Aesthetics and Subjectivity
Bowie
The essential problem:
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Deterministic – no free will 0 Humans are
subject to cause and effect.
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Predestination
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How to establish the deterministic natural world
relates against the world in which we understand ourselves to be autonomous.
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Kant’s third critique tries to bridge the gap by
comparing natural and artistic beauty.
How are the form and nature to be described:
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The difference between forms of cognition and
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The Self-conscious
Descarte – I think therefore I am.
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But he needed to god to reach a reliable
knowledge.
Kant – To extend Descarte
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Certainty derived from the self-conscious
without using theology.
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How can subjectivity give rise to objective
certainty without relying on pre-existing objective assumptions.
We are able to establish testable laws of nature.
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even though perceptions change all the time.
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Our self-conscious gives things identities.
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It synthesizes perception into something
meaningful.
We can only know the world as it appears to us.
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From perceived structures of subjectivity.
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We use preconceived notions of subjectivity to
synthesize perceptions into recognizable forms.
We don’t see the world as ‘itself’ be as we constitute it.
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Objects come into their own through repeatable
identity.
He applies this to people.
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We see ourselves and others as we constitute
them, but
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We don’t see ‘them’ just our interpretation of
them.
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We have a constituted view of ourselves, but
only as a cognition, no as we really are.
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We can know what we constitute relative to our
understanding of reality.
There is what acts on us, and
Ther is us, or the will.
We can’t access the will, only its manifestations.
There is the world that affects us, and
There is the will that moves us.
We are bound to the laws of nature, but we can act as free
agents.
Kant’s aesthetic judgments aims to link between nature in
itself and the freedom of rational beings.
Unity of the Subject
Transcendental aesthetic.
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The account of the conditions of perception.
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It relies on
o
Empirical intuition
o
And the concepts we judge it with.
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Kant’s notion of intuition
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- most immediate form of relation of the
subjects cognition to a subject
o
as the object is given to us.
o
As applied to anything real.
*** Is a thing given to us always in a way that perception
of thing always precedes the concept.
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If the concept of thing comes first then it can
only be a possibility.
Pre-intuition – The framwwork to apprehend things.
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Forms of pre-intuition
o
Space and time
o
We can’t sense things without space or time.
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We don’t sense an object in its entirety.
o
Although we assume so.
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Speaking to the empirical.
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Non-space and time are non-empirical.
o
Judgment
o
Synthesis of cause and effect.
For Kant:
o
Cognition has two sources.
§
Perceptive: Sensuousness which provides
intuitions.
§
Spontaneous: Understanding – objects become
objects of knowledge based on categories; such as causality.
We assume all of an objects attributes exist in space and
time.
We can deduce causal effects, but we cannot distinguish
between their manifestations as necessity.
It is only later that we can make sense of them as random
events.
Imagination:
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Produces associations in the presence of objets’
causal effect.
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Produce intutions about objects cause and effect
in the absence of the objects:
o
Productive
o
Receptive
o
Intuitive – We can guide it.
§
Our attitudes affects our imagination.
Imagination:
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What the world presents to us
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What we bring to interpretation.
I think, therefore I am:
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Suggests only one mod of thinking,
o
When the self-conscious is reflecting on itself.
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Heidegger:
o
Modes of thought
§
Past
§
Present
§
Future
§
Questions
§
Spaces
§
Being/ Inner
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Synthesis is self-caused:
o
External experience to knowledge
o
The inner experience only exists because of the outer
experience
Synthesis is the process that we grasp a representation of
ourselves
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or
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not our “real” selves, but how we understand
ourselves based on categories.
There has to be some unity in our categories
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and how we form knowledge from experience.
How we understand I, or identity, is linked to all other
understanding.
Consciousness must already be present in order for it to
recognize itself.
I is basically nothing.
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Everything has to be given to it.
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But it alone can be given something and do
something with it.
I is nothing more than the feeling of existence.
Abstracts are not law bound.
Unification of Nature
Summary so Far:
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Kant
o
Demonstrates how subjects is grounded,
§
And meaning is generated through synthesis.
§
That we can perceive infinite possibilities of
cause and effect.
§
But it is our “idea” of the universe that
unifies thought.
·
Our identity.
§
Meaning is different than the accrual of random
laws.
o
Does answer why we are able to synthesize
§
Or why we can be independent agents in a cause
and effect world.
·
Is it because we see nature functioning.
·
Or a completely independent of what we know.
