. This situation has arisen
in fact with respect to two notable paintings which look the same, as Timothy Binkley has
explained, namely Leonardo s original Mona Lisaand Duchamp s joke about it, called
L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved.The two works look ostensibly the same, but Duchamp, one needs to know,
had also produced a third work, L.H.O.O.Q.,which was a reproduction of the Mona Lisa,with
some graffiti on it: a goatee and moustache. He was alluding in that work to the possibility that
the sitter for the Mona Lisamight have been a young male, given the stories about Leonardo s
homosexuality. With the graffiti removed the otherwise visually similar works are still different,
since Duchamp s title, and the historyof its production, alters what we think about his piece.

6. Definitions of Art

Up to the de-definitionperiod, definitions of art fell broadly into three types, relating to
representation, expression, and form. The dominance of representation as a central concept in art
lasted from before Plato s time to around the end of the eighteenth century. Of course,
representational art is still to be found to this day, but it is no longer pre-eminent in the way it
once was. Platofirst formulated the idea by saying that art is mimesis, and, for instance, Bateaux
in the eighteenth century followed him, when saying: Poetry exists only by imitation. It is the
same thingwith painting, dance and music; nothingis real in their works, everything is imagined,
painted, copied, artificial. It is what makes their essential character as opposed tonature.

In the same century and the following one, with the advent of Romanticism, the concept of
expression became more prominent. Even around Plato s time, his pupil Aristotle preferred an
expression theory: art as catharsis of the emotions. And Burke, Hutcheson, and Hume also
promoted the idea that what was crucial in art were audience responses: pleasure in Art was a
matter of taste and sentiment. But the full flowering of the theory of Expression, in the twentieth
century, has shown that this is only oneside of the picture.

In the taxonomy of art terms Scruton provided, Response theories concentrate on affective
qualities such as
moving, exciting,nauseous, tedious,and so forth. But theories of art may
be called expression theorieseven though they focus on the embodied, emotional, and mental
qualities discussed before, like joyful,
melancholy, humble, vulgar,and intelligent.As we
shall see below, when recent studies of expression are covered in more detail, it has been writers
like John Hospers and O.K. Bouwsma who have preferred such theories. But there are other types
of theory which might, even more appropriately, be called expression theories.What an artist is
personally expressingis the focus of self-expression theories of art, but more universal themes are
often expressed by individuals, and art-historical theories see the artist as merely the channel for
broader social concerns.

R. G. Collingwood in the 1930s took art to be a matter of self-expression: By creating for

ourselves an imaginary experience or activity, we express our emotions; and this is what we call
art.And the noteworthy feature of Marx s theory of art, in the nineteenth century, and those of
the many different Marxists who followed him into the twentieth century, was that they were
expression theories in the
art-Historicalsense. The arts were taken, by people of this persuasion,
to be part of the superstructure of society, whose forms were determined by the economic base,
and so art came to be seen as expressing, or reflectingthose material conditions. Social theories
of art, however, need not be based on materialism. One of the major social theorists of the late
nineteenth century was the novelist Leo Tolstoy, who had a more spiritual point of view. He said:
Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external
signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are infected by these
feelings and also experience them.

Coming into the twentieth century, the main focus shifted towards abstraction and the
appreciation of form. The aesthetic, and the arts and crafts movements, in the latter part of the
nineteenth century drew people towards the appropriate qualities. The central concepts in
aesthetics are here the pureaesthetic ones mentioned before, like graceful, elegant,
exquisite,
glorious,and nice.But formalist qualities, such as organization, unity, and harmony, as well as
variety and complexity, are closely related, as are technical judgments like well-made, skilful,
and professionally written.Thelatter might be separated out as the focus of Craft theories of art,
as in the idea of art as Technein ancient Greece, but Formalist theories commonly focus on all
of these qualities, and aesthetesgenerally find them all of central concern. Eduard Hanslick was
a major late nineteenth century musical formalist; the Russian Formalists in the earlyyears of the
revolution, and the French Structuralists later, promoted the same interest in Literature. Clive
Bell and Roger Fry, members of the influential Bloomsbury Group in the first decades of the
twentieth century, were the most notedearly promotersof this aspect of Visual art.

Bell
s famous Aesthetic Hypothesiswas: What quality is shared by all objects that provoke our
aesthetic emotions? Only one answer seems possible significant form. In each, lines and colors
combined in a particular way; certain forms and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic emotions.
These relations and combinations of lines and colors, these aesthetically moving forms, I call
Significant Form; and Significant Formis the one quality common to all works of visual art.
Clement Greenberg, in the years of the Abstract Expressionists, from the 1940s to the 1970s, also
defended a version of this Formalism.

Abstraction was a major drive in early twentieth century art, but the later decades largely
abandoned the idea of any tight definition of art. The de-definitionof art was formulated in
academic philosophy by Morris Weitz, who derived his views from some work of Wittgenstein on
the notion of games. Wittgenstein claimed that there is nothing which all games have in common,
and so the historical development of them has come about through an analogical process of
generation, from paradigmatic examples merelyby way of family resemblances.

