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Aesthetics Of Kant And Hegel

Decent Essays

Shashikant

Dr. Prashanta Chakravarty

M.A. English (I Semester)

2nd November 2015

The Aesthetics of Kant and Hegel

The theories of art put forward by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) have long been seen to represent two rival positions which nonetheless arise from a distinctive tradition of German philosophy. In both cases, a concern with problems of art and beauty represents only one part of their respective philosophical systems. It is this larger, theoretical framework which lends both theories their characteristic breadth and range of interest. Whilst Kant’s name has principally been associated with the development of a formalist aesthetics, Hegel is seen to represent an …show more content…

Central to his view of aesthetic judgment is the concept of “purposiveness.” This refers to the fact that we must assume a certain coherence and connection among the appearances of the external world or nature so that we can reflect coherently upon it. We presuppose a harmony between nature and our cognitive powers, as if they were suited or adapted to each other. It is this presumed harmony, which Kant calls “purposiveness,” which gives us pleasure. According to Kant, when we make an aesthetic judgment, we make a judgment about the form of an object (not its content as given through our senses); the object’s form gives rise to pleasure because it exhibits a harmony with our cognitive powers, namely our understanding and imagination. We then call the object
“beautiful” and our ability to judge the object by such a pleasure is “taste”. An aesthetic judgment is not a judgment of cognition; it does not refer to the object and gives us no knowledge of it. It refers only to the perceiving subject, to our self and its feeling of pleasure or displeasure. It tells us only about how we, as subjects, are affected by our mental representation of the

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