Kant's aesthetics and the "empty cognitive stock"
Kant's aesthetics and the "empty cognitive stock"
It is sometimes assumed that Kant’s claim that a judgement of taste is grounded in a pleasure ‘without concepts’ leaves little room for any credible account of critical judgements of art. I argue that even Kant’s conception of free (as opposed to dependent) beauty can provide the framework for an analysis of aesthetic judgements about art works. It is a matter of understanding what roles for concepts Kant prohibits in his analysis of pure judgements of taste: conceptual cognition must be neither what gives rise to the subject’s pleasure nor part of the evidential basis for the subject’s judgement. But this does not entail that the subject encounters the object in a wholly ‘concept–free’ manner. Kant’s account of free beauty is quite different from Schopenhauer’s superficially similar theory, and is compatible with the thought that increased conceptual knowledge can enhance critical judgements of art.
459-476
Janaway, Christopher
61c48538-365f-416f-b6f7-dfa4d4663475
October 1997
Janaway, Christopher
61c48538-365f-416f-b6f7-dfa4d4663475
Janaway, Christopher
(1997)
Kant's aesthetics and the "empty cognitive stock".
The Philosophical Quarterly, 47 (189), .
(doi:10.1111/1467-9213.00071).
Abstract
It is sometimes assumed that Kant’s claim that a judgement of taste is grounded in a pleasure ‘without concepts’ leaves little room for any credible account of critical judgements of art. I argue that even Kant’s conception of free (as opposed to dependent) beauty can provide the framework for an analysis of aesthetic judgements about art works. It is a matter of understanding what roles for concepts Kant prohibits in his analysis of pure judgements of taste: conceptual cognition must be neither what gives rise to the subject’s pleasure nor part of the evidential basis for the subject’s judgement. But this does not entail that the subject encounters the object in a wholly ‘concept–free’ manner. Kant’s account of free beauty is quite different from Schopenhauer’s superficially similar theory, and is compatible with the thought that increased conceptual knowledge can enhance critical judgements of art.
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Published date: October 1997
Organisations:
Philosophy
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Local EPrints ID: 390973
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/390973
ISSN: 0031-8094
PURE UUID: e95120a5-6f77-4274-af6e-e397d0f9ec14
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Date deposited: 13 Apr 2016 15:57
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:11
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