aesthetic paradigms of kant and schelling

Kyle Stone

German Idealism

Final Paper

5/7/05

The Aesthetic Paradigms of Kant and Schelling

“We do injustice to another who does not perceive the worth or the beauty of what moves

or delights us, if we rejoin that he does not understand it. Here it does not matter so

much what the understanding comprehends, but what the feeling senses.”

–Immanual Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime

The first true formulation of an aesthetic paradigm for philosophy began with

Kant’s Critique of Judgment, during which he attempts to mend the gap his first two

critiques constructed between the noumenal and the phenomenal. Interestingly enough,

Kant only included aesthetics as a significant contributor to his philosophical workings in

one other text, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, which was

written years before his Critique of Judgment. These texts, as two of Kant’s more

important writings, gave the question of the role of aesthetics in philosophy independence

as a discipline distinct from other branches of philosophical inquiry. It was popularized

further by German Idealists and romanticists alike, culminating in Schelling, who

presented aesthetics as the pinnacle of his systemic philosophy – valuing its role as one

above science/ modern scientific discourse, and even the philosophical concept in

general. Through an exploration of the aesthetic paradigms posited by Kant and

Schelling, perhaps a fuller understanding of the role of aesthetics as it pertains to

philosophy can be realized.

Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime is the only

truly aesthetic text prior to the Critique of Judgment. Kant limits his discussion of

aesthetics to observations of the ‘human scene’; it is not until his Critique of Judgment

that he discusses aesthetics in terms of faculties that can be known empirically or

disclosed by transcendental logic. In order to analyze Observations in terms of its

aesthetic content, the beliefs embodied throughout the text must be considered as implicit

aspects of the human experience, rather than explicitly – otherwise they would be

understandable through conceptualization, which is not possible for Kant, even in his

more empirically theorized Critique of Judgment. Hence, Kant writes of aesthetics in

terms of feelings of pleasurable experiences, rather than concepts. Once again, these

experiences are not sensuous (able to be conceptualized by sensual perceptions), but

rather immediate intuitions.

Though four sections, Kant attempts to establish a treatise between the realms of

the beautiful and the sublime, which he immediately distinguishes from one another in

the first section. The way in which Kant distinguishes between the beautiful and the

sublime is somewhat complex, in the sense that they are definitely opposed to one

another, but also capable of overlap. Though depicting Kant’s model as a spectrum

which runs from coarse to fine, it becomes clear that the degrees of pleasure associated

with feelings of beauty and sublimity are engendered relative to the individual, and

universally dissimilar throughout all beings.1 Kant writes, “The various feelings of

enjoyment or of displeasure rest not so much upon the nature of the external things that

arouse them as upon each person’s own disposition to be moved by these to pleasure or

pain.”2

Admittedly, this is a somewhat problematic way of looking at Kant’s model,

especially since one’s ability to enjoy either feelings of the beautiful or feelings of the

sublime separately is more hierarchical than the term ‘spectrum’ hints at. Kant points out

that all beings enjoy coarse pleasures, but very few enjoy higher, more intellectual

pleasures.

Since Kant established the two aesthetic categories based on an analysis of the

response of the beholder of the feelings, Kant is, in a certain way, making claims about

human nature. Kant seems the reality of beauty as immanent, and assumes this objective

element as the basis for development of subjective taste – a move made by both

rationalists and empiricists of the time. However, Kant differed from both of these

traditions, as well as from the neoclassicist tradition, in his view of beauty as a taste or

feeling, rather than something a priori and grounded in reason.

Kant begins by distinguishing between feelings of the beautiful and the sublime.

Beauty arouses joy, whereas sublimity arouses awe and admiration. Kant is not hesitant

to make the distinction between men, who are more inclined towards sublimity due to

their nobility, and women, who are more inclined towards beauty due to their fairness.

However, Kant uses this distinction in terms of emphasis and tendency, and does not by

any means exclude either sex from feelings of beauty or sublimity. In a similar fashion,

he argues that these ‘finer feelings’ serve to improve the role of the sexes in marriage by

preserving love and esteem and creating attractive differences. Even more

problematically, he analyzes differences between National characteristics, relating the

English, Spanish, and German to the sublime, and the French and Italians to the beautiful,

and utterly excluding the Dutch, as well as Negroes from either category. Nonetheless, it

is important to consider these associations as pertaining to the current state of society of

which Kant was attempting to describe, and not to see them as permanent and severe

problems within his theory; after all, he still argues that the feeling of the sublime and the

beautiful were shared by all of human kind.

One of the more radical moves made by Kant was his characterization of the

sublime as being the most important aesthetic. This was likely done in tandem with the

notion that feelings of the sublime are important to the moral composition of a person.

Indeed, as aesthetic categories, both the beautiful and sublime can become guides for

human conduct, for Kant. Although judgments of taste cannot be brought under

speculative principles, moral conduct CAN be ordered among principles whereas tastes,

as well as the conduct arising from taste, can be exercised and improved. This helps to

explain why Kant hoped that education could help one to realize a finer taste for the

beautiful and sublime. Kant also explains that sublimity exerts the energy of the soul

more intensely, and therefore tires sooner.