Notes: Separating the spheres of science and nature can
separate out the spheres of ethics and morality.
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Relying only on reason inhibits a totality of
understanding.
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Relying on language inhibits a totality of
understanding
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The public sphere has no soul.
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The public sphere is devoid of individual
interpretation.
o
It is interpretation given to the individual,
§
And the individual must make sense of it.
o
Relying on any individual sphere of thought, or
ideology, inhibits the interpretation of experience.
The same occurs with isolating cognitive functions:
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We tend to regulate and classify religion.
Fact versus value:
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Seperation of scientific fact against
o
ethical certainty
o
Intrinsic meaning
*** Aesthetics – It cannot be reduced to scientific fact,
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yet it is part of our world.
Kant hated the idea of fact versus value roles.
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with art
o
Traditional constraints of what should be known
are removed.
o
Opens up understanding
§
By forcing open spaces
§
And fostering creative interpretation.
o
Then can be applied to other areas of
understanding.
Moving to a single sphere of thought is just another prison.
We have a synthesizing ability to connect the particular to
a general,
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and vice versa.
Judgment:
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Cognition of beautiful with
o
The cognition of purpose.
Judgment, for Kant, the appropriateness of nature to our
capacity to think.
Aesthetic judgment connects
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capacity for cognition with
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capacity for desire (will).
o
By judging which objects give pleasure.
Judgment is not placed on the object,
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but how the object gives pleasure to the
subject.
Sensation is the sensuous material of cognition –
appearance.
Feeling: result of relation to the subject’s pleasure or
displeasure.
Taste is not mere sensation,
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but involves judgment: a form of understanding.
Cognition has a history with feeling that is not necessarily
in control of the subject.
There is a freedom in aesthetics because it allows our
cognitive faculties to play without predetermined concepts.
“Contemplation of Beauty is a judgment.”
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It is the sensuous (Perception}
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And feeling (cognition
o
Interpretation to meaning.
Kant distinguishes between:
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pleasure for self-interest
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pleasure derived from the sense of harmony in
nature which is understanding.
The purpose of beauty:
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There is a tendency to contemplate a purpose of
nature.
o
Any such purpose is derived from our collective
point of view.
o
Place ourselves as lord and master
o
Without considering what nature might think.
Beauty in nature tends to arise when nature is not viewed as
a threat.
The imagination is free:
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it opens consideration of possibilities
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It enlivens the power of cognition
o
It allows it to develop further
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Might suggest the purpose of the imagination is
similar to the purpose of nature.
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Ideas – the basis of reason attempts to unify
the whole from endless diversity.
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Idea: as represented by imagination allows for
consideration without and determinate thought.
Verbal language primarily represent existing objects.
Music represents feelings in the way language represents
ideas or objects.
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If language is social, then pre-existing ideas
are linked to it.
Beauty is a symbol of morality.
Experience: Realm of possible true judgments of the
understanding.
Schiller: From Kant – Aesthetic Education
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Art is to make morality available through
pleasure rather than morality by compelling people through abstract
imperatives.
Aesthetic ideas are pendent to reasoning.
For Kant:
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The aesthetic pleasure of a thing must be
universally shared to be truly beautiful.
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Rather than random stimulation.
What we think we cannot always say:
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The sayability of anything depends on shared
rules which allow for communication.
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Language is rule-based means of communicating
the general truths of what is sayable.
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Language is not good at comprehending feeling.
Aesthetic reveals
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concepts that can be understood via rules.
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Non-conceptual – cannot be understood through
rules.
The ideas come from music:
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music generates feeling.
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Conceptual is the pitch and notes.
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Non-conceptual: creates meaning and order from
conceptual elements.
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Music as a philosophical language.
Causality is temporal:
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Reality is in a present or specific time.
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Necessity is in all times.
Beauty: that which pleases without concepts is a priori to
beauty in art.
A work should not be produced from a pre-existing rule.
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as its subsumed under a category.
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It should be appear as something that has its
own self sufficient organism.
Pleasure is not derived solely from nice effects of the
form.
But from the subjects own existence.
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Dasein – It’s being.
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Ability to appeal independent
o
Any appeal to the senses
o
Purpose of the object.
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Genius is the talent that gives rule to art.
Sublime: something so big it makes us small.
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We have to think beyond understanding of quantity,
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Reminds us of pleasure via lack of pleasure.
Mathematical sublime: However large something is in nature,
it is small in relation to the idea of totality.
Dynamic sublime: When we experience things beyond our
control, but from a place of safety.
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