From Shaftesbury to Kant: The Development of the Concept of Aesthetic Experience

Author(s): Dabney Townsend

Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1987), pp. 287-305
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
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FROM SHAFTESBURY TO KANT*
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT OF
AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE
BY DABNEY TOWNSEND
It is
widely recognized
that
although
reference to "aesthetic
experi-
ence" is anachronistic
prior
to the nineteenth
century,
the
concept
has
its foundation in the
emerging empiricism
of the late seventeenth and
eighteenth
centuries in
England.
Under the influence of Locke and New-
ton and a host of
others,
the decisive break with medieval hierarchical
ontology
which had been
emerging
since the fourteenth
century
took a
clear
conceptual
form. But for the
purpose
of aesthetic
theory,
the
way
that the
primacy
of
"experience" developed
created difficulties which
have
gradually
isolated aesthetics form the mainstream of
epistemology
and
ontology.
In the
eighteenth century
this was not
yet
the case. Hutche-
son, Hume, Burke,
Hogarth,
Gerard,
and Alison all take for
granted
that a discussion of
beauty,
the
sublime,
and taste are central to
philo-
sophical
discussion. From their discussions there
emerges
a
concept
of
aesthetic
experience
which,
in one form or
another,
dominates
subsequent
aesthetic
theory.
The form and some of the
consequences
of these com-
mitments
may
not be so
clear,
however. Thus it is worthwhile to re-
examine some of the
underlying
commitments which inform the discus-
sions of taste from
Shaftesbury
to Kant.
The
history
of the discussions of taste in the
eighteenth century
is
very complex.
Rather than
trying
to trace it in
detail,
I will
single
out
a series of
significant points.
At the
beginning
is Lord
Shaftesbury,
the
pupil
of John Locke. In the middle are Francis
Hutcheson,
who has
Shaftesbury explicitly
in
view,
and David Hume. Hume states the
paradox
of critical
judgment-aesthetic judgments
are
subjective,
but the critical
judgments
which follow from them cannot be
subjective
without com-
mitting
us to absurdities and
defeating
our
attempt
to
say
what we hold
to be
objectively
the case about some works of art-but
essentially
he
evades it. At the end stands Immanuel Kant who sums
up
the movement.
The initial
question, then,
is how one
gets
from
Shaftesbury
to Hume
and in the
process
commits aesthetics to a
concept
of aesthetic
experience
and taste which creates this
paradox.
I. At the
very beginning
of the
eighteenth century, Anthony Ashley
*
I have benefited from the criticisms of two readers for the Journal
of
the
History
of
Ideas who identified a number of obscure
passages
in this
paper;
in several
instances,
I have
adopted wording suggested by
them. I have also been
greatly
aided
by
conversation
with
my colleague,
Mark
Strasser, especially
on Locke and Hutcheson.
287
Copyright
1987
by
JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF
IDEAS,
INC.
288 DABNEY TOWNSEND
Cooper,
the Third Earl of
Shaftesbury, provides
a convenient reference
point. Shaftesbury
is one of those Janus
figures
of
philosophy
who looks
back to an ordered Neo-Platonism while he
simultaneously begins
to use
empirical concepts.
If we
compare Shaftesbury's
aesthetic
philosophy
to
later
eighteenth-century developments
of the same basic
concepts,
it will
help
to
clarify
what is
taking place.
Let us consider first the
concept
of aesthetic
experience
itself. Shaftes-
bury's language
is
firmly
Neo-Platonic,
but he
requires
the
testing
of
judgments
in a
way
which
gives
his Platonism a new content. Thus on
the one hand we find
Shaftesbury endorsing
a traditional
hierarchy
of
forms: first there are "dead
forms,"
then the "forms which
form,
that
is which have
intelligence,
action,
and
operation,"
and
finally
the forms
"which form not
only
such as we call mere forms but even forms which
form.
"'
On the other
hand, Shaftesbury
defends both criticism and "rail-
lery."
He distrusts
introspection,2
and he defends a
public
test of time:
"The
public always judges right,
and the
pieces
esteemed or disesteemed
after a time and a course of some
years
are
always exactly
esteemed
according
to their
proportion
of worth
by
those rules and studies. "3 What
I draw from this is that
Shaftesbury,
like the
empiricists
who follow
Locke,
finds
"experience"
the
only
reliable test. But
Shaftesbury
is
pri-
marily
a
public
man,
and he never
separates
his interests in art from his
moral
theory.
For
Shaftesbury, therefore,
experience
and the tests it
provides
are matters of common
judgment. They
do not
begin
with
private
sense but in medias res where we find ourselves.
Shaftesbury
is as distrustful of "mere sense" as he is of an uncritical
introspection.
For
example,
he holds that "Never can the form be of real
force where it is
uncontemplated, unjudged
of, unexamined,
and stands
only
as the accidental note or token of what
appeases provoked
sense,
and satisfies the brutish
part."4
He extends the
necessity
for critical
reflection to
practical judgment
as well:
"Nothing
is more
fatal,
either
to
painting,
architecture,
or the other
arts,
than this false
relish,
which
is
governed
rather
by
what
immediately
strikes the
sense,
than
by
what
consequentially
and
by
reflection
pleases
the
mind,
and satisfies the
thought
and reason."5
Shaftesbury
is not
systematic,
and he does not
seriously
consider how this reflection is
possible.
Unlike
Locke,
he is not
prepared
to
give up
innate
ideas,
and there is no
question
that
Shaftesbury
I
Anthony,
Earl of
Shaftesbury,
Characteristics
of
Men, Manners,
Opinions, Times,
ed. John M. Robertson
(Indianapolis, 1964),
"The
Moralist,
A
Philosophical Rhapsody,"
II,
132-33.
Throughout
the
quotations
from
Shaftesbury,
I omit italics.
2
Ibid.,
"Soliloquy
or Advice to an
Author," I,
113.
3
Anthony,
Earl of
Shaftesbury,
Second Characters or The
Language of Forms,
ed.
Benjamin
Rand
(Cambridge, 1914),
"Plastics or the
Original Progress
and Power of
Designatory
Art,"
124.
4
Characteristics,
"The
Moralists," II,
142-43.
5
Second
Characters,
"A Notion of the Historical
Draught
of
Hercules,"
61.
FROM SHAFTESBURY TO KANT 289
remains a much more
traditional,
superficial
thinker on these
points
than
his
family
friend. But what he does hold is instructive: character and
judgment
are
shaped
from
experience by
a
process
of critical reflection.
In this
context,
innate ideas are an
unnecessary
residual which Shaftes-
bury
is
unwilling
to
give up,
but which his theoretical stance does not
in fact
require.
His
writings
are
personal,
didactic, and,
one
suspects,
autobiographical.
Instead of
experience writing
on a blank slate of the
mind,
Shaftesbury
finds the mind
being
formed
by
a continual
process
from life's
experience.
His motto
might
be what he
says
of taste: "the
great
business in this
(as
in our
lives,
or in the whole of
life)
is 'to correct
our taste.' For whither will not taste lead us?"6
Shaftesbury
never frees
himself from the
language
of a
pre-existing
"mind" which his Neo-
Platonism
allows,
but he makes little use of that
concept
either.