As far as the simultaneous occurrence of feelings of sublimity and beauty, Kant

makes the following claim:

Those in whom both feelings join will find that the emotion of the sublime is stronger

than that of the beautiful, but that unless the latter alternates with or accompanies it, it

tires and cannot be so long enjoyed. The lively feelings to which the conversation in a

select company occasionally rises must dissolve intermittently in cheerful jest, and

laughing delights should make a beautiful contrast with the moved, earnest expression,

allowing both kinds of feelings to alternate freely.3

Kant directs his focus away from things that require no thought, such as jovial

laughter at a crude joke, or an indolent man enjoying being read to before sleep. He

states, “There is still another feeling of a more delicate sort, so described either because

one can enjoy it longer without satiation and exhaustion; or because it presupposes a

sensitivity of the soul, so the speak, which makes the soul fitted for virtuous impulses; or

because it indicates talents and intellectual excellences” 4 Furthermore, he focuses more

specifically on the sensual feeling that MORE ordinary souls are capable of, rather than

what feelings high intellectual insight brings, as in Kepler’s case, who, as Kant points

out, would never have traded one of his discoveries for a princedom.

Kant characterizes the sublime as nighttime, the beautiful as daytime; he claims

that the sublime moves, and the beautiful charms. Whereas the sublime must always be

great, the beautiful can be small. Kant also argues that those with dark color and black

eyes tend to be more sublime, whereas those with blue eyes and blonde hair are beautiful.

Along the same lines, greater age is more equitable with sublime qualities, and youth is

more akin to beautiful qualities.

Kant divides the beautiful into two forms; the properly beautiful, which is internal

as well as external and contains a considerable amount of admixture with the sublime,

and the merely pretty, which is seen as outward only. He focuses his discussion on the

properly beautiful, and ultimately does not seem as interested in analyzing the merely

pretty. Kant dissects the sublime into three parts, namely, the terrifying sublime, the

noble, and the splendid. The terrifyingly sublime is accompanied by dread or

melancholy, the noble sublime in terms of quiet wonder, and the splendid sublime with

beauty pervading the sublimity of it. Kant uses his famous example of the St. Peter’s in

Rome to explain the splendid sublime more fully; its frame is large and simple, and

beauty is distributed within the gold and mosaic work of the design, yet the feeling of

sublime still accounts for the greatest effect; therefore the object is to be considered

splendid. He also claims that among similar classes of people, clerics must exhibit great

simplicity, whereas politicians and statesmen must exhibit the most grandeur. Yet Kant

seems to be working towards something outside of these somewhat dualistic

observations, as well. Namely, his inclusion of ‘external circumstances’, which he

introduces with the claim, “…but the paramour may adorn himself as he pleases.”5 He

continues:

“There is also something in external circumstances which, at least according to the folly

of men, concerns these sensations. High birth and title generally find people bowed in

respect. Wealth without merit is honored even by the disinterested, presumably because

with its idea we associate projects of great actions which can be carried out by its means.

This respect falls occasionally to many a rich scoundrel, who will never perform such

actions and has no concept of the noble feeling that alone can make riches valuable.

What increases the evil of poverty is contempt, which cannot be completely overcome

even by merits, at least not before common eyes unless rank and title deceive this coarse

feeling and to some extent impose upon its advantage”6

This passage is interesting in that it highlights the power intrinsic to wealth, and

with a certain reading, can even be understood as identifying class struggle as possibly

empowering to the individual. Perhaps along a similar line of thought, Kant focuses on

the power held by negativity, claiming that depravities and moral failings often bear

feelings of the sublime or the beautiful, especially since these feelings often appear to

sensory feeling without any sort of reason. Furthermore, in Kant’s discussion of the

characteristics of negative feelings such as melancholy, he empowers solitude and the

efforts of hermits as noble and adventurous, especially if their separation from the world

comes from a legitimate feeling of weariness. Those who experience melancholy are

much more interested in sublime feelings, for those of the beautiful are seen as deceptive

charms. For Kant, feelings of melancholy are not to be understood as the lack of a joyous

life, nor grievance in a dark dejected state, but rather, “because when his feelings are

aroused beyond a certain degree, or for various causes adopt a false direction, they are

more easily terminated in that than in some other condition.”7 The importance of these

passages is that they demonstrate Kant’s notions of beauty and sublimity much less

actively than following works by Schelling and Schlegel, and even Kant’s own work in

Critique of Judgment, which he writes much later.

Upon a further examination of these passages, it becomes clear that Kant is, once

again, raising the sublime above the beautiful, at least in these specific examples. Kant

uses the Greek literary figure of Alceste to elaborate beauty as a deceptive charm; Alceste

marries his wife because he treasures her beauty, affection, and cleverness – yet how will

he be able to love her when she becomes stricken with illness, wrinkled, and grey? The

comparable Adraste, on the other hand, claims “I will treat this person lovingly and with

respect, for she is my wife”8 – a sentiment Kant views as noble and generous. Still, these

examples are somewhat problematic, in that they literally exemplify the opposite of

Kant’s previous claim, which stated that the sublime was fading and more draining on the

soul, whereas beauty was more infinite and long lasting.

Perhaps the most significant sections of this text are contained within his writings

on moral attributes of the feelings of sublimity and beauty. Indeed, Kant does some of

his boldest, most blatant rankings of different feelings among these sections. First, he

claims that, among these moral attributes, true virtue alone is the only sublime feeling.

