Hume and Kant Opinions of Taste and Beauty

Hume and Kant Opinions of Taste and Beauty

All of the experiences which people get when looking at beautiful paintings , listening to music , reading outstanding poems or novels , have an immediate an emotional character . In order to describe those types of experiences , the term aesthetic is used . Many philosophers have studied questions dealing with aesthetics , and one of the most famous of them can be regarded Hume ( Of the Standard of Taste ) and Kant (Analytic of the Beautiful

Both Hume and Kant regard aesthetic judgement as the one which is exemplifying taste

. In the 18th century aesthetics taste was considered a special mental faculty , or a special mode of employment of mental faculties , exercised in aesthetic judgment . The category of taste is described very well in the works of Hume and Kant . They give a full characteristic of aesthetic judgement formation , and present their peculiar view on the aesthetics . The problem of judgments of taste is formulated by Kant in the following way : How is a judgment possible that , merely from one 's own feeling of pleasure in an object independently of concepts of it , would judge this pleasure a priori- that is , without having to wait for the concurrence of others- attaching to the representation of the object in every other subject

Kant and Hume depict 2 absolutely central features of aesthetic judgement . The first central feature of aesthetic judgement on which this judgement rests , according to Kant , is on a felt response to an object . This means that an aesthetic judgement of some specific object cannot be passed secondhand . On the contrary , it requires a person himself to see the object , and get an idea about it . An aesthetic judgement always requires a person 's acquaintance with an object . For example , if there is a new movie produced , and many people say that it 's a fantastic movie which is worth watching a couple of times , it doesn 't necessarily mean that some specific person will like the movie . There can be many things about the movie which he will not like , even though all of his friends are all in awe of it . This leads us to the conclusion that it 's impossible for one person to get an aesthetic judgement from other people . He has to make it himself

The second central feature of the aesthetic judgement is very connected with the first one . Kant argues that principles play no major role in the aesthetic judgement . It doesn 't necessarily mean that we are ignorant of rules of the aesthetic judgement , but that we will always fail to set such rules . It 's impossible for us to say that a novel is a masterpiece because the author was using a large number of symbols and metaphors in it . The novel makes an impression on us on all levels , it 's a completed work , and we can get a judgement only of the novel on the whole , not just according to the language analysis

According to Kant...