Kant’s Aesthetic Theory: key issues.
An Introduction by the Guest Editor of the Special Issue
NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal
Abstract
This
introduction presents an overview of the special issue of Con-Textos
Kantianos devoted to Kant’s aesthetic theory. The articles in this issue
have been organized into two sections: those written by keynote-authors, and
those written in response to the general call for papers. Within each of these
two sections, articles have been organized thematically, although the
philosophical traditions that they engage with, as well as points of contact
between articles, have also been considered. In the first section, keynote-authors
address questions of aesthetic normativity; the role of aesthetics in the acquisition
of empirical concepts; the emotional nature of aesthetics; subjectivity and
disinterestedness; connections between aesthetics, anthropology, and politics;
and aesthetic non-conceptualism. The second section begins with contributions
dealing with matters of formalism and conceptualism in Kant’s aesthetics, as
well as their relation and relevance to thinking about art, the arts, and
contemporary art. It continues with papers that address key issues of Kant’s
aesthetics, such as the free play and the role of imagination, as well as
possible complementarities between the three Critiques. It closes with articles
that focus on the reception of Kant’s aesthetic theory in the works of major
philosophers of the 20th century, namely within critical theory and
the phenomenological-hermeneutical tradition.
Keywords
Aesthetics; judgment of taste; beauty; sublime;
art; aesthetic normativity
The
call for papers for the special issue of Con-textos Kantianos –
international journal of philosophy devoted to Kant’s aesthetic theory
was announced at the beginning of 2020. In the meantime, major contributions on
Kant’s aesthetic theory kept being published in leading journals, with one
particularly welcome development being that Aviv Reiter was awarded the 2020
British Society of Aesthetics Essay Prize for her paper ‘Kant on the aesthetic
ideas of beautiful nature’, soon to be published in the British Journal of Aesthetics.
Equally welcome is the news that the ultimate outcome of the conference “Kant,
aesthetics and contemporary art”, which took place in October 2020, will take
the form of a special issue of Kantian Review on the relation between Kant’s
aesthetics and contemporary art, to be published in 2021. Kant’s aesthetic
theory is clearly a lively field of research both within and beyond the scope
of Kantian scholarship.
Con-Textos Kantianos plays a key role in propagating this field of research, as a journal
which commits to both a clear Latin American scope and a Kantian cosmopolitan
vocation. The call for papers for this special issue on Kant’s aesthetic theory
elicited responses from a number of authors, with outstanding contributions
being submitted in five different languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian,
German, and English). Fifteen papers have been selected, in addition to the
articles of six keynote-authors who have kindly accepted our invitation to head
the issue.
The
papers within the two parts of this issue have been organized thematically,
although the philosophical traditions that the papers engage with, as well as
how they work in dialogue with other papers, have also been considered.
Among
the contributions given by the keynote-authors, the first three are on aesthetic
normativity. Hannah Ginsborg’s leading status in the scholarship on
Kant’s aesthetics is reason enough for this issue to start with her article,
but the way that the two following papers develop in dialogue with her views
serves to reiterate the importance of her contributions to this field. Indeed,
both Ido Geiger (who takes the experience of pure aesthetic pleasure as
revealing to us a condition of empirical experience and knowledge, without
itself being that condition) and Serena Feloj (who argues for a
reconsideration of aesthetic normativity in favour of regulativity) explicitly
address Ginsborg’s views in their discussions. While Ginsborg, Geiger, and
Feloj help us to consider how Kant’s aesthetic theory can be relevant to
current discussions on aesthetic normativity, David Fenner reminds us
about the impact that Kant has already had on aesthetics, namely by solidifying
the subjective turn and by offering perhaps the most sophisticated view of
disinterestedness of any other thinker. The following contribution from Virginia
Figueiredo broadens the spectrum of discussion by addressing the themes of
critique, reflection, the sublime, and humanity. Figueiredo draws mostly on the
views of Portuguese and Brazilian authors, as well as some French thinkers, and
ultimately proposes an alternative conception of the human species. The first
part of the issue closes with Dietmar H. Heidemann’s response to his
critics: Heidemann carefully considers the objections raised (in previous
issues of Con-Textos Kantianos) against his non-conceptualist reading of Kant’s
aesthetic theory and defends his interpretation of Kant’s aesthetics against
them.