“There are nevertheless good moral qualities that are amiable and beautiful, and, so far as

they harmonize with virtue, will also be regarded as noble, although they cannot properly

be included within the virtuous disposition.”9 Kant distinguishes true virtue from virtue

occurring through some sort of accident, which, by the very nature of virtue, isn’t

virtuous at all. At the same time good-natured passion may appear similar to virtue, but

is ultimately weak and blind. Kant elucidates this point in terms of feelings of

compassion and warmth, which may move one towards sympathizing for those who are

needy. If action of coming to their aid is placed ahead of the debts an individual needs to

pay to others, then it becomes impossible for one to fulfill the duty of justice, which Kant

sees as more powerful than compassion towards others. “Thus the action could never

spring from a virtuous design; for such could not possible induce you to sacrifice a higher

obligation to this blind fascination.”10

Kant emphasizes that affection towards the human species in general may serve as

a principle under which one subordinates his/her actions, thus allowing love towards

those who are in need to remain as well. Yet this constitutes a higher standpoint, in

which these feelings are already placed in their true relation to one’s ‘total duty’ as an

individual. He continues by claiming:

Universal affection is a ground of your interest in his plight, but also of the justice by

whose rule you must now forbear this action. Now as soon as this feeling has arisen to its

proper universality, it has become sublime, but also colder. For it is not possible that our

heart should swell from fondness for every man’s interest and should swim in sadness at

every stranger’s need; else the virtuous man, incessantly dissolving like Heraclitus in

compassionate tears, nevertheless with all this goodheatedness would become nothing but

a tender-hearted idler.

Hence, charitable impulses only bring about nobility, beauty, and virtue when

they are used proportionately, and subordinated under ones inclinations towards beauty

and virtue. Hence, Kant re-posits TRUE virtue as “the feeling of the beauty and dignity

of human nature.”11

Adoptive virtues are similar to true virtues in the sense that they

result in the feeling of immediate pleasure through charity and generous action, yet differ

from true virtue mainly because they are not an immediate grounds for virtue, but rather

always to be seen in relation to true virtue, by which they are judged. Kant states that

true virtues are sublime and venerable, whereas adoptive virtues are beautiful and

charming.

Finally, Kant does include the notion of the genius in Observations, but only very

briefly when he notes that the genius acts freely in artistic endeavors. The inclusion of

such a statement is rather perplexing in lieu of the fact that Kant unquestioningly regards

beauty to be inherent in objects themselves, and outside of the mind. In another Pre-

Critical∗ work entitled Nature History and Theory of the Heavens, Kant reasons, “It is

true that development, form, beauty, and perfection are relations of the elements and the

substances that constitute the matter of the universe, and this is perceived in the

arrangements which the wisdom of God adopts at all times.” The question should be

posed, if beauty lies in the object, and not in the mind, than what is the relationship of the

genius to the aesthetics of beauty and sublimity, and what is the purpose of the genius?

This question remains largely unanswered until it is brought to the fore in Kant’s

Critique of Judgment. Here, Kant re-conceptualizes and perhaps expands on his previous

model by claiming that beauty belongs phenomenally to the object, while the feeling of

beauty, as experienced by the observer, is the signifier of harmony between the faculties

of the mind and the object to which the mind is paying attention. In this text, Kant not

only draws from his older works (Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the

Sublime is arguably the most significant, at least in terms of aesthetics) as well as 18th

century figures committed to metaphysical rationalism such as Baumgarten and

Mendelssohn. He breaks away from these two thinkers, as well as the entire Leibnizian

tradition, since their rationalist systems do not leave any space for the autonomy or

freedom required to establish aesthetics as an independent philosophical tradition.

Whereas these thinkers may have set the stage for idealism through beginning to signify

the importance of aesthetics, Kant was the first to advance these ideas far enough to

account for what is often referred to as the first aesthetic paradigm.

Due to this fact, the Critique of Judgment is widely considered the single most

important text in the history of philosophical aesthetics – yet at the same time, Kant is

also often considered the one thinker who attributed the least amount of importance to the

work of art. However, Kant did claim an importance for aesthetic judgment in general

that empowered it to the level of judgments of cognitive or moral natures. While these

notions may seem somewhat counter-intuitive, they be explained rather easily; for Kant,

aesthetic judgments do not refer exclusively to art, but actually are best understood as

judgments concerning nature. “They are about beauty in natural objects, as well as our

experience of the sublime.”12

The differences between the Critique of Judgment and Kant’s pre-Critical work

can be accounted for by considering Observations as more of an anthropological and

psychological account of culture than a truly aesthetic text – one that was ultimately

much less significant than his Critique of Judgment. It is important to note that the

Critique of Judgment was not written at some sort of a theory exclusive to art and beauty,

but actually took on a much larger project than this. In this text, Kant is attempting to

mend the overarching problem that plagued is first two Critiques; namely, that the

principles outlined in his Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason are

not identical with one another. Left unresolved, these two Critiques created a massive rift

between nature and freedom, respectively. Hence, the aesthetic paradigm employed by

Kant is meant to guarantee the unity of reason. It attempts to do so by advancing

aesthetic judgment as the mediating faculty between sensibility and understanding on the

one hand, and sensibility and moral action, or freedom, on the other. Through this

implementation of aesthetics, Kant is also putting to rest any skeptical claims which

would regard art as incapable of contributing any transcendental insight towards the

world in which we live.

