fine art and genius

by Immanuel Kant (Aesthetics)

Kant assumes that the cognition involved in judging fine art is similar to the cognition involved in judging natural beauty. Accordingly, the problem that is new to fine art is not how it is judged by a viewer, but how it is created. The solution revolves around two new concepts: the 'genius' and 'aesthetic ideas'.

Kant argues that art can be tasteful (that is, agree with aesthetic judgment) and yet be 'soulless' - lacking that certain something that would make it more than just an artificial version of a beautiful natural object. What provides soul in fine art is an aesthetic idea. An aesthetic idea is a counterpart to a rational idea: where the latter is a concept that could never adequately be exhibited sensibly, the former is a set of sensible presentations to which no concept is adequate. An aesthetic idea, then, is as successful an attempt as possible to 'exhibit' the rational idea. It is the talent of genius to generate aesthetic ideas, but that is not all. First, the mode of expression must also be tasteful - for the understanding's 'lawfulness' is the condition of the expression being in any sense universal and capable of being shared. The genius must also find a mode of expression which allows a viewer not just to 'understand' the work conceptually, but to reach something like the same excited yet harmonious state of mind that the genius had in creating

Kant addresses himself particularly to fine art for the first time. The notion of aesthetic judgment already developed remains central. But unlike the investigation of beauty in nature, the focus shifts from the transcendental conditions for judgment of the beautiful object to the transcendental conditions of the making of fine art. In other words: how is it possible to make art? To solve this, Kant will introduce the notion of genius.

But that is not the only shift. Kant stands right in the middle of a complete historical change in the central focus of aesthetics. While formerly, philosophical aesthetics was largely content to take its primary examples of beauty and sublimity from nature, after Kant the focus is placed squarely on works of art. Now, in Kant, fine art seems to 'borrow' its beauty or sublimity from nature. Fine art is therefore a secondary concept. On the other hand, of course, in being judged aesthetically, nature is seen 'as if' purposeful, designed, or a product of an intelligence. So, in this case at least, the notion of 'nature' itself can be seen as secondary with respect to the notions of design or production, borrowed directly from art. Thus, the relation between nature and art is much more complex than it seems at first. Kant's work thus forms an important part of the historical change mentioned above. Moreover, it is clear from a number of comments that Kant makes about 'genius' that he is an aesthetic conservative reacting against, for example, the emphasis on the individual, impassioned artist characteristic of the 'Sturm und Drang' movement. But, historically, his discussion of the concept contributed to the escalation of the concept in the early 19th Century.

So, in order to understand how art is possible, we have to first understand what art is, and what art production is, vis-á-visnatural objects and natural 'production'. First, then, what does Kant mean by 'nature'? (1) On the one hand, in expressions like 'the nature of X' (e.g. 'the nature of human cognition'), it means those properties which belong essentially to X. This can either be an empirical claim or, more commonly in Kant, a priori. On the other hand, nature as itself an object has several meanings for Kant. Especially: (2) If I say 'nature as opposed to art' I mean that realm of objects not presented as the objects of sensible will - that is, which are quite simply not made or influenced by human hands. (3) If I say 'nature as an object of cognition' I mean any object capable of being dealt with 'objectively' or 'scientifically'. This includes things in space outside of us, but also aspects of sensible human nature that are the objects of sciences such as psychology. (4) Nature is also the object of reflective judgments and is that which is presupposed to be purposive or pre-adapted with respect to judgment.

Kant begins by giving a long clarification of art. As a general term, again, art refers to the activity of making according to a preceding notion. If I make a chair, I must know, in advance, what a chair is. We distinguish art from nature because (though we may judge nature purposive) we know in fact there is no prior notion behind the activity of a flower opening. The flower doesn't have an idea of opening prior to opening - the flower doesn't have a mind or a will to have or execute ideas with.

Art also means something different from science - as Kant says, it is a skill distinguished from a type of knowledge. Art involves some kind of practical ability, irreducible to determinate concepts, which is distinct from a mere comprehension of something. The latter can be fully taught; the former, although subject to training to be sure, relies upon native talent. (Thus, Kant will later claim, there can be no such thing as a scientific genius, because a scientific mind can never be radicallyoriginal) Further, art is distinguished from labour or craft - the latter being something satisfying only for the payoff which results and not for the mere activity of making itself. Art (not surprisingly, like beauty) is freefrom any interest in the existence of the product itself.