There are, however, ways of providing a kind of definition of art which respects its open texture.
The Institutional definition of art, formulated by GeorgeDickie, is in this class: a work of art is an
artefact which has had conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciationby the artworld.
This leaves the content of art open, since it is left up to museum directors, festival organizers, and
so forth, to decide what is presented. Also, as we saw before, Dickie left the notion of
appreciationopen, since he allowed that all aspects of a work of art could be attended to
aesthetically. But the notion of artefact,too, in this definition is not as restricted as it might
seem, since anything brought into an art space as a candidate for appreciation becomes thereby
artefactualized,accordingto Dickie and so he allowed as art what are otherwise called (natural)
Found Objects,and (previously manufactured) Readymades.Less emphasis on power brokers
was found in Monroe Beardsley s slightly earlier aesthetic definition of art: an artwork is
something produced with the intention of giving it the capacity to satisfy the aesthetic interest
where productionand aesthetichave their normal, restricted content. But this suggests that
these two contemporary definitions, like the others, merely reflect the historical way that art
developed in the associated period. Certainly traditional objective aesthetic standards, in the
earlier twentieth century, have largely given way to free choices in all manner of things by the
mandarins of the public art world morerecently.
7. Expression

Response theories of art were particularly popular during the Logical Positivist period in
philosophy, that is, around the 1920s and 1930s. Science was then contrastedsharply with Poetry,
for instance, the former being supposedly concerned with our rational mind, the latter with our
irrational emotions. Thus the noted English critic I. A. Richards tested responses to poems
scientifically in an attempt to judge their value, and unsurprisingly found no uniformity. Out of
this kind of study comes the common idea that art is all subjective
: if one concentrates on
whether people do or do not like a particular work of art then, naturally, there can easily seem to
be no reason to it.

We are now more used to thinking that the emotions are rational, partly because we now
distinguish the cause of an emotion from its target. If onelooks at what emotions are caused by an
artwork, not all of these need target the artwork itself, but instead what is merely associated with
it. So what the subjective approach centrally overlooks are questions to do with attention,
relevance, and understanding. With those as controlling features we get a basis for normalizing
the expected audience s emotions in connection with the artwork, and so move away from purely
personal judgments such as Well, it saddened meto moreuniversal assessments like it was sad.

And with the itmore focused on the artwork we also start to see the significance of the objective
emotional features it metaphorically possesses, which were what Embodiment theorists like
Hospers settled on as central. Hospers, following Bouwsma, claimed that the sadness of some
music, for instance, concerns not what is evoked in us, nor any feeling experienced by the
composer, but simply its physiognomic similarity to humans when sad: it will be slow not
tripping; it will be low not tinkling. People who are sad move more slowly, and when they speak
they speak softly and low.This was also a point of view developed at length by the gestalt
psychologist Rudolph Arnheim.

The discriminations do not stop there, however. Guy Sircello, against Hospers, pointed out first
that there are two ways emotions may be embodied in artworks: because of their form (which is
what Hospers chiefly had in mind), and because of their content. Thus, a picture may be sad not
because of its mood or color, but because its subject matter or topic is pathetic or miserable. That
point was only a prelude, however, to an even more radical criticism of Embodiment theories by
Sircello. For emotion words can also be applied, he said, on account of the artistic acts
performed by the artists in presentingtheir attitude to their subject. If we look upon an artwork
from this perspective, we are seeing it as a symptomin Suzanne Langer s terms; however,
Langer believed one should see it as a symbolholding some meaning which can be
communicated toothers.

Communication theorists all combine thethree elementsabove, namely theaudience, the artwork,
and the artist, but they come in a variety of stamps. Thus, while Clive Bell and Roger Fry were
Formalists, they were also Communication Theorists. Theysupposed that an artwork transmitted
aesthetic emotionfrom the artist to the audience on account of its significant form.Leo Tolstoi
was also a communication theorist but of almost the opposite sort. What had to be transmitted,
for Tolstoi, was expressly what was excluded by Bell and (to a lesser extent) Fry, namely the
emotions of life.Tolstoi wanted art to serve a moral purpose: helping to bind communities
together in their fellowship and common humanity under God. Bell and Fry saw no such social
purpose in art, and related to this difference were their opposing views regarding the value of
aesthetic properties and pleasure. These were anathema to Tolstoi, who, like Plato, thought they
led to waste; but the exaltedfeelings coming from the appreciation of pure form were celebrated
by Bell and Fry, since their metaphysical hypothesisclaimed it put one in touch with ultimate
reality.Bell said, What is that which is left when we have strippeda thing of all sensations, of all
its significance as a means? What but that which philosophers used to call the thing in itselfand
nowcall ultimate reality
.

This debate between moralists and aesthetes continues to this day with, for instance, Nol Carroll
supporting a Moderate Moralismwhile Anderson and Dean support Moderate Autonomism.
Autonomism wants aesthetic value to be isolated from ethical value, whereas Moralism sees them
as more intimately related.

Communication theorists generallycompare art to a form of Language. Langer was less interested
than the abovetheorists in legislating what may be communicated, and was instead concerned to
discriminate different art languages, and the differences between art languages generally and
verbal languages. She said, in brief, that art conveyed emotions of various kinds, while verbal
language conveyed thoughts, which was a point made by Tolstoy too. But Langer spelled out the
matter in far finer detail. Thus, she held that art languages were presentationalforms of
expression, while verbal languages were discursive with Poetry, an art form using verbal
language, combining both aspects, of course. Somewhat like Hospers and Bouwsma, Langer said
that art forms presented feelings because theywere morphologically similarto them: an artwork,
she held, shared the same form as the feeling it symbolizes. This gave rise to the main differences
between presentational and discursive modes of communication: verbal languages had a
vocabulary, a syntax, determinate meanings, and the possibility of translation, but none of these
were guaranteed for art languages, according to Langer. Art languages revealed what it is liketo
experience something they created virtual experiences.