Kant no longer operates within the traditional Platonic of aesthetics, wherein art

merely imitates eternal and unchanging objects that the artist finds in his environment – a

position that even his own work in Observations may have still held. Even in 1766, less

than three decades earlier, Lessing writes, “Truth is necessary for the soul; and it

becomes tyranny to exert and force upon it in respect to this vital need. The ultimate end

of the arts, however, is pleasure; and pleasure is dispensable.”13

Due to the popularity of

such positions, and its presence among those who were very influential to Kant such as

Baumgarten, Kant realized that the connection between art and cognition must be

severed; otherwise, art would always be devalued comparatively to reason, because

reason in its very nature was considered the HIGHEST potential for cognition. “Both

must inhabit realms independent of each other: This is the aim of the Critique of

Judgment, namely, to establish our pronouncements on art and beauty not as an inferior

version of our judgments on truth or morality, but as independent of both, albeit related to

both and thus able to span their divergence.”14

These first movements made by Kant had tremendous affects on the history of

philosophy to follow in Kant’s wake. For one, his new definition of ‘aesthetics’ as a

designation of taste which inquires into beauty and art outmoded the traditional

definition, which referred to the theory of sensual perceptions and experience (he himself

investigated this definition briefly in the prior Critique of Pure Reason). In addition, his

designation of art as relating first and foremost to morality rendered its relation to our

faculties of cognition much less important (as he intended it to in his advancement of the

notion that art has very little relation to truth). Yet, aesthetic judgment cannot be devoid

of any cognitive elements altogether, something of which Kant was well aware. This

very move has resulted in one of the ongoing projects of the continued aesthetic tradition

since Kant, namely, to challenge Kant by furthering the ‘epistemic relevance of art’, and

associate a greater ability to demonstrate truth to artwork.

As one would expect, Kant is strictly formal during his analysis of aesthetics, and

never goes into any technical details about specific works of art, nor did he have an

extensive education in art theory. Schelling and Fichte also mainly focus on the formal

aspects of aesthetics, and it is not until Hegel that significant thought is given to the

content of aesthetic products, rather than analysis of their formal structure.

Kant divides beauty from art in general, since he views beauty as a much wider,

more inclusive category that also includes beautiful objects found within nature. Kant

writes:

There are two types of beauty: free beauty (pulchritude vaga) or merely adherent beauty

(pulrichtudo adherens). The first does not presuppose any concept of what the object is

meant to be; the second presupposes such concept and the perfection of the object

according to it. The types of the former are called (independently existing) beauties of

this or that object; the other, as adherent to a concept, is attributed to objects that are

classed under the concept of a particular purpose.15

Here, Kant is attempting to analyze judgments concerning the beauty of objects.

He is not classifying objects according to objective types of beauty which they may or

may not fulfill. In other words, beauty is always relative to the judgments and points of

view of those who are attempting to identify beauty. The beauty of a flower could be

judged as purposive by a botanist, rendering it adherently beautiful, while another man

could be standing right next to him and judge the flower as freely beautiful. Equally

important is the fact that this is not some sort of fallback into general relativism – the

object is only properly analyzed when the discourse and context brought to bear on the

object are reflected upon as well. Although Kant gives no formal arguments as for why

consensus should be reached among individuals concerning the beauty of a given object,

he seems to indicate that it is reasonable to expect, since all human beings have the same

faculties of experience.

Kant further exemplifies his distinction, claiming that the beauty of a horse, a

building, and the human figure are all purposive, and therefore adherent beauty.

Judgment of adherent beauty is impure and applied; it operates with a sense of purpose,

as well as a concept of perfection. In his analysis of Kant’s judgment of taste,

Hammermeister writes, “In order to find an architectural object or the body of man

beautiful, we need to connect the object to a concept of its purpose in the world, its telos,

and hence a sense of its usefulness.”16

These examples are some of the only ones where it seems that Kant is indicating a

superiority of the pure aesthetic judgment. All further discussions seem to rank the

purposive above the pure aesthetic, which becomes very important for a certain reading

of Kant. Since adherent beauty is purposive, it seems much more capable of creating

inspiration towards moral attributes. Furthermore, all of Kant’s examples are somewhat

laborious by their very nature, and all connected with concepts of human labor (a horse, a

church, a palace, a summer-house, etc.). Kant argues that there cannot be any objective

rule by which a conception of beauty can be realized, and seems to attach a certain value

to labor when he writes. “It is only throwing away labor to look for a principle of taste

that affords a universal criterion of the beautiful by definite concepts; because what is

sought is a thing impossible and inherently contradictory.”17

It seems to be along these

lines that Kant accounts for the human body as the highest form of beauty. Because of

this, his definition of beauty as ‘purposiveness without purpose’ is to be seen as aligning

more with free beauty, such as Kant exemplifies by a Tulip, which ‘we meet with a

certain finality in its perception…it is not referred to any end whatever.’

Rather than read the association of the good and purposive with the beautiful as

infringing upon pure beauty in a damaging way, it seems more sensible to understand it

in terms of an aversification by which the purposive beautiful can be properly opposed to

free beauty. Indeed, much later in the text, in the section Beauty as the Symbol of

Morality, Kant very extensively characterizes the link between moral and aesthetic

judgment, which does not seem to touch upon any sort of a connection between free

beauty and morality. Hence, it is not enough to simply take pleasure in the beautiful. It

must be directed towards morality!

Therefore Kant separates the aesthetic judgment not only from strictly rational

judgment, but also from two other forms of pleasure, which Kant sees as only being

interested in the existence of the object. The pleasure of the agreeable is purely

subjective to the object, and has no ability to leave the object intact, but rather wants to

use the object to fulfill its desire. The other, the pleasure felt in encountering the good,

operates in the same fashion but is the opposite of the agreeable. This pleasure is always

dependant on the existence of the good, yet we cannot begin to think of something as

good without already wanted it to exist! Therefore, the only type of pleasure that does

not take a necessary interest in the existence of the object is the pleasure brought by

aesthetic judgment. Whereas the pleasure of the agreeable is purely subjective to the

object, the beautiful is not, because it is able to invite universal content.

Obviously, the aesthetic judgment cannot claim the type of conceptual

universality that rational judgments do. So, then, how are any claims towards

universality to be understood? Kant uses the term subjective universality, which can

perhaps be elaborated most effectively in terms of the three faculties Kant uses when he

IS describing conceptualization of true universality.