The
second section of this special issue begins with contributions dealing with
matters of formalism and conceptualism in Kant’s aesthetics, as well as their
relation and relevance to thinking about art, the arts, and contemporary art (Hemmo
Laiho, Sandra Shapshay, Ioannis Trisokkas, Iris Vidmar
Jovanović, and Maria João Mayer Branco). It continues with papers
that address key issues of Kant’s aesthetics, such as the free play and the
role of imagination, as well as possible complementarities between the three
Critiques (Elena Romano, Jackson Hoerth, Moran
Godess-Riccitelli, Stelios Gadris, Levi Haeck, and Zoltán
Papp). This special issue closes with articles that discuss the reception
of Kant’s aesthetic theory in the works of major philosophers of the 20th
century, namely within critical theory and the phenomenological-hermeneutical
tradition (María Verónica Galfione, Guillermo Moreno Tirado, Stefano
Marino, and Stéphane Vinolo).
Keynote articles
In
‘Aesthetic Normativity and Knowing How To Go On’, Hannah Ginsborg
(University of California, Berkeley) offers an answer to the question of
how it is possible that aesthetic responses are appropriate or inappropriate to
their objects. Ginsborg’s proposal is inspired by Kant and ascribes a central
role to Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘knowing how to go on’. Her main thesis is
that there can be legitimate claims to the normativity of one’s responses which
do not rely on those responses’ reflecting appreciation of objective facts.
According to Ginsborg, what we ought to acknowledge is a kind of normativity
applicable to our psychological responses to things that does not depend on
those responses registering objective facts but that is, rather, a condition of
objective cognition.
In
‘Aesthetic Normativity and the Acquisition of Empirical Concepts’, Ido Geiger
(Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) compares Ginsborg’s account of our
most fundamental experience with the account that he attributes to Kant, in
order to examine whether the pure aesthetic judgment can serve as a model for
fundamental empirical conceptualization. Drawing mostly on the third
Critiques’s notion of the aesthetic normal idea, as well as on the first
introduction, Geiger suggests taking Kant as putting forward a three-step model
in which the first two steps (the delineation of objects in pure aesthetic
judgments and the sorting of objects according to form) are pre-conceptual.
Within this framework, the experience of pure aesthetic pleasure reveals to us
a condition of empirical experience and knowledge, without itself being that
condition.
In
‘Aesthetic Normativity in Kant’s Account: A Regulative Model’, Serena Feloj
(University of Pavia) discusses the normative character of aesthetic
emotions in Kant’s third Critique by drawing upon the notions of regulativity
and exemplarity. Feloj examines three interpretations of aesthetic normativity
and argues that the sentimentalist elements of Kant’s account call for a
reconsideration of aesthetic normativity in favour of the more indeterminate
notion of regulativity, possibly understood as a peculiar kind of normativity
that preserves the ideality, the exemplarity, the indeterminacy and,
ultimately, the emotional nature of aesthetics.
In
‘Immanuel Kant’s Aesthetics: Beginnings and Ends’, David Fenner (University
of North Florida) focuses on the space that Kant occupies at two important
crossroads in aesthetics: the culmination of the tradition of
disinterestedness, and the subjective turn. By offering perhaps the most
sophisticated view of disinterestedness of any other thinker, Kant has brought
that tradition to its historic zenith, and by finding the answer to his
questions about aesthetics in the nature of subjectivity, he shaped the
conversations of aestheticians and art theorists for the last two centuries. What
is more, the problem of aesthetic normativity plays a role in Fenner’s paper –
according to him, disinterest was a way to place one’s attentive focus on those
elements of one’s focus that are normatively justificatory when rendering a
judgment of taste.
In
‘Sobre abismos, pontes e travessias’, Virginia Figueiredo (Federal
University of Minas Gerais) follows the guiding thread given by Kant’s metaphors
of abysses, bridges, and crossings, and reflects on some key concepts of the
third Critique in order to point out a wider Copernican revolution in Kant’s
philosophy that entails a change in the very concept of the human being. Focusing
on the current situation in Brazil and considering the words of Ailton Krenak,
Figueiredo ultimately proposes an alternative conception of the human species
that walks hand in hand with Patrícia Kauark-Leite’s proposal of a poietic
enlightenment.
