Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Aesthetic Pleasure and Harmony

According to Kant, the source of Pleasure in Aesthetic experience is a "harmony" that is an ingredient in the contemplation of Beauty.  However, his analysis of the experience reveals two such harmonies--that between Imagination and Understanding, and that between that interplay and the object of Beauty.  So, his precise attribution of Pleasure likewise vacillates between those two possible harmonies, e. g. both possibilities are plainly cited in part VII of the Introduction to the 3rd Critique.  Now, regardless of how he conceives the two harmonies as systematically related, e. g. as identical, or as one derived from the other, it is latter type that is paradigmatic in his theory.  For, it is only a comparison of the object with subjective processes that is a representation that is exclusive to Reflective Judgment, and it is only insofar as the object is judged as designed to stimulate those processes that it is 'Purposive'.  But, if the main thesis of his Aesthetic Theory is 'The contemplation of Beauty is constituted by a Reflective Judgment that derives Pleasure from the seeming role of the object of Beauty as stimulating subjective cognitive faculties', it is unclear if the claim is factual or normative.  If factual, it seems plainly false, because Beauty has been contemplated over the centuries without that dimension entering into the enjoyment, and, if normative, the requisite criterion would convert all judgments of Taste to Determinative ones, contrary to the fundamental premises of the theory.  Furthermore, the particular implication that the enjoyment of human-made Art is Purposive is false--at least many artists devise their products with an audience in mind, which means that such objects of Beauty are 'purposeful', not 'purposive'.  So, the attribution of Aesthetic Pleasure to a Purposiveness that is conceived only in Reflective Judgment, seems to serve only one function in Kant's theory--as preparation for conceiving Happiness as a divine reward, a Theological function that, as has been previously argued, and as this analysis confirms, is extrinsic to Aesthetic appreciation

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