Immanuel Kant Presentation

x is beautiful
y is sublime
Prepared by Fara Martia P. Manuel-Nolasco
University of the Philippines
© 2011-2020

THE ENLIGHTENMENT
The 18th century as a period in
intellectual history, is often called the Age
of Enlightenment, which was a brief
period under the Age of Reason.
It is characterized above all by an
optimism in the human ability to think or
reason.
The ability was seen as the key to a
progressive knowledge of the natural
world including the human beings.
Painting: Joseph Wright, The Experiment with an Air Pump (detail), 1768
© 2011-2020

THE ENLIGHTENMENT
● ● SCIENCE
In the sciences, physics
became the paradigm of human
thought becoming a science. In
human aspects, psychology,
sociology, economics, politics were
central areas of study.
● ● RELIGION AND RATIONALISM
Deism + Reason was
applicable even to the moral
world and to God resulting in
‘Deism’ – a rational religion
entirely separate from the dogma
and practices of any church.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT
…signifies a process of intellectual
liberation in which the natural sciences
freed themselves from the erroneous
beliefs of the past, developing a method of
systematic experimentation that is still the
standard determinant of scientific truth.
while political theorists, guided by
Utopianism, overthrew traditional values
in their effort to re-conceive society in
ideal terms
The Enlightenment was in essence a new
way of thinking critically about the world
and about humankind, independently of
revealed religion, of myth and of
tradition.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT
IMMANUEL KANT
An Answer to the question:
What is Enlightenment?
(published in Koenigsberg, Prussia, 30 September, 1784)
‘Enlightenment is the emergence of man from
his self-imposed minority.
His minority is his incapacity to make use of
his own understanding without the guidance of
another.
This minority is self-imposed if its cause lies,
not in lack of understanding, but in the lack of
resolution and courage and courage to make
use of what is his without the guidance of
another.
Sapere aude! Have the courage to
make use of your own understanding!
is therefore the slogan of the
Enlightenment.
Source: Raabe, Paul and Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm, Enlightenment in Germany.
Bonn, Germany: Hohwacht Verlag, 1979. Print.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT
Thrust: democratize of knowledge
To gather knowledge and spread
among constituents of the state
application of scientific method to
everyday life the enlightened mind
must be skeptical of doctrines and
theories for which no verifiable
evidence could be found
(logical positivism’s influence)
FRANCE & ENGLAND were the
‘principal centers’ whose dictums
influenced the thinking of the
intellectuals throughout Europe and
American colonies.
Leading discoveries by Newton
and discussions by Locke gave
form and direction to the
Enlightenment

THE ENLIGHTENMENT
John Locke (1632 - 1704), English
philosopher
● wrote Doctrine of Empiricism
‘our ideas are not innate or God-given;
it is only from experience that we can know’
‘from perceptions alone we form ideas’
Empiricism is contrasted with Rationalism, the
theory that the mind may apprehend some
truths directly, without requiring the medium
of the senses.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT
SOCIO-POLITICAL CLIMATE
Power transfer from ARISTOCRACY
to
MIDDLE-CLASS, who controlled
industry and commerce
Provided the middle-class democratic
values nurtured by favorable conditions in
England:
● High degree of religious tolerance
(all leading to the tempered power of
monarchy)
● free press
● parliamentary form of government
© 2011-2020

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
1740s onward – Industrial Revolution in England
and all of Europe
characterized by technological invention
coupled with scientific investigation
● Discovery of oxygen
● Steam power – used as an adjunct or replacement
to human labor, used for transportation

TIMELINE
The invention of the steam engine
by James Watt
1784
1785 Beginning of the Industrial Revolution
1786 First Factory in Manchester, England
1764 Invention of the spinning machine
by James Hargreaves
1796 First furnace in Germany
1822 Invention of the Automatic loom
Opening of the first railway line
in England
1830
Weaver uprising in Schlesian1837
Revolution in Germany, Austria
and France; Marx & Engels writes th
Communist Manifesto
1848
Franco-Prussian War, making
Germany a world power
1870
1770s Oxygen was discovered

THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION
● ● ECONOMIC SYSTEM
Shift from feudal system to
capitalist (industrial) system
● ● MIGRATION
Due to industrial changes
people flocked the cities to
take jobs in the new
steam-powered factories;
there was an increase in
urban working class
● ● LABOR RIGHTS
The pace was too fast social
service could not evolve fast
enough to serve new city
residents

THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION
● ● FACTORIES & PRODUCTION
● hand-made to machine-made
● biggest innovation was the
assembly line
(from England to US)
● the gap between
employer/employee widened
● antagonism between powerful
wealthy few and workers helped
fuel political revolutions under the
banners of democracy and free trade
● child labor became widespread

Periods in
Western Art History
Medieval Period (c.300-c.1400)
Renaissance (c.1400 –c.1600)
Baroque (c.1600-c.1750)
Modern (c.1750-c.1960)
Post-Modern (c.1960s to present
time)

Watteau, Pilgrimage to Cythera (1717), Delacroix, Death of Sardanapalus (1827), Daumier, The Third Class Carriage (1862-64)
ca.1600-1750
Baroque period
1600-1700
Early Baroque
1700-1750
Rococo style
ca. 1750 - 1840
Romanticism
Neo-Classicism
ca. 1840
Realism
Modern Period

Watteau, Pilgrimage to Cythera (1717), Delacroix, Death of Sardanapalus (1827), Daumier, The Third Class Carriage (1862-64)
ca.1600-1750
Baroque period
1600-1700
Early Baroque
1700-1750
Rococo style
ca. 1750 - 1840
Romanticism
NEO-CLASSICISM
ca. 1840
Realism
Enlightenment & the
Industrial Revolution

18th Century French Art
(1700 – 1750)
Continuation of 18th C. Baroque
in the stylistic form of ROCOCO
● Interior design
● "After the French Manner", Rococo was a combination
of Baroque and grotesque and fantasy styles of motifs and
ornamentation which came to dominate French design
from around 1700.
© 2011-2020

18th Century European Art
Early Stage of 18Th Century (1700 – 1750):
Continuation of 17th C Baroque
in the stylistic form of ROCOCO
Centred in France and emerging as a reaction to the Baroque
grandeur of the Versailles court of the French King Louis XIV
the Rococo style was associated particularly with Madame de
Pompadour, the mistress of the new King Louis XV, and
the Parisian homes of the French aristocracy.
It is a whimsical and elaborately decorative style of art, whose name
derives from the French word 'rocaille' meaning, rock-work after the
forms of sea shells.

