Kant And Schopenhauer Analysis

Aesthetics: The study of art, beauty, and taste. Growing up it never occurred to me to question, what is art? I thought one could just look at anything and point out if it was art or not but there is actually more than that. According to two philosophers, Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, it is a talent that separates a person from artworks and connecting them directly to the universe using the art of genius. In Kant’s Critique of Judgement and Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, there are similarities and differences in their point of view of the role of a genius and their interpretation of what it takes to be a genius. Fine art: the art of genius. In Kant’s Critique of Judgement, he starts off his discussion of the

Unlike Kant look on it as a natural born talent a person has, Schopenhauer sees it more as just the an “objective tendency of the mind.” (Schopenhauer, 197) meaning it is more of a mindset that allows they captures works as how the world perceives it rather than them being subjective, capturing works as how they perceive it. Also in Schopenhauer’s point of view he still sees the ability to be a genius as fairly because because, not only do you be an “pure knowing subject” meaning you have a clear eye of the world and the ability to leave out your interest, will, and your personality, but also maintaining that too. The genius also has a sense of imagination and knowledge in which they use to help with their abilities but their knowledge has no relation the will, so they have a pure knowing. The idea of someone embodying the phenomenon of genius is quite rare which lead to mad persons acquiring this idea of genius through their madness. He saw this during one of his frequent visits to a lunatic asylum, which implies that typically in his case, geniuses where locked up in asylums, possibility for irrational behavior, showing that geniuses are not only difficult to find but also difficult to be around, which possibly explains why they are both so rare. Being a person who embodies a mindset that most of society doesn’t understand possibly caused them to feel

First, they both mentioned the fact of how rare or how difficult it was to embody the genius, for Kant you had to be born with the abilities since it wasn’t teachable and for Schopenhauer it was just rare to find someone to be able to see a piece as a “pure knowing subject”. Then, kind of described geniuses as something or someone out of social norms. For Kant, Geniuses are the only ones in society that uses a sense of originality in their works and can use that for distinguishing works of art. For Schopenhauer, geniuses are the only ones in society to make and perceive works of art objectively, allowing them to separate themselves from their works, but since them are so rare, they become isolated from society and their ways. Finally, both mentioned that their interpretations of a genius included the trait of being imaginative. For Kant, Imagination is vital for creation of rational ideas and for Schopenhauer, imagination and genius goes hand in hang allowing the genius to not only see an object how nature intended but also seeing pass