For Kant, there are three faculties involved in the type of knowledge that depends on

experience, the first being sensibility (the passive reception of sensory stimuli), the

second imagination (the ordering of the sensory manifold into a unity), and then third

understanding (the provision of a concept under which to subsume the results of

imagination’s activity).18

Kant describes these three faculties as being the three types of knowledge which

depend on experience. Kant claims that, due to the nature of the aesthetic judgment, it is

never possible for an aesthetic judgment to move from the second faculty, imagination,

fully into the third faculty, understanding. Were this possible, aesthetic judgments would

be capable of conceptualization, since only the faculty of understanding can provide

concepts. Hence, further steps must be taken in order to allow for aesthetic judgments to

transcend their subjectivity in order to make any sort of universal claims.

Kant is able to explain this universalizing claim of the aesthetic judgment through

recourse to prior sections, wherein he demonstrated the cohesion of aesthetic judgments

and the pleasure involved within them. This pleasure is not reliant on the ability of the

judgment to reach understanding, and become a concept; rather the nature of the aesthetic

pleasure IS the very attempt at moving from imagination to understanding, regardless of

the fact that it will never arrive there. No concept ever suffices to understand what the

aesthetic unity imagines possible to understand, and yet this effort to conceptualize what

is imagined mustn’t be abandoned, and never ceases. Since this process is virtually

endless in that it can never be satisfied or completed, aesthetic pleasure therefore

continuously renews itself. This move was certainly observed by the later German

Idealists, to say the least, and was employed by Fichte in a very similar way within his

Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation, except in terms of society moving towards

perfection, but never reaching it, yet finding purpose in that very process.

Kant demonstrates here why we can gaze upon the most familiar painting over

and over again, or submit ourselves to listening to a symphony an infinite number of

times, and yet never satisfy our pleasure in these aesthetic experiences, since we are

unable to conceptualize such knowledge. Perhaps this is the lasting, unending beauty that

Kant had previously hinted at in his Observations. This idea is taken up again and again

by later philosophers, such as Schelling, Heidegger, and Adorno. Yet, in these later

forms ‘ultimate un-interpretability’ of the object becomes more of a feature of the object

than a characterization of the aesthetic pleasure, which is felt by the subject.19

One further elaboration must be made concerning beauty and the aesthetic

judgment. Kant has claimed that works of art and beautiful objects do not have ends

outside if themselves, since an end outside of itself would ultimately have to either be

seen in terms of a purpose, or finality. Purpose and finality, for Kant, are understood in

relation to a concept of perfection; therefore, is seems as if it would be logical to assume

‘Since beauty can never be conceptualized, no beautiful object can ever be thought to

have a purpose’. Yet how can this be true, given the fact that beautiful objects are used to

fulfill particular functions, such as to allow for the feeling of pleasure to overcome an

individual? Beautiful objects therefore must be seen as existing independently from any

purposive association to the observer. Hence, in section 17, Ideal of Beauty, Kant states,

“Beauty is the form of purposiveness in an object, insofar as it is perceived without the

representation of a purpose.” Hammermeister summarizes Kant’s discussion of the

aesthetic judgment as such:

To sum up this discussion of the aesthetic judgment Kant settles the old dispute of

whether one can argue about taste or not by stating that it is certainly possible to do so,

but the argument can never be settled because neither party could give and universally

valid reason for its judgment. Although aesthetic judgments do not provide knowledge,

they are still related to the faculty of understanding, and thus they participate in

cognition. Since animals lack cognition as based on concepts, their world certainly

knows the agreeable, but it is devoid of all beauty.20

Much like the pleasure of beauty, the qualification of an object as sublime is

related to an interpretation of the object, and is not a quality of the object itself. In

Critique of Judgment Kant considers sublimity to be “the name given to what is

absolutely great”, meaning that what is sublime extends beyond all comparison, and

cannot be an object of the senses or synthesized into a conceptual unity. In Definition of

the Term “sublime”, Kant writes:

If, now, I assert without qualification that anything is great, it would seem that I have

nothing in the way of a comparison present to my mind, or at least nothing involving an

objective measure, for no attempt is thus made to determine how great the object is. But,

despite the standard of comparison being merely subjective, the claim of the judgments is

none the less one to universal agreement; the judgments: "that man is beautiful" and "He

is tall", do not purport to speak only for the judging subject, but, like theoretical

judgments, they demand the assent of everyone.21

Therefore, there are no sublime objects for Kant – only sublime states brought

about through encounters with certain objects. Kant separates sublimity into the

mathematical sublime and the dynamic sublime. He explains the mathematical sublime

in terms of infinity, which we can never arrive at conceptually as an absolute totality by

means of sensual experience, or, the faculty of imagination. No matter what we postulate

infinity as conceptually, we can always add any number to it, and therefore lose any hope

of grasping it at all. However, even through possessing the ability to contemplate the

infinite, human beings are empowered with a faculty that is capable of transcending

experience, at least to a certain extent. Kant supplements, “To merely be able to think the

given infinite without contradictions requires a faculty in the mind that is itself

supersensible.”22

Kant sees the dynamically sublime as being distinct in that it contains a moment

of anxiety which, in the case of a natural object, manifests itself as fear. The experience

of nature constitutes a source of fear because it is strong enough of a force to destroy us,

and upon encountering it, often experience intense displeasure, inferiority, and

vulnerability. Citing examples of thunderclouds, boundless rising oceans, and the

violence of volcanoes, Kant only sees forces of nature as sublime if they can be

experienced from a position of guaranteed security and safety. From this safe position,

the human power of resistance isn’t as hopelessly trifling, and can even be raised to a

superior position to that of nature. As Hammermeister puts it, “Encountering the forces

of nature allows us to discover within ourselves a power of resistance that stems from the

discovery that human freedom is not subject to natural destruction, but transcends the

sensory realm.” Experiencing such phenomena allows for one to arrive at a sense of

pleasure resulting from the seemingly indestructible nature of human existence. Hence,

the sublime aspect of this experience is not the actual challenge presented by nature when

it threatens to destroy us, but the very independence we feel from nature.

