Aesthetic preferences and practices vary widely between individuals and between cultures. How should aesthetics proceed if we take this fact of aesthetic diversity, rather than the presumption of aesthetic universality, as our starting point? How should we theorize the cultural origins and cultural basis of aesthetic diversity? How should we think about the value and normativity of aesthetic diversity? In an effort to model what the turn toward diversity might look like in aesthetic inquiry, each author defends a different account (...) of aesthetic diversity, and they engage in a collective dialogue about these issues. (shrink)

The conception of disinterested pleasure is not only central to Kant’s theory of beauty but also highly influential in contemporary philosophical discourse about beauty. However, it remains unclear, what exactly disinterested pleasure is and what role it plays in experiences of beauty. This volume sheds new light on the conception of disinterested pleasure from the perspectives of both Kant scholarship and contemporary aesthetics. In the first part, the focus is on Kant’s theory of beauty as grounded on the conception of (...) disinterested pleasure. In the second part, disinterested pleasure is investigated in the light of contemporary debates on beauty. The third part is dedicated to the relation of theories of disinterested pleasure to the meta-aesthetical debate between realism and anti-realism. The volume clarifies the meaning, role, and implications of one of the most influential conceptions in traditional as well as contemporary approaches to beauty. (shrink)

One thing to expect from a theory of absolute music is that it explains what makes it so significant to us. Kant rightly observes that the essence of absolute music is our affective response to it. Yet none of the standard 18 th century theories, arousal theory and aesthetic rationalism, can explain both the universality of a judgment of taste and its subjective emotional content. The paper argues that Kant’s own aesthetic theory of aesthetic ideas is on the right path (...) for explaining the emotive significance of music, but that Kant does not further pursue this route because his interest in a “theory of music” is only peripheral to his systematic interest as a transcendental philosopher. For both philosophical and historical reasons, Kant does not have a “theory of music.” Nevertheless, if we free Kant’s conception of aesthetic idea and its restriction to Geist from the background of its 18th century humanism, then Kant’s aesthetics of free play becomes a good theory to account for the broad variety of emotions in absolute music as a fine art proper. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the role of attention in Kant’s aesthetic theory in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. While broadly Kantian aestheticians have defended the claim that there is a distinct way that we attend to objects in aesthetic experience, Kant himself is not usually acknowledged as offering an account of aesthetic attention. On the basis of Kant’s more general account of attention in other texts and his remarks on attention in the Critique of the Power of (...) Judgment, I reconstruct Kant’s account of aesthetic attention. On this account, aesthetic attention is simultaneously directed at the form of an object and at the judging subject’s own mental states as she attends to the object. In the experience of beauty, we specifically attend to the harmonious relation between the faculties of imagination and understanding. (shrink)

Abstract Kant claims that the basis of a judgment of taste is a merely subjective representation and that the only merely subjective representations are feelings of pleasure or displeasure. Commentators disagree over how to interpret this claim. Some take it to mean that judgments about the beauty of an object depend only on the state of the judging subject. Others argue instead that, for Kant, the pleasure we take in a beautiful object is best understood as a response to its (...) qualities, and that, accordingly, feelings of pleasure or displeasure are no different from other representations, such as colors or smells. While I agree that the judgment of taste is best understood as asserting a claim about an object's qualities, I argue that the distinction Kant makes between feelings of pleasure or displeasure and other representations should not be ignored. I show that one's liking or disliking for an object is merely subjective in the sense that its significance depends on what one has made of oneself through one's aesthetic education. The judgment of taste, then, is merely subjective because one must first become the kind of person whose feelings have the right significance at the right time before one can determine whether an object's qualities make it beautiful. (shrink)

Kant holds that it is possible to quarrel about judgements of beauty and cultivate taste, but these possibilities have not been adequately accounted for in the dominant interpretations of his aesthetics. They can be better explained if we combine a more subjectivist interpretation of the free harmony of the faculties and aesthetic form with a type of social constructivism. On this ‘subjectivist-constructivist’ reading, quarrelling over and cultivating taste are not attempts to conform to some matter of fact, but rather to (...) reconcile subjective perceptions through mutual interchange governed by the regulative goal of constructing a universal community of agreement. (shrink)

At the end of §40 of the Critique of Judgement, after a discussion of the sensus communis and its connection with taste, Kant writes:If we could assume that the mere universal communicability as such of our feeling must already carry with it an interest for us , then we could explain how it is that we require from everyone as a duty, as it were , the feeling in a judgment of taste.

Is there tension in a view of the conditions of being in a proper position to make aesthetic evaluations that is committed to aesthetic autonomy and norms of exposure? I define ‘aesthetic autonomy’ in terms of the Kantian idea that in order to make a proper aesthetic evaluation, one must rely on oneself rather than on any outside source. I define ‘norms of exposure’ in terms of the Humean idea that practice and aesthetic education are conditions of proper aesthetic evaluation. (...) Prima facie, these two commitments point toward competing accounts of whether exposure is a condition of being in a position to make proper aesthetic evaluations. However, I argue that a closer look at the Kantian position reveals that aesthetic exposure is a condition of being able to make aesthetic evaluations in an autonomous way in the Kantian framework. (shrink)

This essay discusses four definitions of beauty from Western philosophy in light of recent experimental work from the more modern fields of psychology and biology. The first idea, derived from Plato, that beauty consists of relationships between parts, is partially confirmed by recent psychological experiments on infants and adults. The second idea, that beauty consists of one salient feature amid a mass of details, is more recent, perhaps from Hume, and is confirmed by some experiments on adults, but this finding (...) has not been replicated in non-Western cultures. The third idea, that beauty is based on utility, occurs in Plato but is more difficult to support through experiments; biology suggests that a longing for beauty, not merely for survival, is an evolutionary target. Finally, the fourth idea, that beauty is a type of cognitive pleasure, is a constant thread from Plato through the work of Aquinas and Kant and seems to confirm a preference for an optimum level of complexity by adults, but cannot explain a parallel preference for complexity in human infants. (shrink)

The notion of normativity has been key to an actualizing reading of the subjective universality that for Kant characterizes the aesthetic judgment. However, in the scholarly literature little discussion is made, somehow unsurprisingly, of what exactly we should understand by normativity when it comes to Kant’s aesthetics. Recent trends show indeed the tendency to take normativity very broadly to the point of nuancing most of its core meaning. Based on how we speak about normativity in aesthetics, we seem indeed to (...) have accepted that every kind of evaluative process is normative. I will argue that the sentimentalist elements of Kant's account call for a revision of its normative interpretations, for a better framing of its subjective universalism, and finally for a reconsideration of aesthetic normativity in favour of regulativity. (shrink)