Kant on the fine arts: A reply to a social practices objection

Abstract

Nicholas Wolterstorff’s book Art Rethought objects to what he calls a now widely accepted “grand narrative” about art, originally proposed during the early modern period. According to this narrative, art came into its own once it was contemplated for its own sake from an aesthetic point of view. Although Kant is a foremost aesthetic theorist from the period in which this narrative took root, Wolterstorff does not directly criticize Kant’s aesthetic theory, choosing to discuss figures such as Karl Philipp Moritz and Wilhelm Wackenroder. I thus formulate an objection broadly based on Wolterstorff’s concerns and apply it to Kant. Roughly, the objection is that Kant’s account focuses too much on the pleasure in disinterested aesthetic contemplation and that it does not sufficiently recognize the social practices of art. I then argue that Kant’s account is able to neutralize the objection for three main reasons. 1) Kant to some extent acknowledges the social functions of art, including veneration and honoring. His notion of adherent beauty provides a way to account for the social functions of the work. 2) Kant’s theory can be expanded to account for social protest art, memorial art, reflexive art and conceptual art. 3) Another basis for recognizing the social functions of art can be derived from Kant’s view of the empirical interest in the beautiful, which is grounded on sociability. In short, Kant holds that aesthetic experiences are important for the cultivation of the social and moral aspects of human beings.

Keywords

• kant
• fine art
• aesthetic contemplation
• adherent beauty
• nicholas wolterstorff
• social practices