The practical significance of taste in Kant's Critique of Judgment: Love of natural beauty as a mark of moral character

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 63, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 33-45

  Baxley, Anne Margaret ^a  

^a VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 45749095735     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.0021-8529.2005.00179.x     Document Type: Review

References (42)

1. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2001 Pacific Division Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics in Pacific Grove, California and at the 2002 Eastern Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association in Philadelphia. I am grateful to my commentators and audiences on both occasions for helpful discussion, especially to Paul Guyer, Kenneth Rogerson, Amelie O. Rorty, and Rachel Zuckert; and to Jordanna Bailkin, Frances Ferguson, and Iain Thomson for their comments on the penultimate version of the paper. My views about the moral significance of taste in Kant's aesthetic theory are indebted to Henry Allison; in particular, my analysis of Kant's account of an intellectual interest in natural beauty has been shaped by discussions in Allison's seminar on Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, taught at the University of California, San Diego in the spring of 2000. The National Endowment for the Humanities supported research for this project
2. "KU" refers to Kritik der Urtheilskraft in Kants gessamelte Schriften (KGS), herausgegeben von der Deutschen (formerly Königlichen Preussischen) Akademie der Wissenschaften, 29 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (and predecessors), 1902-). The Kritik der Urtheilskraft appears in vol. 5 of KGS. In this paper I refer to Werner Pluhar's English translation (Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987)) and occasionally draw on my own translation when relevant. In the parenthetical references to Kant's work that appear in this paper, the page number in the English translation is referred to immediately following the reference to the volume and page number of the German text
3. Since (for Kant) taste is a necessary condition of taking an interest in objects because of their beauty, the requirement to develop taste is entailed by the requirement to take an interest in the beautiful
4. It is widely agreed that the connection between taste and morality is central to the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" (the first part of the Critique of Judgment). As Henry Allison has argued, there are two distinct ways in which cultivating taste and our experience of beauty contribute to morality. In § 59, Kant is concerned to show that taste and morality are connected insofar as beauty (in art and nature) symbolizes morality. In § 42, however, Kant explains that natural beauty holds a particular interest for us because we take the beautiful in nature as providing some intimation of nature's moral purposiveness, which is itself morally significant to us. This second aspect of Kant's account of the connection between taste and morality is the focus of this paper. Thus, what I offer here is by no means intended as a complete account of Kant's views on the practical significance of taste
5. For Allison's analysis of these issues, see Henry Allison, Kant's Theory of Taste (Cambridge University Press, 2001), pt. 3. Paul Guyer's account of the connection between aesthetics and morality in Kant's philosophy can be found in Kant and the Experience of Freedom (Cambridge University Press, 1993), chaps. 6-10
6. In this way, judgments of taste are distinct from not only judgments of the agreeable but also judgments of the good (or moral judgments). Even moral judgments, which are grounded in pure practical reason alone independently of any interest, immediately give rise to an interest and, thus, as Kant puts it, are "still very interesting" (KU 5: 205n; 46). Elsewhere, he reiterates this point by explaining that, as the object of a will determined by reason, the morally good "carries with it the highest interest" (KU 5: 209; 51). The interest we have in the morally good is discussed at length in Section II of this paper
7. Kant expands on this initial definition of interest in the third Critique by adding that "such liking always refers at once to our faculty of desire," indicating that to be interested in something is to desire its existence (KU 5: 204; 45). Although Kant tends to focus more exclusively on the connection between interest and existence in the third Critique, his basic view about the relations between interest, pleasure, desire, and judgment is consistent with the account set out in fuller detail in his moral theory. (On this point, see Allison, Kant's Theory of Taste, chap. 4. Allison explains that any apparent differences between the account of interest in the third Critique and the one in Kant's moral theory are reconcilable if one allows for their different contexts and emphases of the discussions [Allison, Kant's Theory of Taste, p. 360 n.6].) Section II of the introduction to The Metaphysics of Morals contains Kant's most extended treatment of the various connections between interest, pleasure, desire, and judgment (MS 6: 211-213; 373-374). (References to The Metaphysics of Morals [MS] are to Die Metaphysik der Sitten [KGS 6]