In contrast to
Shaftesbury,
Locke
separates
ideas in the mind from
qualities
in the
object.
He thus introduces a
separation
between ideas and
the
powers
of
objects
which
produce
those ideas.
Shaftesbury
is not aware
of such a
separation.
Locke must
try
to
distinguish
the ideas of
primary
qualities
which bear a real resemblance to their causes from the ideas of
secondary qualities
which do not have a real resemblance. In order to
retain a connection and account for the
difference,
Locke thinks in terms
of the mechanics of Newton and the
corpuscular theory
of
Boyle.7
Thus
Locke's
empiricism
is
atomistic,
and it
opens
a host of
problems
about
how ideas are related to the real world which will trouble
subsequent
empiricists. Shaftesbury,
in some
ways, suggest
a
simpler
and more hol-
istic
empiricism.
Mind, character,
and self are formed from
experience;
they
are not ideas of
something
else but the sum of our existence. This
may
be
only
a failure on
Shaftesbury's part
to
perceive
the
problems
which Locke addresses.
However,
one can
imagine Shaftesbury saying
with
Wittgenstein,
"The world and life are one. I am
my
world.
(The
Microcosm.)"8
In his famous
analogy,
Locke asks us to
"suppose
the
Mind to
be,
as we
say,
white
paper,
void of all
Characters,
without
any
ideas." He then asks us how it comes to be furnished.9 I am
suggesting
only
that
Shaftesbury, perhaps
because he thinks of the mind as
already
furnished with
ideas,
is free to conceive of that mind as a whole as an
empirical entity
which is known as the sum of its own
experience.
A
reflective aesthetic
experience-good
taste-is the means
by
which the
mind knows itself.
10
6
Second
Characters, "Plastics,"
114.
7
See Peter
Alexander, "Boyle
and Locke on
Primary
and
Secondary Qualities,"
in
Locke on Human
Understanding,
ed. I. C.
Tipton (Oxford, 1977),
62-76.
8
Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus,
trans. D. F. Pears and B. F.
McGuinness
(London, 1961), 5.621,
5.63.
9 John
Locke,
An
Essay Concerning
Human
Understanding,
ed. Peter H. Nidditch
(Oxford, 1975), II, i, 1;
104.
0
I do not want to
press
this
comparison.
It overstates
Shaftesbury's empiricism
in
290 DABNEY TOWNSEND
In
aesthetics,
the direct
consequence
of
following
Locke is found in
Francis Hutcheson.
Shaftesbury anticipates
Hutcheson who
begins
An
inquiry
into the
Originals of
our Ideas
of Beauty
and Virtue as a defense
and
explanation
of
Shaftesbury's principles. Shaftesbury provides grounds
for Hutcheson's immediate sense of
beauty
and
provides
a statement of
the
theory
of an internal sense which sounds
very
much like Hutcheson's
theory:
The
shape,
motions, colours,
and
proportions
of these latter
being presented
to
our
eye,
there
necessarily
results a
beauty
or
deformity, according
to the different
measure,
arrangement,
and
disposition
of their several
parts....
It
[the mind]
feels the soft and
harsh,
the
agreeable
and
disagreeable
in the
affections;
and
finds a foul and
fair,
a harmonious and
dissonant,
as
really
and
truly
here as
in
any
musical numbers or in the outward forms or
representations
of sensible
things.
Nor can it withhold its admiration and
ecstasy,
its aversion and
scorn,
any
more in what relates to one than to the other of these
subjects.
So that to
deny
the common and natural sense of a sublime and beautiful in
things,
will
appear
an affectation
merely,
to
any only
who considers
duly
of this affair.
"
Compare
this to Hutcheson's claim "that some
objects
are
immediately
the Occasions of this Pleasure of
Beauty,
and that we have Senses fitted
for
perceiving
it."12 But Hutcheson is concerned to take the sense of
beauty
in a different direction. His "defense" of
Shaftesbury
is
designed
to show that "this moral sense has no relation to innate ideas." 3 For
Hutcheson,
the moral and aesthetic senses
produce
ideas in the mind
like those
produced by
the "external" senses of
sight,
taste, smell,
and
touch.
They correspond
to Locke's ideas of sense rather than ideas of
reflection,
and
they
have the same kind of immediate
incorrigibility
which
other ideas of sense have. For
Shaftesbury,
reflection is
part
of taste.
Mere sense is not reliable. Hutcheson reduces reflection to
temporal delay:
"It is
probably
some little time before Children do
reflect,
or at least let
us know that
they
reflect
upon Proportions
and Similitude.
"14
Hutcheson
at least two
ways: 1) Shaftesbury
does not
try
to make Locke's distinction because his
own Neo-Platonism offers an
apparent
alternative-ideas are real.
My point
is
only
that
this realism is
compatible
with an
empirical interpretation
of much else that
Shaftesbury
says. 2)
The same Neo-Platonism includes an innate
"character";
one is born into a
certain
place
in the cosmos which one must live
up
to in
Shaftesbury's thinking. Being
Lord
Shaftesbury
carries with it moral and social
responsibilities
which are
givens.
I
would maintain
only
that neither the innate ideas nor the class consciousness are
necessary
to
Shaftesbury's
aesthetics of taste. Taste is a
sign
of moral and aesthetic
character,
and
the formation of
taste,
in
practice,
if not
always
in
theory,
is the result of
experience
shaped by
reflection.
1
Characteristics,
"An
Inquirey Concerning
Virtue or
Merit," I,
251-52.
12
Francis
Hutcheson,
An
Inquiry
into the
Original of
our Ideas
of Beauty
and
Virtue,
(London, 1725),
11.
3
Ibid., vii.
4
Ibid.,
ix.
FROM SHAFTESBURY TO KANT 291
takes the internal sense to be a form of
perception
and its
qualitative
accompaniment
is
pleasure.
Moral
pleasure
follows from
good actions;
aesthetic
pleasure
from beautiful
objects.
In both
cases,
the
perception
is an idea in the mind and the
pleasure
is likewise the
experiencer's
internal
feeling.
It is not
important
that Hutcheson misreads
Shaftesbury
and that his
defense is
misguided. Shaftesbury certainly
does not find
pleasure
a re-
liable
sign
of moral or aesthetic
quality,
and Hutcheson
provides
so
many
teleological qualifications
that he evades most of the
consequences
of his
implicit
hedonism. The
significant point
is that for
Hutcheson,
both
external and internal sense are
immediately
reliable
(if
not
wholly
in-
corrigible.)
External sense shows us the
physical qualities
of the world.
Internal sense shows us the moral and aesthetic
qualities
of the same
world. Hutcheson is a much more
systematic
thinker than
Shaftesbury,
so he works out the internal sense on a strict
analogy
to Locke's ideas
of sensation. Mistakes about
beauty
are due to a failure of
perception
or
to accumulated associations.
