Immanuel Kant Valued Traditionalized Aesthetics Essay

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The German Philosopher, Immanuel Kant valued traditionalized aesthetics. He explains the judgments of taste by breaking it down under two fundamental conditions, subjectivity and universality. There are other conditions that apply to the judgement of taste, however these two functions are the most important. Subjectivity is crucial to the equation because it is the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. According to Kant, beauty is determined by the representational perception of a thing. The feeling of pleasure when evaluating a piece of art is when the person who is evaluating finds intentional content in beauty. People often make judgements based off of they 're own virtues and values, therefore subjectively perceiving in favor of the work. Kant points out that there is a surface and deep account of pleasure in beauty, deep relating to the use of the imagination and understanding of a work of art. Kant also points out that a person can be intrigued by a sense of …show more content…

Kant described universality as demanding the same delight from others when one thinks of an object as beautiful. Universal validity implies that others should share our judgement and if they don 't, they do not have a sense of taste. Kant goes on to explain why an individual feels the need to have this shared judgement is because we judge confidently, meaning we are correct. Kant believes that universality is a product of the human mind and that there is no objective property of a thing that makes it beautiful. Kant further distinguishes a feature called judgments of agreeableness which simply means if a person likes something, they do not claim that everyone else should too. With this condition one cannot say an object is beautiful because they are only thinking of themselves and what pleases them. Overall, universality is necessary in the judgement of taste because it makes the artist think on the appropriate