The detailed ways in which this arises with different art forms Langer explained in her 1953 book
Feeling and Form. Scruton followed Langer in several ways, notably by remarking that the
experience of each art form is sui generis, that is,
each of its own kind.He also spelled out the
characteristics of a symbol in even more detail. Discussions of questions specific to each art form
have been pursued by many other writers; see, for instance, Dickie, Sclafani, and Roblin, and the
recent book by Gordon Graham.

8 . Representation

Like the concept of Expression, the concept of Representation has been verythoroughly examined
since theprofessionalization of Philosophy in the twentieth century.

Isnt representation just a matter of copying? If representation could be understood simply in

terms of copying, that would require the innocent eye,that is, one which did not incorporate any
interpretation. E. H. Gombrich was the first to point out that modes of representation are, by
contrast, conventional, and therefore have a cultural, socio-historical base. Thus perspective,
which one might view as merely mechanical, is only a recent way of representingspace, and many
photographs distort what we take to be reality for instance, those from the ground of tall
buildings, which seem to make them incline inwards at the top.

Goodman, too, recognized that depictionwas conventional; he likened it to denotation, that is, the
relation between a word and what it stands for. He also gave a more conclusive argument against
copying being the basis of representation. For that would make resemblance a type of
representation, whereas if a resembles b, then b resembles a yet a dog does not represent its
picture. In other words, Goodman is saying that resemblance implies a symmetric relationship,
but representation does not. As a result, Goodman made the point that representation is not a
craft but an art: we create pictures of things, achieving a view of those things by representing
them as this or as that. As a result, while one sees the objects depicted, the artists thoughts about
those objects may also be discerned, as with Sircello artistic arts.The plain idea that just
s
objects are represented in a picture was behind Richard Wollheim s account of representational
art in the first edition of his book Art and Its Objects (1968). There, the paint in a picture was said
to be seen asan object. But in the book s second edition, Wollheim augmented this account to
allowfor what is also seen inthe work, which includes such things as the thoughtsof the artist.

There are philosophical questions of another kind, however, with respect to the representation of
objects, because of the problematic nature of fictions. There are three broad categories of object
which might be represented: individuals which exist, like Napoleon; types of thing which exist,
like kangaroos; and things which do not exist, like Mr. Pickwick, and unicorns. Goodman s
account of representation easily allowed for the first two categories, since, if depictions are like
names, the first two categories of painting compare, respectively, with the relations between the
proper name Napoleonand the person Napoleon, and the common name kangarooand the
various kangaroos. Some philosophers would think that the third category was as easily
accommodated, but Goodman, beingan Empiricist (and so concerned with theextensional world),
was only prepared to countenance existent objects. So for him pictures of fictions did not denote
or represent anything; instead, they were just patterns of various sorts. Pictures of unicorns were
just shapes, for Goodman, which meant that he saw the description picture of a unicornas
unarticulated into parts. What he preferred to call a unicorn-picturewas merely a design with
certain named shapes within it. One needs to allow there are intensionalobjects as well as
extensional ones before one can construe picture of a unicornas parallel to picture of a
kangaroo.By contrast with Goodman, Scruton is one philosopher more happy with this kind of
construal. It is a construal generally more congenial to Idealists, and to Realists of various
persuasions, than toEmpiricists.

The contrast between Empiricists and other types of philosopher also bears on other central
matters to do with fictions. Is a fictional storya lie about this world, or a truth about some other?
Only if one believes there are other worlds, in some kind of way, will one be able to see much
beyond untruths in stories. A Realist will settlefor there being fictional characters,often enough,
about which we know there are some determinate truths wasn t Mr. Pickwick fat? But one
difficulty then is knowing things about Mr. Pickwick other than what Dickens tells us was Mr.
Pickwick fond of grapes, for instance? An Idealist will be more prepared to consider fictions as
just creatures of our imaginations. This style of analysis has been particularlyprominent recently,
with Scruton essaying a general theory of the imagination in which statements like Mr. Pickwick
was fatare entertained in an unassertedfashion. One problem with this style of analysis is
explaining how we can have emotional relations with, and responses to, fictional entities. We
noticed this kind of problem before, in Burke s description delightful horror: how can audiences
get pleasure from tragedies and horror stories when, if those same events were encountered in
real life, theywould surelybe anything but pleasurable? On the other hand, unless we believe that
fictions are real, howcan we, for instance, be moved by the fate of Anna Karenina? Colin Radford,
in 1975, wrote a celebrated paper on this matter which concluded that the paradox of emotional
response to fictionwas unsolvable: adult emotional responses to fictions were brute facts,but
they were still incoherent and irrational, he said. Radford defended this conclusion in a series of
further papers in what became an extensive debate. Kendall Walton, in his 1990 book Mimesis
and Make-Believe, pursued at length an Idealist s answer to Radford. At a play, for instance,
Walton said the audience enters into a form of pretence with the actors, not believing, but making
believethat the portrayedevents and emotions are real.

9. Art Objects

What kind of thing is a work of art? Goodman, Wollheim, Wolterstorff, and Margolis have been
notablecontributors to thecontemporary debate.