Beauty
must be an
objective correspondence
of the mind to some external
thing just
as our ideas of sensible
qualities
are. Hutcheson thinks that he can
identify
the ideas which
correspond
to the
qualities necessary
for
beauty
in the same
way
that one identifies
the ideas of color which
correspond
to color
qualities:
"The
figures
that
excite in us the ideas of
Beauty,
seem to be those in which there is
uniformity
amidst
variety."15
But
equally,
the
presence
or absence of
those
qualities
is a matter of
experience:
"As to the universal
Agreement
of Mankind in their sense of
Beauty
from
Uniformity
amidst
variety,
we
must consult
experience."16
Hutcheson's concern is to defend the moral
and aesthetic sense
against charges
that it is "interested" and thus ca-
pricious
and
subjective
in the absence of innate ideas. He does so
by
providing
an
apparatus
of sense which will
place
morals and aesthetics
on the same
footing
as
perception
and
by appealing
to the common
experience (the
universal
agreement
of
mankind.)
Hutcheson does not
spell
out the
requirements
for internal sense.
However,
Alexander Gerard offers a concise
argument along
the same
lines that the
power
of the mind which is called taste should be
properly
called a sense. Gerard's evidence comes from "the
phenomenon
of our
faculties.
"17
A sense
supplies
us with
simple perceptions; they
are
given
immediately;
and
they
are
independent
of volition. Gerard concludes:
These characters
evidently belong
to all the external
senses,
and to reflection or
consciousness, by
which we
perceive
what
passes
in our minds.
They
likewise
belong
to the
powers
of taste:
harmony,
for
example,
is a
simple perception,
15Ibid.,
15.
16
Ibid.,
68.
17 Alexander
Gerard,
An
Essay
on Taste
(third edition, 1780; repr.
Gainsville, 1963),
145.
292 DABNEY TOWNSEND
which no man who has not a musical ear can
receive,
and which
every
one who
has an ear
immediately
and
necessarily
receives on
hearing
a
good
tune. 18
Gerard
goes
on to
argue
that an internal sense need not be ultimate. Just
as white can be
decomposed
into
colors,
so internal senses
may
be based
on external sensation. As Locke
argued concerning secondary qualities,
it is still the data of the
senses-sight,
etc.-which makes
possible per-
ception.
The ideas
may belong
to the mind and not be resemblances of
the
quality
in the
object,
but that does not make the ideas unreliable.
For
Hutcheson,
the
perception may
be either of the
objects
of
sight
or
of the
beauty
of those
objects.
There is a
quality
of the
object
which has
the
power
to
produce
our felt
perceptions
of
beauty.
One does not
require
some new
organ
of sense for an internal sense to be a sense. Gerard
clearly
follows Hutcheson
here,
but he is
explicitly
concerned to defend
taste as a direct
operation
of the mind-a
faculty
of
imagination
inde-
pendent
of reason.
The
problems
of "sense" understood
along
the lines Locke
lays
down
lead to the
increasing skepticism
of Hume. But it is not
skepticism
about
"sense" in
general
which creates the
difficulty
for Hutcheson's line of
development
in aesthetics. Hutcheson would be successful if he could
maintain that
beauty
has the status of a
simple
idea of sense. The
problem
is whether he can do this. For there to be an aesthetic
sense,
it must not
be reducible to the external senses
(though,
as Gerard
argued,
it need
not
by wholly independent
of
them).
If it
were,
then
beauty
would become
a
complex product
of reflection or an association of ideas
(as
it does for
Archibald
Alison)
and thus a
product
of education. It would lose the
qualified
kind of
objectivity
as a
simple
idea of sense which Hutcheson
seeks to win for it. To achieve
this,
Hutcheson
attempts
to follow Locke
by treating
aesthetic
experience
as
something acquired directly
and in
discrete units from
things.
But there is no
organ
of internal sense.
So,
in
spite
of Gerard's
argument,
it is unclear how the ideas of an internal
sense are to be identified. External sense can be defined
causally.
A
simple
idea of
sight
is
produced by corpuscular
action on the retina of the
eye.
If we do not know the
quality,
we know the
power
that it has on us.
Whatever
skeptical problems
arise from that causal
connection,
external
sense has a kind of common-sense
biological
basis. A
comparable hy-
pothesis
is not available for an internal
sense,
however.
Thus,
it is not
just
incidental that Hutcheson must
supply
some criteria for aesthetic
qualities
in the
object
even
though
he
acknowledges
that the
pleasure
we
call
beauty
is an idea in the
subject.
He need not settle on the
pleasure
which follows from
uniformity
amidst
variety,
but he must
supply
some
defining properties
which link the
idea-pleasure-to
the
object
if the
sense of
beauty
is not to lose the
objectivity
which
simple
ideas of sense
'8Ibid.,
146.
FROM SHAFTESBURY TO KANT 293
can claim
according
to Locke. The
seemingly
obvious move to an ex-
periential
sense on a direct
analogy
with external senses thus ends
by
committing
aesthetics to two theses:
1)
The aesthetic sense is
qualitatively
distinct and not reducible to
any
other
sense,
and
2)
there must be some
qualitative
characteristics which are
uniquely
aesthetic.19 The first thesis
might
be called the aesthetic
experience thesis;
it is most
commonly
conceived of as a
uniquely
aesthetic
delight
or
pleasure.
Much of sub-
sequent eighteenth-century
British aesthetics is
occupied
with
supplying
alternatives to
satisfy
the second thesis.
Hogarth's
sensuous line and
revivals of the classical
golden
section are
among
the
proposals.
Toward
the end of the
century
the
qualitative
"idea" shifts from
pleasure
to a
more
religious ecstasy
or awe as romanticism
gradually
takes hold.20
I want to
emphasize
how different Hutcheson's
concept
of aesthetic
experience
is from the kind of
experience
to which
Shaftesbury
refers.
When
Shaftesbury speaks
of an immediate sense of
beauty,
the
emphasis
falls on "immediate." It is unmediated
by
rules or interest. The sense
of
beauty
is not a sixth
sense, however,
because
Shaftesbury
is not com-
mitted to Locke's
process
of
acquiring experience. Shaftesbury's opponent
is
Hobbes,
and it is the isolated individual that
Shaftesbury
must counter.
Or
rather,
it is the
consequence
of
being
an
individual,
for
Shaftesbury
is
enough
of a follower of Locke and far
enough
from real Platonism to
think of individuals as
primary. Shaftesbury
wants to show that
experience
is
public
and that some senses are not restricted to Hobbes's individual
interest. The moral and beautiful are themselves
empirical
evidence which
Shaftesbury
can cite
against
Hobbes,
and his reference to a sense of these
in men
implies only
that to be a man is not to be a brute
living
in a state
of nature.
Shaftesbury
is thus not committed to a
simple
sense
unqualified
by
reflection,
nor does his aesthetics need the kind of
defining qualities
which Hutcheson must
supply.
For
Shaftesbury,
art is bound
up
with
both
history
and
morality,
and
"beauty"
remains an
essentially "higher"
form.
We cannot
get
from
Shaftesbury
a new
aesthetic,
therefore. He retreats
back into the
language
of Renaissance Neo-Platonism at this
point.
What
he shows us is a different
way
of
relying
on
experience,
however. He
points
to all of the
empirical
evidence of character
being
formed
by
aesthetic and moral taste
(and
the aesthetic has the
priority
because it
is free of
interest).
