The Aesthetic Philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Niet

Bibliography

The Aesthetic Philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten

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By Margaret Daoust

Introduction

Alexander Baumgarten Background

Immanuel Kant Background

“Aesthetics is the name of the philosophical study of art and natural beauty” (Miller, 2004). Aesthetic philosophy has been around since the 1700s. It was most famously covered by Alexander Baumgarten who altered the definition of the term aesthetics to concern beauty, he is often called "the father of aesthetics" (Beiser, 2009). Alexander Baumgarten "undertook the first systematic philosophy of art" (Altman, 2008). Many philosophers have since tackled this topic, including Immanuel Kant, who was greatly influenced by Baumgarten. Kant used many of Baumgarten's works to formulate his famous ideas on the philosophy of aesthetics. Through the philosophies of Kant and Baumgarten, seeing how Baumgarten influenced Kant, and a comparison of the two philosophers, all allow for an understanding of aesthetics.

Immanuel Kant was born April 22, 1724. Kant was brought up in a very religious household, which interpreted the Bible literally and valued religion over science and math. He was a German philosopher who is considered "the central figure of modern philosophy" (n.a., 2017). Throughout his life, Kant developed many philosophies, which influenced contemporary ideas, including epistemology, ethics, metaphysics and aesthetics. Kant's aesthetic philosophy holds the belief that aesthetics is due to disinterested judgement. Kant believed that in order to make an aesthetic judgement, four features are required. Kant believed that these judgements were formed using intellect.

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten was born July 17, 1714, in Berlin, Brandenburg. Baumgarten's parents both died early in his life, and as a result, he was taught by Martin Georg Christgau. During these teachings, Baumgarten became interested in Latin poetry. Like Kant, Baumgarten was a German philosopher. Baumgarten conceived the word aesthetics. Before Baumgarten, aesthetics meant sensibility. In the 1700s purchasing art became a commonality within the upper classes, which led people to wonder what classified art as good. Baumgarten altered the definition to mean "the study of good and bad taste" (n.a., 2016), and by doing so linked beauty with good taste.

Immanuel Kant's Aesthetic Philosophy

Immanuel Kant Aesthetic Philosophy

Immanuel Kant's Aesthetic Philosophy

In his studies, Kant also covered how such judgements are possible and valid, meaning are they actually universal and necessary. According to Kant, aesthetic experience contains both a conceptual and intuitive dimension. The first explanation is Kant's philosophy as conceptual. Aesthetic judgements are disinterested. To Kant, there are two types of interest: by way of the agreeable and good. Interest is a link to real desire and action, and is also a deciding relation to the real existence of an object. In an aesthetic judgment the real existence of the object does not matter. In an aesthetic judgment, pleasure should result in a judgment rather than a judgment resulting in pleasure.

Kant claims that the judgment must be on the form of the object, and not sensible content. The form contains things such as the shape, and the sensible content includes characteristics such as colour. For example, a person may want to own a painting, because they find pleasure in it. However, this goes against Kant's views of an aesthetic judgment. In this case, the judgment of the painting is resulting in pleasure rather than the pleasure resulting in a judgment. To Kant, we cannot say that a painting is beautiful because it is small. Rather, Kant believed that people find things beautiful when they bring them a feeling of pleasure.

Immanuel Kant was very concerned with the judgment of the beautiful and how people classify what is beautiful and what is not. For Kant, four features are required to make an aesthetic judgment. The first feature is that the judgment must be disinterested, meaning the judgment is based on a pleasurable feeling and does not depend on the subject having any desire for the object. The second feature is that the judgment must be universal and the third feature is the judgment must be necessary. This means that we make judgments and expect others to agree with us. However, this is not always the case and we argue with people over aesthetic judgments. According to Kant, aesthetic judgments are truly just a product of the human mind. The fourth and final feature is that the object must appear as though it has a purpose even though it does not. Kant believed that objects should affect us as if they serve a purpose, although we should not actually be able to find one.

Alexander Baumgarten's Philosophy

Baumgarten's Influence on Kant

Baumgarten's theory placed an importance on feeling, and much "concentration was placed on the creative act" (n.a., 2006). For Baumgarten, he found it of the utmost importance to modify the idea that "art imitates nature" (n.a., 2006) by stating that the artists must "deliberately alter nature by adding elements of feeling to the perceived reality" (n.a., 2006). Baumgarten envisioned a "science of the beautiful" (Altman, 2008) that would be derived and regulated by the five senses. In Baumgarten's theory of knowledge, logic can be used to purify the senses in "clear and distinct" (Altman, 2008) ideas of perfection. For Baumgarten, aesthetics has one important task, "to know things through the senses" (Idalovichi, 2014). Aesthetics involve the art of attention, abstraction, and memory.

