Kant and the aesthetics of nature

British Journal of Aesthetics

Volumn 47, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 138-155

  Rueger, Alexander ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA   (Canada)

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EID: 61149226662     PISSN: 00070904     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/aesthj/ayl052     Document Type: Review

References (39)

1. 'Wir fühlen uns bei der Naturschönheit zu sehr im Unbestimmten, ohne Kriterium zu sein . . .' G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970) (= Werke, Bd. 13), p. 15 (my translation)
2. See, for instance, R. Wollheim, Art and Its Objects (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1980), pp. 96-98
3. or E. Brady, Aesthetics of the Natural Environment (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003), p. 68
4. See, for instance, A. Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 131
5. See again Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment, for a series of influential essays on this question and an overview of the history of the discussion. Also cf. G. Parsons, 'Freedom and Objectivity in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 46 (2006), pp. 17-37
6. Cf., for instance, N. Carroll, Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Cambrige U.P., 2001), pp. 392-394
7. The phrase is from Y. Saito, 'Appreciating Nature on Its Own Terms', Environmental Ethics, vol. 20 (1998), pp. 135-149
8. Shaftesbury, The Moralists (1709), in P. Ayres (ed.), Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. Vol. II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), p. 101
9. Quoted from F. W. Leakey, Baudelaire and Nature (Manchester: Manchester U.P., 1969), pp. 113 and 121
10. O. Wilde, Intentions (Amherst, MA: Prometheus 2004), p. 55
11. The classic source for this approach is Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment
12. References to the third Critique follow the pagination of vol. 5 of the Akademie edition. The translations, unless noted otherwise, are from I. Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgement, trans. P. Guyer and E. Matthews (Cambridge: Cambrige U.P., 2000)
13. 'The powers of cognition that are set into ply hy this representation are hereby in a free play, since no determinate concept restricts them to a particular rule of cognition. Thus the state of mind in this representation must be that of a feeling of the free play of the powers of representation in a given representation for a cognition in general' (5: 217; cf. also 5: 287)
14. For a more detailed account, see A. Rueger and S. Evren, 'The Role of Symbolic Presentation in Kant's Theory of Taste', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 45 (2005), pp. 229-247
15. Virtually alone among commentators of Kant, S. Kemal has also argued that, on Kant's theory, 'natural objects are ascribed aesthetic qualities by analogy with fine art' (Kant and Fine Art: An Essay on Kant and the Philosophy of Fine Art and Culture [Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1986], p. 20) I don't find Kemal's reasons for this claim plausible and my own view does not emphasize fine art in the same way
16. See Wollheim, Art and Its Objects, pp. 96f.
17. Th.W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1970), pp. 97-121
18. That a judgement of adherent beauty is actually a conjunction of a judgement of free beauty (a pure judgement of taste) and a judgement of perfection is not an uncontroversial view. For supporting arguments see M, Budd, The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2002), pp. 36-39
19. M. Gammon, 'Parerga and Pulchritudo adhaerens: A Reading of the Third Moment of the "Analytic of the Beautiful"', Kant-Studien, vol. 90 (1999), pp. 148-167
20. and H. Allison, Kant's Theory of Taste (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2001), pp. 138-142, 290-298
21. For a different interpretation, cf. P. Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambribge U.P., 1997), pp. 218-220
22. and 'Free and Adherent Beauty: A Modest Proposal', in Guyer, Values of Beauty (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2005), pp. 129-140
23. See the references in footnote 17 as well as A. Rueger, 'Beautiful Surfaces: Kant on Free and Adherent Beauty in Nature and Art', British Journal for the History of Philosophy (forthcoming)
24. P. Guyer, 'Beauty and Utility in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics', in Guyer, Values of Beauty, pp. 126-127
25. Cf. E. Schaper, Studies in Kant's Aesthetics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh U.P., 1979), pp. 79 and 97-98
26. Guyer and Matthews translation modified
27. Cf. R. Brandt, 'Die Schönheit der Kristalle und das Spiel der Erkenntniskräfte', Kant-Forschungen, vol. 5 (1994), pp. 19-57, and Rueger, 'Beautiful Surfaces'
28. This is how Kant introduces the distinction between aesthetic and ideological judgements: purposiveness, he says, can be represented either in aesthetic judgements 'on a merely subjective ground' or in teleological judgements 'as an objective ground, as a correspondence of its form with the possibility of the thing itself, in accordance with a concept of it which precedes and contains the ground of this form' (5: 192). In teleological judgements, 'nature is no longer judged as it appears as art, but to the extent that it really is art (albeit superhuman) . . .' (5: 311)
29. Cf. The completely different, even contrary evaluation of the case of organisms and their surface features in Hegel's aesthetics: Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I, pp. 193-194 ('The deficiency of natural beauty'). The fact that organisms (qua organisms) have no special significance in Kant's theory while they occupy centre place in Hegel's has not been sufficientlynoted and discussed. Kant's view is also diametrically opposed to the way Nick Zangwill has recently tried to reconstruct the distinction of free and adherent beauty in his project of articulating a 'moderate formalism' in aesthetics. See Zangwill, 'Formal Natural Beauty', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 101 (2001), pp. 209-224, on p. 213 n.n: 'The beauty of a part of a creature is plausibly a beauty which is relative to its function. One may have to know what the part does-that is, we may have to know its function with respect to the whole organism-in order to see ... its dependent, non-formal beauty. The part is beautiful as a thing with its function. But whole organisms ... in my view, often have a free, formal beauty.'
30. Cf. Budd, The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature, p. 52
31. Cf. Allison, Kant's Theory of Taste, pp. 178-179
32. For summaries: Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment, ch. 8
33. Brady, Aesthetics of the Natural Environment, ch. 4
34. Cf. Saito, 'Appreciating Nature on Its Own Terms'
35. Cf. M. Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. I (Pfullingen: Neske 1961), p. 130
36. Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, ch. 11
37. and Guyer, Kant and the Experience of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambrige U.P., 1993), ch. 7
38. With respect to the intellectual interest in beautiful nature Kant does impose cognitive conditions: we have to be aware that it is nature we are judging (see 5:302-303). But this cognitive constraint does not extend to the pure judgement of taste itself. 'The thought that nature has produced that beauty must accompany the intuition and reflection, and on this alone is grounded the immediate interest that one takes in it. Otherwise there remains ... a mere judgement of taste without any interest . . .' (5: 299)
39. This paper is dedicated to my friend Béla Szabados. Thanks to Glenn Parsons for comments on an earlier version