Aesthetic taste is formed
immediately,
without the
intervention of calculation and interest. Yet
Shaftesbury
allows
fully
for
the need to
reflect,
judge,
and correct taste. Rather than
simple
ideas of
19
I am
leaving
aside the moral side at this
point
because it is
ultimately
worked out
on different
grounds
and does not concern us
directly.
Hutcheson does not use "aesthetic"
of
course,
but that anachronism should cause no
problems.
20
The
subsequent
idealist
development
of these
beginnings
in Continental aesthetics
does not affect the
point
I am
trying
to make.
294 DABNEY TOWNSEND
sense, Shaftesbury
shows us an
experience
which is
always public
in some
sense. His aesthetic
follows;
it is
moral, neo-classical,
and conventional.
But it has a
place
for all of the
things
that Hutcheson finds difficult to
account for:
deformity,
criticism,
and
higher
and lower forms. And it
does not have to
supply
what no
eighteenth-century
writer-or
anyone
subsequently,
for the matter-has been able to
supply:
a set of
defining
qualities
for the aesthetic sense.
II. Without
defining qualities,
aesthetic
experience undergoes
a met-
amorphosis
into a
pure theory
of taste. The shifts which take
place
can
be illustrated
by comparing Shaftesbury's position
with that worked out
by
Hume in "Of the Standard of Taste."
Shaftesbury
is a
long way
from
thinking
that there is no
disputing
about taste. As we
noted,
a central
motive for
Shaftesbury's study
is the correction of taste. He is also
willing
to
provide
rules for the artist drawn from moral and historical sources.
In
this, Shaftesbury clearly
shows the neo-classical direction of his
thought. Ultimately,
taste is a moral
quality
of
character;
the task of
philosophy
is "to teach us
ourselves,
keep
us the self-same
persons,
and
so
regulate
our
governing
fancies,
passions
and
humours,
so as to make
us
comprehensible
to ourselves and knowable
by
other features than those
of a bare countenance."21
The
development
of taste is thus one of the
elements in moral education.
The
enemy
of taste is
fancy
which
Shaftesbury generally
condemns.
He writes:
As
long
as we
enjoy
a
mind,
as
long
as we have
appetites
and
sense,
the fancies
of all kinds will be hard at work: and whether we are in
company
or alone
they
must
range
still and be active.
They
must have their field. The
question
is
whether
they
shall have it
wholly
to
themselves,
or whether
they
shall acknowl-
edge
some controller or
manager.
If
none,
'tis
this,
I
fear,
which leads to
madness.... For if
Fancy
be left
judge
of
anything
she must be
judge
of all.
Everything
is
right,
if
anything
be
so,
because I
fancy
it.22
An uncontrolled taste is the
subject
of
fancy.
A controlled taste
grows
from internal
mastery
of the self.
Shaftesbury's
advice to authors leads
from internal
mastery
to the external exercise of taste: "That their com-
position
and vein of
writing may
be natural and
free,
they
should settle
matters in the first
place
with themselves. And
having gained mastery
there, they may easily,
with the
help
of their
genius
and
right
use of
art,
command their audience and establish a
good
taste."23 Good
taste, then,
is
something
to be established. It is
subsequent
to
judgment,
not the basis
for
judgment.
21
Characteristics,
"Advice to an
Author," I,
184.
22Ibid.,
207-8.
23Ibid.,
180-81.
FROM SHAFTESBURY TO KANT 295
Much of David Hume's treatment of taste is consistent with Shaftes-
bury's.
Hume
begins by acknowledging
a
problem
which
finally
leads to
Kant's
antinomy
of taste.
Agreement
is
only
about
generalities,
and
judgments
of
particulars vary
from individual to
individual,
nation to
nation,
and
age
to
age
in a
way
that
seemingly
cannot be reconciled.
Over
against
this must be set the obvious
justice
of some
judgments:
"Whoever would assert an
equality
of
genius
and
elegance
between
OGILBY and
MILTON,
or BUNYON and
ADDISON,
would be
thought
to defend no less an
extravagance,
than if he had maintained a
mole-hill to be as
high
as
TENERIFFE,
or a
pond
as extensive as the
ocean."24 Hume then
proceeds
to
try
to
mitigate
the effects of this
antinomy.
His
strategy
is to
provide enough qualifying
factors to account
for
diversity
of taste. These include
practice, experience,
and
delicacy
of
taste. Whenever
possible,
matters of fact must be substituted for "sen-
timent."
Only
then can the
appearance
of
disagreement
be
mitigated.
Hume
rejects
Hutcheson's
dependence
on a
unique
sense as decisive in
disputes
about taste. Whereas for Hutcheson an internal sense
provides
empirical
warrant for a form of aesthetic
feeling,
Hume's
skepticism
about
"ideas"
requires
that
only
matters of fact will be sufficient for
objectivity.
It is not the
feeling
but the fact that
many
feel it which testifies to a
standard of taste.
In
reality,
the
difficulty
of
finding,
even in
particulars,
the standard of
taste,
is
not so
great
as it is
represented....
Theories of abstract
philosophy, systems
of
profound theology,
have
prevailed during
one
age:
In a successive
period,
these
have been
universally exploded:
... And
nothing
has been
experienced
more
liable to the revolutions of chance and fashion than these
pretended
decisions
of science. The case is not the same with the beauties of
eloquence
and
poetry.
Just
expressions
of
passion
and nature are
sure,
after a little
time,
to
gain public
applause,
which
they
maintain for ever.25
Thus Hume comes around to a
practical
standard of taste based on
public
agreement
and critical skill:
"Strong
sense,
united to delicate
sentiment,
improved by practice, perfected by comparison,
and cleared of all
prej-
udice,
can alone entitle critics to this valuable
character;
and the
joint
verdict of
such,
wherever
they
are to be
found,
is the true standard of
taste.
"
26
Hutcheson's
dependence
on a direct
perception
of
beauty
is main-
tained,
and Hume
acknowledges qualities
in
objects
as the causes of
sentiments of
beauty:
"Some
particular
forms or
qualities,
from the
24
David
Hume,
"Of the Standard of
Taste,"
in The
Philosophical
Works
of
David
Hume, III,
ed. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose
(London, 1925),
269. The
irony
of
history's
judgment
on Hume's
comparison
of
Bunyon
and Addison
only
makes his whole
point
more
strongly.
25
Ibid.,
279.
26
Ibid.,
278-79.
296 DABNEY TOWNSEND
original
structure of the internal
fabric,
are calculated to
please,
and
others to
displease;
and if
they
fail of their effect in
any particular
instance,
it is from some
apparent
defect or
imperfection
in the
organ."27
At the
same
time,
Hume never withdraws from his
acknowledgment
that
beauty
is not in the
object
but in the
sentiment,
and he seems to
accept
Hutche-
son's kind of link between "ideas" and
objects: "Though
it be
certain,
that
beauty
and
deformity,
more than sweet and
bitter,
are not
qualities
in
objects,
but
belong entirely
to the
sentiment,
internal or
external;
it
must be
allowed,
that there are certain
qualities
in
objects,
which are
fitted
by
nature to
produce
those
particular feelings.