We must first distinguish the artwork from its notation or recipe,and from its various physical
realizations. Examples would be: some music, its score, and its performances; a drama, its script,
and its performances; an etching, its plate, and its prints; and a photograph, its negative, and its
positives. The notations here are digitalin the first two cases, and analoguein the second two,
since they involve discrete elements like notes and words in the one case, and continuous
elements like lines and color patches in the other. Realizations can also be divided into two broad
types, as these same examples illustrate: there are those that arise in time (performance works)
and those that arise in space (object works). Realizations are always physical entities. Sometimes
there is only one realization, as with architect-designed houses, couturier-designed dresses, and
many paintings, and Wollheim concluded that in these cases the artwork is entirely physical,
consisting of that one, unique realization. However, a number a copies were commonly made of
paintings in the middle ages, and it is theoretically possible to replicate even expensive clothing
and houses.
Philosophical questions in this area arise mainly with respect to the ontological status of the idea
which gets executed. Wollheim brought in Charles Peirce s distinction between types and tokens,
as an answer to this: the number of different tokens of letters (7), and different types of letter (5),
in the string ABACDEC,indicates the difference. Realizations are tokens, but ideas are types,
that is, categories of objects. There is a normative connection between them as Margolis and
Nicholas Wolterstorff have explained, since the execution of ideas is an essentially social
enterprise.

That also explains howthe need for a notation arises: one which would link not only the idea with
its execution, but also the various functionaries. Broadly, there are the creative persons who
generatethe ideas, which are transmittedby means of a recipe tomanufacturers who generate the
material objects and performances. Typesare created, particulars are madeit has been said, but
the link is through the recipe. Schematically, two main figures are associated with the production
of many artworks: the architect and the builder, the couturier and the dressmaker, the composer
and theperformer, the choreographer and the dancer, the script-writer and the actor, and so forth.
But a much fuller list of operatives is usually involved, as is very evident with the production of
films, and other similar large entertainments. Sometimes the director of a film is concerned to
control all its aspects, when we get the notion of an auteurwho can be said to be the author of
the work, but normally, creativity and craft thread through the whole production process, since
even those designated originatorsstill work within certain traditions, and no recipe can limit
entirelythe end product.

The associated philosophical question concerns the nature of any creativity. There is not much
mystery aboutthe making of particulars from some recipe, but much more needs to be said about
the process of originating some new idea. For creation is not just a matter of getting into an
excited mental state as in a brainstormingsession, for instance. That is a central part of the
creative processtheory,a form of which is to be foundin the work of Collingwood. It was in these
terms that Collingwood distinguished the artist from the craftsperson, namely with reference to
what the artist was capable of generatingjust in his or her mind. But the major difficulty with this
kind of theory is that any novelty has to be judged externally in terms of the artists social place
amongst other workers in the field, as Jack Glickman has shown. Certainly, if it is tobe an original
idea, the artist cannot know beforehand what the outcome of the creative process will be. But
others might have had the same idea before, and if the outcome was known already, then the idea
thought up was not original in the appropriate sense. Thus the artist will not be credited with
ownership in such cases. Creation is not a process, but a public achievement: it is a matter of
breakingthe tape ahead of others in a certain race.

Indian aesthetics
Indian art evolved with an emphasis on inducing special spiritual or philosophical states in
the audience, or with representing them symbolically. According to Kapila Vatsyayan,
"Classical Indian architecture, sculpture, painting, literature (k vya), music, and dancing
evolved their own rules conditioned by their respective media, but they shared with one
another not only the underlying spiritual beliefs of the Indian religio-philosophic mind, but
also the procedures by which the relationships of the symbol and the spiritual states were
worked out in detail."
In the Pan Indian philosophic thought the term 'Satyam Shivam Sundaram' is another name
for the concept of the Supreme. 'Sat' is the truth value, 'Shiv' is the good value& 'Sundaram' is
the beauty value. Man through his 'Srabana' or education, 'Manana' or experience and
conceptualization and 'Sadhana' or practice, through different stages of life (Ashramas)
comesto form and realize the idea of these three values to develop a value system. This Value
-system helps us to develop two basic ideas 1) that of 'Daksha' or the adept/expert and 2) of
Mahana/Parama or the Absolute and thus to judge anything in this universe in the light of
these two measures, known as 'Adarsha'. A person who has mastered great amounts of
knowledge of the grammars, rules, & language of an art-form are adepts (Daksha), whereas
those who have worked through the whole system and journeyed ahead of these to become a
law unto themselves is called a Mahana. Individuals idea of 'Daksha' and 'Mahana' is relative
to one's development of the concept of 'Satyam-Shivam-Sundaram.' For example, Tagore's
idea of these two concepts should be way above any common man's and many perceive
Tagore as a 'Mahana' Artist in the realm of literature. This concept of Satyam-Shivam-
Sundaram, a kind of Value Theory is the cornerstoneof Indian Aesthetics.
Of particular concern to Indian drama and literature are the term 'Bhava' or the state of mind
and rasa referring generally to the emotional flavors/essence crafted into the work by the
writer and relished by a 'sensitive spectator' or sahdaya or one with positive taste and mind.
Poets likeK lid sa were attentive to rasa, which blossomed into a fully developed aesthetic
system. Even in contemporary India the term rasa denoting "flavor" or "essence" is used
colloquially to describe the aesthetic experiences in films; "m sala mix" describes popular
Hindi cinema films which serve a so-called balanced emotional meal for the masses, savored
as rasa bythese spectators.
Rasa theory blossoms beginning with the Sanskrit text N tyash stra (n tya meaning"drama"
and sh stra meaning"scienceof"), a work attributed to Bharata Muni where the Gods declare
that drama is the 'Fifth Veda' because it is suitable for the degenerate age as the best form of
religious instruction. While the date of composition varies wildly among scholars, ranging
from the era of Plato and Aristotle to the seventh century CE. The N tyash stra presents the
aesthetic conceptsof rasas and their associated bh vas in Chapters Six and Seven respectively,
which appear to be independent of the work as a whole. Eight rasas and associated bh vas
are named and their enjoyment is likened to savoring a meal: rasa is the enjoyment of flavors
that arise from the proper preparation of ingredients and the quality of ingredients. What
rasa actually is, in a theoretical sense, is not discussed and given the N tyash stra's pithy
wording it is unlikely the exact understanding of the original author(s) will be known.
The theory of the rasas develops significantly with the Kashmiri aesthetician
ndandavardhana's classic on poetics, the Dhvany loka which introduces the ninth rasa,
sh nta-rasa as a specifically religious feeling of peace ( nta) which arises from its bh va,
weariness of the pleasures of the world. The primary purpose of this text is to refine the
literary concept dhvani or poetic suggestion, by arguing for the existence of rasa-dhvani,
primarily in forms of Sanskrit including a word, sentence or whole work "suggests" a real-
world emotional state or bh va, but thanks to aesthetic distance, the sensitive spectator
relishes the rasa, the aesthetic flavor of tragedy, heroism or romance.
The 9th - 10th century master of the religious system known as "the nondual Shaivism of
Kashmir" (or "Kashmir Shaivism") and aesthetician, Abhinavagupta brought rasa theory to
its pinnacle in his separate commentaries on the Dhvany loka, the Dhvany loka-locana
(translated by Ingalls, Masson and Patwardhan, 1992) and the Abhinavabharati, his
commentary on the N tyash stra, portions of which are translated by Gnoli and Masson and
Patwardhan. Abhinavagupta offersfor the first time a technical definition of rasa which is the
universal bliss of the Self or Atman colored by the emotional tone of a drama. Sh nta-rasa
functions as an equal member of the set of rasas but is simultaneously distinct being the most
clear form of aesthetic bliss. Abhinavagupta likensit to the string of a jeweled necklace; while
it may not be the most appealing for most people, it is the string that gives form to the
necklace, allowing the jewels of the other eight rasas to be relished. Relishing the rasas and
particularly sh nta-rasa is hinted as being as-good-as but never-equal-to the bliss of Self-
realization experienced by yogis.

