Having briefly surveyed Aristotle’s theory of art vis-a-vis Plato as art as cognition asking the question What is Beauty, let us now skip some two thousand years to another giant of philosophy whose theory of aesthetic has had an enormous influence on the modern conception of art: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). He never subscribed to the fallacious theory of the struggle between the ancients and the moderns; that what historically arrives at the end is always superior to what precedes it. On the contrary he was cognizant that in philosophy which is an ongoing perennial dialogue one rejects nothing, one builds on the solid foundations laid out by our predecessors at the risk of re-inventing the wheel.

He set out his theory in the third of his famous Critiques: The Critique of Judgment. It is there that one finds for the first time the term aesthetic as applied to the philosophy of art. His wide-ranging discussion of art under the rubric of aesthetic judgment continues to be debated today and one can safely assert that, just as Plato’s and Aristotle’s theories will continue to be debated for a very long time to come.

The theory is complex because it attempts to solve a variety of puzzles, foremost among those the Humian question: in what sense can judgment of artistic merit, which at first glance appear to derive from our subjective feelings (beauty as being in the eye of the beholder, as the conventional wisdom would suggest), can be considered objective and factual? That is indeed the crucial question which Kant attempts to answer.

In surveying the theory one needs to begin where Kant begins, with the understanding of aesthetic judgment, which he takes to apply to nature in the first instance. For Kant, a judgment about a beautiful sunset is a peculiar kind of judgment. In the first place, we need to understand that for Kant the term “judgment” refers to all acts of mental cognition; thus thinking for him is equivalent to making judgments. Consequently to conclude that something is beautiful does not enhance our understanding of it as would a mere empirical judgment, that the setting sun has reddened the clouds. Rather we seem to be saying something about how our perception of it affects us.

When I call the sunset beautiful, I refer to feelings the sunset produces in me, even though I express this in a judgment that attributes an apparently objective property—beauty—to it. So the question for both Kant and Hume is this: how a judgment about our feelings can have an objective validity. When I say the sunset is beautiful I seem to be saying more than that it appeals to me, claiming also that the sunset’s beauty is there for all to see.

So, how does Kant resolve the dilemma? He goes beyond Hume who had based the objectivity of judgments of taste on the presumed empirical truth that certain qualities of objects tend to produce pleasure in all human beings. Kant is aware that this will not justify our belief that attributions of beauty to objects have normative force, that is to say, that when I say something is beautiful, I not only believe you will agree, but I also think that, in some sense, you should agree.

Which begs the question: how does Kant justify the objective validity of aesthetic judgments? Simply by claiming that the feeling of pleasure conceptualized in such judgments is of a very specific sort. Unlike the feeling of pleasure consumed by consuming an ice cream cone, the feeling of beauty incident on the perception of a beautiful object does not arise from the satisfaction of a particular interest or desire. Rather, it is a disinterested pleasure derived from the mere contemplation of the object that induces it.

The source of this pleasure, according to Kant, is in those features of the object uniquely suited to my perception. In Kantian terms, the form of a beautiful object causes the imagination (that is to say, the mental faculty that allows me to apprehend any object) and the understanding (that is to say, the faculty of conceptualization) to coincide in a special sort of harmony: it is as if the object were produced in order for it to be perceived by me. It is this free play of the faculties that produces a pleasurable feeling of the sort that gives rise to the judgment that the object is beautiful. For this reason, we see beautiful objects as purposive, but without their fulfilling any actual purpose.

This account by Kant solves the problem of the objective validity of aesthetic judgments by claiming that the pleasure produced by beautiful things is such that any being equipped with the perceptual and cognitive faculties human being possess would experience this pleasure. The attribution of beauty to an object is objectively valid in that it posits a subjective state that all human beings are capable of experiencing. Unlike Hume’s solution, the universality of our susceptibility to aesthetic pleasure does not depend on an empirical generalization that admits of many exceptions; rather, it depends only on the most general structure of the human mind. Nevertheless, aesthetic judgments do not meet the rigorous standards for empirical knowledge set forth by Kant in The Critique of Pure Reason.

Another important detail of Kant’s theory of natural beauty is the distinction he makes between the beautiful and the sublime in our aesthetic response to nature. The sublime has within it the terrifying, the awe inspiring and the dangerous in nature which nevertheless remains poetical and therefore sublime.

Once we move to art proper Kant proceeds to distinguish it from various other branches of human activity, always stressing that “art” proper always refers to human activity freely undertaken. He calls it fine art. It is a species of aesthetic art that attempts to produce pleasure through the form of its objects. So Kant defines “art” by reference to his theory of aesthetic judgment. Art objects are those created to produce aesthetic pleasure by virtue of their form.

In The Critique of Judgment Kant argues that art must seem to us like a natural product. This claim is important because it grounds in a naturalistic standard the judgment of works of art. Thus, according to Kant, noticing that a work of fine art was consciously produced to give us pleasure detracts from the work’s ability to produce that pleasure. Only those art objects that both reveal and conceal their nature as artifacts will produce in us a genuine aesthetic response.

This aspect of Kant’s philosophy exhibits an intriguing tension with his claim that art can express ideas. Aristotle had also expressed the cognitive function of art as expressing ideas and therefore sister to philosophy. This claim is developed fully by Schopenhauer. Actually, what Kant calls “ideas” are concepts which cannot be fully encountered in experience. Although there are perfectly valid examples of empirical concepts, such as “chair,” within our experience, ideas such as beauty can never, according to Kant, be adequately instanced in the course of our daily lives. It is only art, with its ability to go beyond the quotidian that provides us with sensory analogues of ideas. What Kant seems to be suggesting here is that art worthy of that name is always pointing beyond itself, to the transcendent; it is a sort of metaphor of the beyond, an “intimation of immortality” so to speak.

Another important aspect of Kant’s theory is its insistence that fine art has no rules; for it did it would be knowledge. But if there are no rules how can it be made? By geniuses who seem to have a natural ability to create objects that produce aesthetic pleasure in us. This account of genius became very much in vogue in the Romantic period in the 19th century.

In judging a work of art, Kant insists we ought to also judge its perfection, not just its beauty. He defines perfection as the harmony between its sensory features and its purpose. This aspect of the theory echoes Aristotle deontological theory in his “Poetics.” In fact, like Aristotle, Kant holds that we can judge as beautiful in art things we would find repellent in nature such as war or disease. There is however an emotion which cannot be redeemed in art and it is disgust. Probably Sartre would disagree with that if one were to judge from his famous “No Exit.” Be that as it may, there are undoubtedly elements of this theory which seem problematic today, such as the endorsement of naturalism or the emphasis on form as the only aesthetically relevant feature of artworks. Nevertheless, Kant’s theory of aesthetic remains insightful and influential and only a cultural philistine would dare to declare it passé.