460.03a subjectivity objectively

SUBJECTIVITY: OBJECTIVELY SPEAKINGModern Concepts in Taste and Aesthetics

MODERNITYUs or Them?

!1. Foundations 2. The objective nature

of the subject 3. Objectivity/

Subjectivity 4. Natural Philosophy to

Science 5. Static to Dynamic

Empiricism

RationalismDescartes 1596-1650

Hume 1711-1776

Berkeley 1685-1753

Leibniz 1646-1716

Galileo 1564-1642

Newton 1642-1727

Linneaus 1707-1778

Lavoisier 1743-1794

Darwin 1809-1882

!1. Foundations 2. The objective nature

of the subject 3. Objectivity/

Subjectivity

Empiricism

RationalismDescartes 1596-1650

Hume 1711-1776

HUMETaste and the Critic

HUME

All knowledge comes from experience

images from http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n16/mente/senses1.html

http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n16/mente/senses1.html

images from http://www.create-a-healthy-flexible-body.com/images/pain-relief-using-the-mind.jpg

HUME


http://www.create-a-healthy-flexible-body.com/images/pain-relief-using-the-mind.jpg

Gold

HUME


Mountain

HUME


+

HUME

All knowledge comes from experience Gold Mountain

“On a long journey of human life, faith is the best of companions; it is the best refreshment on the journey; and it is the greatest property.”

Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.

Practice loving kindness: do not do utno others as you would not have them do to you

Confucius, The Confucian Analects

I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore

choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live

Moses, Deuteronomy 30:19

But with love, we are creative. With it, we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able

to sacrifice for others. Chief Dan George

'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' Jesus, Mark 12:28-31

Is beauty merely in the eye of the beholder?

Milton: Paradise Lost

Ogilby

Mount Teneriffe

Homer’s Popularity Over Time

0

25

50

75

100

700 BCE 350 BCE 0 350 ACE 700 ACE 1050 ACE 1750 ACE 2000 ACE

Athens

The Standard of Taste and The Test of Time

Paris

London

Rome

Bach’s Popularity Over Time

0

25

50

75

100

700 BCE 350 BCE 0 350 ACE 700 ACE 1050 ACE 1750 ACE 2000 ACE

The Critic

The Character of the Critic

1.Strong Sense 2.Delicate Sentiment 3.Practice 4.Comparison 5.Free from Prejudice

Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 2 in E Minor,

Op. 27: III. Adagio Baltimore Symphony Orchestra & David

Zinman

http://www.renaissance-in-art.org/artist-page-Giotto+Di+Bondone.html

Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 2 in E Minor,

Op. 27: III. Adagio Mikhail Pletnev &

Russian National Orchestra

http://www.renaissance-in-art.org/artist-page-Giotto+Di+Bondone.html

Like a Virgin Madonna

Like a Virgin Marylin Manson

KANTThe Aesthetic and the Free Play of the Imagination

logi

c

aesthetic

Phenoumenallogi

c

aesthetic

Phenoumenallogi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

Phenoumenallogi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

The analytic + the aesthetic constitutes an object. Both are needed, neither by itself is enough.

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Part of the concept of an object is that it is a thing in itself— a Ding

an Sich that exists outside the

phenoumenal, in the noumenal

Ding an Sich

concept

intuition

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Noumenal

Ding an Sich

concept

intuition

Noumenal

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Noumenal

Ding an Sich

concept

intuition

In this technical sense judgements about

beauty are intuitive, aesthetic, and non-

conceptual

Noumenal

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Noumenal

Ding an Sich

concept

intuitionJudgements about facts, by contrast, are

conceptual

Noumenal

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

concept

intuition

Such judgements are objective in that they have four conceptual

vectors: quality, quantity, relation, and modality

Noumenal

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Noumenal

Ding an Sich

concept

intuition

Judgements about beauty have analogous vectors but without

conceptual or objective grounding

Noumenal

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

concept

intuition

Noumenal

Definition of the Beautiful derived from the First Moment: Taste is the faculty of

estimating an object or a mode of representation by means of a delight or

aversion apart from any interest. The object of such a delight is called beautiful.

FIRST MOMENT. Of the Judgement of Taste: Moment of Quality.

The judgement of taste is aesthetic.

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

concept

intuition

Noumenal

In order to distinguish whether anything is beautiful or not, we refer the representation, not by the understanding to the object for

cognition, but by the imagination (perhaps in conjunction with the understanding) to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or pain.



Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

existence

intuition

NoumenalWe wish only to know if this mere representation of the object is accompanied in me with satisfaction, however indifferent I may be as regards the existence of the object of this representation. We easily see that, in

saying it is beautiful and in showing that I have taste, I am concerned, not with that in which I

depend on the existence of the object, but with that which I make out of this

representation in myself.



Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

representation as sensation/

existence

feeling/ desire

NoumenalIf a determination of the feeling of pleasure or pain is called sensation, this expression

signifies something quite different from what I mean when I call the representation of a thing

sensation. For in the latter case the representation is referred to the object, in the

former simply to the subject. The green color of the meadows belongs to objective sensation; the pleasantness of this

belongs to subjective sensation.



Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

utility

feeling/ desire

Noumenal

That which pleases only as a means we call good for something (the useful), but that which pleases for itself is good in itself. In

both there is always involved the concept of a purpose, and consequently the relation of

reason to the (at least possible) volition, and thus a satisfaction in the presence of an

object or an action, i.e. some kind of interest.



you

object

is pleasing to

you

object

is good for

purpose

youobject

purpose

Pleasant

Good

Beautiful

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

…Noumenal

Taste is the faculty of estimating an object or a mode of representation by means of a

delight or aversion apart from any interest.


the beautiful is disinterested

beautiful

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

…Noumenal

Definition of the Beautiful drawn from the Second Moment:

The beautiful is that which, apart from a concept, pleases universally.

SECOND MOMENT. Of the Judgement of Taste: Moment of Quantity.

The beautiful is that which, apart from concepts, is represented as the Object

of a universal delight.

beautiful

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

…NoumenalFor since it does not rest on any inclination of

the subject (nor upon any other premeditated interest), but since the person who judges

feels himself quite free as regards the satisfaction which he attaches to the object, he cannot find the ground of this satisfaction in any private conditions connected with his

own subject, and hence it must be regarded as grounded on what he can presuppose in

every other person.

SECOND MOMENT. Of the Judgement of Taste: Moment of Quantity.

feeling/ desire

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

finalityNoumenal

Definition of the Beautiful drawn from the Third Moment:

Beauty is the form of finality in an object, so far as perceived in it apart from the

representation of an end.

THIRD MOMENT. Of Judgements of Taste: Moment of the relation of the Ends brought under Review in such Judgements.

beautiful

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

finalityNoumenalthe causality of a concept in respect of its

object is its purposiveness (forma finalis). Where then not merely the cognition of an

object but the object itself (its form and existence) is thought as an effect only

possible by means of the concept of this latter, there we think a purpose. The

representation of the effect is here the determining ground of its cause and precedes

it.


beautifulpurposiveness/ purpose

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

finalityNoumenal

Therefore it can be nothing else than the subjective purposiveness in the

representation of an object without any purpose (either objective or subjective), and thus it is the mere form of purposiveness in the representation by by which an object is given to us, so far as we are conscious of it, which constitutes the satisfaction that we without a concept judge to be universally

communicable; and, consequently, this is the determining ground of the judgment of taste.


beautiful

purposiveness/ purpose

feeling/ desire

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

finalityNoumenal

Objective purposiveness can only be cognized by means of the reference of the manifold to

a definite purpose, and therefore only through a concept. From this alone it is plain that the

beautiful, the judging of which has at its basis a merely formal purposiveness, i.e. a

purposiveness without purpose, is quite independent of the concept of the good,

because the latter presupposes an objective purposiveness, i.e. the reference of the object

to a definite purpose. Objective purposiveness is either external, i.e. the utility,


beautiful


feeling/ desire

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

finalityNoumenal

an aesthetical judgment is unique of its kind and gives absolutely no cognition of the

object. On the contrary, it simply refers the representation, by which an object is given, to

the subject, and brings to our notice no characteristic of the object, but only the

purposive form in the determination of the representative powers which are occupying themselves therewith. The judgment is called

aesthetical just because its determining ground is not a concept, but the feeling (of

internal sense) of that harmony in the play of the mental powers, so far as it can be felt in

sensation.


beautiful


feeling/ desire

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

…Noumenal

The judgment of taste requires the agreement of everyone, and he who describes anything

as beautiful claims that everyone ought to give his approval to the object in question and also

describe it as beautiful. The ought in the aesthetical judgment is therefore pronounced

in accordance with all the data which are required for judging, and yet is only

conditioned.

FOURTH MOMENT. Of the Judgement of Taste: Moment of the Modality of the Delight in the Object.

beautiful/ ought

Phenoumenal

logi

c

aesthetic

concept

intuition

object

Ding an Sich

…Noumenal

But such a principle could only be regarded as a common sense, which is essentially different from common understanding which people

sometimes call common sense (sensus communis ); for the latter does not judge by

feeling but always by concepts, although ordinarily only as by obscurely represented

principles. Hence it is only under the presupposition that there is a common sense (by which we do not understand an external sense, but the effect resulting from the free

play of our cognitive powers)—it is only under this presupposition, I say, that the

judgment of taste can be laid down.

FOURTH MOMENT. Of the Judgement of Taste: Moment of the Modality of the Delight in the Object.

beautiful/ sensus communis

QualityQuantity

Relations Modality

Necessary delight

Free play

Universal delight

Aesthetics/ disinterested

GENERAL REMARK ON THE FIRST SECTION OF THE ANALYTIC If we seek the result of the preceding analysis, we find that everything runs up into this concept of taste—that it is a faculty for judging an object in reference

to the imagination’s free conformity to law.

REFLECTIONS

What aesthetic terms did people in the film use to describe the artwork? The environment? What aesthetic terms would you use to describe the artwork or the environment?

What aesthetic terms would you use to describe Running Fence, the film (including the soundtrack and the plot)?

Look up some critic’s views on either the film or the artwork—how do they compare with Hume’s Ideal Critic? Will either the film or the artwork stand the test of time?

Which aesthetic terms you’ve noted above fit Kant’s First Moment (disinterestedness)? Which don’t?

Which aesthetic terms you’ve noted above fit Kant’s Third Moment (free play)? Which don’t?

460.03a subjectivity objectively

Documents

time0255075100700 bce

critichumeall knowledge

experience humeall knowledge

e minor

objective nature

long journey of human

free play

best of companions