AN INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S AESTHETICS

TWO CHALLENGES 131
determinate cognition (the aesthetic interaction might, in a specific case, happen
to lead to a determinate cognition, but that would not be necessary, and it would
be external to the aesthetic judgment as such). Harmonious and disharmonious
play are two kinds of aesthetic reflection. Both require “more” and “less” than
epistemic reflection that serves in cognizing the object. Aesthetic reflection
requires more because it involves the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, which is
not the case in epistemic reflection, and it requires less because it does not aim
at cognition, as is the case in epistemic reflection.
The state of mind which underlies a judgment of taste, and which Kant analyses
in section 9, can be that of a harmonious as well as that of a disharmonious
play. Crucial for Kant’s arguments is that this state of mind be universally communicable.
He carefully writes: “it can be nothing other than the state of mind
that is encountered in the relation of the powers of representation to each other
insofar as they relate a given representation to cognition in general” (section 9,
217). These relations, we may add, must obtain in a harmonious as well as in a
disharmonious play. Thinking of poems by Charles Baudelaire or paintings by
Hieronymus Bosch, we can see how fascinating the ugly can be and how much
beauty and ugliness can be interwoven. There is indeed a free play of our faculties
possible also in the case of the ugly. And our judgment can be as disinterested
as in the case of the beautiful.
Finally, we return to the principle of subjective purposivness. In addressing
this topic, we have to introduce the notion of negative purposiveness. In chapter
3 we introduced a diagram indicating the threefold structure of subjective purposiveness.
This will be useful here.
understanding
P 1 P 3
object ___ Æ ↕ P2
___ Æ cognition in general
imagination
The object of a positive judgment of taste is suitable (purposive) for free play, in
which the two faculties, imagination and understanding, strengthen and enliven
each other and thus are purposive for each other. All this in turn is suitable for
cognition in general. So far this applies to the judgment about the beautiful.
There are now at least two ways of introducing an element of negation into this
threefold structure of subjective purposiveness. First, if we find something ugly,
we find it negatively purposive (-P1) for a harmonious free play (P2), that is, the
object resists our attempt to engender such a play among the faculties. Or,
second, we may say that the object is indeed purposive (P1), but purposive not
for a harmonious but for a disharmonious (-P2) free play.