Immanuel Kant: Beauty, The Sublime & The Subjective Universal

Immanuel Kant famously states within his ‘Critique of Judgment,’ “Beautiful is what, without concept, is liked universally.”[1] His claim is that judgments of taste, especially those of the beautiful or sublime, can be differentiated from judgments of cognition or the agreeable, through notions of disinterest, and subjective universality. I will argue, whilst critically assessing both The First and Second Moments, three objections to Kant’s aesthetics; that his account of beauty separate from interest is unconvincing, that beauty can never be known to be universal, and finally, that his account of beauty focuses exclusively on positive judgments. 

Within his third critique, the ‘Critique of Judgment,’ Kant explicates, through a priori justification, three kinds of aesthetic judgments; the agreeable, the beautiful and the sublime. Firstly, Kant makes it known that our judgments take the form of quantity, quality, relation and modality. Secondly, within the First Moment (§1–§5), Kant assures that when assessing the beautiful, we base this judgment upon feelings of pleasure. However, for Kant, this judgment must be devoid of interest in the sense that the subject does not depend upon the existence of the object. For if the subject were either to have a desire for, or to depend upon whether or not they could possess, or own the object, their judgment would not necessarily correlate with the beautiful, but rather just with the agreeable. He states, the “agreeable is what the senses like in sensation.”[2] So, if I were to visit an art gallery and suggest that the sculpture is ‘beautiful,’ however, think to myself, “that it would look amazing in my living room,” I am merely expressing my preference for the item. For Kant, my suggestion that the sculpture was ‘beautiful’ was intermingled with a judgment of the agreeable, and as such, was not a judgment of beauty. This is evident in “for he must not call it beautiful if [he means] only [that] he likes it.”[3]

My main objection to Kant’s reasoning within The First Moment is that he is unable to assure our perceptions can ever be divorced from our sense faculties. For, if judgments of beauty must “subject the object to our own eyes,”[4] it follows that we are reliant upon our sense faculties to some degree. So, if judgments of taste do not reside in our sense, or our cognition,[5] where do they come from? Potentially Kant is suggesting ‘beauty’ belongs to the ‘object,’ and through our senses, we are merely recognising this. However, if we are to adopt Kant’s account of disinterested beauty, what are we really judging? If I am not mistaken, devoid of interest, desire, and passion, the beautiful object merely becomes an abstract manifestation in the external world, pattern-like, almost mathematical in nature; an aesthetic algorithm. To this point, is it not actually in our best interest to see the preservation of the beautiful? And, why is it that the comingling of beauty and interest is understood as a negative? I believe such questions are evaded in detriment to the argument.   

Within the Second Moment (§6–§9), Kant posits beauty as a universal. When making a judgment of beauty, albeit a correct one, we can assume that everyone else who encounters the singular object ought also to judge it to be of beauty. And additionally, feel a similar pleasure. In what seems like an oxymoronic statement, Kant suggests that the beautiful makes a claim of subjective universality. In this, Kant is suggesting that whilst beauty is ‘objective’ in that it is not influenced by personal preference, feelings or concepts, it is only conceived (wholly) through subjective experience. It is within these few passages that Kant also distances judgments of beauty from judgments requiring cognition, or those reliant upon concepts, or the good. Apparently, aesthetic judgments are made without understanding, or otherwise our faculties would give rise to cognition. Beauty is not logical, so therefore is not dependent upon cogito. And yet, in a somewhat contradictory move, Kant explains that in the communication of this ‘subjective universal’, “imagination and understanding are in free play.”[6]

Whilst this move appears counterintuitive and confused, my main objection of The Second Moment lies in the assertion that both ‘beauty’ and ‘the sublime’ are universals. Kant’s argument seems to rest on the idea that if we are to experience difference of opinion, one of the subjects is not making a pure judgment of beauty. If they were, everyone would surely be in agreement. It follows that just because someone suggests something is beautiful, it does not mean they are making a judgment of beauty. In fact, for Kant, they are utilising the word incorrectly. So, I suggest, Kant isn’t necessarily making a metaphysical claim of beauty, but rather is asserting a philosophy or language; redefining the noun ‘beauty’ in contrast to our layman use of the term.

Furthermore, the sublime is yet another example of contradictory language in virtue of Kant suggesting the definition of such to be ‘ineffable.’ To state that an entity is so beautiful one is rendered speechless, and yet, describe such as ‘sublime’ and ‘ineffable’, is directly putting words to the very thing that is apparently ‘beyond words.’ If, the sublime is also rendered a universal, and everyone in experience of this entity ought to feel the exact same ‘indescribable’ feeling, how are we to ever support such a claim if we are unable to speak of its properties? And even if it were just that in the face of the sublime everyone ought to be speechless, how are we to differentiate speechlessness due to the sublime and speechlessness due to an inability to speak?

Lastly, I find objection in the fact that Kant only ever speaks of positive judgments of beauty. Unfortunately, he has little to nothing to say about objects that are not beautiful, and more importantly, objects that are oppositely beautiful, or rather, ugly. Is ugly also a subjective universal? I think it pertinent to the conversation of judgments of taste to also speak of judgments against taste. Unfortunately, along with the other two objections noted above, I do not believe that Kant gives a convincing argument of why ‘beauty’ has been purported as disinterested and universal, above reasoning and resolving concerns he has self-created.

[1] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett 1987),64.

[2] Ibid., 47.

[3] Ibid., 55.

[4] Ibid., 59.

[5] As I will momentarily argue.

[6] Ibid., 62.