In
‘Response to my critics: In defense of Kant’s aesthetic non-conceptualism’, Dietmar
H. Heidemann (University of Luxembourg) responds to objections raised (in
previous issues of Con-Textos Kantianos, by Matías Oroño, as well as Silvia del
Luján di Saanza, Pedro Stepanenko, and Luciana Martínez) against his
non-conceptualist reading of Kant’s theory of judgments of taste. Heidemann
concentrates mostly on two difficulties with a non-conceptualist reading of
Kant’s aesthetics that seem to be central: the cognitive status of judgments of
taste and the representationalist capacity of aesthetic feeling as non-conceptual
mental content. He defends his overall non-conceptualist interpretation of
Kant’s aesthetics against his critics.
General articles
In
‘On Aesthetic Judgments and Contemplative Perception in the Critique of the
Power of Judgment’, Hemmo Laiho (University of Turku) claims that
Kant’s accounts of the aesthetic judgment of sense and the aesthetic judgment
of taste both suggest that a contemplative model of perception underlies his largely
formalistic account of aesthetic appreciation. The basic aim of Laiho’s paper
is to outline how this model might work.
In
‘Kant, Celmins and Art after the End of Art’, Sandra Shapshay (City
University of New York) builds on Arthur Danto’s claim that Kant had two
conceptions of art, the second of which is non-formalist, and puts Kant’s
theory in dialogue with the art practice of Vija Celmins, in order to highlight
two ways in which Kant’s aesthetics is of great continuing relevance to the
artworld today.
In
‘Can Kant’s Aesthetic Accommodate Conceptual Art? A Reply to Costello’, Ioannis
Trisokkas (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) claims that
Kant’s art theory, as presented by Diarmuid Costello, applies neither to
conceptual art nor to all other kinds of art, and holds that either one of two
amendments to the theory would enable it to accommodate all art, including conceptual
art.
In
‘A New Look at Kant’s Genius: a Proposal of a Multi-componential Account’, Iris
Vidmar Jovanović (University of Rijeka) argues that genius is
multi-componential and includes a capacity to maximize imagination’s
productivity as well as a capacity to develop taste to the point where it
establishes new ways of creation and gives the rule to art. Vidmar Jovanović
extrapolates further aspects of genius, which relate to the artist’s capacity
to create products imbued with moral and cognitive significance.
In ‘“uma certa falta de urbanidade”. As hesitações de Kant a respeito da música’, Maria
João Mayer Branco (NOVA University of Lisbon) aims to show how Kant’s
ambivalent views on music are in line with the modern philosophical reflection
on this art, and clarifies the place of these views within Kantian aesthetics.
According to Mayer Branco, this justifies Kant’s hesitations about whether to
classify music as beautiful or agreeable, art or mere enjoyment, free or
dependent beauty, and culture or nature.
In
‘Can everything be beautiful? Pan-aestheticism and the Kantian puzzle of the
free play of the faculties’, Elena Romano (University of Pavia) provides
an overview of the ways in which the problem of Kant’s apparent commitment to
pan-aestheticism can be confronted and eventually solved. Romano rejects two
potential solutions and proposes a third. She draws upon the reflecting status of
judgments of taste in order to explain why pan-aestheticism cannot follow from
Kant’s account.
In
‘Schematism and Free Play: The Imagination’s Formal Power as a Unifying Feature
in Kant’s Doctrine of the Faculties’, Jackson Hoerth (Temple University)
argues that the imagination demonstrates a formal capacity that can be seen in
the first Critique’s schematism and can be more clearly recognized in the third
Critique’s discussion of harmonious free play. According to Hoerth, not only
does this formal capacity provide the key to demonstrating that the imagination
is an original, unified, and independent faculty across Kant’s critical
framework, but the capacity itself also serves as the ground for the
purposiveness of nature.