Kant’s view of the sublime is that it is an expression of moral energy, unlike

beauty, which has a calming effect on an individual. Kant continues to oppose beauty

and sublimity, claiming that a sublime experience points towards the superiority of the

supersensory parts of the self over materiality and finitude, and that it aims at the

abandonment of sensory realms with the goal of moving towards reason. Beauty, on the

other hand, rests on the basis of the sensory experiences which are cast into doubt

sublimity. This does not suffice as an account for any sort of a connection between the

beautiful and the sublime, and is, in that sense, problematic. Schelling will attempt to

overcome this opposition by arguing that a unification of beauty and sublimity is

necessary, or else the self will remain divided between sensibility and morality.

Kant’s elaboration on his notion of the genius requires the revisiting of a problem

he already encountered in his transition from Observations to Critique of Judgment; in

this case, he has argued that beauty is not to be understood as the quality of an object, and

yet still makes statements regarding characteristics of the beautiful among the arts. He

claims that these comments are not scientific, but rather simple critiques. Kant stresses

the importance of the fine arts, which are not within themselves nature, but take on the

appearance of nature through the expert craftsmanship of the artist. The beauty of fine art

rests with its craftsmanship, not its color or shade, and therefore, only perceptible form

should enter the aesthetic judgment of fine art. The only possible way for an artistic

product to appear as natural requires the work of a genius, who Kant describes as an

outstanding person who is naturally endowed with this talent.

Kant claims that genius is the talent which gives rule to art, and that this is the

only way for rule to be attributed to art. In other words, fine art cannot ‘self-excogitate’

its own rules by which to evaluate its products. Kant’s explanation of the inner-workings

of the unfolding of these rules is somewhat unclear, yet he includes it within the natural

endowment of the genius artist to always know when rules are to be followed, and when

the alteration of rules will result in what will become judged as beauty.

Concerning the role of morality among aesthetic judgment, Kant has already

stated that aesthetic judgment invites agreement, and transcends the purely subjective

sphere, thus giving it a tendency to force us out of isolation, since it provides the grounds

for establishing contact with other individuals. Kant claims that, “Empirically, the

beautiful only exists in society. And if we grant that the impulse to society is natural to

man and that fitness and liking for it, i.e. sociability, is a requirement for man as a social

being and a predicate of humanity, then it follows that taste as a faculty of judgment

through which we communicate our feeling to everyone else must be considered a means

of promoting that which everyone’s natural inclination calls for.”23

It seems fair to argue

that Kant sees fine works of art as powerfully able to advance culture and intelligence

through social communication, as well as establish community and enhance social ties.

As a whole, Kant’s Critique of Judgment established aesthetics as independent of

other philosophical disciplines, and worked towards linking theoretical and moral

importance to the beautiful and the sublime. Without making any general critiques of

Kant’s effort to mend the gap between nature and freedom, it is within the interest of this

paper to raise several important questions towards his aesthetic paradigm which left his

followers unsatisfied, and with a lot of work on their hands.

First, what can be said about the ontological status of the work of art within

Kant’s model? Though barring a direct relationship between the aesthetic judgment and

the object, Kant leaves room for beauty only in the eye of the beholder, at least as far as

ontology is concerned. Although Kant claims that beauty does not exist in the object, he

also claims that there are definitely objects that are not beautiful – and yet he does not

advance these notions in terms of a distinction between objects that are capable and

incapable of being represented beautifully.

Second, is it necessary that we must not make any epistemic truth-claims

concerning art? The Kantian position leaves one unable to connect art and knowledge,

since art cannot be cognized. Hammermeister states, “This is one of the legacies of

Kant’s aesthetics that turned out to be one of the greatest objects of contention in the

tradition oh philosophical theory on art from then on.”

Lastly, what is the practical potential of art? As symbols of the morally good,

Kant claims that aesthetic judgments strengthen our efforts towards leading moral lives.

Yet at the same time, beautiful objects have no direct practical value, and are only

pleasurable in terms providing the means for reflective intuition.

Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism is arguably the summit of the

estimation of art’s role in philosophy, in that it is the only major known philosophical text

to argue for aesthetics and the fine arts as the pinnacle and conclusive representation of

its insights.24

Schelling, as a romantic philosopher of the late eighteenth century,

esteemed aesthetics above all as necessary for the completion of a system of

transcendental idealism. Schelling was much more strongly committed to systemic

philosophy in general than most of his fellow philosophers, who felt that systematic

philosophies focused too much synthesis on a single argumentation. Although he

admitted that, since Kant, totality could no longer represent the object of a

comprehensive philosophical discourse, he nonetheless took upon the somewhat Fichtean

project of describing a system which worked towards totality.