8. In this paper I have used Gregor's English translation as it appears in the Cambridge edition of the works of Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor [Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.]) There he claims that pleasure or displeasure is always connected with desire (Begehren), although the converse does not hold, because I can have a feeling of pleasure that is connected only with the mere representation I form of an object (regardless of whether this object exists). This merely contemplative pleasure is called "inactive delight" or "taste." Since this kind of pleasure has no necessary connection with desire for an object, Kant explains that it is not "at bottom a pleasure in the existence of the object of a representation but is attached only to the representation itself (MS 6: 212; 374). Whereas merely contemplative pleasure belongs to the domain of aesthetics and is investigated in the Critique of Judgment, the pleasure involved in practical philosophy proper is the type necessarily connected with desire for an object, that is, practical pleasure (praktische Lust)
9. Among commentators who have criticized the disinterestedness thesis along these, and other, lines are Karl Ameriks, "Kant and the Objectivity of Taste," The British Journal of Aesthetics 23. (1983): 4-5
10. Donald Crawford, Kant's Aesthetic Theory (University of Wisconsin Press, 1974), pp. 50-54
11. Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste (Cambridge University Press, 1979), chap. 5
12. and Jens Kulenkampff, "The Objectivity of Taste: Hume and Kant," Noûs 24 (1990): 108-109. Allison has attempted to present Kant's view in a more plausible light by arguing that we can distinguish between a liking that incidentally gives rise to an interest and one whose very nature depends on its doing so. Whereas giving rise to an interest cannot be a condition of the liking for the beautiful itself (as it is for the morally good), because the purely contemplative nature of this liking would be lost and, with it, the purity of the judgment of taste, the pleasure of taste may nonetheless produce a liking for the existence of an object in an incidental way. Allison contends that some such distinction is compatible with Kant's overall conception of interest (and disinterest) and that, consequently, the disinterested thesis can accommodate our intuitions about the kinds of interest lovers of beauty have in the existence and accessibility of beautiful objects
13. See Allison, Kant's Theory of Taste, chap. 4
14. On my reading, the deontic claim introduced here at the end of § 40 is importantly different from the one that Kant takes himself to have established in the official deduction of taste. What the deduction attempts to account for is why I am justified in saying: "You ought to find this beautiful." Hence, there the issue is the entitlement to demand universal agreement in a particular judgment - "This is beautiful"-which, on Kant's analysis, amounts to the requirement that another person feel pleasure in the presence of certain objects. By contrast, in the central passage under investigation here (which Kant expressly announces follows on the conclusion of the deduction), I understand Kant's point to be that if we could show that a pure judgment of taste somehow carries with it an interest, we could explain why we have something like a morally-based obligation to take a direct interest in the beautiful. Thus, the normative claim alluded to at the end of § 40 is, "You ought to take an interest in beauty," which is to say, "You ought to cultivate taste." In distinguishing sharply between these two questions central to the analysis of taste in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment - the question of the normativity of judgments of taste (their supposed right to demand the agreement of others) and the question of the moral or systematic significance of taste - I am in agreement with both Allison and Guyer
15. For commentators who endorse an opposing view, according to which the grounding of taste itself ultimately depends on its relation to morality, see Donald Crawford, Kant's Aesthetic Theory
16. Salim Kemal, Kant and Fine Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)
17. Kenneth Rogerson, Kant's Aesthetics (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986)
18. Robert Pippin, "The Significance of Taste: Kant, Aesthetic and Reflective Judgment," Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (1996): 549-569