Early Baroque
vs. Rococo
Characteristics of Baroque
Art: Decadent classical,
unstructured, theatrical
Characteristics of Baroque Art:
Rococo is a product of stylistic
change:
a ‘dynamic brilliant, colorful,
theatrical and passionate, sensual,
and ecstatic, opulent and
extravagant, versatile and virtuoso.’

Early Baroque 16-1700
1.
The Supper at Emmaus
Carravaggio
1601
141 x 196 cm. (551/2x77in),
oil on canvas,
National Gallery, London
2.
Samson and Delilah
Peter Paul Rubens
c.1609
185 x 205 cm. oil on wood;

3.
A Dance to the Music
of Time
Nicholas Poussin
c.1638
82.5 x 104 cm., oil on canvas,
Wallace Collection, London
4.
Belshazzar’s Feast
Rembrandt van Rijn;
c.1638
168 x 209 cm., oil on canvas;

5.
Last Meninas
Diego Velasquez
1656
318 x 276 cm., oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

A Journey/Pilgrimage to Cythera
Jean-Antoine Watteau
1717
Musee du Louve, Paris
Late Baroque - Rococo 1700-1750

Cythera
Cythera, Venus’ birthplace; Alessandro Boticelli, ‘Birth of Venus, ’ 1485

1750– 1830
Rise of Romanticism
At the turn of the nineteenth century, France is
governed by Napoleon as First Consul.
As emperor, Napoleon sanctions the
Neoclassical style, embodied in the art of
Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825).
Meanwhile, the seeds of Romanticism—sown
in France and elsewhere in Europe give rise to
an aesthetic that exalts emotion, nature, and
the sublime over rationalism and classicism.
Source: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/?period=10&region=euwf
Painting:
Jacques-Louis David,
The Oath of Horatii
(detail), 1784
© 2011-2020

1750– 1830
Rise of Romanticism
• Emerged as a response to the disillusionment
with the Enlightenment values of reason and order
in the aftermath of the French Revolution of
1789
• Often posited in opposition to Neo-classicism
Source: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm
Painting:
Eugene Delacroix,
Death of Sardanapalus
(detail), 1827

The Experiment with an Air Pump
Joseph Wright
1768
National Gallery of London
Romanticism - Neo-Classicism?

Oath of Horatii
Jacques-Louis David
1784
Romanticism – Neo-Classicism

Hannibal Crossing the Alps
Joseph M. W. Turner
1812
Tate Galley, London
Romanticism

Romanticism
Chalk Cliffs on Ruegen
Caspar David Friedrich
1818

Romanticism
Wanderer above a
sea of fog
Caspar David Friedrich
1818

The Raft of the Medusa
Eugene Delacroix
1819
Romanticism

1800 – 1900
Realism
French Realism, 1840
Around mid-century, in the midst of class
struggles and the wake of civil uprisings against
an oppressive government, Romanticism is
supplanted by Realism in the visual arts and
literature, which focuses on modern subjects
and the lives of the lower classes.
Source: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/?period=10&region=euwfOil on canvas:
Honore Daumier,
Third-Class Carriage
(unfinished)
ca.1808-1879

In a nutshell . . .
● 1740s onwards Industrial revolution
● ca.1750-1780 Age of Sensibility
● 18th C was dual in character: 2 parts
corresponded to
Earlier stage:
continuation of 17th Century Baroque
In between, began after 1765 :
Neo-Classicism
Later stage:
Foundations of Modern world
and rise of Romanticism
Baroque: Peter Paul Ruebens Samson and Delilah
Rococo: Watteau’s Pilgrimage to Cythera
Romanticism (Neoclassicism) Oath of Horatii by Jacques-Louis David

ChronologyKant born on April 22 in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia)1724
Attends elementary school at Vorstädter, Hospitalschule1730-32
Age 8-16; Attends Pietist Collegium Federecianum (leading school in the city)1732-40
Attends Albertina, the university at Königsberg; left without a degree1740-46
9 yrs; Employed as a private tutor for a wealthy, upper-middle-class family1748-54
Publishes True Estimation of Living Forces1749
Return to Königsberg, publishes “Whether the Earth has changed in its
Revolutions” and “Whether the Earth is Aging from a Physical Point of View”
1754
Kant’s mother dies, Anna Regina Nee Reuter (1697-1737)1737
Receives M.A. for “On Fire”; earns right to lecture as Privatdozent with “A New
Exposition of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition” and begins
lecturing; publishes General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens
1755
Kant’s father dies, Johann Georg Kant (1683-1746)1746

Chronology
Publishes doctoral dissertation on Physical Monadology; three essays on Lisbon
earthquake and essay on the theory of winds
1756
Publishes “New Doctrine of Motion and Rest” (‘58),”Essay on Optimism”(’59),
“False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figure” (‘62), “Only Possible Basis for
A Demonstration of the Existence of God”(‘63) and “An attempt to Introduce
The concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy.” (’63)
1758-63
“Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime”1764
1790
1804
1781 Critique of Pure Reason; published in May
Critique of the Power of judgment
Dies on Feb 12; Publishes What Real Progress has Metaphysics made in
Germany since the Time of Leibniz and Wolff? Edited by Rink

Philosophy
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
As an introductory lecture in Logic,
Kant asks poses these questions:
1) What can I know?
2) What ought I to do?
3) What may I hope?
4) What is man?
:: Metaphysics, morality, religion, anthropology
© 2011-2020

life
Kant’s origin
Königsberg, was a small
although not insignificant city in the
Prussian empire. It was a significant
and affluent seaport and for that
reason more cosmopolitan in some
ways than larger cities inland.
Kant’s working life spanned the 2nd
half of the 18th Century,
a formative period in the history of
Europe.

lifeImmanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Kant’s lifestyle
• With the exception of his complete
inexperience to wider travel (he lived in
the North-East corner of Europe), Kant’s
life is quite exemplary of his period.
• Kant was a typical cosmopolitan figure;
he read works from all over Europe and
his works were read just as widely.
• He became a local celebrity for his
brilliant, witty but eccentric character.

