The Concept of the Beautiful by Heller Agnes; Morgan Marcia;

Author:Heller, Agnes; Morgan, Marcia; [Heller, Agnes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

Kant’s Concept of the Beautiful

On Finitude and Happiness

It is with Kant that we who explore the vicissitudes of the concept of the beautiful return home, or at least to one of our homes—to the spirit of the old European narrative. But Kant still is and remains a man of the Enlightenment as he reinvigorates an ancient idea in light of a new framework. What he termed his Copernican revolution, that is, the turn away from the metaphysical center towards the faculties of the human mind, had already been accomplished in matters of beauty—the faculties of judgment, taste, understanding, and sense replaced the notion of the One during the finest hours of the British Enlightenment. The turn to the subject or transcendental subject was first accomplished by understanding beauty, and this change was radical, even for Kant. Of the three a priori faculties, only reflective judgment had no territory of its own as judgment legislates only for itself. Compared to the concepts of the true and the good, the concept of the beautiful was the most radically anti-metaphysical.

If this idea is true, then defending the notion that Kant returned to the spirit of the old narrative initiated by Plato is difficult. Additionally, in many noteworthy details, Kant was as remote from the tradition as his Scottish and French predecessors and contemporaries. Obviously, there is no hierarchy in Kant, so ascension on the rungs of the metaphorical ladder does not actually occur in his framework. Moreover, love does not play a pivotal role in aesthetic judgment, be it the judgment of taste (of the beautiful) or the sublime. erôs, desire, is absent as the judgment of taste is, in its origin, unrelated to the faculty of desire. The British Enlightenment eliminated the will, which Kant identified as the “upper” faculty of desire, from the list of faculties which were said to be related to beauty and taste. However, the thinkers of the time maintained that the lower faculties of desire, such as love, played a role in matters of taste. In Kant, according to whom both the will and desire are excluded from the experience of the beautiful, beauty is not something that man covets, desires to possess, or misses in its absence. Instead, humans desire happiness and they achieve happiness only if they receive what they desire. Nevertheless, since men are overwhelmed by insatiable drives, Süchte, they are most likely unable to attain happiness in their pragmatic pursuits. The faculty of reflective judgment is, however, detached from all practical pursuits. Men and women assume the perspective of the spectator in their judgments of taste. As an observer, one must let something be for itself, and not for himself. Here, joy and pleasure are present, but not as a result of an achievement. Therefore, it is no wonder that love in the Platonic sense is expelled from the paradise of beauty.

Still, many elementary aspects of the Platonic arch-narrative of the beautiful may be traced in Kant’s work. The moment at which one experiences the beautiful is autarchia.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.