"28 But much of this
agreement
is
superficial.
Hutcheson follows
Locke; qualities
are
powers
(or
at least we know them as
powers).
For
Hume,
qualities produce
feelings according
to the associations we establish with them. Thus one
can
identify
aesthetic
qualities only by examining practices
relative to
perceivers.
Hutcheson
distinguishes
an
"original
or absolute"
beauty
from
"comparative
or relative"
beauty.
In Hume's
essay
this
distinction,
like that between
primary
and
secondary qualities, disappears.
One can
only compare
actual
judgments.
Absolute
beauty plays
no role. Hutcheson
explains
how
things
can interfere with the internal
sense;
the sense itself
needs no education. Hume's "taste" must be educated or at least
acquired
culturally, though
some
aspects
of it
may
turn out to be universal to
human-kind. In
fact,
beauty gives way generally
to taste in Hume's
essay.
The "facts" Hume has reference to are
mostly
facts about the
judges
and not about what is
judged.
Thus Hume shifts the
ground
for aesthetics
from the aesthetic
experience
itself to the factors which form our
per-
ceptions.
We have
taste,
but not a sense of taste in Hutcheson's
strong
use of "sense." This allows Hume to maintain a standard of taste without
having
to
actually
confront its
subjectivity.
In
many ways
this moves Hume back toward
Shaftesbury
in
practice.
Hume's
essay
is a defense of the
practice
of criticism
against
the claims
that
anyone
can
judge
as well as
anyone
else. "It is sufficient for our
present purpose,
if we have
proved,
that the taste of all individuals is
not
upon
an
equal footing,
and that some men in
general,
however difficult
to be
particularly pitched upon,
will be
acknowledged by
universal sen-
timent to have a
preference
above others.
"29
This leads him to link taste
and
understanding
in a manner which
Shaftesbury
would
approve:
"It
seldom,
or never
happens,
that a man of
sense,
who has
experience
in
any
art,
cannot
judge
of its
beauty;
and it is no less rare to meet with a
man who has a
just
taste without a sound
understanding.
"30
But Hume's
practice
stands on the
opposite
side of a chasm
opened by
Locke and
27
Ibid.,
272.
28
Ibid.,
273.
29
Ibid.,
279.
30
Ibid.,
278.
FROM SHAFTESBURY TO KANT 297
Hutcheson. Whereas for
Shaftesbury
taste follows education and
judg-
ment,
for Hume taste is
simply
a
phenomenal reality.
It
may
need ed-
ucation and correction in a sense of refinement which Hutcheson's
theory
of direct sense did not
allow,
but Hume has no other basis for our aesthetic
judgments
than taste itself.
However,
Hume conceives of
experience
itself
in a Lockean fashion and so taste still
depends
on a "sentiment" or
"idea" discrete in itself and linked to the
organs
of
perception.
Hume's
critique
of the connections between "ideas" and that of which
they
are
ideas and his
skeptical
doubts about our
ability
to
justify
our inductive
procedures apply
to
any
individual
judgment
of taste. He
acknowledges
rules in art: "But
though poetry
can never submit to exact
truth,
it must
be confined
by
rules of
art,
discovered to the author either
by genius
or
observation."3' But such rules are
discovered; they
have the status of
inductive
generalizations
and are
subject
to the same doubts. Hume's
advice to the individual critic is a counsel of
modesty,
therefore,
since
the critic can
appeal beyond
the foundations of his own taste and
per-
ception only
to other
judgments similarly
formed. There is no other
standard than the
joint
verdict of ideal critics.
Only agreement
over time
can validate either the critic or his
judgments.
Thus,
Hume has raised a whole new set of
problems
which
Shaftesbury
did not address.
Shaftesbury's
rules are not the kind that
judge
Milton
better than
Ogilby
but that
judge history painting
better than
landscape.
A
particular history painting
will be
judged rightly by
a
right
character,
and that
judgment
will be confirmed
by
time as it will be
according
to
Hume. But
Shaftesbury's
view of
judgment
here is more
Greek; only
a
completed
character can be
judged,
and it is "the whole of life" which
matters. When
Shaftesbury gives
advice to an author or
guides
the ed-
ucation of a
young gentleman,
he has a view
already
to his "effects"-
his
standing
in the
history
of his
family
and nation.
Shaftesbury
does
not
forget
the
individual,
but he is not
primarily
concerned with individual
judgments.
Individual "taste"
plays
a
correspondingly
lesser role in his
thought.
One bases taste on
judgment,
not
judgment
on taste. Good taste
(like grace)
is the outward and visible
sign
of an inward and
spiritual
state.
III. There are
many objections
to
Shaftesbury's concept
of taste. Hume
could
certainly reply
that it
begs
the
interesting question
of how we know
specific judgments. Shaftesbury provides
no answer. We thus reach an
impasse.
We
may judge
the
judges by
matters of
fact,
but the aesthetic
experience upon
which their
judgment
is based is
unique
and
mysterious.
This
separates
aesthetic
judgment
from other
empirical judgments
in
science and morals and thus undercuts the
original
motives for Hutche-
son's work. A form of aesthetic attitude
theory
results
directly
from the
31
Ibid.,
270.
298 DABNEY TOWNSEND
attempts
to
escape
the
antinomy
to which Hume is led. What results
from these
attempts
is an aesthetic
subjectivity
which resembles modern
aesthetic attitude theories in
important respects. Again,
we
may
take
Shaftesbury
at the
beginning
of the movement as one
point
of reference.
At the other
end,
Kant's Third
Critique
stands as the
outstanding
cul-
mination. The basic theses
remain;
aesthetic
experience
must be
quali-
tatively
different,
and its
qualities
must have some
defining
characteristics.
But the
development
of the
theory
of taste is unable to link an internal
sense to
objective qualities.
It seems to follow that the one who
experiences
must
help
to
produce
the
qualitative
difference. We are led from a sense
of taste to the formation of aesthetic
judgments by
the beholder's attitudes.
By
the end of the
eighteenth century,
Archibald Alison had
given up
the
quest
for
specific properties
which
produced beauty
and concentrated
attention on the formation of ideas
by
association,
imagination,
and
expression.
In
itself,
this
may
not
yet
be
fully
an attitude
theory,
but
once
again
the
ground
for
judgment
is
being
shifted.32 It is a short
step
from there to the more recent claims that it is an attitude of the
perceiver
which is the
necessary
condition for the
expressive properties
of the
things
to be felt.
The
single
most
important concept
which
emerges
is "disinterest-
edness."
Shaftesbury opposes
disinterestedness to
private
interest as
part
of his
rejection
of Hobbes's
egocentric position.
Disinterestedness is one
way
that we know that
private
interest is not
paramount.
For
example,
Shaftesbury
asserts that "in all disinterested
cases,
[the heart]
must
approve
in some measure of what is natural and
honest,
and
disapprove
what is dishonest and
corrupt.""33
The contrast to this disinterestedness
is the kind of
private pursuit
of one's own ends which some senses of
"interest"
imply.
Disinterestedness becomes a
particularly important
moral and aesthetic state since
only
then can the heart be trusted.
