Aesthetic Value and Beauty (Burke, Kant, Lyotard et al.

Use the class powerpoint presentation to answer the following questions. Take detailed
notes and bring them with you to class to help you participate in the discussion during the
seminar.

The reading assigned for the class will also help you to form your views.

1. Who and what was it that ‘awoke [Kant] from his dogmatic slumber? How did this
influence Kant’s work? i.e. what did he set out to do?

2. What are ‘aesthetic judgements’ and how are they different from ordinary cognitive
judgements and from moral judgements?

3. Explain the following Kantian terms: a priori; a posteriori; analytic; synthetic.

4. Explain the paradox that aesthetic judgement seems to be subjective and universal
at the same time.

5. What does Kant mean when he says that beauty is without concept? What difficulty
does this cause us in the making of aesthetic judgements?

6. What does Kant mean when he states that everyone possesses a common aesthetic
sense? What does this enable us to do with regard to aesthetic judgements?

7. To what extent do you agree that we all share a ‘common aesthetic sense’? Give
reasons for your view.

8. What is meant by ‘subjective finality?

9. To what extent do you agree with Terry Eagleton that ‘when … we find ourselves
concurring spontaneously in an aesthetic judgement, able to agree that a certain
phenomenon is sublime or beautiful, we exercise a precious form of
intersubjectivity, establishing ourselves as a community of feeling subjects linked by
a quick sense of our shared capacities’ (Eagleton 1990, 76). Give reasons for your
view.

10. Do you agree with Eagleton that ‘In the sphere of aesthetic culture … we can
experience our shared humanity with all the immediacy of our response to a fine
painting or a magnificent symphony’? (Eagleton 1990, 76).

11. What, for Kant, is the importance of the genius?

12. Evaluate Kant’s conditions for beauty that it is

a. ‘universal without a concept’

b. a ‘disinterested satisfaction’
 c. ‘finality without end’

13. What does Kant mean by (a) Free beauty and (b) Adherent/dependent beauty?

14. What are the main criticisms of Kant’s aesthetics, particularly in relation to what he
has to say about beauty?

15. How does composer Helmut Lachenmann conceive of beauty in relation to

contemporary music? What, for him, is the problem with ‘conventional beauty’? Do
you agree with his view? Give reasons.

16. Give some examples of pieces of music which for you are beautiful and explain what
it is that you find beautiful about each piece?

17. How important do you think beauty is for artworks and musical
compositions/improvisations etc? Give reasons.