Kantian and Post-Kantian Aesthetics
Kant's Critique of Judgment and its transformation of aesthetics into a distinct branch of critical philosophy, along with its Romantic and modern successors, from Schiller and Hegel through Schopenhauer to Benjamin and Adorno.
60-Second Review
Express reviewA condensed, point-by-point summary of the module, for reviewing right before a test or exam.
- Kant's Critique of Judgment and the Analytic of the Beautiful. Kant's 1790 third Critique founds aesthetics as reflective judgment mediating nature and freedom.
- Disinterested Pleasure and the Universality of Taste. Disinterested pleasure grounds Kant's claim that judgments of taste demand universal, if subjective, assent.
- Kant on the Sublime: Mathematical and Dynamical. Kant divides the sublime into the mathematical (overwhelming magnitude) and dynamical (overwhelming power).
- Schiller and the Aesthetic Education of Humanity. Schiller's 1795 Letters propose aesthetic "play" as the path to reconciling sense and reason in freedom.
- Hegel's Aesthetics and the End of Art Thesis. Hegel's Lectures trace art's historical forms and argue art has ceded its highest role to philosophy.
- Schopenhauer on Art as Escape from the Will. For Schopenhauer, aesthetic contemplation stills the will, offering temporary release from suffering.
- Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". Benjamin argues mechanical reproduction destroys art's "aura," shifting art from ritual toward politics.
- Adorno's Aesthetic Theory and the Autonomy of Art. Adorno's posthumous Aesthetic Theory defends autonomous, difficult art as resistance to commodification.
This module continues after "Classical Theories of Beauty and Art" in the syllabus. If you haven't reviewed it yet, it may help set the context.
Key points
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Further reading
Bibliography and cited sources used to create this module.
- Kant, I. (1790/2000). Critique of the Power of Judgment (P. Guyer & E. Matthews, Trans.; P. Guyer, Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Guyer, P. (1997). Kant and the Claims of Taste (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Schiller, F. (1795/1967). On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters (E.M. Wilkinson & L.A. Willoughby, Eds. & Trans.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Hegel, G.W.F. (1835/1975). Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art (T.M. Knox, Trans.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Schopenhauer, A. (1818/1966). The World as Will and Representation (E.F.J. Payne, Trans., Vols. 1–2). New York: Dover Publications.
- Benjamin, W. (1936/2008). The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media (M.W. Jennings, B. Doherty, & T.Y. Levin, Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Adorno, T.W. (1970/1997). Aesthetic Theory (R. Hullot-Kentor, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.