Interior design in the West

Ancient world

E GYPT

In contrast with the monumental tombs and temples of stone, manyof which remained intact
to the 20th century, Egyptian houses were built of perishable materials, and, therefore, few
remains have survived. Sun-dried or kiln-burnt mud bricks were used for the walls; floors
consisted of beaten earth, and a thin coat of smoothmud plaster was oftenused as an internal
wall finish.
In its simplest form the applied decoration was a plain white or coloured wash, but, in larger
houses, patterns in varying degrees of elaboration were painted on the plaster. Rush matting
was hung across most internal door openings and used as screening inside the small, high
windows. It is probable that decorative wall hangings and floor coverings were made of
rushes or palmetto woven into a pattern, since painted representations of such hangings have
survived from 5th-dynasty tombs at Saqq rah. In the workmen s village of Kahun, built in the
12th dynasty (c. 1900 BC), some of the more well-to-do houses contained rooms decorated
with brown-painted skirting, onefoot (0.3 metre) high, then a four-foot (1.2-metre) dado (the
lower portion of wall that is decorated differently from that above it) striped vertically in red,
black, and white. Above this the walls were buff coloured with brightly painted decorative
panels in the more important rooms, and ceilings werealso often of painted wood. It may be
assumed that the lavish tomb decoration of all periods was basically derived from the
domestic interiorsof their time.
Many Egyptian decorative motifs are stylized from natural forms associated with the life-
giving Nile. The lotus bud and flower, the papyrus, and the palm appear constantly with
borders of checkered patterns or coiled, ropelike spirals, giving an air of space and elegance.
The palace of the pharaoh Akhenaton and other large houses at Tell el-Amarna (c. 1365 BC)
reflect a tendencytoward naturalism in their ornamentations.Akhenaton, his queen Nefertiti,
and their daughters are frequently represented, usually grouped affectionately together.
Other painted panels show animals and birds with twining borders of vegetation. Molded,
coloured, glazed ware was introduced to give a brilliant inlay of grapes, poppies, cornflowers,
and daisies, all in natural colours. The use of square ceramic tiles as a wall surfacing was
uncommon but not unknown. Primary colours were the most common, a brilliant yellow
being among the most frequently used, but terra-cotta, gray, black, and white were all added
to give contrast. Even floors were delicately painted to represent gardens or pools. One of
these at Tell el-Amarna shows a rectangular tank with swimming fish and waterfowl,
bordered with lotus and papyrus marshland, with an outer band showing more birds and
young cattle in the meadows beyond. Furniture ranged from the simplest benches and
ceramic pots to beautifully designed chairs, small tables, and beds in the homes of the rich,
where many vases, urns, ceramic, wood, and metal utensils evince a fastidious, luxurious way
of life.

Theory of Aesthetics by K ant

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)Theory of Aesthetics : Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)Theory of
Aesthetics Kant is an 18th century German philosopher whose work initiated dramatic
changes in philosophy. As an Enlightenmentthinker, he holds our mental faculty of reason
in high esteem. He believes that it is our reason that invests the world we experience with
structure. He believes that it is the
faculty of judgmentthat enables us to have experienceof
beauty and grasp those experiencesas part of an ordered, natural world with purpose.

