What Philosophy Is

Æsthetic Judgment

As you read the material for the next class, keep the questions below in mind. To answer these questions you will have to reflect critically on what you have read and possibly re-read important passages. Keep in mind that there are two basic kinds of information that you need to look for in the readings.

  1. What are the main points or conclusions that an author accepts with respect to a particular issue?
  2. What are the reasons or important considerations that lead the author to accept that conclusion?

For our purposes, it is information of the latter sort (2) that will be our primary concern since our most basic task is to evaluate the reasons that are offered to support accepting one possible conclusion about an issue, rather than another.

Although I strongly suggest that you write out brief answers to these questions, you do not have to turn in written responses. You do, however, need to be prepared to speak intelligently to these issues in the next class meeting. Also, it is reasonable to assume that the final exam’s questions will be drawn from these questions—particularly those in bold.

Readings:

  • Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment from Stephen M. Cahn (ed.), Philosophy for the 21st Century, pp. 823-832.

Questions:

  1. According to Immanuel Kant, why must judgments of taste be disinterested? How is this type of satisfaction different from those of the pleasant and the good? Why are æsthetic judgments not merely those of the pleasant?
  2. What does it mean to say that judgments of taste are “subjectively universal”? Why does the disinterested satisfaction of beauty entail that judgments of beauty are subjectively universal? How does this make æsthetic judgments different from those of the pleasant and the good?
  3. Kant claims that judgments of taste have “exemplary necessity”. What Kant mean by this and how does he justify this claim? In doing so, Kant brings up the idea of “common sense”? What does he mean by this? How is it different from the usual usage of that phrase? What reasons does Kant give for presupposing a common sense?
  4. Plato and Aristotle argue that good works of art have common, objective features. Hume claims that the beautiful is a species of the pleasant, and so judging a work of art is a subjective matter. Kant rejects both: beauty is not an objective matter but neither are judgments of beauty mere subjective judgments concerning the pleasant. These thinkers cannot all be right. Who has the stronger and more convincing argument? Why or why not?

 

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