Immanuel Kant
Education and
Teaching Career
• Kant’s early education first at the Pietist
school and then at a university in
Königsberg in theology, but he soon
became attracted by problems in physics,
and especially the work of Isaac Newton.
• In 1746, financial difficulties forced him
to withdraw from the university.
• After nine years supporting himself as a
tutor to the children of several wealthy
families in outlying districts, he returned
to university, finishing his degree and
entering academic life.
• He was lecturer for many years
and only in 1770 was he given a
chair in logic and metaphysics.

Kant’s early works
• He started out as a student into theology as the center of
philosophy.
• Newton-inspired.
But it is not long before that he is forced to address the issue of
science (i.e. physics, within this, the work of Isaac Newton) and
the relationship of science not only to religion but also to the
nature of human being and human values.
• Kant initially adapted Leibnizian (more specifically Wollf’s)
dogmatic tradition. However in the 1750s, he was increasingly in
the orbit of Leibniz rival Isaac Newton.
works

Free will?
• Newtonian concept of the natural world as entirely
subject to the interaction of basic forces (space-time
relationships) made the determinism of that world – that
the natural world was subject to inescapable natural laws.
• This in Kant’s view, exacerbated the age-old
philosophical problem of free will.
• How could human beings – who are obviously at least
partly natural beings – act freely in a Newtonian
universe? And, if free will is impossible what happens to
morality?
works

Kant’s influences:
David Hume
– an empiricist, thinking can be
summed up as:
“Any reasoning not entirely
subservient to our experience of
things was bound to be utterly
worthless.”
• Hume does not claim that science
of nature was thereby impossible
but had to be founded on an
entirely and thoroughly
empirical basis.
influences

Kant’s influences:
David Hume
Kant famously claims
that Hume first interrupted my
dogmatic slumber and gave
my investigations in the field
of speculative philosophy
quite a new direction.’
Hume in particular
influenced Kant to investigate
the validity of metaphysics
rather than assume it.
influences

Kant’s influences: Rousseau
Rousseau
He condemned reason as an
instrument of ethical or political
advance.
• Rousseau had in mind reason in all
its exterior and institutionalized
forms in the modern world.
• Too often, he thought this ‘reason’
distorted or eliminated the natural
virtue and liberty of humans – our
ability to rule over ourselves –
rather than enhancing it.
influences

What is Enlightenment?
Sapere aude!
Have the courage to use your own intellect
Rousseau influenced Kant to undertake
a critique on pure theoretical reasoning
and to elevate in its place practical
(moral) reason.
© 2011-2020

Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation of
1770
(Core Kantian philosophy)
Among his statements was that sensible
presentations were only
‘appearances,’ and not things was
they are in themselves.
This was because space and time,
which describe the basic structure
of all sensible appearances, do not
exist in things in themselves, but
are only effect of things upon our
organ of sense. With this, Kant
claims that objects exist in a realm
of their own, which lies beyond
human knowledge – incapable of
being determined.
Painting: Rene Magritte, This is not a Pipe, The Treachery of Images, 1928-1929
works

Kant’s philosophical style
Kant and Plato
- Introspection; Kant looked inside of himself
and tried his best to adopt the universalistic
standpoint of a human being in general,
independent of the historical circumstances,
physical limitations and cultural soil within
which his daily life took place.
- In a similar manner, Plato, sought for
universal constancies both within and without
us, and noted that if truth requires something
permanent for us to grasp, then ultimately
truth can reside only in what is absolutely, and
not merely relatively, steadfast.
thinking

Kant and Plato
- Plato claims that there is a timeless realm that can
only be understood and discovered through pure
contemplation, using our mind’s power alone.
(in as simple as how we use our senses to perceive the
natural world)
- For Plato, this timeless realm is more
than an imaginary ideal; this is how we
can access absolute truth.
What resides in the parallel world of forms are
perfect circles, numbers, goodness, beauty,
courage, and the like that merely instantiated
in the material objects (ephemeral) that
continually come and go.
thinking

Kant differs from Plato:
Kant does not believe that it is
possible to exactly know of such
a timeless world, he also did not
sympathize with Plato’s
metaphysical optimism.
Similar to Plato in a sense that:
Kant acknowledged that if anything
is to be characterized as
unconditional
and true, then it must be
unchanging, stable, and self-
sufficient.
thinking
Kant’s revolutionary
contribution:
He claimed to have
discovered within the human
being formal structures of
thought whose character can
be known independently of
experience, that which
constitutes the steadfast
structural foundations of our
experience, both scientific
and moral.