Shaftesbury
is not
rejecting
"interest" as a
legitimate
motive for
action,
however. There are three levels of interest for
Shaftesbury.
There
is a
private
interest which is
good
and natural. "We know that
any
creature has a
private good
and interest of his
own,
which Nature has
32
George
Dickie has
argued
that Alison is not an attitude theorist while Jerome
Stolnitz classified him that
way.
The debate between them has been
re-engaged recently-
George
Dickie,
"Stolnitz Attitude: Taste and
Perception"
and Jerome
Stolnitz,
"The
Aesthetic Attitude in the Rise of Modem
Aesthetics-Again,"
The Journal
of
Aesthetics
and Art
Criticism,
43
(1984),
193-208. The
problem
with their
way
of
arguing
is that it
puts
too much
emphasis
on
classifying
someone like Alison who is a
complex,
transitional
figure.
I think that Dickie is
right
that Alison is not an attitude theorist in the
way
that
some later nineteenth
century figures
are.
However,
Alison's insistence that the emotion
of taste is
complex
moves him
away
from earlier theories of taste in a decisive
way.
Thus
Stolnitz is also correct to insist that Alison should be seen as
breaking
with the earlier
theories of taste. There is no
need, however,
to
place
Alison in one box or the other.
33
Characteristics,
"Advice to an
Author," I,
192-93.
FROM SHAFTESBURY TO KANT 299
compelled
him to seek."34 We also
recognize
the
public
interest which
follows.
"Everyone
discerns and owns a
public
interest and is conscious
of what affects his
fellowship
or
community."35
And
finally
there are
disinterested cases when the heart can be trusted to
respond directly
and
rightly.
The three are
related,
and the
object
is to discern one's own true
interest. In other
words,
in
spite
of his
rejection
of Hobbes's
egocentric
position, Shaftesbury
is still concerned with the formation of the indi-
vidual character and taste. Public and disinterested
judgments
serve the
cause of
educating
taste. Rather than
opposing
interested and disinter-
ested
judgment, Shaftesbury
uses disinterested
judgments
as evidence that
we have a true interest to be discovered beneath the
shifting ground
of
pleasure
and
fancy.
Hume's use of the
concept
of interest is similar in
many respects
to
Shaftesbury's.
Hume notes that in
ethics,
the fundamental
controversy
turns on whether the foundations of morals are derived from reason or
sentiment. The latter
position
he attributes to "the ancients" and to
Shaftesbury, although
he notes
acutely
that
Shaftesbury
can be found
arguing
on both sides of the
issue;36
Hume is aware that if
morality
is
based on
taste,
there will be difficulties: "Truth is
disputable;
not taste:
what exists in the nature of
things
is the standard of our
judgement;
what each man feels within himself is the standard of sentiment."37 The
result is that Hume
separates
morals from aesthetics. Morals should be
founded in reason and the nature of
things,
but aesthetics can remain a
matter of taste. In "Of the Standard of
Taste,"
Hume
argues
that moral
precepts
are
already clearly
identified
by language
itself. We know which
sentiments to
approve
without need for maxims. But that is not the case
in aesthetics. There the need for a standard of taste is
essentially
a need
for a rule
"by
which the various sentiments of men
may
be reconciled"
so that one
may
know which sentiment is to be confirmed and which
condemned. 38
Hume does
develop
a contrast between
public
and
private
interest as
part
of a refutation of ethical
egoism
which he identifies with
private
interest.39 But for
Hume,
as for
Shaftesbury,
the
argument against
self-
love as the sole ethical motive turns on the existence of a
competing
interest whose existence cannot be denied. This is a
"general
affection"
which is aroused when no
advantage
or even
presence
of one's self is at
issue.
Also,
as
Shaftesbury does,
Hume contrasts one's real interest with
34Ibid., "Concerning
virtue or Merit"
I,
243.
35
Ibid.,
252.
36 David
Hume,
"An
Enquiry Concerning
the
Principles
of
Morals," Enquiries
Con-
cerning
the Human
Understanding
and
Concerning
the
Principles of Morals,
ed. L. A.
Selby-Bigge (Oxford, 1963),
170-71.
37
Ibid.,
171.
38
Hume,
"Of a Standard of
Taste,"
268.
39
Hume, Enquiry,
215.
300 DABNEY TOWNSEND
an
imagined
interest.4 Hume then
goes
on to
argue
that
public
interest
is not reducible to
private
interest. The claim for self-love is that the
interest of the individual is so identified with that of the
community
that
"our concern for the
public might
be resolved into a concern for our
own
happiness
and
preservation."41
Hume's
reply
is,
in
part,
that this
explains something
obvious-the existence of a
public interest-by
some-
thing
abstruse and unobservable.
A
public
interest is
virtually
identical to disinterestedness
provided
disinterested sentiment is not understood as a lack of interest but as an
interest which does not refer to the self. Even in
art,
it is a
type
of interest
which is aroused. The theater is an
example
of shared
sentiment,
not of
the absence of sentiment. In
poetry,
"no
passion,
when well
represented,
can be
entirely
indifferent to us. "42 Hume
speaks
of disinterested
passion
as an alternative to
self-love,43
but his
point
is that even the
egoist
distinguishes
the "vicious and
merely
interested"44 from the virtuous
character. The
hypothesis
of an
omni-present
self-interest is
metaphysical
and has no foundation in
reality.45
Disinterested benevolence is
nothing
more than a sentiment which does not
require any
reference to the self
to
explain
the
phenomenon.
"In such
cases,
these and a thousand other
instances are marks of a
general
benevolence in human
nature,
where no
real interest binds us to the
object.
And how an
imaginary
interest known
and avowed for
such,
can be the
origin
of
any passion
or
emotion,
seems
difficult to
explain.
"46
The
argument, then,
claims that
only
a real interest
can be the
origin
of a
passion
or
emotion,
but there are cases where no
real interest binds us to the
object.
Disinterested benevolence is thus a
real
public
or communal interest free of
any
individual bonds.
This has considerable ethical
importance
for
Hume,
but he does not
make the aesthetic extension which both
Shaftesbury
and Kant do.
(Both
Shaftesbury
and Kant move from the aesthetic to the
moral;
Hume does
not.)
For
Hume,
it is
important
to establish whether the moral sentiment
is founded in reason and the nature of
things.
Aesthetic taste can remain
merely
a matter of sentiment. While it needs a
standard,
Hume does not
claim the
universality
for it that Kant does. The closest that Hume comes
to a Kant's sense of disinterestedness is in his list of the characteristics
of true
judges
in "Of the Standard of Taste" which includes a freedom
from
prejudice.
47
This
requires
that a work "must be
surveyed
in a certain
40
Ibid.,
217.
41
Ibid.,
218.
42
Ibid.,
222.
43
Ibid.,
296.
44Ibid.,
297.
45
Ibid.,
300.
46
Ibid.
47
Hume,
"Of A Standard of
Taste,"
277.