19. and Anthony Saville, Aesthetic Reconstructions (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987). What I take to be mistaken in this opposing view is that it fails to see that any alleged connection between taste and morality presupposes the normativity of pure judgments of taste - that connection itself cannot be invoked to show that a pure judgment of taste makes a rightful demand on the agreement of others (and thus possesses normativity)
20. As Guyer eloquently formulates this very point: "Taste can serve moral autonomy only if morality can recognize aesthetic autonomy." See Paul Guyer, Kant and the Experience of Freedom:Essays on Freedom and Morality (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 19
21. Earlier, in the first moment of the "Analytic of the Beautiful," where he explains that judgments of taste do not of themselves give rise to an interest, Kant remarks that "[o]nly in society does it become interesting to have taste" (KU 5: 205n; 46), noting that the grounds for this will be explained later. This claim about the social nature of taste is now taken up in § 41
22. Indeed, he thinks that such an empirical, inclination-based interest in beauty is a means for furthering an inclination inherent in us (our sociability), which he portrays as "a requirement of man as a creature with a vocation for society" (KU 5: 296-297; 163). Moreover, he suggests that the universal communicability of the pleasure of taste with which this empirical interest is connected is "something that everyone expects and demands from everyone else, on the basis, as it were, of an original contract dictated by [our] very humanity" (KU 5: 297; 164)
23. Kant tells us, further, that it is important to establish such an a priori connection between taste and an interest because taste would then "reveal a transition of our judgmental faculty from sense enjoyment to moral feeling" (KU 5: 297; 164), and we would "then have better guidance in using taste purposively" (KU 5: 298, 164)
24. More accurately, the inclination for society gives rise to a merely empirical interest of inclination; since such an interest is always conditional and contingent, it cannot ground a necessity claim. In addition to highlighting the fact that this empirical interest in the beautiful is conditional - for one, it is only operative in society - Kant also comments on what he sees as the potentially corrupting effects of its full-fledged development. He claims that the value we attach to it attains its maximum when civilization has reached its peak; this seems to be worrisome for two reasons. First, he suggests that at this stage aesthetic pleasure is valued solely to the extent that it is communicable, indicating that we are interested in the beautiful mainly because we want to appear refined. Second, he says that inclinations and passions reach their height and variety at the most advanced stages of society and that our interest can easily attach to these (supposedly with deleterious effects). These further remarks about the corrupting effects of an empirical interest in beauty parallel some of Kant's (perhaps gratuitous) comments about the potential problems with sensible inclinations in the Groundwork
25. Much more could be said about the pleasure this lover of natural beauty feels in beauty's existence. As already noted, in § II of the introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant explains that the species of pleasure necessarily connected with desire for an object is "practical pleasure." But practical pleasure can be connected with desire in two ways, which means that desire-based pleasure, on Kant's view, can take two forms. When practical pleasure precedes desire and is the cause of desire for an object, pleasure is sensuous. In this case, the resulting desire is an inclination; if one adopts a policy of acting on that inclination, one has an interest of inclination (ein Interesse der Neigung), that is, an interest of inclination in whatever satisfies that desire. If, however, practical pleasure follows on the antecedent determination of the faculty of desire - in which case the faculty of desire is the cause of pleasure - pleasure is intellectual (intellektuelle Lust), stemming directly from the faculty of desire or rational will itself. Kant holds that the pleasure one takes in morality is of this kind and that any resulting interest in the object of desire is an interest of reason (Vernunftinteresse). Whereas an interest of inclination is based on the senses, an interest of reason, Kant claims, is based "on pure rational principles alone" (MS 6: 213; 374). Kant adds that, in order to conform to ordinary speech, we might refer to this inclination for what can be an object only of an intellectual pleasure as a "habitual desire from a pure interest of reason" (MS 6: 213; 374). These considerations enable us to say that the intellectual interest in the beautiful that Kant is concerned with in § 42 is an interest of reason and the practical pleasure this lover of beauty feels for nature is an intellectual pleasure