The Central Problems of The Critique of Judgment: The Central Problems of The Critique
of JudgmentKant defines judgmentas the subsumptionof a particular under a universal.
The faculty of understanding is that which supplies concepts (universals), and reason is that
which draws inferences (constructs syllogisms, for example), Then judgment 'mediates'
between the understanding and reason by allowing individual acts of subsumption to occur.

The distinction between determinate and reflective judgments I : The distinction between
determinate and reflective judgments I In the determinate judgment, the concept is sufficient
to determine the particular The concept contains sufficient information for the
identification of any particular instance of it. The reflective judgment is a more difficult
philosophical issue because The judgment has to proceed without a concept, sometimes in
order to form a newconcept.

The distinction between determinate and reflective judgments II : The distinction between
determinate and reflective judgments II Kants conundrum: How could a judgment take place
without a prior concept? That is: How are new concepts formed? And are there judgments
that neither begin nor end with determinate concepts?

Kant's Aesthetics The Judgment of the Beautiful I : Kant's Aesthetics The Judgment of the
Beautiful I The Critique of Judgment begins with an account of beauty. Kant argues that such
aesthetic judgments(or 'judgmentsof taste') must have four keydistinguishing features. First,
they are disinterested we take pleasure in something because we judge it beautiful rather
than the other way around. If we judge something pleasurable because it is beautiful, it is
morelike the judgment of what is agreeable.

Kant's Aesthetics The Judgment of the Beautiful II & III : Kant's Aesthetics The Judgment of
the Beautiful II & III Second and third, such judgments are both universal and necessary. We
may say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but thats not how we act. There is no objective
property of a thing that makes it beautiful. For Kant necessity and universality are a product
of features of the human mind what he calls commonsense

Kant's Aesthetics The Judgment of the Beautiful IV : Kant's Aesthetics The Judgment of the
Beautiful IV Fourth, through aesthetic judgments, beautiful objects appear to be 'purposive
without purpose An object s purpose is the concept according to which it was made Beautiful
objects should affect us as though they have a purpose, although no particular purpose can be
found.

Kant differs from Hume I : Kant differs from Hume I The key ideas for Hume were: (i) There
is a definite human nature -- thus beauty could, within limits, be universal in scope; (ii)
Beautiful objects [and our responses to them] involved sense or feeling, and were not
cognitive; (iii) Any 'natural' responses to beauty were generally overlaid by individual and
communal experiences, habits and customs.

Kant differs from Hume II : Kant differs from Hume II Hume s main disagreement with
rationalist thought on aesthetics was in the second of these ideas. (ii) Beautiful objects [and
our responses to them] involved sense or feeling, and were not cognitive Kant believed that
there was a basic distinction between intuitive or sensible presentations and the conceptual
or rational on the other.

Kant: 'how are judgments about beauty possible I : Kant: 'how are judgments about beauty
possibleI The First Moment: Aesthetic judgments are disinterested. Interest = a link to real
desire and action There are two types of interest: by wayof sensations in the agreeable and by
way of concepts in the good. Only aesthetic judgment is free or pure of any such interests.
Even more: the existence of the beautiful object is irrelevant. Kant is founder of Formalist
Aesthetics

Kant: 'how are judgments about beauty possible IIa: Kant: 'how are judgments about beauty
possibleIIa The Second Moment: Aesthetic judgments behave universally They involve an
expectation or claim on the agreement of others just 'as if' beauty werea real property of the
object judged.

Kant: 'howare judgments about beauty possible IIb : Kant: 'howare judgments about beauty
possible IIb I at least implicitly demand universality in the name of taste.The way that my
aesthetic judgments 'behave' is key evidence here: that is, I tend to see disagreement as
involving error somewhere, rather than agreement as involving mere coincidence. Being
reflective judgments, aesthetic judgments of taste have no adequate concept (at least to begin
with), and therefore can onlybehave as if they were objective. Introduces the concept of free
playof our cognitive faculties to help explain this.

Kant: 'how are judgmentsabout beauty possible IIIa : Kant: 'howare judgments about beauty
possibleIIIa The Third Moment: purpose and purposiveness An object's purpose is the
concept according to which it was manufactured; Kant claims that the beautiful has to be
understood as purposive, but without any definite purpose. [definite purpose = external or
internal meant to do vs. be like. Kant argues that beauty is equivalent neither to utility nor
perfection, but is still purposive.

Kant: 'how are judgments about beauty possibleIIIb : Kant: 'how are judgments about
beauty possibleIIIb Beauty in nature, then, will appear as purposive with respect to our
faculty of judgment, but its beauty will have no ascertainable purpose. Indeed, this is why
beauty is pleasurable.

Kant: 'how are judgments about beauty possible IV : Kant: 'how are judgments about beauty
possibleIV The Fourth Moment: Aesthetic Judgments as being 'necessary' necessary'
effectively means, 'according to principle'. [SEE HIS ETHICS] Everyone must assent to my
judgment, because it follows from this principle. But this necessity is of a peculiar sort: it is
'exemplary' and 'conditioned'.

The Deduction of Taste I : The Deduction of Taste I Kant argues that judgment itself, as a
faculty, has a fundamental principle that governs it. This principle asserts the purposiveness
of all phenomenawith respect to our judgment. This is because the beautiful draws particular
attention to its purposiveness; but also because the beautiful has no concept of a purpose
available, so that wecannot just apply a concept and be donewith it.

