When it comes to aesthetic judgments and the human faculties that enable them, Kant analyzes and classifies them with the same meticulous rigor that is characteristic of his approach to ethics or epistemology. The key notion of his aesthetics is that a proper judgment of beauty can only be disinterested – that is, not associated with possessing the beautiful object for sensual gratification. However, in order to create this concept, Kant needs to distinguish between the judgments of agreeable and those of beautiful or good, even though the former may also speak of beauty in a colloquial sense. Moreover, since sensual gratification belongs to the realm of animal faculties and, as such, can only be controlled but not created or destroyed by will. Consequently, the Kantian ‘disinterestedness’ essentially becomes a chance game – while it is possible, a person can never guarantee that a certain type of object will not invoke desire along with appreciation.
Before assessing whether ‘disinterestedness,’ as described by Kant, may be an effective way of making solid aesthetic judgments, it is necessary to briefly cover what the philosopher means by it. According to him, aesthetics is concerned with representation rather than the usefulness or even the existence of objects. As he puts it, the question of considering something beautiful does not have anything to do with “whether anything depends or can depend on the existence of the thing” – only with its observation (Kant 47). In practical terms, it means that, in order to make a properly aesthetic judgment, a person should have no interest in possessing a beautiful object or gaining any other benefit from its existence – in fact, the object may not exist at all. For example, the once-famous Grey Castle in Szczecin, Poland, was utterly destroyed during the Second World War, and the only reminder of it is painted or photographed images. However, it does not prevent people from considering it beautiful despite the fact that it does not exist and cannot benefit anyone. Hence, Kantian ‘disinterestedness’ as a means of making aesthetic judgments is certainly possible in practice.
One major limitation of this approach is that Kant’s definition of beauty is much narrower than what is usually meant in the colloquial use of the term. The German philosopher makes a sharp distinction between the judgments of the ‘agreeable’ and those of ‘beautiful.’ According to him, the judgment of the agreeable or pleasant necessarily relies on the estimation of “the gratification that they promise” through possessing or using them, which necessitates interest (Kant 49). Making a purely aesthetic judgment of something that invokes a desire to partake in is impossible because, as mentioned above, the judgments of beauty can only be disinterested. It makes Kant’s notion of beauty considerably more limiting than the colloquial use of the term. For example, a person may easily refer to a woman as ‘beautiful’, meaning that she is sexually attractive, but, for Kant, that would be an interesting judgment based on the desire for sensual gratification. As a result, the demand of only making disinterested judgments when deciding on the aesthetical value of something constrains the applicability of the Kantian approach considerably.
More importantly, still, a strict application of the Kantian model gives aesthetes hostage to their natural inclinations with little choice in whether they can or cannot decide the beauty of certain objects. Kant explains that the stimuli that push a person to seek sensual gratification in a particular direction are an irrational, animal faculty (54). It means that they can be dominated by a rational human mind but not created or extinguished at will: one may control the craving for a particular food but not cancel it. In practical terms, it means that the ability to make aesthetic judgments becomes essentially random: a person either has or has not a sensual inclination toward something with little choice in the matter. To continue the example used in the previous paragraph, a homosexual man can make a purely aesthetic disinterested judgment of a woman’s beauty, but a heterosexual man cannot due to the implicit sensual interest involved. This is only one example of how natural inclinations that people do not choose may stand in the way of Kantian demand of disinterestedness, making its practical application a game of chance.
To summarize, the Kantian notion of disinterestedness as a foundation for true aesthetic judgment is possible but very limiting and conditional upon the factor outside the aesthete’s control. People certainly can appreciate the aesthetic value of objects regardless of their usefulness, pleasantness, or even existence itself, thus making what Kant would consider a purely aesthetic judgment. However, the disinterestedness demand makes the concept of beauty much narrower than its colloquial use. Moreover, since people cannot freely decide whether they have a sensual inclination toward something, their ability to make a disinterested decision in each case hinges upon a random chance of not having such an inclination. With this in mind, the disinterested Kantian judgment is technically possible but hardly a workable and sustainable approach to making aesthetic judgments.
Work Cited
Kant, Immanuel. Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Translated by J. H. Bernard, 2nd ed., Macmillan, 1914.