26. There are two points to keep in mind here. First, Kant is not saying that one could no longer find the object beautiful. The aesthetic evaluation may remain, but in this case a pure aesthetic judgment would not give rise to a further interest in the object. Second, Kant is not committed to the view that an indirect, empirical interest in the beautiful is to be avoided or that it is inherently problematic. He does, however, insist that such an empirical interest based on society provides no "safe indication of a morally good way of thinking" (sichere Anzeige auf moralisch-gute Denkungsart) (KU 5: 299; 166)
27. Kant also notes that they differ insofar as aesthetic judgments are based on feeling, as opposed to concepts, but it is the difference noted above that concerns us here
28. See, especially, the second introduction to the Critique of Judgment for Kant's discussion of this problem
29. Again, the assumption seems to be that the rational orderliness and purposiveness of the beautiful object that I am admiring gives me reason to think (by analogy) that nature is amenable to the tasks incumbent on me as a moral agent. In the process of making an aesthetic reflective judgment about a beautiful object, I incidentally feel the need for the existence of the object. That practical pleasure cannot be accounted for in terms of the purely disinterested (or desire-independent) pleasure I feel in the initial judgment and experience of beauty. Instead, my desire for the existence of natural beauty has to do with my own intellectual need to find a "hint" in nature that my moral aims are not in vain, and, purportedly, I glean such a hint of nature's moral purposiveness from nature's aesthetic purposiveness, which is exhibited by the rational orderliness and purposiveness of the beautiful object I am contemplating. One obvious objection Kant's analysis raises concerns the reason for a morally predisposed person to take an interest in natural beauty. The main issue would be whether the analogy between nature's aesthetic purposiveness and the moral purposiveness in which we have a stake is sufficient for reading nature this way - that is, is the way in which nature favors us in providing beautiful objects that seem to be designed according to the needs of judgment sufficiently similar to the way in which nature would have to favor our moral goals to warrant a moral interest in natural beauty? Although there is reason to doubt that this is so, in § 42 Kant at least treats the analogy as valid. In each case, he thinks, there is some reason to think that nature is "on our side" in the sense of harmonizing with our intellectual needs, either as cognizers or as practical subjects
30. It is, however, important to note that this leaves room for the possibility that one could have (what Kant would call) an empirical interest in natural beauty, and yet not be attached to the morally good. So a love of natural beauty in general does not necessarily signify a moral disposition, which implies that a moral disposition is not necessary for any kind of love of natural beauty. One could take pleasure in the existence of natural beauty insofar as one is interested in it for some other purpose, or values it for the sake of something else (for example, vanity, the "play" of conversation, communication with others). For example, the beautiful shape of a wildflower might interest me because I want to communicate my taste and appear refined and sophisticated in the eyes of the people in my garden club. Again, Kant's analysis is simply that such an interest in natural beauty is an empirical one and that taste here caters to inclination. In this case, we have no cause to infer that someone has a good moral disposition
31. In § 42 Kant makes the following claims about an intellectual interest in natural beauty: it provides "proof that someone's way of thinking is attached to the morally good"; it is "always a mark of a good soul"; it indicates "at least a mental attunement to moral feeling"; it provides "a safe indication of a morally good way of thinking" (KU 5: 298-310; 165-167). He nowhere indicates that an intellectual interest in beauty or, more generally, taste is required for virtue. After all, whether the mind finds itself in the presence of the beautiful in nature in the first place, or has the leisure to meditate on natural beauty when in its presence, is not within our control
32. (On this point, see Jane Kneller's helpful discussion in "The Interests of Disinterest," in Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress [Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995], vol. I., p. 782.) Were Kant committed to the view that taste is strictly a requirement for possessing a virtuous character, this would appear to raise the specter of moral luck - that the very possession of a virtuous character is subject to fortune - which Kant generally wants to deny
33. This is precisely what Kant claims twice when he notes that the privileged status of natural beauty has nothing to do with aesthetic ranking, but consists in the fact that only the beautiful in nature gives rise to a direct interest (KU 5: 299, 302; 166, 168)