The Deduction of Taste II : The Deduction of Taste II He is arguing that the kinds of
'cognition' (i.e. thinking) characteristic of the contemplation of the beautiful are not, in fact,
all that different from ordinary cognition about things in the world. What s he doing here?
The key idea is that of a harmony among the faculties of cognition. The Judgment of Taste is
important because it provides purposive without purpose, thus providing a model of that
harmony.

The Sublime : The Sublime For Kant, the other basic type of aesthetic experience is the
sublime. The sublime names experiences, like violent storms or huge buildings, which seem
to overwhelm us. The problem for Kant here is that this experience seems to directly
contradict the principle of the purposiveness of nature for our judgment. Kant's solution is
that, in fact, the storm or the building is not the real object of the sublime at all. Instead, what
is properly sublime are ideasof reason.

Fine Art and Genius : Fine Art and Genius Kant argues that art can be tasteful (that is, agree
with aesthetic judgment) and yet be 'soulless' - lacking that certain something that would
make it more than just an artificial version of a beautiful natural object. What provides soul
in fineart is an aesthetic idea. It is the talent of genius to generate aesthetic ideas.

CRITIQU E OF JUDGM E NT
The Critique of Judgment (German: Kritik der Urteilskraft), or in the new Cambridge
translation Critique of the Power of Judgment, also known as the third critique, is a
1790 philosophical work by Immanuel Kant. It lays the foundationsfor modern aesthetics.

Foundations
Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment simultaneously completeshis Critical project and lays
the foundations for modern aesthetics. The most popular English translation is the one by
James Creed Meredith, though recently Paul Guyer's translation, part of the newCambridge
Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant in Translation, has gained some ground. Guyer
translates the title as the Critique of the Power of Judgment, though this title has not caught
on as the standard way of referring to the text. The Guyer and Werner S. Pluhar translations
tend to bepreferred over the older Meredith and Bernard editions.[citation needed]

The book is divided into two main sections, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and
the Critique of Teleological Judgment, and also includes a large overviewof the entirety of the
Critical system, arranged in its final form. The so-called First Introductionwas not published
during Kant's lifetime, for Kant wrotea replacement for publication.

The Critical project, that of exploring the limits and conditions of knowledge, had already
produced the Critique of Pure Reason, in which Kant argued for a Transcendental Aesthetic,
an approach to the problems of perception in which space and time are supposed not to be
objects but ways in which the observing subject's mind organizes and structures the sensory
world. The end result of this inquiry is that there are certain fundamental antinomies in
human Reason, most particularly that there is a complete inability to favor on the one hand
the argument that all behavior and thought is determined by external causes, and on the
other that there is an actual "spontaneous" causal principle at work in human behavior.

The first position, of causal determinism, is adopted, in Kant's view, by empirical scientists of
all sorts; moreover, it led to the Idea (perhaps never fully to be realized) of a final sciencein
which all empirical knowledge could be synthesized into a full and complete causal
explanation of all events possible to the world.

The second position, of spontaneous causality, is implicitly adopted by all people as they
engage in moral behavior; this position is explored more fully in the Critique of Practical
Reason.
The Critique of Judgment constitutes a discussion of the place of Judgment itself, which must
overlap both the Understanding (which operates from within a deterministic framework) and
Reason (which operates onthe grounds of freedom).

Aesthetics
The first part of the book, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, discusses the four possible
"reflective judgments": the agreeable, the beautiful, the sublime, and the good. Kant makes it
clear that these are the onlyfour possible reflectivejudgments, as he relates them to the Table
of Judgments from the Critique of PureReason.

"Reflective judgments" differ from determinative judgments (those of the first critique). In
reflective judgment we seek to find unknown universals for given particulars; whereas in
determinative judgment, we just subsume given particulars under universals that are already
known, as Kant puts it:

It is then one thing to say,

the production of certain things of nature or that of collective
nature is onlypossible through a cause which determines itself to action accordingto design ;
and quite another to say, I can according to the peculiar constitution of my cognitive
faculties judge concerning the possibility of these things and their production, in no other
fashion than by conceiving for this a cause working according to design, i.e. a Being which is
productive in a way analogous to the causality of an intelligence.In the former case I wish to
establish something concerning the Object, and am bound to establish the objective reality of
an assumed concept; in the latter, Reason only determines the use of my cognitive faculties,
conformably to their peculiarities and to the essential conditions of their range and their
limits. Thus the former principle is an objective proposition for the determinant Judgment,
the latter merely a subjective proposition for the reflective Judgment, i.e. a maxim which
Reason prescribes to it.

The agreeable is a purely sensoryjudgment judgments in the form of "This steak is good," or
"This chair is soft." These are purely subjective judgments, based on inclination alone.

The good is essentially a judgment that something is ethical the judgment that something
conforms with moral law, which, in the Kantian sense, is essentially a claim of modality a
coherencewith a fixed and absolute notionof reason. It is in many ways the absoluteopposite
of the agreeable, in that it is a purely objective judgment things are either moral or they are
not, accordingto Kant.

