/lit/ - Literature

>analytic aesthetics

"this painting is dope if and only if the quality of dopeness follows from the definition of the painting"

good luck

>>6059632
What would you recommend than?

>>6059640

Deleuze

You could take a look at Arthur Danto

>>6059640
oscar wilde has some nice things to say about aesthetics

>to me it sounded like he pulled it all out of his ass.

Hurr durr my half-asses reading sure did refute Kant, huh guys?

>reading the third Critique first

That's where you fucked. Kant is a rather logical writer, you can't jump in the middle of his work and expect to get the whole thing.

Start with Critique of Pure Reason and then Critique of Practical Reason. If you can't (lol) finish both, you're not fit to understand Kant's aesthetic.

>important analytical works about aesthetics

Goethe wrote a lot on art, with much intelligence, particularly in his letters to his friends.
I think Plato and Aristotles were the first (as often) to deal explicitly with aesthetics (particularly Aristotles). His contemporaries (the Schlegel brothers, Schiller and Eckermann, two friends of Goethe) will also have interesting things to say.

You might be interested in Boileau's Poetic Art, it's in verse, and not really argumented, but farily detailed. Baudelaire's non-poetic works also spring to mind (those are generally in prose, and very intelligently written).
Speaking of Boileau, Borges was a fan of him. And Borges was very good at crafting intellectually sound problems around literature. Try his essays.

Poe was a very insightful aesthetical commentator, with a practical understanding of aesthetics, check out his non-spooky short stories and his philosophical poems.

Schopenhauer and then Nietzsche dedicated a lot of effort to understanding aesthetics.

>>6059733
Refute what?His analysis is completely intuitive.

>>6059775
There's nothing _to_ understand, it's all opinions.

>>6059733
Come on..
"subjective universal judgments", nigga what? The explanation of this term seems completely bogus.
He makes a distinction between thing we make judgment about that we desire or that are a means to an end and that for art we just find it pleasurable but not as a result of some underlying desire for it or necessity.
But how is our own enjoyment that we know we get not a form of desire? I look at a painting in hopes it will be beautiful and make be feel good.
Also he claims that when one makes judgments about what is beautiful they are making them as if they expect others to agree even if they know many wont..
What does this even mean? When I look at a nice painting or architecture and say i find it pleasurable I do not expect others to find it pleasurable much like with food that i like.
He tries to make it sound special and different for his own goals.

>>6059868
I tried looking for further clarification of this term and i found nothing that sounds satisfactory.
Without it a major part of his line of thinking about aesthetics breaks down.

>>6059868
Contd

he claims that a painting(for example) has no function or purpose and yet when we make a judgment of it we make it as if it does..But it does..its purpose is to please us..

all this line of reasoning seems really sketchy to me at best.

I mean come one a lot of his claims seem like utter bullshit today..Its not his fault he just didnt have the luxury of knowing what we know now.
All his crap about the organic being unique and unexplainable..
I mean he didnt even have the luxury of knowing about evolution...
Reading these parts is just pointless unless you study kant as a historian.

OP, the only elements of Kant's understanding of aesthetics that remain important are aesthetic disinterest (the idea thta to enjoy art you should have no intention at all, so you can received the full blast without ending up confusing other feelings with those the work generates) and the sublime (mostly as a jumping board to diferentiate art from cultural industries). Reading Kant for aesthetics is a silly way to start, the vague points he makes are brought up by posterior writers and worked around anyway. Same with Hume.

I'd recommend starting with Adorno and then jumping to Benjamin, is quite easy to distinguish which are the books related to aesthetics and which are general social studies for the titles.

>>6059775
>>reading the third Critique first
also this

>Goethe
His more of a color commentator, like Artaud, but there's little method in the studies Sturm und Drang did. You end up with lots of cool general ideas but only each author could expand on them because you're not seeing the basis of their analysis, just the conclusions.

>Nietzsche
I doubt his stuff will be easier to grasp out of context than Kant.

>>6059825
His thesis are, it's the same with science. You read to see the justification, just like you check the experiments done to test a scientific theory.