Kant’s doctrine on the subjectivity of space and time is arguably his
most famous and influential contribution to the history of philosophy.
He argued that space and time are structures within us that we bring to our
experience, not inherent in the object itself. For human beings, the forms
of space and time are subjective constants.
Transcendental philosophy attempts to discover the a priori conditions for
any mental faculty (such as reason or judgment) to function at all.
thinkingKant’s Transcendental style of
Argumentation
© 2011-2020

Kantian Philosophy
• Critique of the Power of Judgment
2 Parts: Bringing together two subjects:
Aesthetics and Teleology
• Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment
The first part discusses our judgments about beauty and
sublimity in both nature and art, judgments we now call
“aesthetic”
• Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment
The second part discusses our judgments about the
systematic organization of specific things within nature,
namely organisms, as well as our tendency to think of
nature as a whole as if it were one single and well-
designed system and to that extent like one big organism
itself.
critique

Critique defined
‘Critique’ in Kant’s sense can be defined as:
“An analysis which attempts to determine the legitimate range of some type
of ‘mental power.’Pertaining to mental ‘power’or faculty, the range of
that ability which makes sense and thus are legitimate.”
Mental power can be defined as what Kant calls the things that our minds
can do or accomplish. Historically (18th C) used term is “FACULTY.”
critique

Judgment defined
‘Judgment’ in Kant’s sense can be defined as:
Any act of subsumption of a particular under
a universal, or a decision concerning whether
a particular is, or is not something
critique
© 2011-2020

Mental Faculties
What can our minds do?
The mind viewed in mechanical terms, was dissected into capacities and
functions for accomplishing specific processes. These capacities were
not real physical processes but abstract processes.
The Faculties of the Mind (purpose and legislative faculties)
LEGISLATIVE FACULTIES
Faculty HIGHER (Cognitive faculties) LOWER*
Theoretical COGNITION of
Nature
UNDERSTANDING,
the laws of nature
Subjective
associations or
habits
Aesthetic FEELING for
nature and Art
JUDGMENT, with principle of
purposiveness
Corporeal desire
PURE DESIRE in exercise
of Freedom
REASON, with the principle of morality,
and of a higher purpose or good
Corporeal desire
Non-legislative faculty: Sensibility, especially productive IMAGINATION
*LOWER faculties/associations are insufficient to explain our full relationship to the world
thinking

Higher faculty - Understanding
functioning in some ways ‘prior’
to any ‘ordinary’ event or thing in the mind
or the world
Ex. In order for one to reason, there has to
be formal and logical conditions.
Lower faculty – subjective associations or
habit
Entirely a function of nature; bound to natural
laws; connecting various sensations
Ex. Fire (vision) is the same as warmth
(tactile sensation)
Mental Faculties
cognize
feel
desire

Cognition
Faculty of cognition on the higher faculty
Cognition could be about all things that exist
and are imagined (God) to exist in nature
(including humans).
For Kant, the ‘natural world’ includes the
human world to the extent that the latter
is seen to obey the same scientific laws as
the rest of nature.
For Kant, the lower aspect, makes
knowledge impossible for it is based
merely on subjective associations.
Mental Faculties
cognize
feel
desire

Feeling as explained by Kant
Is an immediate awareness of our activity of being alive,
or of the general effect of something upon that
activity.
Kant defines ‘life’ as being able to act according to
desires or purposes. Where, my desires or purposes
are impeded or furthered or where my ability to act
are impeded or further, I feel a certain kind of
pleasure or pain. Thus an incentive to act so as to
prolong pleasure or discontinue pain.
Higher faculty = aesthetic feeling
Lower faculty = corporeal feeling or
sensory gratification (Eg. pleasure felt in eating
chocolates)
Mental Faculties
cognize
feel
desire

Mental Faculties
Desire
Pure desire is our free will determined by
moral law; also the ‘final purpose’ of
man, or the highest Good.
By this Kant means the most perfect
imaginable state for rational beings: that
they are fully happy, and that their
happiness is morally deserved.
The lower aspect is corporeal desire,
determinations to act in concrete ways,
in order to achieve a certain purposes.
cognize
feel
desire

Cognitive faculties & Presentations
The cognitive faculties (understanding, judgment and reason) are the
distinctive sources of presentations (concepts, images, ideas,
principles, etc.) , also translated as representations.
For each faculty of the mind, a distinct cognitive faculty will be
dominant. (which Kant labeled as ‘legislative’)
COGNITION UNDERSTANDING
FEELING JUDGMENT
DESIRE REASON
MENTALFACULTIES
COGNITIVEFACULTIES

Understanding
Judgment
Reason
Cognitive Faculties
With what tools can it do these things (i.e. desire, cognition, feeling)?
Cognition
Feeling
Desire
© 2011-2020

Understanding
The source of concepts for our knowledge of nature.
The source of a priori formal concepts or ‘categories’
Judgment
The source of decisions whether something is this or that.
ALL judgments are defined as the thinking of a
particular under a universal.
Ex. ‘That is a hat’places the particular hat to which I
refer under the universal concept ‘hat.’
Cognitive Faculties

‘Prior’ to natural laws
A condition of possibility is
something which may be the case
before something else can
possibly take place.
A priori is a philosophical expression
that means something absolutely
independent of any ‘ordinary’
event or thing, that is,
independent of any event or thing
which can be observed or studied
as being either within my
conscious mind, or in the world
around me.
A Priori in a Nutshell
What is A Priori?

A set of logical and formal conditions
that must be understood to be in
place for reasoning to ever
happen.
Independent from any physical thing
A Priori in a Nutshell
What is A Priori?
thinking
© 2011-2020

Reason (for DESIRE)
The ability to relate individual acts of the understanding together, in order
to prove or demonstrate things.
(1) Speculative reason – allows one to string together what goes beyond
our knowledge of things. Source of ideas. Example of which is
Freedom.
(2) Practical reason (based upon the Greek root of the word ‘practical,’
which means simply to act) that faculty that can determine the will to
act. Practical reason legislates the mental faculty or desire, meaning it
determines the purpose of desire is simply the ‘Good.’
Cognitive Faculties
With what tools can it do these things (i.e. cognition, feeling, desire)?
thinking

Sensibility
Non-legislative
faculty*; source of
Particular
presentations
(1) Sensation
(2) Pure Intuition
(3) Reproductive
Imagination
(4) Productive
Imagination
Cognitive Faculties
*Non-Legislative Faculty – Loose; Does not correspond to a particular
faculty of the mind; therefore it is treated separately
thinking