Arts are subdivided into mechanical and aesthetic. The former are those which, although not handicrafts, never-the-less are controlled by some definite concept of a purpose to be produced. The latter are those wherein the immediate object is merely pleasure itself. Finally, Kant distinguishes between agreeable and fine art. The former produces pleasure through sensation alone, the latter through various types of cognitions

This taxonomy of fine art defines more precisely the issue for Kant. What, then, 'goes on' in the mind of the artist? It is clearly not just a matter of applying good taste, otherwise all art critics would be artists, all musician's composers, and so forth. Equally, it is not a question of simply expressing oneself using whatever means come to hand, since such productions might well lack taste. We feel reasonably secure that we know how it is possible for, for example, clockmakers to make clocks, or glass-blowers to blow glass (which doesn't mean that we can make clocks or blow glass, but that as a kind of activity, we understand it). We have also investigated how it is for someone looking at a work of beauty to judge it. But it is not yet clear how, on the side of production, fine art gets made.

Kant sums up the problem in two apparent paradoxes. The first of these is easy to state. Fine art is a type of purposeful production, because it is made; art in general is production according to a concept of an object. But fine art can have no concept adequate to its production, else any judgment on it will fail one of the key features of all aesthetic judgments: namely purposiveness without a purpose. Fine art therefore must both be, and not be, an art in general.

To introduce the second paradox, Kant notices that we have a problem with the overwrought - that which draws attention to itself as precisely an artificial object or event. 'Over-the-top' acting is a good example. Kant expresses this point by saying that, in viewing a work of art we must be aware of it as art, but it must never-the-less appear natural. Where 'natural' here stands for the appearance of freedom from conventional rules of artifice; this concept is derived from the second sense of 'nature' given above. The paradox is that art (the non-natural) must appear to be natural.

Kant must overcome these paradoxes and explain how fine art can be produced at all. In sect.46, the first step is taken when Kant, in initially defining 'genius', conflates 'nature' in the first sense above with nature in the third sense. He writes,

Genius is the talent (natural endowment) that gives the rule to art. Since talent is an innate productive ability of the artist and as such belongs itself to nature, we could also put it this way: Genius is the innate mental predisposition (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art. (sect.46)

In other words, that which makes it possible to produce (fine art) is not itself produced - not by the individual genius, nor (we should add) through his or her culture, history, education, etc. From the definition of genius as that talent through which nature gives the rule to art follows (arguably!) the following key propositions. First, fine art is produced by individual humans, but not as contingent individuals. That is, not by human nature in the empirically known sense. Second, fine art as aesthetic (just like nature as aesthetic) can have no definite rules or concepts for producing or judging it. But genius supplies a rule, fully applicable only in the one, concrete instance, precisely by way of the universal structures of the genius' mental abilities (which again, is 'natural' in sense one).

Third, the rule supplied by genius is more a rule governing what to produce, rather than how. Thus, while all fine art is a beautiful 'presentation' of an object (sect.48), this partly obscures the fact that genius is involved in the original creation of the object to be presented. The 'how' is usually heavily informed by training and technique, and is governed by taste. Taste, Kant claims, is an evaluative faculty, not a productive one (sect.48). Thus, the end of sect.47, he will distinguish between supplying 'material' and elaborating the 'form'. Fourth, because of this, originality is a characteristic of genius. This means also that fine art properly is never an imitation of previous art, though it may 'follow' or be 'inspired by' previous art (sect.47). Fifth, as we mentioned above, fine art must have the 'look of nature' (sect.45). This is because the rule of its production (that concept or set of concepts of an object and of the 'how' of its production which allows the genius to actually make some specific something) is radically original. Thus, fine art is 'natural' in sense two, in that it lies outside the cycle of production and re-production within which all other arts in general are caught up (and thus, again, cannot be imitated). This leads Kant to make some suggestive, but never fully worked out, comments about artistic influences and schools, the role of culture, of technique and education, etc. (See e.g. sect.49-50)

Having made the various distinctions between the matter and the form of expression in genius' work, or again between the object and its presentation, Kant applies these to a brief if eccentric comparative study of the varieties of fine art (sect.51-53). According to the manner of presentation, he divides all fine arts into the arts of speech (especially poetry, which Kant ranks the highest of the arts), the arts of visual form (sculpture, architecture and painting), and the arts involving a play of sensible tones (music). The last pages of this part of Kant's book are taken up with a curious collection of comments on the 'gratifying' (non-aesthetic but still relatively free activities), especially humour.