Baumgarten's original meaning for the term aesthetics was the "science of the senses" (n.a., 2016), or to sense beauty. However, today it is used to characterize the philosophy of art. In his studies, Baumgarten altered the meaning of aesthetics to mean good and bad taste. If something is in good taste, it is beautiful, and vice versa for bad taste. By linking beauty to taste, Baumgarten defined taste as being able to judge using the five senses, instead of using intellect. Baumgarten believed that we used our five senses to make aesthetic judgments. To Baumgarten, sense perception is cognition by the senses, or sensible pictures. He used the word aesthetics to describe rules that give "clarity on sensible objects" (n.a., 2016). Baumgarten believed that aesthetic judgments were cognitive. He thought that while aesthetic judgments, or judgments of taste, express some cognition, they are not yet fully developed cognitive judgments. Baumgarten believed that when we judge, we are using our "rational faculties" (Elicor, 2016). Since cognition is related to beauty, Baumgarten did not believe it to be possible to create rules or guidelines to follow in order to classify something as beautiful. In simple terms, Baumgarten believed that beauty was subjective.

Baumgarten created and published textbooks for his ethics and metaphysics classes while he was teaching at a Prussian university. Kant used Baumgarten's metaphysics textbook for much of his studying and work while he was in university. Studying Baumgarten's doctrines and works for over forty years, Kant used many of the concepts presented in Baumgarten's work to formulate his own. In Baumgarten's work, he defined aesthetics as "the science of the senses" (n.a., 2016) and this concept was greatly used by Kant. Kant took Baumgarten's word aesthetics and "applied it to the entire field of sensory experience" (n.a., 2006). Kant used many of Baumgarten's important doctrines of his psychological aesthetics, such as the difference between an "aesthetic judgment and intellectual judgment" (Banham, 2015), and between the judgment of taste and the agreeable and the disagreeable. In Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic, he does not try to describe the "rules behind art" (n.a., 2016), but instead described aspects of sensation that he felt were unable to be "reduced to intellectual concepts" (n.a., 2016), such as space and time. In this, it is clear to see Baumgarten's influence on Kant.

Conclusion

Differences Between Baumgarten and Kant

Similarities Between Baumgarten and Kant

Both Baumgarten and Kant's philosophies recognized the limitations of the intellectual knowledge, and to compensate for this, expanded it to include cognition and the senses. In the philosophies of Baumgarten and Kant, the five senses are what allow people to make their aesthetic judgments. For Baumgarten, the mind uses its senses to relay information to the mind which allows it to make judgments. To Kant, the mind collects data by way of sensual perception, the mind will then process the data. This is how it makes judgments. In the theories of both philosophers, the senses relay information to the brain which allows it to make judgments. The senses are what allow the brain to receive information, and by taking this information, the mind is able to decide what it considers to be in good taste - what it considers to be beautiful. Both philosophers thought that aesthetic judgments were made based on feelings of pleasure and displeasure. Even though Kant studied much of Baumgarten's work in order to formulate his own ideas, the philosophies of the two do not overlap a great quantity. In fact, Kant's philosophy opposed many of Baumgarten's philosophy, as he thought that aesthetic judgments were different from any other cognition, which contrasts Baumgarten's philosophy.

Overall, it is clear to see the influence that Alexander Baumgarten had on Immanuel Kant, however Kant was still able to create his own philosophy which is similar to Baumgarten's in some ways, and different in others. Immanuel Kant's philosophy believed that there are four features necessary in order to make an aesthetic judgment. Kant also believed that there is no beauty in an object, rather it is our judgment that is aesthetic. This philosophy opposes that of his precursor, Alexander Baumgarten. Alexander Baumgarten's philosophy emphasized the view that aesthetic judgments were made using the five senses and cognition, and were thoughts that were not yet fully formed. This created the basis for modern aesthetic philosophy, which is why many consider Baumgarten to be the father of aesthetic philosophy. While Immanuel Kant's philosophy altered and overshadowed Alexander Baumgarten's, both philosophers helped to shape how aesthetics are viewed in today's society.

Baumgarten believed that aesthetics could become a science, whereas Kant did not. Baumgarten believed that aesthetics involved a "primitive rationality" (n.a., 2017), in other words, he believed them to be "half formed thoughts" (n.a., 2017). However, Kant believed that aesthetic judgments do not involve cognition. Kant did not think that beautiful objects could be "brought under a concept" (n.a., 2017). Rather, Kant's philosophy is considered with feelings of pleasure and displeasure. However, to Kant, taste is not just a matter of "subjective opinion", (n.a., 2017) but it does center on feelings. Therefore the main difference between Alexander Baumgarten and Immanuel Kant's philosophy is that Baumgarten believed that aesthetic judgments were made using the five senses and logic, whereas Kant believed that judgments are made based on feelings of pleasure. To Kant, the judgments were aesthetic rather than the object. Another difference was that Baumgarten argued that sense perception was "merely cognition by way of sensible images" (Burnham, n.d.). This means that while beauty appears to the senses, this does not mean it is non-cognitive. In Kant's philosophy, he made a distinct difference between intuitive and sensible presentations and the conceptual and the rational. Kant did not believe that aesthetic experience is "inexplicible without both an intuitive and conceptual dimension" (Burnham, n.d.).