Sensibility
(1) Sensation
Both passive
and lower or
dependent.
In sensation we
are presented with
colors, sounds,
feelings of
warmth,
hardness and so
on.
Cognitive Faculties
(2) Pure intuition
Source of
a priori
presentations of
the form of
space and time
(3) Reproductive
Imagination
‘lower, world-
bound;’
allows us to
sense (hear, see,
touch, etc.)
things that are
no longer there.
Enables us to
form
associations
between two
separate things.
(Eg. This cake
tastes like the
one baked by my
sister.)
(4) Productive
Imagination
‘free,’
Opposite of
reproductive
imagination in
that it is not
bound to
previous
sensations or
laws of
association.
thinking

Aesthetic
• Aesthesis (Gr.) which
means perception or things
perceived by the senses;
• Ant.: aneasthesia
• Aistheta (Gr.)
Sensible particulars
• Aesthetics is the
philosophy of beauty and
art
• Alexander Baumgarten
first used the term Aesthetics
in a modern sense
▬ Alexander Baumgarten (1714-
1762)
During the 18thC – new ideas about
Beauty
posed the question, “What is Beautiful?”
He coined the term “Aesthetics” to
describe what he was doing

A science of Beauty
• In his Master’s dissertation of
1735, Baumgarten introduced the
term ‘aesthetic’ and called for the
establishment of a science of
aesthetics—a science that would
deal with human perception.
The Beautiful
• Baumgarten introduced the
possibility that perception might
have its own excellence—that a
vivid sensory experience might
offer ‘something special’ (beauty)
that would not be improved by
analysing it rationally
Mohammad Zaman, Blue Iris, 1663-4.

A science of Beauty?
• Kant insisted that Aesthetics could not
be a science, in the way that logic was
a science: according to Kant, the
judgment that something is beautiful
can never be proved.
Compared to Logic:
something can be T or F.
‘To call an object
beautiful, Kant
argues, provides no
knowledge whatsoever
of that
object.’
© 2011-2020

Beauty is outside the object
BEAUTY IS SUBJECTIVE
• In the 1st paragraph of the CPJ, Kant
claims that judgment of beauty is
subjective; it refers to the feeling of
delight experienced by the subject—
the viewer or observer—when
contemplating an object, and not to
anything about the object itself.
• For Kant beauty is not essential or
inherent to the object; it is not a
property or a feature of the object.

Aesthetic Judgment
• What is Aesthetic judgment?
It is about how the object’s appearance
makes us feel
• Formal, abstract (non-sensory) compositions are
included in aesthetic judgment.
• Heuristic – encouraging a person to discover
and solve problems on his/her own
Photograph: Man Ray: Ingres's Violin, 1924.
© 2011-2020

What is judge-able?
(1) The natural world/NATURE
(2) Paintings/FINE ARTS*
(as distinguished from craft)
(*) figurative (since abstraction
has not been invented/accepted
during that time)
(3) Abstract concepts – that which
resides in the mind; i.e. dreams,
imagined landscapes, etc.
judgment
Aesthetic Judgment

judgmentPure Beauty defined
What kind of beauty do we look for?
Pure beauty –
2 Kinds:
Free Beauty
Dependent Beauty
© 2011-2020

judgmentJudgment of Pure Beauty
What kind of judgment is
necessary?
Reflecting judgment – the use of
judgment that seeks to discover a concept
for a particular object that is given to it
rather than to find a particular object to
which to apply a concept that it already has.
What reflecting judgment is not: The
opposite kind is determining judgment,
which requires established or determinate
concepts (rules) and the only task is for the
viewer is to apply those concepts to objects.

Aesthetic Judgment
• What is Aesthetic judgment?
Aesthetic judgment does not involve judgment of
beauty all the time.
• The term “aesthetic,” in this context refers simply
to that which is related to feeling.
There are different feelings that have different
sources or grounds: the agreeable, the beautiful,
the good and the sublime.
+ Agreeable – that which pleases our senses
+Beautiful – that which pleases with no concept
+Sublime – that which overwhelms our
understanding yet empowers us

Aesthetic Judgment
The First Logical Moment: (Disinterested-ness)
The Judgment of Taste is aesthetic and
not cognitive (thus not logical). §§1-5
The Second Logical Moment: (Universality)
Judgments of Pure Beauty are grounded
upon a universal feeling of approval §§6-9
The Third Logical Moment: (Purposiveness)
Judgments of Pure Beauty reflect upon how
an object’s configuration appears to have
been the result of an intelligent design §§10-
17
The Fourth Logical Moment: (Morality)
The Universal Feeling of Approval that
grounds judgments of pure beauty carries
the force of necessity §§18-22
ManRay:Ingres'sViolin,1924.

Aesthetic Judgment
Part 1, Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Section
1. Analytic of Aesthetic Judgment. Book 1.
Analytic of the Beautiful.
§1 - The Judgment of Taste is aesthetic
and
not cognitive (thus not logical).
Judgments of pure beauty thereby concern
themselves in the first instance
(First Logical Moment)
with subjective feelings of pleasure and
displeasure towards the object, assuming it
has the power to arouse those feelings.
© 2011-2020

Aesthetic Judgment
Part 1, Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Section 1. Analytic of Aesthetic
Judgment. Book 1. Analytic of the Beautiful.
•
§1 - The Judgment of Taste is aesthetic and not
cognitive (thus not logical).
2 ways to view an object:
1) cognition - objectively knowing about or
comprehending an object
2) experiencing how the object makes us feel
(aesthetic awareness)
Taste is the estimation of pleasure or displeasure
that is derived from one’s interaction with the
object.
Beauty is the Object of judgments of Taste.

Aesthetic Judgment
Part 1, Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Section 1. Analytic of Aesthetic
§2 - Judgments of Pure Beauty are Not Grounded
upon Interests (Disinterestedness)
The delight which we connect with the representation of the
real existence of an object is called interest.(132) Desire and
Interests go together.
When we are interested in something, the representation of
that thing’s existence produces a liking, satisfaction, or
feeling of approval.
.
• Judgment of pure beauty is free and detached from
empirical and/or moral judgment
• Note: An object need not be physically real, it may be imaginary.

