Aviv Reiter

§49 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment concludes with a striking claim regarding the freedom required for artistic expression. Kant classifies Mannerism as aping, but considers manner the only valid means of artistic expression. These opposed uses of maniera echo a historical controversy, which finds reconciliation in Kant in what I call artistic autonomy. For Kant, artistic expression of genuine originality requires autonomous action, the individual manner in which an artist selects, transforms and applies given academic rules, in a way that renders an aesthetic vision meaningful. His grave concern is that artists, in their aspiration to innovate, might make the freedom to modify and transform rules into the very aim of their artistic endeavor. In order to grasp the full significance of Kant’s view, I examine the contradictory attitudes towards maniera articulated by Vasari and Bellori. Kant’s account of artistic autonomy offers an understanding of artistic succession, different from that of his predecessors.

The Analytic of the Beautiful in Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment is a text of unparalleled importance in the history of philosophical aesthetics. Its main claims are adopted by some and rejected by others. A significant number of responses, of both kinds, take the Analytic to apply to all experiences of beauty—most notably, to the beauty of both nature and fine art. Our principal claim is that this assumption is mistaken. The analysis in the misleadingly titled Analytic of the Beautiful applies paradigmatically to judgments of natural beauty. The experience of the beauty of most artworks is different and requires a separate analysis. We detail the modifications required in all four moments of the Analytic and thereby explicate the experience of artistic beauty. This reveals that Kant holds an interesting and historically consequential account of the experience of artistic beauty, which is significantly different from the experience of natural beauty. The analysis further reveals that despite these significant differences, the experiences are both species of a single genus.

For Kant the definitive end of art is the expression of aesthetic ideas that are sensible counterparts of rational ideas. But there is another type of aesthetic idea: ‘Beauty can in general be called the _expression_ of aesthetic ideas: only in beautiful nature the mere reflection on a given intuition, without a concept of what the object ought to be, is sufficient for arousing and communicating the idea of which that object is considered as the _expression_.’ What are these aesthetic ideas? I argue that Kant is drawing on the idealist conception of art, associated with Vasari, Bellori and Winckelmann, as presenting idealized spatial forms characteristic of natural kinds. He incorporates this conception into his analysis of the beauty of nature and adds that we have non-conceptual access to it. These idealized forms he names aesthetic normal ideas of natural species. §51 of Kant’s Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment opens with an unexpected claim, described by readers as ‘puzzling’, ‘perplexing’ and even as a ‘notorious mystery’.1 1 Beauty can in general be called the _expression_ of aesthetic ideas: only in beautiful art this idea must be occasioned by a concept of the object, but in beautiful nature the mere reflection on a given intuition, without a concept of what the object ought to be, is sufficient for arousing and communicating the idea of which that object is considered as the _expression_. 2 2 I will argue that, in this passage, Kant states that there are two types of aesthetic ideas—namely, aesthetic ideas expressed in beautiful art and aesthetic ideas expressed by beautiful nature. This distinction is surprising for, before this juncture, there is no explicit claim that there are different types of aesthetic ideas. In fact, although Kant offers several seemingly general characterizations of aesthetic ideas, in none of them does he indicate that there is a subdivision of the genus. Noteworthy, too, is the claim that the distinct pleasure we take in beautiful nature is independent of concepts; for strikingly, it can be considered as the expression of what the passage above expressly calls ideas. In his analysis of fine art, Kant draws the distinction between natural and artistic beauty—a distinction that is succinctly repeated in the passage above.3 3 But when he goes on to explicate the notion of an aesthetic idea, he refers only to aesthetic ideas expressed in art. This fact is taken to support the assumption that aesthetic ideas are connected solely to art. This is the heart of the mystery of the passage, for in it, Kant explicitly talks about aesthetic ideas expressed by beautiful nature. This raises a crucial question: Does the explication of aesthetic ideas in the sections on art apply to aesthetic ideas of beautiful nature?I maintain that the answer is negative. Although, in the passage above, Kant uses the same term in relation to both kinds of beauty, he has a clear distinction in mind: Beauty in art is an aesthetically or sensuously unified expression of the conceptual richness of an idea of reason; beauty in nature is an expression of a purely aesthetically or sensuously unified richness. Obviously, this distinction is connected to other significant differences between the two kinds of beauty. But it is important to point out at the outset that the two types of aesthetic ideas have in common only the quality of being a sensuously unified richness. It is in this sense that they are both species of a single genus. But what more precisely does Kant mean by aesthetic ideas expressed by beautiful nature, and what unified richness do they express and how precisely do they express it? It is to the historical genealogy of this notion of aesthetic ideas of beautiful nature and its implications for Kant’s theory of beauty that this paper is devoted. This historical genealogy will reveal a sense of the notion of aesthetic ideas that we easily overlook but would have been familiar to Kant and his contemporaries.

Wittgenstein’s private language argument claims that language and meaning generally are public. It also contends with our appreciation of artworks and reveals the deep connection in our minds between originality and the temptation to think of original meaning as private. This problematic connection of ideas is found in Kant’s theory of fine art. For Kant conceives of the capacity of artistic genius for imaginatively envisioning original content as prior to and independent of finding the artistic means of communicating this content to others. This raises the question of whether we can conceive of art as both original and meaningful without succumbing to privacy.