FROM SHAFTESBURY TO KANT 301
point
of view."48 This
point
of view turns out to be the conformation of
the interests of the audience and the work. It is a
general
view-one in
which "I must
depart
from this situation
[friendship
or
enmity
with the
author],
and
considering myself
as a man in
general, forget,
if
possible,
any
individual
being
and
my peculiar
circumstances."49 In the
light
of
the
arguments
about
public
interest,
it is
important
not to misunderstand
this criterion. Hume's
critic,
if he is a true
judge,
is a critic rather than
a
private person.
His real interest is defined
by
that
role,
and the sentiment
he feels will be
correspondingly
indicative of the
judgment
of the
general
view of human nature.
By
the time Immanuel Kant
incorporates
"disinterestedness" into
the Third
Critique,
the whole
problem
of aesthetic
experience
has shifted.
The limited role which Hume
assigned
to sentiments of taste is no
longer
possible
in the
system
established
by
the First and Second
Critiques.
Like
Shaftesbury
and
Hume,
Kant's use of "interest"
primarily
concerns one's
relation to the world and one's attitude. But Kant
greatly
widens the
scope
of disinterestedness. To be disinterested is to be without interest
in the
object's
existence while an interested state involves one with the
existence of the
object.
Thus disinterestedness does not
pick
out a class
of
general
or
public judgments.
Both
practical
and
conceptual judgments
imply
the
presence
of a
prior
intuition,
and disinterestedness is charac-
teristic of that
prior phase.
The "aesthetical
judgments" precede
the
objective
and
practical.
The consciousness of the mere formal
purposiveness
in the
play
of the
subject's
cognitive powers,
in a
representation through
which an
object
is
given,
is the
pleasure
itself,
because it contains a
determining ground
of the
activity
of the
subject
in
respect
of the excitement of its
cognitive powers,
and therefore an
inner
causality (which
is
purposive)
in
respect
of
cognition
in
general,
without
however
being
limited to
any
definite
cognition,
and
consequently
contains a
mere form of the
subjective purposiveness
of a
representation
in an aesthetical
judgment.
The
pleasure
is in no
way practical,
neither like that
arising
from the
pathological ground
of
pleasantness,
nor that from the intellectual
ground
of
the
presented good.50
This
interweaving
of the
cognitive
and aesthetic
places
Kant somewhat
beyond
the
scope
of the
present comparison.
Yet it is Kant's formulations
which
provide
the most
telling separation
of aesthetic disinterestedness
from the
practical
and
conceptual
realms. Once disinterestedness is made
central,
it
completes
the
separation
of the aesthetic from its
primary
phenomena-works
of art-because it is not the work but the
perceiver's
pleasure
which becomes the
subject
of aesthetics. If A
disagrees
with B
48
Ibid.
49
Ibid.
50 Immanuel
Kant, Critique of Judgment,
trans. J. H. Bernard
(New York, 1974),
57-58.
302 DABNEY TOWNSEND
about a work of
art,
they
are
really disagreeing
about the kind of
pleasure
each
has,
and that is a function of the
epistemological position
of each
observer. Kant assimilates aesthetic
experience
to all
experience
as its
transcendental basis. Croce
concludes,
in that
case,
that
anything
is
beautiful if it is known. Other attitude theorists make the attitude of the
spectator
the sole determinant of aesthetic
judgment.
Aesthetics
really
becomes a matter of how one looks at
things.
The kinds of attitude theories which follow differ
greatly
from Kant's
complex
aesthetic
theory,
but
they
can be traced back to it. Consider
two illustrative
points.
The first is disinterestedness itself. The "First
Moment" of the "Aesthetic of the Beautiful" culminates in the
descrip-
tion of taste as "the
faculty
of
judging
of an
object
or a method of
representing
it
by
an
entirely
disinterested satisfaction or dissatisfac-
tion."51 "Interest" is
always
connected to
desire,
and desire
requires
existence. To be disinterested then
separates
the
judgment
from the ex-
istence of its
object.
"We must not be in the least
prejudiced
in favor of
the existence of the
things,
but
quite
indifferent in this
respect,
in order
to
play
the
judge
in
things
of taste."52 The
key point
here is that dis-
interestedness has become the
opposite
of interest. The
pleasure
and
satisfaction which
accompanies
interest has to do with the
object
and its
existence. The
object,
Kant
says, "gratifies"
me.53 That which can be
called
beauty,
in which we take a disinterested
pleasure,
is
altogether
different;
to be
pleased by
the beautiful is a
wholly subjective,
non-
cognitive "feeling"
for the
object
as it is
contemplated.
"Taste in the
beautiful is alone a disinterested and free
satisfaction;
for no
interest,
either of sense or of reason here forces our assent. "54 To move from the
disinterested to the interested is to
go
from one kind of satisfaction to
another.
It distorts Kant's
position
to take this out of context. While the
disinterested
contemplation
is
non-cognitive,
that is because it
precedes
(logically)
the
cognitive phase.
Kant
ultimately
links the aesthetic to
both
practical
and theoretical
judgments.
But disinterested
judgments
of
taste
belong wholly
to the
beautiful,
and in so far as
beauty
itself
provides
the satisfaction in the
subject,
there can be no intermixture of interest.
While for Kant the aesthetic
may eventually
be the
keystone upon
which
the
practical
and theoretical
depend,
the
contemplation
of the beautiful
is not
and,
according
to
Kant,
for a
priori reasons,
cannot be taken into
either the
practical
or theoretical. When Kant comes to link the beautiful
to the
moral,
the link can be
only "symbolic."55
Thus
any
actual ex-
51
Ibid.,
45.
52
Ibid.,
39.
53
Ibid.,
41.
54Ibid.,
44.
55Ibid.,
59.
FROM SHAFTESBURY TO KANT 303
perience
of an
object
as beautiful will be
apart
from all of the other
ways
of
experiencing
that
object.
Since this aesthetic
experience
rests
solely
on
the
subject,
it follows that if we wish to restrict
contemplation
to aesthetic
contemplation,
we must assume a "disinterested attitude" since
anything
else would
belong
to a
practical
or theoretical
judgment.
This disinterested attitude in the Third
Critique
seems to me a direct
consequence
of the
way
of
taking
aesthetic
experience
which has
emerged
from the
position
of Hutcheson and Hume. Even if we
grant
that Kant's
position
is more
complex
than
subsequent
aesthetic attitude
theories,
we
have a
complete separation
from the
starting point represented by
Shaf-
tesbury.
For
Shaftesbury,
interested and disinterested awareness are two
aspects
of the same
phenomenon.
Far from
making
disinterestedness the
sole
possibility
for
aesthetics, Shaftesbury
uses it
only
as evidence for
finding
where our real interest lies. Rather than three different
pleasures
(gratifying, pleasing,
and
esteeming), Shaftesbury
finds
only
one
pleasure.
His
problems
are
fancy, flattery,
and the transient
pleasures
of the
ap-
petites (mere sense).
His solution is to correct taste. Kant moves the
conceptual
and
practical
to a different kind of
judgment
and leaves the
manifestation of the aesthetic in art isolated. The solution which
follows,
even if it is not one that Kant
directly
embraces since he is not
very
interested in actual works of
art,
is that disinterestedness must be cul-
tivated as a stance or attitude
by
the
subject.