34. On this point, see Kneller, "Interests of Disinterest."
35. I am indebted to Rachel Zuckert for raising this very point and suggesting these examples in her helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. As a specific example she thought closer to Kant's concerns, Zuckert noted that it seems aesthetically comprehensible that the narrator of Martin Amis's Time's Arrow, who inhabits a world of reversed time and morality - violence, for example, cures people of their wounds - would find the beauty of the stars hateful, since such beauty symbolizes a harmony in nature that is belied by human behavior. We might consider the Nazi preoccupation with natural beauty as a counterexample to our intuitions about some sort of (at least loose) connection between morality and love of natural beauty
36. Kneller raises this latter point in "Interests of Disinterest," p. 783
37. Again, it might turn out that Kant's theory of genius complicates matters for him on this point
38. For a helpful discussion of the interpretive issues involved in the distinction Kant seems to draw between artistic and natural beauty and the evaluative significance of this distinction, see Kenneth F. Rogerson, "Art and Nature in Kant's Aesthetics," in Akten des Siebten Internationalen Kant Kongresses, Kurfürstliches Schloß zu Mainz, 1990, ed. G. Funke (Bonn: Bouvier, 1991), pp. 735-744. Rogerson rightly insists that both art and nature are of moral interest on Kant's view in the third Critique
39. Jane Kneller explores this issue and concludes that a case can be made that Kant allows for an intrinsic valuing of nature. See Kneller, "Beauty, Autonomy and Respect for Nature," in L'Esthétique de Kant/Kants Äesthetik/Kant's Aesthetics (Berlin: de Grutyer, 1995), pp. 403-414
40. For an opposing interpretation of Kant's view, according to which nature is ultimately subordinate to the unconditioned end of human morality, see Guyer, Kant and the Experience of Freedom, p. 334
41. This very point may indicate that the distinction Kant goes on to draw between a direct and indirect interest might be somewhat narrower than that of "for its own sake" versus "for the sake of something else." The empirical interest in beauty discussed in § 41 is clearly an indirect interest. Since that inclination-based interest is in the universal communicability of the pleasure one feels in the experience and judgment of beauty, which is itself based on an inclination for society inherent in human nature, one cares about the beautiful because it is instrumental for satisfying one's desire to communicate one's feelings and evaluations with others in society. By contrast, the intellectual interest in the beautiful cannot be put to use in such an immediate way - natural beauties are not useful in any obvious way for realizing the Highest Good, but merely give us some comforting, global sense that nature is amenable to its realization. Once again I am indebted to Rachel Zuckert for raising this extended point about Kant's distinction between the two types of interest in the beautiful in her helpful correspondence regarding an earlier version of this paper
42. The notion that the "for the sake of" relation is not always a merely instrumental one is a fundamental insight of Aristotle's, and I think it provides a useful way of thinking about Kant's account of the value natural beauty holds for us. On Aristotle's taxonomy in EN i, a complete good is chosen for its own sake, whereas an unconditionally complete good is chosen only for its own sake alone - for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else. This distinction between a complete and an unconditionally complete good suggests that some goods chosen for the sake of others are intrinsically good, as opposed to merely instrumentally good. They are intrinsically good, or good in themselves, because they are proper parts of happiness and are valuable for their constitutive contribution to happiness. The relevant lesson here is that for Aristotle "for the sake of" is not always an instrumental relation. We might apply some such distinction to Kant's account of taste and its systematic or moral significance in the following way. Even though it appears that the intellectual interest we take in the beautiful in nature is ultimately explained in terms of the interest we have in our moral vocation - which Kant explicitly conceives of as "the ultimate purpose of humanity" (KU 5: 298; 165) - natural beauty nonetheless has an intrinsic value, belonging to it independently of any concerns we have regarding our moral vocation (or anything else). In other words, even if we did not take a morally-based interest in natural beauty (and thus value it in some mediated sense for the sake of its contribution to our moral aims), it would still please us in the experience and judgment of taste, and possess a value not subordinate to any independent end or aim