However, we have not yet clarified what kind of thing the 'rule' supplied by genius is; therefore, we have not yet reached an understanding of the nature of the 'talent' for the production of fine art that is genius.

Genius provides the matter for fine art, taste provides the form. The beautiful is always formal, as we have already discovered. So, what distinguishes one 'matter' from another, such that genius might be required? What genius does, Kant says, is to provide 'soul' or 'spirit' ('Seele', sect.49) to what would otherwise be uninspired. This peculiar idea seems to be used in a sense analogous to saying that someone 'has soul', meaning to have nobility or a deep and exemplary moral character, as opposed to being shallow or even in a sense animal-like; but Kant also, following the Aristotelian tradition, means that which makes something alive rather than mere material. There can be an uninspired fine art, but it is not very interesting (pure beauty, mentioned above, may be an example). There can also, Kant warns, be inspired nonsense, which is also not very interesting. Genius inspires art works - gives them spirit - and does so by linking the work of art to what Kant will call aesthetic ideas.

This is defined in the third paragraph of sect.49. The aesthetic idea is a presentation of the imagination to which no thought is adequate. This is a 'counterpart' to rational ideas (which we encountered above in talking of the sublime), which are thoughts to which nothing sensible or imagined can be adequate. Each is excessive, we might say, but on different sides of our cognitive apparatus. Aesthetic ideas are seen to be 'straining' after the presentation of rational ideas - this is what gives them their excess over any set of ordinary determinate concepts.

In the judgment of the beautiful, we had a harmony between the imagination and the understanding, such that each furthered the extension of the other. Kant is now saying: certainly that is true for all judgments of taste, whether of natural or artificial objects. And yet we can distinguish between such a harmony which happens on the experiencing of a beautiful form simply, or a harmony which happens on the experiencing of a beautiful form that itself is the expression of something yet higher but that cannot in any other way be expressed. (The notion of 'expression' is important: what Kant is describing is an aesthetic process, rather than a process of understanding something with concepts, and then communicating that understanding.) Inspired fine art is beautiful, but in addition is an expression of the state of mind which is generated by an aesthetic idea.

The relevant passages in sect.49 are both confused and compressed. Kant seems to have two different manners in which aesthetic ideas can be the spirit of fine art. First, the aesthetic idea is a presentation of a rational idea (one of Kant's examples is the moral idea of cosmopolitan benevolence). Of course, we know that there is no such adequate presentation. An obvious example might be a novelist or playwright's attempt to portray a morally upright character: because, for Kant, an important part of our moral being transcends the world of phenomena, there must always be a mis-match between the idea and the portrayal of the character. Here the aesthetic idea seems to function by prompting an associated or coordinated surplus of thought that is directly analogous to the associated surplus of imaginative presentations demanded by rational ideas. (We saw a similar relation between the demand of rational ideas and imaginative activity in Kant's analysis of the sublime. Indeed, arguably there is an analogy here to the concept of 'negative exhibition'.) In practice, this will often involve what Kant calls 'aesthetic attributes': more ordinary, intermediate images: 'Thus Jupiter's eagle with the lightning in its claws is an attribute of the mighty king of heaven'.

Second, the aesthetic idea can be an impossibly perfect or complete presentation of a possible empirical experience and its concept (death, envy, love, fame are Kant's examples). Here the aesthetic idea is not presenting a particular rational idea so much as a general function of reason: the striving for a maximum, a totality or the end of a series (as in Kant's account of the mathematical sublime). And again, the effect is an associated 'expansion' of the concept beyond its determinate bounds. In either case, the aesthetic idea is not merely a presentation, but one which will set the imagination and understanding into a harmony, creating the same kind of self- sustaining and self-contained feeling of pleasure as the beautiful.

Kant's theory of genius - for all its vagueness and lack of philosophical rigor - has been enormously influential. In particular, the radical separation of the aesthetic genius from the scientific mind; the emphasis on the near-miraculous expression (through aesthetic ideas and attributes) of the ineffable, excited state of mind; the link of fine art to a 'metaphysical' content; the requirement of radical originality; the raising of poetry to the head of all arts - all these claims (though not all of them entirely unique to Kant) were commonplaces and wide-spread for well over a century after Kant. Indeed, when modernists protested (often paradoxically) against the concept of the artist by using 'automatic writing' or 'found objects' it is, for the most part, this concept of the artist-genius that they are reacting against.