Aesthetic judgment
When it comes to beauty, all that matters is
“whether the mere representation of the object is
accompanied by with satisfaction in me, how indifferent
I might be with regard to the existence of the object.”
judgment
(CPJ,§2, 5:205)

Aesthetic Judgment
• Part 1, Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Section 1. Analytic of Aesthetic
§3 – Delight in the agreeable is coupled with interest
Something which gratifies…
”Sensation”
pleasures or displeasures that is grounded in the five senses
(All sensory gratification is bound up with interest and does
not relate to beauty.)
Where there is sensory satisfaction, we desire that the
satisfaction continue and therefore have an interest in them
that is objectively related to sensation.
(Cognitive) Greeness is objective
(Agreeable judgment) Feeling of approval or liking for green
elements is subjective

Aesthetic Judgment
• Part 1, Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Section 1. Analytic of Aesthetic
§4 – Delight in the good is coupled with
interest
To find something good, I must always know what kind of
thing the object ought to be, i.e., I must have a concept of it.
To find beauty in something, I do not need that. Flowers,
free delineations lines wanderingly intertwined in each
other called “foliage” – signify nothing, depend on no
definite concept, and pleases nonetheless, the feeling of
approval in the beautiful must depend upon the reflection
on an object that leads to some sort of concept or other (it
is undetermined which). It thereby also separates and
distinguishes itself from the agreeable, which rests entirely
on sensation.
(§4, Ak 207 (10-11), G 93, P 49, M 46, B 41)
• For in disinterested judgment, we are not concerned with

Aesthetic Judgment
• The Second Logical Moment: Judgments
of Pure Beauty are grounded upon a
universal feeling of approval §§6-9
“Ought” – an agreement-forcing universality that
admits no exceptions
UNIVERSAL CONCEPT
When making judgments of pure beauty, we
demand that others agree. We judge as human
beings in general, rather than as private
individuals with personal interests
© 2011-2020

Aesthetic Judgment
• The Second Logical Moment: Judgments of
Pure Beauty are grounded upon a universal
feeling of approval §§6-9
Judgment of Taste – “The Universal voice”
The judgment of taste itself does not postulate
(assume) the agreement of everyone, it only imputes
(ingrains) this agreement to everyone, as an instance
of the rule in respect of which it looks for
confirmation, not from concepts, but from the
concurrence of others.
© 2011-2020

judgmentX is beautiful
To call an object beautiful is to speak with a “universal
voice,” that is to assert that the pleasure on takes in the object
oneself is a pleasure that should be felt by anyone who
responds to the object oneself, at least under ideal or optimal
circumstances, even though “there can also be no rule in
accordance with which someone could be compelled to
acknowledge something as beautiful.” (CPJ §8, 5:216)

judgmentX is beautiful
“The beautiful,” Kant claims, “is that
which pleases universally without a concept.”
(CPJ §9, 5:219)

Aesthetic Judgment
• Third Logical Moment: Purposiveness
§§10-17
The purposiveness of an object’s form. The purposive
form of the object occasions the harmony of cognitive
faculties and universal feeling of approval; only if the
purposive form is significantly impressive.
Purposiveness without a purpose rests on a priori grounds
Kant says, it is the mere purposiveness of the beautiful for
cognition in general that serves as it were a purpose.
• Beauty in nature will appear as
purposive, but its beauty will have no
purpose.

Aesthetic Judgment
• Third Logical Moment: Purposiveness
§§10-17
Purposiveness without a purpose
The harmony of cognitive faculties is purposive with
respect to attaining knowledge of natural objects, but since
these faculties remain in free play, they remain at the level
of cognition in general, and hence at a disengaged level
where the purpose is not realized.
Satisfaction is nevertheless attained despite the
indeterminateness
• Nature’s intelligent design seems purposive but there’s no
way of knowing whether there exists such purpose.
© 2011-2020

In a product of art one must be
aware that it is art, and not
nature; yet the purposiveness in
its form must still seem to be as
free from all constraint by
arbitrary rules as if it were a
mere product of nature [so that]
the purposiveness in the
product of beautiful art,
although it is certainly
intentional, must nevertheless
not seem intentional.
(CPJ, §45, 5:306-7)
judgment
Form (§XIV)
Photograph: Man Ray:Le Violon d'Ingres (The Violin of Ingres), 1924.

In pictorial arts, sculpture,
architecture, etc. so far as the fine arts,
the design is what is essential. Here it is
not what gratifies in sensation but merely
pleases by its form (i.e. shape and
arrangement of things in space or
composition), that is the fundamental pre-
requisite for taste.
judgment
Photograph: Man Ray:Le Violon d'Ingres (The Violin of Ingres), 1924. c
Form (§XIV)

judgment
Kind of Beauty (§XVI)
A judgment of taste by
which an object is described
as beautiful under the
condition of a definite
concept is not pure
• 2 kinds of beauty
1) Free beauty
2) Dependent beauty
• (1)Presupposes no concept on what the object should be;
(2)The second does presuppose such a concept.