The remaining two judgments - the beautiful and the sublime - occupy a space between the
agreeable and the good. They are what Kant refers to as "subjective universal" judgments.
This apparently oxymoronic term means that, in practice, the judgments are subjective, and
are not tied to any absolute and determinate concept. However, the judgment that something
is beautiful or sublime is made with the belief that other people ought to agree with this
judgment - even though it is known that many will not. The forceof this "ought" comesfrom a
referenceto a "sensus communis" - a communityof taste. HannahArendt, in her Lectures on
Kant's Political Philosophy, suggests the possibility that this sensus communis might be the
basis of a political theory that is markedly different from the one that Kant lays out in the
Metaphysic of Morals.
The judgment that something is beautiful is a claim that it possesses the "form of finality" -
that is, that it appears to havebeen designed witha purpose, even though it does not haveany
apparent practical function. The judgment that something is sublime is a judgment that it is
beyond the limits of comprehension - that it is an object of fear. However, Kant makes clear
that the object must not actuallybe threatening - it merely must be recognized as deserving of
fear.

Kant's view of the beautiful and the sublime is frequently read as an attempt to resolve one of
the problems left following his depiction of moral law in the Critique of Practical Reason -
namely that it is impossible to prove that we have freewill, and thus impossible to prove that
we are bound under moral law. The beautiful and the sublime both seem to refer to some
external noumenal order - and thus to the possibility of a noumenal self that possesses free
will.

In this section of the critique Kant also establishes a faculty of mind that is in many ways the
inverse of judgment - the faculty of genius. Whereas judgment allows one to determine
whether something is beautiful or sublime, genius allows one to produce what is beautiful or
sublime.

Teleology
The second half of the Critique discusses teleological judgement. This way of judging things
according to their ends (telos: Greek for end) is logically connected to the first discussion at
least regarding beauty but suggests a kind of (self-) purposiveness (that is, meaningfulness
known by one'sself).

Kant writes about the biological as teleological, claiming that there are things, such as living
beings, whose parts exist for the sake of their wholeand their whole for the sake of their parts.
This allows him to open a gap in the physical world: since these "organic" things cannot be
brought under therules that apply to all other appearances, what arewe to do withthem?

Kant says explicitly that while efficiently causal explanations are always best (x causes y, y is
the effect of x), there "will never be a Newton for a blade of grass", and so the organic must be
explained as ifit were constituted as teleological. This portion of the Critique is, from some
modern theories, where Kant is most radical; he posits man as the ultimate end, that is, that
all other forms of nature exist for the purpose of their relation to man, directly or not, and
that man is left outside of this due to his faculty of reason. Kant claims that culture becomes
the expression of this, that it is the highest teleological end, as it is the only expression of
human freedom outside of the laws of nature. Man also garners the place as the highest
teleological end due to his capacity for morality, or practical reason, which falls in line with
the ethical system that Kant proposes in the Critique of Practical Reason and
the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysicsof Morals.

Kant attempted to legitimize purposive categories in the life sciences, without a theological
commitment. He recognized the concept of purpose has epistemological value for finality,
while denying its implicationsabout creative intentionsat life and the universe's source. Kant
described natural purposes as organized beings, meaning that the principle of knowledge
presupposes living creatures as purposive entities. He called this supposition the finality
concept as a regulative use, which satisfies living beings specificity of knowledge. This
heuristic framework claims there is a teleology principle at purpose's source and it is the
mechanical devices of the individual original organism, including its heredity. Such entities
appear to be self-organizing in patterns. Kant's ideas allowed Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
and his followersto formulate the scienceof types (morphology) and to justify itsautonomy.
Kant held that there was no purpose represented in the aesthetic judgement of an object's
beauty. A pure aesthetic judgement excludesthe object's purpose.

Influences
Though Kant consistently maintains that the human mind is not an "intuitive understanding"
something that creates the phenomena which it cognizesseveral of his readers (starting
with Fichte, culminating in Schelling) believed that it must be (and often give Kant credit).

Kants discussions of schema and symbol late in the first half of the Critique of Judgement
also raise questions about the way the mind represents its objects to itself, and so are
foundational for an understanding of the development of much late 20th century continental
philosophy: Jacques Derrida is known to havestudied the book extensively.

The core of modern Aesthetics utilized the Kantian critique of judgement as a framework in
which aesthetic questions could bedebated.

Schopenhauer s comments
Schopenhauer noted that Kant was concerned with the analysis of abstract concepts, rather
than with perceived objects. "he does not start from the beautiful itself, from the direct,
beautiful object of perception, but from the judgement [someone
s statement] concerning the
beautiful."

Kant was strongly interested, in all of his critiques, with the relation between mental
operations and external objects. "His attention is specially aroused by the circumstance that
such a judgement is obviously the expression of something occurring in the subject, but is
nevertheless as universally valid as if it concerned a quality of the object. It is this that struck
him, not the beautiful itself."

The book s form is the result of concluding that beauty can be explained by examining the
concept of suitableness. Schopenhauer stated that Thus we have the queer combination of
the knowledge of the beautiful with that of the suitableness of natural bodies into one faculty
of knowledge called power of judgement, and the treatment of the two heterogeneous
subjectsin onebook.

Kant is inconsistent, according to Schopenhauer, because after it had been incessantly

repeated in the Critique of Pure Reason that the understanding is the ability to judge, and
after the forms of its judgements are made the foundation stone of all philosophy, a quite
peculiar power of judgement nowappears which is entirely different from that ability.

With regard to teleological judgement, Schopenhauer claimed that Kant tried to say only this:
"although organized bodies necessarily seem to us as though they were constructed
according to a conception of purpose which preceded them, this still does not justify us in
assuming it to be objectively the case." This is in accordance with Kant's usual concern with
the correspondence between subjectivity (the way that we think) and objectivity (the external
world). Our minds want to think that natural bodies were made by a purposeful intelligence,
like ours.