study questions

Some Questions for Kant

(adapted from A. J. Drake's Teaching Resources)

From The Critique of Judgment (1790)

from Book I. "Analytic of the Beautiful"

1. Are judgments of beauty based on the object or on the subject?

2. Why, according to Kant, isn't it possible to make "a pure judgment of taste" as soon as "interest" enters the picture? Kant uses the term "disinterested[ness]." How does this word encapsulate what he has been saying about the purity of a proper aesthetic judgment?

3. How does Kant define judgments about "the agreeable" and "the good"? To what do these kinds of judgments appeal? Why aren't these kinds of judgment aesthetic?  Provide your own examples of a judgment about the agreeable and the good, respectively.   

4. How does Kant summarize in part 5 the differences between judgments based on the agreeable, the good, and the beautiful?

5. Why, according to Kant, do we suppose we have the right to other people’s agreement once we have declared an object beautiful? That is, we would not demand that everybody like chocolate ice cream just because we like it, but we would insist that our statement, “this rose is beautiful” is a universally correct judgment. Why?

6. According to Kant, judgments of taste to be pure must be reflective judgments and the object of our judgment must be free of an underlying concept. What does he mean by this?

7. What does Kant mean by "purposiveness"? What is the relationship between this concept and his claim that a judgment of taste "rests on a priori bases"?

8. According to Kant, what is "free beauty" (pulchritudo vaga)? What examples does he offer? Why is it important that our liking for such objects does not refer to any definite concept, i.e. that we don't refer the object to a fixed purpose or concept?

9. How do you understand Kant's terms "common sense" (sensus communis) and "purposiveness without a purpose"? What significance do they hold for Kant's claims about the human value of aesthetic judgment?

from Book II. "Analytic of the Sublime"

1. In what respects, according to Kant, are the beautiful and the sublime similar?

2. What "significant differences" does Kant note between the beautiful and the sublime? Which difference is the most important, and why?

3. How does Kant's attitude towards the sublime differ from that of Longinus?

4. How does Kant define the term "sublime"? Why is it the case that "nothing that can be an object of the sense is to be called sublime"?

5. How is it that the feeling most relevant to our experience of the sublime is "respect"? What is it that we respect when we experience the sublime, and why? How does this experience entail "a feeling of displeasure" and yet "at the same time also [involve] a pleasure"?

6. While the sublime is associated with feelings of displeasure and inadequacy, according to Kant it also produces the contrary effect of empowering and emboldening the subject. How does this work and why is it important to Kant's theory?

7. How does Kant define nature as a "might"? Why is it necessary for a judgment of sublimity that we "consider and object fearful without being afraid of it"? What would happen to our experience of sublimity, for instance, if -- my example -- we were clinging to a flimsy branch over the edge of Niagara Falls rather than viewing the Falls from a safe distance?

8. How does Kant treat the issue of "genius"? What can the artist or genius do especially well?

9. When Kant claims that the genius both relies on Nature and surpasses it, to which theorists does he appear closest? Does Kant add anything to those earlier theorists?