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
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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
question John Berger, critic of art and author of the Ways of Seeing, raised in his essay, and it is
When artists create a piece of work, they carefully analyze every aspect that they could possibly include and then carefully select which pieces they want to include in the final product. The amount of time and effort it takes to compose a piece they are satisfied cannot be overstated and it is the hope of these artists that their work is admired by others. When looking at art there can be some much going on that it seems overwhelming and each piece of art is subject to the perspective and values of each of the viewers. This is why art critics created three basic theories that can be used to effectively judge art. Each of these looks for specific aspects in a piece and uses that to determine the quality of work completed. Depending on the piece of work that is to be evaluated, one theory may be more fitting than the others to apply to the specific piece. Georgia O’Keefe’s painting Summer Days portrays a beautiful desert scene that has a very strong personal meaning for the painting, making using an expressive theory a successful method for analyzing how her own passions and views influenced the work. On the other hand, Jan van Eyck’s Madonna of Chancellor Rolin used groundbreaking oil techniques that defied the traditional works of his time, making a formal theory that focuses attention on the overall composition an ideal means to judge his piece.
In moving away from the objective property-based or perfectionist theories of the medieval and early modern periods to this sort of subject-based aesthetic, Kant did not intend to give up the idea that judgments of beauty are universalizable. Accordingly, much of the first part of the Critique is given to showing how one person’s reflective aesthetic judgments can be legitimately "imputed" to or expected from all properly-situated human subjects.(3) The famous "Deduction of Judgments of Taste" (§ 38) provides a sketch of this argument. Very briefly, Kant argues that since the faculties under consideration are "required for possible cognition as such," it follows that all who (through communicating with others reveal their ability to) cognize anything are susceptible to the same experience of faculties in free harmony, and to the concomitant aesthetic pleasure. As long as the subject takes himself to be conscientiously beholding the object under appropriate circumstances (e.g. without interest, prejudice, etc.) he can take his judgment of taste to imply in an "a priori" fashion that under similar circumstances other well-functioning human beings likewise will be pleased by it.(4)
He compared it to art and how art should be the raw cut form of how an individual feels, and individual expression, that requires one to reach into the deepest and most inner parts of the human mind to create such a masterpiece that it would in turn be considered true
The formal analysis of a work of art has to do with what the viewer sees through his or her own eyes, to attempt to describe it to their personal knowledge. One important element is the composition, which involves the order of colors, lines, and space, in an art piece that relate to the subject matter. To explain what the artist is communicating through visual aspects of his or her own artwork and to analyze every last detail. These specific terms are important tools to dissect forms of art from any artist and being able to distinguish the qualities that it has to offer. Also to differentiate visual features to figure out what’s going on in the subject’s mind or to determine the behavior in the composition. Being capable to comprehend what’s
Kant’s theory of art calls for us to view art in a way where we
Over the course of several months the meaning and understanding of aesthetics and its application to art have taken place as a means to expanding the mind of a budding aesthete. Multiple respected aesthetes have been discussed regarding their philosophical approach to art and the theories influencing their philosophical stance. Some theories have been refuted while others have been regarded yet the insight provided by these aesthetes has been profound. Several of these aesthetes studied have helped in shaping one particular individual’s viewpoint in the creation of her own philosophy of art. Art and its significance can be appreciated by critics willing to understand the artist is in control of creating and expressing herself through
This bids fair to a maxim erroneously accredited to Friedrich Nietzsche — that aesthetics, in art or science, is no longer a question of "I do my thing, you do yours." Yet, in point of fact, integrating artistic verdict with truth, prettiness, and forthrightness is, in the times we now live in, more than utterly obligatory than ever before. Not only because the US, or our world, has woken up to actuality and vowed to exterminate Frankenstein monsters that it once created, or encouraged.
In his text entitled “Modernist Painting”, Greenberg focuses on the development of painting between the 14th and 19th century and emphasizes on what distinguishes Modernist painting from previous forms of painting, particularly those of the Old Masters. Greenberg begins by relating Modernist art to Kantian philosophy claiming that, the same way Kant used reason in order to examine the limits of reason, Modernist art is when art became self critical because it uses the technique of art to draw attention to its status as art. Indeed, he explains how without this self-examination similar to that of Kant’s reflection on Philosophy, art would’ve been “assimilated to […] therapy” like religion, because
Ernest Hemingway, the author of “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, near Chicago. When Hemingway finished high school, World War I was raging across Europe. Although Hemingway wanted to enlist in the war, he became a reporter for the Kansas City Star. This is where he really practiced writing. He eventually moved to Paris to work as a reporter and he joined a group of writers and artists, including Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Pablo Picasso. In 1937, Hemingway went to Spain as a reporter to cover the Spanish Civil War. After, he moved around a great deal, first to Havana, Cuba, and then back to Europe to contribute to the war effort in World War II. Hemingway’s work won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” is one of Hemingway’s most famous short stories, as much for its existentialist themes, as its questionable dialogue that has been argued over for years. Existentialism is a philosophical movement that believes that life has no higher purpose and that no higher being exists to help us make sense of it. People are just left alone to find meaning in the world and their lives. Despite his great literary achievement, Hemingway dealt with existentialism, depression, alcoholism, and other health problems. He died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds in 1961 at age sixty-one.
Beauty and aesthetics can be defined as “Nothing more nor less, than sensitivity to the sublime and the beautiful and an aversion to the ordinary and ugly”, this means that beauty can be absolutely anything which is beautiful as long as it is not ugly or ordinary, this may seem harsh, much like the poems by William Shakespeare and Jonathan Swift. In both poems; ‘Sonnet 130’ by William Shakespeare and ‘A beautiful young nymph going to bed’ by Jonathan Swift, aesthetic beauty is explored in a brutal and honest light. Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 130’ tells the story of a man describing his mistress
is an aesthetic notion distinct from Beauty (from which the Picturesque aesthetic flows) in that Beauty generally evokes positive feelings in the viewer; the Sublime, on the other hand, has the ability to instill awe, wonder, and even horror (46).
Let’s Talk about Love: A Journey to the End of Taste centers on Carl Wilson’s quest to discover why we like and dislike certain aspects of our larger culture. Within this search he finds how cultural taste relates to how humans perceive both each other and themselves. Each chapter is an exploration into one part of taste and how it relates to the world beyond the book. In Chapter 7, Wilson explores objectivity. Specifically, he asks: “is there any objectivity in artistic taste?” (Wilson 75). In other words, Wilson is questioning whether objectivity can exist at all in the artistic sphere, or if taste is ultimately ruled by subjectivity and bias. In addition to this question, Wilson also asks how the existence of objectivity or lack thereof
Kant has a particular separation between free and accessory of what a certain thing is; a design that pleases a night club may not be appropriate in a senior home. With so many types of art forms, we are hardly able to ignore them and become disinterested, eventually curiosity will take its course.
In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus defines beauty and the artist's comprehension of his/her own art. Stephen uses his esthetic theory with theories borrowed from St. Thomas Aquinas and Plato. The discourse can be broken down into three main sections: 1) A definitions of beauty and art. 2) The apprehension and qualifications of beauty. 3) The artist's view of his/her own work. I will explain how the first two sections of his esthetic theory relate to Stephen. Furthermore, I will argue that in the last section, Joyce is speaking of Stephen Dedalus and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as his art.