Following in the romantic tradition, Schelling believed that artistic creation was

somehow necessary in order for cognition to be possible. Artistic creation was

understood by Romanticists as primarily that of God, although individuals can respond to

this creation with poetic language. Poetic language is conceived of by the romanticists as

the translation of cognition based on sensuality. This is a very different than account

Kant’s somewhat genealogical understanding of rhetoric and poetry, which he

intentionally separates from his elaboration of aesthetics. Kant writes, “Hence these

historical sciences, owing to the fact that they form the necessary preparation and

groundwork for fine art, and partly also owing to the fact that they are taken to comprise

even the knowledge of the products of fine art (rhetoric and poetry), have by a-confusion

of words, actually got the name of elegant sciences.”25

The significance of poetry is dramatically heightened by Schelling, who includes

it as a central aspect not only in his characterization of the art product, but also as the

means for imagination to be realized by the ego as an original, immediate intuition.

According the Schelling, poetry allows for far more insight into the being of God (i.e. the

creation of man) than is possible through speculative philosophy. David Simpson points

out that, indeed, “Schelling has worked through all the primitive and developing stages of

self-consciousness in its positive of the not-self, or objective world, and the consequent

reflective intuition of self as free intelligence”26

within his System.

Ascribing to aspects of romanticism as well as Idealism, Schelling attempted to

respond to the still-operative Kantian dualism between nature and freedom (noumenal

and phenomenal). In realizing aesthetics as the absolute which remains unknowable by

conceptual means, Kant is borrowing from Hölderin, a figure often seen as a precursor to

Schelling.27

Even Kant himself had already proposed that the faculty which allows one

to attribute various sensory pleasures to a single entity must be considered the highest

point of philosophy – although he never took this to be the principle which could bridge

the noumenal and phenomenal. Schelling also borrowed from Fichte, who elevated the

ego to the position of the foundation of being and incorporated it romantic philosophy,

which claimed that only the symbolic, not reason, can make any claims towards the

grounds the foundation of being. This is precisely why Schelling and other romantic

thinkers attributed the function of disclosure of being to the work of art. Schelling moved

away from Fichte by attempting to supplement his writings on transcendental philosophy

with those on the philosophy of nature. In order to reconcile these two aspects he needed

to show nature and the transcendental as ‘two sides of one coin’. “It is one aim of the

System to unite the philosophy of nature, which deduces the ideal from the real, with the

transcendental philosophy, which understands nature as a reflex of spirit.”28

Schelling posits nature and freedom as opposites, but immediately claims that

both nature and freedom point inward towards each other. Nature, as the unconscious

stage of development for freedom, begins in the unconscious and ends in the conscious.

The ego, on the other hand, which represents freedom in its establishment, must begin in

the consciousness and end in the unconsciousness. The ego is conscious in terms of

production, but unconscious as regards the product. Hence, the product of nature and the

product of freedom form the identity of consciousness and unconsciousness within the

ego, as well as a consciousness of this identity. Schelling states, in reference to the

intellectual intuition through which the ego is realized, “If we know the product of

intuition, then we also know the intuition itself. We therefore need only deduce the

product in order to deduce the intuition.”29

In further elaborating his theory, Schelling

runs into a seeming contradiction as he states:

Conscious and unconscious activity are to be absolutely one in the product, just as they

are also in the organic product; but they are to be one in a different way – both are one for

the ego itself. But this is impossible unless the ego is conscious of the production. But if

the ego is conscious of the production, then the two activities must separate, since this is

a necessary condition for consciousness of production. The two activities must therefore

be one, for otherwise there is no identity; the two must be separate, for otherwise there is

identity, but not for the ego.30

So, then, how can the ego and the product, and the production of the ego be one

in the same, and yet also separate? Schelling realizes that a point must exist at where the

two activities fall together as one – yet immediately upon reaching this point, the

production must cease to be free, and must cease ultimately. This is because production,

as such, is just the opposition of conscious and unconscious activity; at the point where

these two activities meet absolutely, there can no longer be any opposition, hence the

contradiction is resolved, and ends in what Schelling refers to as Intelligence. The

‘postulated product’ involved in this move, is the concept of the genius for Schelling, and

“since genius is possible only in art, the product of art.”31

Schelling’s model is able to bring objective activity and conscious activity, which

are distinct and even may oppose one another, into an unexpected harmony; THIS is the

Absolute intuition, which contains the universal ground for the pre-established harmony

between the conscious and the unconscious. This is also Schelling’s definition of the

organism. It should be noted that what Schelling describes here, similar to Kant’s

established ideal between the imagination and the understanding, can never be fully

known conceptually, and eternally flees from itself. It is upon these grounds that

Schelling’s notion of the genius begins to truly take shape.

Schelling distinguishes more resolutely between products of art, and products of

non-art, although, like Kant, he approaches this topic from a formal perspective, and does

not specifically exemplify his reasoning. Concerning works of art, Schelling writes, “So

it is with every work of art: each is susceptible of infinite interpretation, as through there

were an infinity of intentions within it, yet we cannot at all tell whether this infinity lay in

the artist himself or whether it resides solely in the art-work.”32

Non-art, or products

merely imitating the character of a work of out, is limited to the aesthetical rules of the

surface. Non intuition or insight occurs in non-art, and it is therefore not capable of any

relational use-value. Greek Mythology, in analogy to the art product, attempted to

describe infinite meaning to the ideas contained within its formulation, and was not

created with any finite conceptual purpose which could be grasped by any individual. In

this way, Schelling sees every aesthetic production as starting from an infinite separation

of conscious and unconscious activities, which become unified within the work of art.

Schelling equates this unity to the concept of beauty.

Schelling argues that conceptual knowledge cannot present access to the absolute

unity of the artwork, although this unity can still be grasped through intellectual intuition.