In
‘The Cipher of Nature in Kant’s Third Critique: How to Represent Natural Beauty
as Meaningful?’, Moran Godess-Riccitelli (University of Potsdam) examines
how we represent natural beauty as meaningful while leaving it open to a
certain form of interpretation. The systematic question is how and for what end
we should treat nature as possessing its own language when it comes to our
aesthetic experience in nature. Godess-Riccitelli argues that it is from our
experience in nature that it is possible to extend our reflections to the
assumption of a final end of nature.
In
‘Striving: Feeling the sublime’, Stelios Gadris (University of Crete)
proposes that we ultimately succeed in presenting – rather than representing –
the absolute as a symbol or in art, and that this re-affirms that the
fundamental role of intuition for human beings is fulfilling the need to make
our notions tangible. Gadris claims that Kant ultimately vindicates sensibility
in the aesthetic (he)autonomy of the subject.
In
‘Exploring the Deduction of the Category of Totality from within the Analytic
of the Sublime’, Levi Haeck (Ghent University) defends an interpretation
of the first Critique’s category of totality based on Kant’s analysis of
totality in the third Critique’s analytic of the sublime. Haeck ultimately
holds that such an aesthetical detour has the potential to reveal how the subjective
aspects of objectivity are accounted for in the very system of the categories
itself.
In
‘Matters of Taste: Kant’s Epistemological Aesthetics’, Zoltán Papp (Eötvös
Loránd University) suggests that Kant’s theory of taste is intended as the
completion of a twofold epistemological job that remained unfinished in the
first Critique. By highlighting how the judgment of taste cannot be made
without assuming the purposiveness of nature and the uniformity of the
cognizing subjects, Papp contends that such judgment offers a solution to the
problem that the transcendental theory of experience needs a common sense in
order to secure a common objectivity.
In ‘Las aporías de la apariencia. Modernidad y estética en el pensamiento de Kant’, María Verónica Galfione (National University of Litoral) reconstructs the epistemic context of the third Critique, considers Kant’s delimitation of the autonomy of the judgment of taste, and revises those moments in which Kant goes beyond his own claims. Using this discussion, Galfione proposes that the problem of truth is not completely absent from Kantian aesthetics, because the autonomization of the aesthetic dimension is thought of on the basis of a unified subjective experience.
In ‘El “concepto hermenéutico”. Una interpretación del juicio estético puro kantiano desde Heidegger’, Guillermo Moreno Tirado (Complutense University of Madrid) offers an interpretation of Kant’s pure aesthetic judgment in a Heideggerian mode by presenting a foundation for the intellectual artifact “hermeneutic concept” based on an interpretation of the third Critique’s deduction of pure aesthetic judgments. Moreno Tirado ultimately outlines two reading hypotheses, one for the place of Kant’s third Critique in the work of Heidegger, and another for Kant’s aesthetics and aesthetics in general.
In
‘La ricezione della Critica della facoltà di giudizio nell’ermeneutica
contemporanea (Heidegger, Gadamer, Figal)’, Stefano Marino (University of Bologna)
proposes that a progressive shift can be observed in the development of the
phenomenological-hermeneutical tradition. This tradition initially favoured
Hegel’s philosophy of art, then moved to an explicit critique of the supposed
subjectivization of aesthetics by Kant, and finally culminated in a full-blown
rehabilitation and retrieval of the significance of Kant’s treatment of beauty
as essential for any serious philosophical aesthetics.
In
‘La estética kantiana como paradigma de la fenomenología de la donación de Jean-Luc
Marion’, Stéphane Vinolo (Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador)
argues in favour of the Kantian legacy of the phenomenology of givenness by
establishing a link between Marion’s phenomenon of revelation and the sublime
in Kant. According to Vinolo, Marion finds that Kant’s aesthetics offers the
possibility of presenting negativities in a positive way, and therefore also
offers evidence of the givenness of negativities.
Considering
the wide range of topics covered by this special issue of Con-Textos
Kantianos devoted to Kant’s aesthetic theory, as well as
the quality of each of the articles included in it – their originality and
exemplarity, one might say – I strongly believe that it constitutes an
important contribution to fostering further research on Kant’s aesthetics, not
only within Kantian scholarship, but also in current and future discussion in
aesthetics, including its connections with philosophy of art, philosophy of perception,
epistemology, ethics, and moral and political philosophy.