>>6059832
lol

>>6059868
You're taking it all out of context. Of course someone born 200 years after that in a society where some people study kant in posterior writers in HS will have incorporated subjective judgement, but back in his time there was a lot of effort to justify beauty as an universal value. It was like that since Plato saying beauty is the connection with objective true ideas to Saint Augustin saying it was the connection with god to the Renaissance and the Querelle saying that beauty was the perfect equilibrium of nature mixed with an original idea. The idea of purely subjective feelings didn't come into play until the 1950's, you were just born into it and take it for granted.

Kant does a lot of mental gymnastics to justify Enlightenment ideas, that was his job. Everyone knows those ideas were weak and had a clear tendency in favor of european bourgeois a priori ideas.

>>6059868
Okay, first of all, you need to proofread before you post, some of your points are kinda hard to follow because of that.

>But how is our own enjoyment that we know we get not a form of desire? I look at a painting in hopes it will be beautiful and make be feel good.
So yes, you hope that the painting will aestetically please you. So you view the painting with a desire to find it beautiful. This desire can then be either fulfilled or not. That is a subjective judgement. To talk coherently about judgements, Kant claims that these kinds of experiences should not be talked about as aesthetic, without the knowledge of it's subjective character.

>Also he claims that when one makes judgments about what is beautiful they are making them as if they expect others to agree even if they know many wont..
Yes, when you experience something as aestetically pleasing, while having absolutely no desire or interest in it's ends (you could say it overwhelmes you), then you will have to conclude that it must be universally accepted as beautiful.
>When I look at a nice painting or architecture and say i find it pleasurable I do not expect others to find it pleasurable much like with food that i like.
Exactly. That's because you are aware that you are somehow invested in the thing. What he says is, that if you have nothing invested in it, and still find it to be pleasurable, then it probably is.
Although he destinguishes between pleasurable and some other terms that I don't know the english words for.

>>6059885
'Its purpose is to please us,' he said after judging that paintings exist only to please us, which he would have to have done prior to forming such an opinion.
Oh look, Kant was right.

>>6059946
Good post, I'd just like to add

>not as a result of some underlying desire for it or necessity.
this is a direct opposition to the british aesthetes of the time who defended ownership as a part of the universal feeling of beauty, both wanting to own it and caring more for it after owning it.

>>6059940
>same with science. You read to see the justification, just like you check the experiments done to test a scientific theory.

I am sure most people would not consider science as some form of completely objective portrayal of reality, including scientists themselves.
This is why, I at least, found him justifying the existence of the very notion of a morality by equating its validity to science very unconvincing.

He himself founded how "a priori" truths were only certain (let's assume this to be true) and then grounded the basis of his morality along the lines of experience, something completely a post.
I always found that to be a huge contradiction.

We still accept science because it is useful for society and academics study it because of the former reason and due to their own interest in the subject.

We still read Kant's philosophy even if we don't agree with its premise because of interest but is it really useful to the same extent as science is such that humanity should adopt his categorical imperative?
I do not think so.

>>6059940
"You're taking it all out of context. Of course someone born 200 years after that in a society where some people study kant in posterior writers in HS will have incorporated subjective judgement, but back in his time there was a lot of effort to justify beauty as an universal value. It was like that since Plato saying beauty is the connection with objective true ideas to Saint Augustin saying it was the connection with god to the Renaissance and the Querelle saying that beauty was the perfect equilibrium of nature mixed with an original idea. The idea of purely subjective feelings didn't come into play until the 1950's, you were just born into it and take it for granted."

I was not taking it out of context, I am well aware that back than it was new and important. I was just replying to the "hurr durr i refuted Kant" comment.
Anyway, why do people study kant in an expanded way if a lot of his ideas are now out of date?Or dont they? I do not want to have a proper philosophical education. I just want some philosophical background for aesthetics for my own activities that are focused elsewhere.
What would be nice is a concise breakdown of all the important and relevant ideas about aesthetics we have today(And later on i would be able to expand on them if need be).

>>6059648
Seconded. Begin with Logic of Sensation. A masterpiece.
You can then follow with a Thousand Plateaus.
With that, I would recommend you his work with Guattari on Kafka, and Proust and the Signs.
Merleau-Ponty has also really beautiful pages, (I'm thinking of the mind), and his Phenomenology of perception is a must-read, especially if you're interested by 60s art.
I would also recommend :
- Hegel (outdated, but very important)
- Nietzche's Birth of Tragedy
- Cezanne by Gasquet
- Greenberg
- Rosalind Krauss
- Lyotard
- Didi-Huberman (start with the Fra Angelico)

>>6059964
Same can be said about tasting food. a Painting can be equated with other visual stimuli we experience.
Anyway just as much as if i happen to see a painting without meaning to and i find it pleasurable I can accidentally taste some food and find it delicious. None of this explains his invented "subjective universal judgments".