Kant termed this ‘intuitive reason’ and restricted it to God, while Schelling argues that

‘intellectual intuition’ should be seen as an unmediated vision which reveals the freely

posited empirical self. For Schelling, the state of intellectual intuition is always

somewhat unaccountable, and is in this sense precarious. Much like contemplation on

the state of death, this mythical uncertainty leaves the individual to return to the state of

reflection, able to do no more than realize that the absolute unity which transcends all

concepts is observable within this death-like state.

Hopefully, now, Schelling’s definition of poetry as it pertains to the work of art

and the notion of the genius will become more readily understandable. Once again,

Schelling argues that, through genius, artwork is crafted among the interaction of two

distinctly different activities, namely, unconscious and conscious ones. Although the

genius can never be reduced to one side of the other, Schelling claims that the conscious

aspects of the production may be practiced and refined, and are able to be taught as well

as learned from others. In this sense, there is nothing truly ‘special’ occurring within the

conscious production. The unconscious production, however, is mysterious, and cannot

be named. It cannot be gained, and must be endowed as a gift of nature. THIS is

precisely the role of poetry, for Schelling:

For though that which cannot be achieved by practice but is native with us is generally

considered the nobler of the two, the gods have so grimly tied the exercise of that original

power to painstaking human effort, to industry and deliberation, that without art, poetry,

even where it is innate, produces only products that appear lifeless, in which no human

understanding can take delight, and which repel all judgment and even intuition by the

completely blind force at work in them.33

It becomes clear that Schelling, similarly to Kant, once again takes more interest

in this ‘naturally endowed’ aspect of aesthetics than the content of the art product.

Further evidence to support this claim is also discovered within Schelling’s summation of

the faculty of imagination, which he posits as original poetic intuition. Schelling argues

that the imagination provides the sole capacity through which we are able to contemplate

what is contradictory – or even to cognize in general!

Schelling regards beauty as the basic character of art, and claims that without

beauty, there is no art. Within this move, Schelling seems to be empowering the

beautiful over the sublime, although he claims that both still operate separately within an

artwork, and may either oppose each other or combine in an art product. Schelling

argues that the interaction between the two occurs at the level of the aesthetic object, and

in regard to the object rather than the subject of intuition. Furthermore, Schelling states:

For the difference between a beautiful and a sublime work of art rests only on the fact

that where beauty exists the infinite contradiction is resolved in the object itself, whereas

where sublimity exists the contradiction is not unified in the object itself but is merely

raised to a level at which it involuntarily removes itself in the intuition, which then is as

good as if it were removed from the object.34

Not only do the beautiful and the sublime operate at the same level, but they also

rest on the same absolute contradiction. In the case of the sublime, the intuition is found

not within the artist of the sublime object, but within the intuiting subject itself, since “the

sublime sets all the powers of the mind in motion in order to resolve the contradiction

that threatens one’s entire intellectual existence.”

Schelling also considers the existence of natural beauty in the world. He

considers natural beauty as solely an organic product of nature, because it has not been

processed by aesthetic production, and has therefore not been rendered conscious, even

partially. Hence, there is no infinite contradiction within natural beauty, because there is

no conscious activity which would account for the contradiction. Therefore any beauty

encountered in nature will always appear as accidental. Schelling points out that it is not

the merely accidentally beauty found in nature that ‘gives the rule to art’, but rather that

the perfection produced by art is to become the principle and the norm for judging the

beauty of nature.

In summary, the paradigm of aesthetics outlined by Schelling describes the

epistemic function of art as its most significant function. In doing so, Schelling places

the ontological or practical functions of art to its epistemological functioning. The effect

of this move is that art, now inclusive of philosophy, is established as precedent over

science, and becomes instantiated as the model by which science should aim to function.

One consequence is that, since science must always join art, Schelling leaves no room for

any notion of genius to operate in science, or anywhere outside of art. Hammermeister

elucidates, “Art is cast in a role in which it is celebrated as that product of the human

spirit that reveals a kind of truth that is not only different from scientific truth, but is

instead its foundation. The truth of art precedes scientific truth and enables it, and

without the world-disclosing activity of art, no individual inquiry would be possible.”35

Within only roughly two years of finishing the System, Schelling rescinds the

place of art as the pinnacle of his system, and subjugates it under conceptual knowledge.

While his later works certainly still valued aesthetics as important, it was at best on par

with the philosophical concept, or resulting immediately from it – a position that would

soon be occupied more fully by Hegel. Schelling’s model is certainly disappointing, in

that he postpones the metaphysical, ontological, and practical questions raised by Kant’s

critical works in favor of aesthetics – which he eventually abandons as well! I am in full

agreement with Hammermeister when he writes, “One cannot help but feel that

philosophy somehow gets shortchanged with the establishment of romantic aesthetics – a

sense that led Hegel to a reversal of the hierarchy of philosophy and art as expressed by

the Schelling of the System.”

1 Kant would have used the term ‘man’, which I prefer to avoid, especially since it would greatly obfuscate

my discussion of Kant’s distinction between men and women in terms of alignment with either beauty or

sublimity. 2 Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, University of California Press, 45

3 Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, University of California Press, 51-53

4 Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, University of California Press, 46






10Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, University of California Press, 58

11Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, University of California Press, 60

∗

Meant as previous to his three critiques, not as not critical! 12

Hammermeister, The German Aesthetic Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 21 13



Kant, Critique of Judgment, Section 16 16


PG 17, Ideal of Beauty, C o J, Kant 18







David Simpson, Introduction to Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism, Cambridge University

Press, 119 25


David Simpson, Introduction to Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism, Cambridge University

Press, 119-120 27



Philosophy of German Idealism, Continuum, 203 30






Hammermeister, The German Aesthetic Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 67

aesthetic paradigms of kant and schelling

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