Judgment in Aesthetic: Taste vs. Disinterest Hume’s overall persuasive thesis seems to be relatively comfortable and even rational, while reading on Kant has been a bit uneasy to follow. I think the most contrasting position may come from the artistic ‘norms’ or ‘standards’ about judgment or evaluation in aesthetic value. Kant stated that awareness of art requires a necessity of interrelation with “a priori” rule of knowledge, because an art thing is a creation by a creative process that having purpose through an artist similar with the natural beauty which is forming by natural creation process so-called “purposive without purpose,”; it would be comparable to Aristotle’s famous quote “Oak tree is the telos of acorn” that meant a thing must have cosmic purpose under the plans of Unmoved Mover. Kant’s “a priori” aesthetic rule claims that it is to be justified as a general law and universal because of the preconditions of both an art object and artist as like in nature. On the contrary, Hume has positioned by an objection to Kant’s “a priori” of artistic norm. First, our perception of beauty is most part associated with our experience, such as by custom, culture, nationality ---, etc. Therefore, Hume argues about ‘reaction’ which is a great variety of taste for beauty that the norm of aesthetic is almost interconnected with collective cultural relativity and even each unique individual attitude of taste to the beauty. In fact, appreciations of beauty would be changed constantly by the people’s cognitive attitudes among different generations or even a contemporary’s predominant ideological impact. Hume added that the norm of taste is subject to each individual’s capacity of evaluation, because taste is almost associated through various daily experiences. Although both see that the cognition of beauty is a subjective matter by an individual’s capacity to the judgment, their interesting comparative contrasting point is that; while Kant positions as aesthetic idea came from intuitional idea of reason and rational, Hume positions that it is fully depended on our sense of imaginations and sentiments with an objects. For example, there are so various possibilities of interpretations and understandings in any poetic descriptions by metaphor. Hume also states that even though the principles of taste are universal, it is difficult to aware whether we are free of prejudice. Therefore, gradually our judgment would be forced into skeptical because of our various experiences in society, such as among age groups or schools of young and old. Kant argues in the Critique of Judgment that aesthetic judgments must have reflected three distinguished core indicators in application: 1) first applicable notion is “disinterested” principle, because we are both active perceivers and audiences for judgment to an objects, whether beautiful or distasteful. Therefore, those audiences able to judge rightly in free of prejudice that following the principle of “disinterested”; 2) second application is “common sense” which is human mind has already encoded a judgment ability of “universal” and “necessary” by given intuitions; 3) the last applicable indicator to an appreciation is “final without end” or “purposive without purpose” notion. Kant explains that the beautiful objects should affect audiences as if they had a purpose even if there is lack of or empty of particular purpose matters. And then Kant shifts form the judgment of the beautiful object to the transcendental preconditions about the creation of fine art, by the notion of a work of artistic “genius.” Most importantly, Kant focuses on work of art, as fine art, which is huge parts borrow from nature its beauty or sublimity feeling like a gentleman standing in front of winded huge waves of ocean. Kant added fine art is a type of purposeful production, for it is created by mechanically. And then he goes to the art must appear to be “natural” in end of accomplishment. However, Kant goes to further work of genius that fine art is produced by individual artist (necessary being for art) not by a contingent being. For fine art is aesthetic like nature as aesthetic, there seems not to be definite rules or concepts for producing or judging it. Consequently, Kant stats, only genius can apply a rule, concrete blue print, and then construct universal structures by his genius mental force like nature doing like this way. Reference: Of the Standard of Taste: Hume Critique of Judgment: Kant
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 20:42:21 +0000
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