A second
point concerning
"common sense" also illustrates the shift
from
judgments
about
objects
of taste to the
subjective
vision of the
beholder. I have
emphasized Shaftesbury's
concern for a
public
interest
as well as a
private
interest,
and I think it is instructive to see what
happens
to this
public presence.
Kant
begins
from much the same
point
as
Shaftesbury. Objective principles
are ruled
out,
but so is mere sense:
"If
they [judgments
of
taste]
were devoid of all
principle,
like those of
the mere taste of
sense,
we would not allow them in
thought any necessity
whatever. 56 Kant concludes from this that there must be some
subjective
principle
with universal
validity
which he calls a common sense. The
ground
for
assuming
a common sense is the universal
communicability
of
feeling
which
cognition presupposes.
The common sense is the nec-
essary
condition of
non-solipsistic knowledge.
It allows us to claim for
taste a
universality
based on our
feeling
because we
identify
that
feeling
as common and not
private.
Thus Kant
begins
with the fact that our
judgments
of taste are universal and combines that with the
necessary
condition for
knowledge
that
feeling
be
intersubjective.
He concludes that
a common sense must be
presupposed.
We are
justified
in
presupposing
it on the basis of the
possibility
of
knowledge
itself. We do not
require
actual
agreement
with our
judgments
of
taste,
and we leave
open
the
actual nature of the common sense.
56
Ibid.,
75.
304 DABNEY TOWNSEND
As a defense of the
possibility
of
knowledge against skepticism
or
solipsism,
this
probably
assumes too much. But in
context,
it relates taste
to the
cognitive powers by granting
that when we
appeal
to
"feeling"
we are not
appealing
to our own
feeling.
The aesthetic
ground
for the
judgment
of taste must allow the
universality
of the
judgment
or it would
be
internally contradictory,
so a common sense is at least
presupposed.
The conditions of
knowledge
make that
presupposition acceptable,
since
it is also
required
for
knowledge
itself.
(We
satisfy
Ockham's razor on
this
point.)
Thus while it does not
prove
that there is a common
sense,
Kant's
argument justifies
its inclusion since to abandon it is to abandon
the whole
project
of
knowing
as Kant conceives it.
However,
Kant has shifted the
ground
for the common sense from
Shaftesbury's position
in a
revealing way. Shaftesbury points
to a
public
interest and the relative
uniformity
or
universality
of taste as a matter
of observation. Hume
agrees
in this
empirical judgment.
Actual
agreement
on
specific
works,
given enough
time,
emerges
as an observable fact.
Shaftesbury
finds a
purely private
interest
contradictory
on the
grounds
that it makes
impossible
the kind of
pleasure
that we do in fact have in
objects
of art and
public
benevolence. Kant's
grounds
for
postulating
a
common sense have the
skepticism
of Hume in the
background.
It is not
observation but the
possibility
of
knowledge upon
which Kant relies.
What lies in between these two
positions
is the
fragmentation
of "ob-
servation" in the work of Hume and his critics.
Shaftesbury
takes it for
granted
that two observers see the same
thing;
he needs no
argument
for
a common sense. He does need an
argument
for a common
(or public)
sense,
however.
Shaftesbury
is
sufficiently
removed from the medieval
sensus communis to think of the individual as an
independent
moral
force;
it is
important
to him to re-establish the link between
experience
and
community, therefore,
and
typically
he does it
by appealing
to the facts
of our
experience.
Where this is not mere
sense,
it is
public
as well as
private,
and from this follows not
only
moral but aesthetic
agreement.
Kant,
on the other
hand,
leaves
nothing
unexamined,
so he
begins by
stating
the conditions for the
possibility
of
knowledge.
The
universality
of taste is a
subjective feeling
whose
only
claim to
universality
is via the
common sense. Since
empirically
it is
always possible
that
people
will
disagree,
the
resulting
universal claim is
only
an
"ought."
But it is not
a moral
"ought"
as it would be for
Shaftesbury.
It is an
epistemological
"ought,"
and the result is that the
judgment
of taste is
only incidentally
related to the actual
experience
of works of art. If I
say
that someone
ought
to find Hamlet
profound,
I can
only
be
projecting my
attitude as
the common attitude.
Shaftesbury's
naive view of
experience
does not
limit or isolate the
judgment
of taste in this
way,
and Hume would check
to see whether true
judges
have
actually
found Hamlet
profound.
FROM SHAFTESBURY TO KANT 305
When Kant comes to resolve the
antinomy
of
taste,57
he does so
by
trying
to remove the
appearance
of contradiction. He does not
appeal
directly
to
disinterestedness,
a common
sense,
or an aesthetic
attitude,
but he does conclude in
part
that "the
judgment
has
validity
for
everyone
(though,
of
course,
for each
only
as a
singular judgment immediately
accompanying
his
intuition)."58
Thus we are in fact forced back on an
individual
judgment
and the
possibility
of
assuming
a stance and
making
the
judgment
ourselves. This must be set over
against Shaftesbury's pro-
cedure which is to
expose
the individual
judgment
to
public scrutiny by
soliloquy,
criticism,
and even
"raillery"
and Hume's inductive
general-
ization over time. We have moved from
Shaftesbury's concept
of aesthetic
experience
as
open,
moral,
and "common" in the sense of
public
to
Kant's
position
which makes the aesthetic
experience subjective, singular,
and common
only
as a
necessary
condition to
knowledge.
In Kant's
theory
as a
whole,
aesthetic
judgment
remains
intersubjective
because it
is the foundation of
cognition.
But it has no
practical
side.
Subsequent
versions of aesthetic attitude and taste recover the
practical by forgetting
the
cognitive
limits.
Shaftesbury represents
a
relatively
naive
starting point
for modern
aesthetics. He has not shed medieval Neo-Platonism
fully,
but he
begins
an
empirical
examination of art and taste which
subsequently develops
into what we know as aesthetics. His
empiricism, perhaps
because it is
undeveloped,
is holistic. Taste is a taste for actual works of
art;
aesthetics
is an essential
part
of one's moral and
epistemological practice,
and
judgments
of taste are
practical
as well as
personal.
In the
eighteenth
century,
the
empirical
foundations of this view are
explored.
But
they
are also
pulled apart.
Hutcheson tries to
place
aesthetics on a more
satisfactory
Lockean basis. But the sense of aesthetic taste cannot be
established on the same
ground
as other
secondary qualities.
The
quest
for
specifically
aesthetic
qualities
and
identity
criteria
opens
the
way
for
the criticism of Hume and the re-construction of Kant. Yet each move
increases the
separation
of the
subjective
and
practical aspects
of aesthetics
and makes it more difficult for aesthetic
judgments
to be related to other
claims about
knowledge
and value. Modem aesthetic theories based on
an aesthetic attitude and a
unique
aesthetic
experience
are the heirs of
this tradition.
University
of Texas at
Arlington
57
The
judgment
of taste is not based on
concepts
and does not admit of
controversy
(i.e. everyone
has his own
taste);
the
judgment
of taste is based on
concepts (i.e.
we do
quarrel
about these
judgments
and claim for them universal
validity). Ibid.,
183-84.
58
Ibid.,
185. Italics mine.