But the ideal of beauty…is
only to be sought in the human
figure.
Here the ideal consists in the expression of
the moral, apart from which the object
would not please at once universally and
positively.
judgmentIdeal of Beauty (§XVII)
© 2011-2020

This visible expression that
govern men inwardly can, of
course, only be drawn from
experience; but their
combination with all our reason
connects the morally good in the
idea of the highest finality –
benevolence, purity, strength,
equanimity – and this
embodiment involves a pure
union of pure ideas of reason
and great imaginative power, in
one who would form an estimate
of it.
judgmentIdeal of Beauty (§XVII)

The correctness of such an
ideal of beauty is
evidenced by its not
permitting any sensuous
charm to mingle with the
delight in its Object. . .This
tells us that the judgment
can never be purely
aesthetic, that judgment of
an ideal of beauty is not a
simple judgment of taste.
judgment
Ideal of Beauty (§XVII)

Aesthetic Judgment
Fourth Logical Moment: Necessity
§§18-22
Taste is a Kind of sensus communis
Commmon sense
§§22
The necessity of the universal agreement
that is thought in a judgment of pure beauty
is a subjective necessity, which under the
presumption of a common sense, is
represented as an objective necessity
Common sense (sensus communis) can be interpreted as
common human understanding

Aesthetic Judgment
Fourth Logical Moment: Necessity
§§18-22
Common sense is also explained as:
The capacity to detach one’s self from
personal biases and put ourselves in the
position of everyone else.
This “letting go” of sensation allows us to confine our
attention to the formal peculiarites of the object at hand;
thus, making possible the communicability (sharing) of
feelings (pleasure and displeasure).
© 2011-2020

Kant’s Theory of Genius
§§46 Beautiful art is the art of genius
Artist as genius
Genius is the talent . . . through which
nature gives the rule of art.”
(CPJ, §46,5:307)
For the beauty of the work of a genius lies
precisely in the way that it goes beyond
anything that could be mechanically
derived from any conscious intention of
the artist
© 2011-2020

Aesthetic Judgment
• §§46 Beautiful art is the art of genius
Kant asserts that all fine arts presupposes a mastery of a
body of techniques without which “the spirit, which
must be free in the art and which alone animates the
work, would have no body at all” (CPJ, §43,5:304)
Beautiful art is . . . a kind of representation that is
purposive in itself and, though without an end,
nevertheless promotes the cultivation of the mental
powers for sociable communication (CPJ, §43,5:306)
© 2011-2020

Genius is
• a talent for producing that for which no
determinate rule can be given, not a
predisposition of skill for that which can be
learned in accordance to some rule,
consequently . . . originality must be its
primary characteristic.
• . . . since there can also be original
nonsense, its products must be at the same
time be models, i.e., exemplary, hence,
while not themselves the result of imitation,
they must yet serve others in that way, i.e., as
a standard or a rule for judging.

• Genius is the talent . . . through which nature gives
the rule of art.” (CPJ, §46,5:307)
• Since the talent is inborn productive
capacity of the artist, belongs itself to
nature, one could also express it as
follows: Genius is the inborn mental
disposition (ingenium) through which
nature gives rule to art
(CPJ, §46,5:307)
© 2011-2020

Genius is (continued…)
. . . it cannot itself describe or indicate scientifically how it
brings its products into being, but rather . . . it gives the
rules as nature, and hence the author of the product that
he owes to his genius does not himself how the idea for
it came to him, and also does not have it in his power to
think up such things at will or according to plan, and to
communicate to others precepts that would put them in a
position to produce similar products.
(CPJ, §46,5:307-8)
© 2011-2020

Free Play of Faculties
• Thus, genius “displays itself not so much in the . . .
presentation of a determinate concept as in the
exposition or the expression of aesthetic ideas,
which contain rich material for that aim,” and in the
“unsought and unintentional purposiveness in the
free correspondence of the imagination to the
lawfulness of the understanding” from which it
results in the artist and produces in its audience.
(CPJ, §48,5:317)
•
FREE PLAY OF FACULTIES
Pure Beauty: Between Understanding
and Imagination
Sublime: Reason and Imagination

judgment
Y is sublime
The sublime stands, in general, for anything
which makes us experience awe:
this could be architecture, a canyon, a passage
in an epic poem or even a human action
(heroism.)
Simply,
the overwhelming-ness of an object

The Sublime
thinking
Genealogy of the Sublime: The 2000-year evolution of the
sublime (Source: Blocker, et. al, Contextualizing Aesthetics…)
On the Sublime (1st Century) by Pseudo-Longinus*
- during the Hellenistic period; considered as an influential
text of the Greek and Roman period
- The book was not written as a text in aesthetics or the
philosophy of art, but rather as a manual for rhetoric, or
public speaking.
- a rhetorical expression of making poetic expressions about
great, overwhelming passions.
(Eco,On Ugliness, 272)
▬ Pseudo-Longinus because the writing was first
attributed to the Roman writer Cassius Longinus is now
thought to be an unknown Greek author of the first century.
1st C – 17th-18th
and 20th Century…
Sculpture: Roman portrait of Cicero,
1st C, artist unknown

The Sublime
thinking
Translation of Longinus’ work (1674)
The work had little influence in Europe until
Nicholas Boileau’s French translation in 1674
1st C – 17th-18th
and 20th Century…
Engraved portrait of Boileau, 17th C
© 2011-2020

The Sublime
thinking
From Longinus: On the Sublime, trans. H.L. Havell (London: Macmillian &
Co., 1890)
The Sublime, wherever it occurs, consists in a certain loftiness and
excellence of language, and … it is by this, and this only, that the
greatest poets and prosewriters have gained eminence…A lofty
passage does not convince the reason of the reader, but takes him
out of himself.
Stun your audiences
That which is admirable ever confounds our judgment, and
eclipses that which is merely reasonable or agreeable. To
believe or not is usually in our own power; but the Sublime,
acting with an imperious and irresistible force, sways every
reader whether he will or no(t).
1st Century…

The Sublime
thinking
From Longinus: On the Sublime, trans. H.L. Havell (London: Macmillian &
Co., 1890)
Sublime is in-born
“The sublime” they tell us, “is born in a man, and not be
acquired by instruction; genius is the only master who can
teach it…a writer can only learn from Art when he is to
abandon himself to the direction of his genius…
Aspire for greatness
Man was not made to be base and ignoble; we were born
into a big field of contest
…Implanted in our soul is an invincible yearning for all that
is great, all that is diviner than ourselves.
1st Century…

