This document contains all the elaborated lecture slides plus my own written notes and explanantions of the course Thinking About Art 1: Philosophy of Art. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, year 1.
Lecture 1 // Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Hume & Kant
What is philosophy? This is a philosophical question in itself. It is about asking questions.
“Questioning answers rather than answering questions”. There is no specific method about
philosophy. There is no particular subject, you can philosophy about everything. Philosophy is on a
meta-level in a general way, beyond the usual scientific questions. They are questioning the concepts
and presuppositions of other sciences; what is truth/morality/beauty? What do you mean by it?
There are different branches such as
- Philosophy of science/history/economy/psychology etc.
- Epistemology (how do we know knowledge?), ontology (what does it mean to be?), ethics
(right or wrong)
- Political and cultural philosophy
- Philosophy of art (questions concerning art) and aesthetics (beauty in nature)
Questioning in order to:
- Find the ‘essence’ (get to the core of what it actually is)
- Lay bare presumptions (thoughts that go before our common sense, rethink our common
sense -> consciousness)
- Analyze concepts (give these concepts second thought and find out what it means, give it a
definition)
- Analyze argumentations (find out the way how people come to their conclusions -> logic)
Methods:
- Conceptual analysis / text analysis
- Rational argumentation
- Debates
Sources of philosophy
1) Debates -> gain knowledge/ideas of others
2) Sciences
3) Public sphere -> debates going on
What is philosophy of art?
- Thinking about / questioning art and its concept. The investigation of concepts in art (beauty,
interpretation media etc.)
- Relation to art history / art criticism
- Thinkers, concepts, theories and debates
In philosophy, art becomes increasingly important. In art, philosophy becomes increasingly
important.
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder : Hume and Kant on beauty and taste
Is it in the object or in the eye of the beholder? Related to the question to what is beautiful? Is a
color or a shape a characteristic of beauty? Related to the question of taste, if everyone has their
own taste? -> Are judgments of taste merely subjective and/of individual?
We cannot discuss taste because each one of us all has their own taste (De gustibus non est
disputandum)
,Enlightenment
- The questioning of all kinds of traditional and given knowledge and ideas. -> “have the
courage to use your own reason” (Kant) -> dogmatism of knowledge -> use your own
thinking/reason.
- Challenging authority: power and knowledge -> Human beings themselves should be the
authorities.
- What is the foundation of our ideas of truth/goodness (morality)/beauty? -> If we cannot rely
on God or the Bible, what is then the foundation we can have? -> Human reason.
Traditional versus modern aesthetics
- Quarrel between the ancients and the moderns about beauty and art and about the question
if our ideas of beauty and our ability to produce things of beauty whether we should follow
the rules laid out by the ancients or whether we should follow the rules laid by our own.
- How do we legitimize our judgment of taste?
- Rationalism (reason) versus empiricism (experience from the senses)
- Rationalism: Alexander Baumgarten
-Aesthetics as the science of beauty
-Perfection (to say something is beautiful means it is perfect)
-Rule-or-concept-based aesthetics
-> You should know the purpose of the object to say it is perfect ( use it; it works)
-> Beauty has no reason, no purpose, no knowledge
Kant and Hume: beauty does not work like that. There is no rationality in beauty. You don’t have to
need a reason for thinking something is beautiful. Beauty functions in a different way than
Baumgarten suggests. It is no perfection. Beauty is referring to a feeling.
They have a problem with this rationalist approach
- Saying something is beautiful is something completely different from knowing what
something is
- Beauty is a feeling, not a concept
- “It is evident that none of the rules of composition are fixed by reasonings a priori, or can be
esteemed abstract conclusions of the understanding, from comparing those habitudes and
relations of ideas, which are eternal and immutable. Their foundation is the same with that of
all the practical sciences, experience[.]” (Hume, #9)
- “By a principle of taste would be meant a principle under which, as condition, we could
subsume the concept of an object and then infer that the object is beautiful. That, however, is
absolutely impossible. For I must feel the pleasure directly in my presentation of the object,
and I cannot be talked into that pleasure by means of any bases of proof.” (Kant, § 34)
Problem of Hume and Kant: judgments of taste are expressions of (subjective) feeling… but does this
make them completely arbitrary and/or individual? Can we indeed say nothing whether there is
some general idea of beauty?
David Hume
- Wrote “Of the standard of taste” -> is beauty in the eye of the beholder?
- Talks about the following problems/paradox
1) Judgments of taste are expressions of a sentiment (feeling).
2) A sentiment can never be ‘false’. A proposition (it is raining) can be true or false. A
sentiment ( I am feeling sad) cannot be true or false.
3) Some judgments of taste are clearly more valid or valuable than others.
- Two of these statements can be true at the same time, but not all three!
Problem: all of these propositions seem to be plausible but they can not be true all at the
same time.
, 1&2 are true: that would imply that there is no standard of taste, that we cannot indeed
make any kind of distinction between judgments of taste that we consider to be more or less
valuable.
2&3 are true: this would imply that judgments of taste can not be based on sentiments but
must be based on rules.
1&3 are true: this would imply that we have to argue that a sentiment can be false or
misplaced (laughing at a funeral).
Hume tries to unravel this question. He is arguing that although beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
he still argues that there are still more or less valuable aesthetic judgments. He bases this argument
of something what he called ‘delicacy of taste’-> Some people by talent, education or experience are
probably better equipped than others to judge in matters of beauty. There would be a consensus of
what beauty is if you put these experts together. The ones with expertise in the field, are indeed the
most beautiful ones (e.g. Shakespeare or Homer).
• “the durable admiration of those works that have survived all the caprices of mode and
fashion, all the mistakes of ignorance and envy” (#10) -> he argues that there might have
been all kind of missteps/ misjudgments but that when you look at the history of what
certain experts agree upon there is a certain standard of taste.
Standard of Taste is what critics/experts agree on / have agreed on.
Objections about Hume’s text:
- Is this test of time objective? Are there cultural biases involved?
- Circular argument of Hume: good art or beautiful art is the art appreciated by good critics
and known experts. But if you ask the question of who is a good critic or a known expert then
his answer would be that a good expert or critic is the one that appreciates great or beautiful
art. -> he does not really mange to answer his question in his essay
- Important: aesthetic judgments are not completely individual but depend on the
agreement of / recognition by of others.
Will Kant manage to solve Hume’s problem?
Lecture 2 // Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Hume & Kant on beauty and taste
Recapitulation
- Problem: how can we legitimize our aesthetic judgments? (judgements with regard to
beauty) Is beauty in the eye of the beholder or in the object?
- Paradox: beauty seems to be a feeling (feeling of pleasure to a certain object; hence
subjective) and yet there seem to be certain objects that are more less likely to produce such
a feeling (hence objective)
- Hume’s solution: the ‘standard of beauty’ is the joint verdict of respected critics throughout
history.
Does Kant provide a different answer?
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
His aesthetic theory is part of a larger discussion and of a larger project of himself. He focuses on
judgments. He is a key figure in Western philosophy.
- Ongoing epistemological (knowledge) discussion in age of Enlightenment with two ‘camps’ ;
rationalism and empiricism.
- Beyond rationalism (we can only know things through rational ideas/concepts, so only by
logically deducing things we can get to certain knowledge) and empiricism (we can only know
things on the basis of our experience through our senses). Both focuses on the object of
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