kant and fine art: an essay on kant and the philosophy of fine art and cultureby salim kemal
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Kant and Fine Art: An Essay on Kant and the Philosophy of Fine Art and Culture by SalimKemalReview by: Oliver LeamanThe Journal of Speculative Philosophy, New Series, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1991), pp. 298-301Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25670010 .
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Book Review
Kant and Fine Art: An Essay on Kant and the Phibsophy of Fine Art and Culture. Salim Kemal. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Pp. 348.
This is a detailed and very closely argued book, which genuinely throws new light on Kant's aesthetics. Its main unusual feature is that the author does not stress the 'disinterestedness' of aesthetic experience, nor does he concentrate upon the epistemological aspects of aesthetic reasoning. His main claim is that we have to pay close attention to the remarks Kant makes concerning the connection between our experience of beauty and our life in a community within a particular culture. This is a novel and
interesting approach, since the majority of commentators on Kant's aes
thetics tend not to investigate in much depth his analyses of the sensus communis and his notion of participation in a critical culture, but rather look at the issue of the isolated individual making aesthetic judgements on
the basis of her own experiences. The aesthetic enterprise is seen in this book as one in which we enter
into a culture of discrimination, understanding, and assessment. We are
not limited there to our own point of view, but seek to extend our ideas on
the basis of distinctions that are in principle acceptable to a wider commu
nity of people who are rational and aesthetically aware. Thinking aesthet
ically brings us closer to others in the community, since it involves direct
ing ourselves toward others and identifying them as equal members of a
critical yet, at the same time, affective cultural project.
THE JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY, Vol. V, No. 4, 1991. Copyright ? 1991 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
298
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BOOK REVIEW 299
Kemal discusses in some depth Kant's comments on creativity and
genius, morality, history, and politics. He also spends some time distin
guishing Kant's views on culture from those of Schiller and Fichte. The main theme of the book, though, deals with fine art and the way in which Kant justifies aesthetic necessity. Kemal's approach is careful and always
sympathetic to the Kantian enterprise, even where he is sceptical of its
validity and comprehensiveness. There is a particularly fine extended
discussion of the apparent contrast between aesthetic necessity and the
subjectivity of the individual agent. Kemal tries to tease out the subtle ways in which Kant seeks to resolve the apparent difficulties involved in recon
ciling these disparate viewpoints. Kemal suggests that aesthetic necessity is based on the contribution fine
art makes to our moral lives. Kant wishes to establish a unity between
theory and practice, between nature and reason, between individuals and the community. Aesthetic judgements are made by autonomous individ uals on the basis of feelings that are universalizable over the range of other autonomous subjects. Fine art requires judgements that not only use cogni tive criteria but also take account of subjects as rational and feeling ends in themselves.
The main problem, then, that Kant has to resolve is the apparent incompatibility of aesthetic experience as a subjective phenomenon with the wider interpretation of such experience in cultural and political terms.
Once the feeling subject has established that his judgement is uncontami nated with moral, scientific, or other interests, and so counts as an aes
thetic judgement, there is no room for adjudication over aesthetic disagree ments. Aesthetic judgements are taken to be autonomous, pleasurable, and
intersubjectively valid, but unable to oblige universal agreement. This is not to say that these judgements are therefore subjective, since
they are rational judgements and as such must come under universal and
objective concepts. This sort of process takes place: Initially, there is a
pleasure resulting from use of our cognitive faculties, which are guided and directed by the moral idea of the sensus communis as representative of cultural thought. For an object to be a work of art it must depend upon the existence of a will that can be brought under practical reason, brought under the notion of the sensus communis which organizes the intersubjec tively valid pleasure we experience.
Although our aesthetic experiences are subjective, they are capable of
participating in a harmony involving other individuals. The subject has the
right to expect, and indeed demand, that all others assent to his judge
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300 THE JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY
ment. They have a duty to play their part in the construction of a particular culture, one providing the framework for the claim that others should agree with his autonomous and intersubjective judgement concerning an object's aesthetic qualities.
It is obvious that we are going to have problems on this account if people do not in general find that they can agree with the aesthetic judgements of the subject. It seems that the line Kant would need to take here is that the
process of aesthetic communication is dependent upon the existence of a
comprehensive cultural unity linking its participants, and yet there are
grounds for thinking that such a unity may not always be present. It may indeed be essential to the aesthetic enterprise that it goes hand in
hand with the construction of such a cultural unity, as part of the project of
aesthetic development itself. Aesthetic activity has here a vital social
function. It is meant to transform those who participate in it, so that our
growing understanding and appreciation of fine art increases our sensitivity to other rational subjects and to the world we all inhabit. Beauty thus is an
engine of enlightenment and can lead to a change in consciousness that, in
empirical terms, is representable as a change in people and in their relation to each other in society.
Yet Kemal gently chides Kant with his failure to provide an argument
showing how we may adjudicate between conflicting interpretations in
aesthetic judgements. Kant does not address this issue; thus, there is no way for audiences to tell that an aesthetic judgement is plausible as an inter
pretation, or which set of alternative interpretations is possible. I am not
sure that this is a particularly serious objection. Kant is after all working at a
highly abstract level of reasoning here, in order to establish the conditions
that make a particular enterprise possible. It is no part of that investigation to enter into issues of actual truth of falsity, or whether the criteria of a
particular realm of discourse are in fact ever satisfied. This is an empirical rather than transcendental issue.
Kant seeks to show that aesthetic judgements as such are possible, and if
his arguments are successful then they are possible. Particular disputes
concerning such judgements do not fall within his remit, and there is no
reason to think that they should. It would have been helpful here if Kemal
had said something about KemaPs own idea of the logic of the transcenden
tal argument itself, a form of argument which he carefully follows and
examines in the book but which is never taken out of its employment by Kant and held up for independent examination. It seems to me that Kemal
has a perspicuous grasp of the way Kant expects such arguments to work
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BOOK REVIEW 301
when it comes to aesthetics. However, a closer reading of the nature of such
arguments and their intimate connection with transcendental idealism would have been very helpful in broadening out the analysis and placing the discussion of aesthetics more firmly within the critical project itself.
This is in every way an excellent book. The level of discussion and
analysis does not vary in quality, and Kemal follows Kant as far as he can,
extending the latter's arguments where necessary by employing a wide
variety of texts and comparisons with other relevant thinkers. The book is not easy to read, but it is worth the effort. Kemal raises a large number of relevant questions in the process of mining this deep sense of Kantian
philosophy. The text itself is well presented, with interesting notes and a
useful index. The only critical point I should like to make here is that the references in the text to works of art are not accompanied by pictures. This makes it difficult to do what the author wants, i.e., use those pictures to
illustrate his argument. Oxford University Press should be chided for not
having included the necessary pictures. This comment excepted, Kemal has produced a book that is indispensable for anyone concerned with Kant's aesthetics.
Oliver Leaman
Liverpool Polytechnic
THE JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY, Vol. V, No. 4, 1991. Copyright ? 1991 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
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