The Sublime
thinking
▬ Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of
the Sublime and the Beautiful (1756-59), also titled as,
The Sublime and the Beautiful (1757) by Edmund Burke
-after which the Sublime became a key concept for defining
the budding Romantic art of the time.
(beginning in the late 18th and early 19th Century)
▬ The Critique of Judgment (1790) by Immanuel Kant
Second Book. Analytic of the Sublime. §§23-29.
▬ The Sublime and the Avante-Garde AND Presenting
the Unpresentable: The Sublime
by Jean-Francois Lyotard
1st C – 17th-18th
and 20th Century…
Edmund Burke
Lyotard

The Sublime
thinking
Contributions:
Pseudo-Longinus
Q: What is the sublime?
L: The sublime is neither logical nor beautiful but
emotionally powerful.
Q: How can we tell that what is really sublime?
L: Objects considered sublime by the noble and
elevated person (i.e. highly educated)
1st Century…

The Sublime
thinking
Contributions:
Edmund Burke (1700s)
Q: What is the sublime?
B: We sense the Sublime on seeing a storm, a rough see,
rugged cliffs, glaciers, abysses, boundless stretches of
land, caves and waterfalls, when we can appreciate
emptiness, darkness, solitude, silence and the storm – all
impressions that can prove delightful when we feel
horror for something that cannot possess us and cannot
harm us.
1st C – 17th-18th
and 20th Century…
Edmund Burke

Laocoon*
(1st Century
sculpture) -
Trojan priest who
warned his
compatriots
about the peril
concealed in the
Trojan horse;
from Aenid by
Virgil
The Sublime
18th century concerted
effort to systematically
retrieve the glories of lost
civilizations began.

The Sublime
Johann Joachim
Winckelmann
(Thoughts on Imitation, 1755)
in support of his neo-
classical poetics, had noted
how the statue expressed the
suffering of Laocoon in a
classically composed,
repressed manner.
Rejecting the notion that
art imitates life
"The most eminent characteristic of Greek
works," he wrote, "is a noble simplicity and
sedate grandeur in gesture and expression. As
the bottom of the sea lies peaceful beneath a
foaming surface, a great soul lies sedate beneath
the strife of passions in Greek figures.
Source: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/neoc_1/hd_neoc_1.htm
© 2011-2020

The Sublime
Laocoon by Lessing (1766)
Art of Time and Art of Space
According to Lessing, the difference
between poetry and sculpture is:
…Poetic rendition (Virgil’s narrative)
describes action, in the course of which
one can evoke repugnant events without
making them unbearably evident
Romanticism and the
Redemption of Ugliness
(Eco On Ugliness Chapter X, p271)
…Sculptural rendition
(by an 1st Century, anonymous Greek
artist)
can portray only an instant, and in fixing it
could not show a disgustingly distorted
face because the disfiguring violence of
physical pain would not be reconcilable
with the beauty of the portrayal.

The Sublime
Definition | During the 1700s, the
debate on beauty shifted to from
the search for rules with which to
define it to a consideration of the
effects it produces.
The first works on the Sublime are
not concerned so much with
artistic effects as with our reaction
to those natural phenomena
dominated by the formless,
the painful and the
terrifying.
20th Century…
Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (1818), Caspar David Friedrich

The Sublime
How it is perceived | The
apprehension of the sublime is
a 2-stage process:
1st Stage:
Counter-purposiveness
and Displeasure (pain)
(i.e. initial experience involves ill-
adaptation due to formlessness)
2nd Stage:
Overcoming the first,
thus, feeling pleasure
20th Century…
Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (1818), Caspar David Friedrich

The Sublime
2 Types:
1) Mathematical Sublime
MAGNITUDE:
Mathematical because there is
emphasis on proportion (i.e. size
man compared to the grand sky)
Overwhelmingness due to its
spatial or temporal enormity
OUTRAGES our IMAGINATION
because we cannot ‘take it all in’ at
once
Example: Pyramid of Cheops or
the Great Wall of China
Wanderer above a sea of fog (1818), Caspar David Friedrich
20th Century…

The Sublime
2 Types:
1) Mathematical Sublime
Large objects that suggest the idea
of INFINITY (even if they’re
finite)
“To sublime is that which in the
very ability to think of it,
demonstrates a mental capacity
that surpasses every measure of
the senses.”
CPJ, §25, Ak250 (85)
|imaginative expansion produces
aesthetic satisfaction leading to a
frustrating moment when one’s
imaginative powers becomes exhausted Wanderer above a sea of fog (1818), Caspar David Friedrich
20th Century…

2 Types:
2) Dynamic Sublime
POWER:
Overwhelmingness characterized
by its hugeness of power
Outrages our will because we
know that, as sensibly
conditioned beings, we are
helpless before it.
Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), Joseph Mallord William Turner
20th Century…
The Sublime
© 2011-2020

2 Types:
2) Dynamic Sublime
For example, the sight of a storm,
when the soul is stirred by an
impression of boundless power
and our sensible nature is
humbled – hence a sense of
disquiet, compensated for by our
sense of moral greatness, against
which the forces of nature are
powerless.
20th Century…
The Sublime

The SUBLIME does not exist in
nature.
NATURE is mistakenly called
the sublime:
‘sublime merely because it
elevates the imagination to the
exhibition of those cases wherein
the mind can be made to feel the
sublimity, even above nature, that
is proper to its vocation.’ CPJ,
§28
20th Century…
The Sublime

The SUBLIME can be viewed as
a strange relation of discord or
strife within us, as reason is
pushed to the limits.
20th Century…
The Sublime

Sublime Now
World Press Photos awards 2011

Sublime Now
World Press Photos award

Sublime Now
Anish Kapoor
-Cloud gate
nicknamed , “the
Bean”

Immanuel
Kant•• Kant’s (Primary) Reason
for connecting Aesthetics and
Teleology:
Transforming the
natural world into a
moral world
Both Aesthetic and Teleological
judgment lead us to look at
products of nature and indeed
all of nature itself – and in his
theory, Kant will imply that
even works of fine art must be
considered to be gifts of nature
– as if they also have moral
significance, and thus both
aesthetic and teleological
experience gives us crucial
encouragement in our
fundamental task of literally
transforming the natural world

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