Surly you dont think kant was "right about everything" do you?I mean when inspecting it from the pov of modenr times...

>>6059974
>Anyway, why do people study kant in an expanded way if a lot of his ideas are now out of date?Or dont they? I do not want to have a proper philosophical education.

Not the guy you were talking to but...
Yes, Kant is pretty big in phil courses.
People study so many philosophers even though they do not agree with most or any of their ideas.
Pure, human, curiosity.

The only reward you get for digging so deep is a bigger shovel.

Of course, that is just true for me and the people I have been lucky enough to meet who share my interests.

For the most part it seems that people study philosophy for the fuck of it, I do not think I have met anyone who was, say, genuinely frightened by the prospect of being a "Brain in a vat" or was actually depressed upon feeling that there is no objective sense of morality in the world.

Most philosophy enthusiasts get over that quite quickly in a relative sense, they are more curious than stuck in a perpetual state of "angst" or acceptance of the Absurd.

>>6059974
I don't find the claim in >>6059940 to be all that exact.
Kant isn't just a historical oddity today, he actually has pretty coherent arguments, that you can't just dismiss. See >>6059946 , it looks like you still feel like your points are well-grounded, while what you posted in >>6059868 (assuming that's you), evidently shows that you've misunderstood the text.

>>6060013
>he actually has pretty coherent arguments
I'm not trying to be a dick or anything, actually curious.

I found the most his arguments extremely, entertainingly, coherent except the most fundamental argument regarding morality.

Would you care to explain why the very "experience" of morality justifies it, taking to account that simply hearing a sound does not actually mean a sound "exists" just that we experience it.
(Summarized my argument wildly here)

>>6059999
>Same can be said about tasting food
Yeah, it's kind of a universal form of judgment.
>Surly you dont think kant was "right about everything" do you?
No, I'm a Hegelian, but here he's more right than you are.

>>6059972
We read Kant to understand the thinking of an era and see how it evolved, you don't read philosophers to agree with them.
Also, you seem to have miss read the whole "how we know" issue. I can't guide you through it in 4chan posts without making it unberable. Re read him and you'll understand the things that seem like contradictions.
AGAIN, Kant was making a conclusion of 200 years of thinking. Many of his arguments take for granted some knowledge of previous authors and you should read him as a stepping stone in continental thinking more than a profet or something.

>>6059974
Why aren't you greentexting?

>it was new and important
no he wasn't. at all. not a single term he uses is original to him.

>hy do people study kant in an expanded way if a lot of his ideas are now out of date?
Because he's a master of logic that justified incredibly capricious ideas. That's why you also read him in order.
It's the same with Descartes, you're not reading him to find out if you're really real or not.
And a proper philosophical education helps understand posterior branches of the field. ANYWAY, you should just jump to Frankfurt with some Adorno and his Aesthetic Theory and compensate with some Benjamin like Art at the Time of Mechanical Reproduction (retranslating the title, not sure how it's called in english). From there you can easily jump to Guy Debord and then start with the basic post-structuralists like Barthes.

this guy has some more specialized stuff but it sounds good for what I recognize >>6059984

>>6059999
The idea is that your own subjectivity tells you that thing is universal (taste, enjoyment). You don't think that a painting makes YOU experience art, you think the painting IS.
Still, again, you were born post post-modernity. You were trained from your early ages to recognize subjective values around you, that wasn't the norm in Kant's time but quite the contrary.

>>6060013
(940 here)
I didn't want to present him as an oddity, very related to his time. There would be no Kant without the industrial revolution, formal academia, Renaissance, rationalism and so on. The same could be said of Hegel or Marx or whoever.

>>6060034
>>No, I'm a Hegelian, but here he's more right than you are.

gah...I have no problem with this statement nor did i ever try to dispute it.

>>6060035
Woah, I can't seem to finish a sentence right. It's too hot here. I'm just gonna fix this one because.

>I didn't want to present him as an oddity, very related to his time.
JUST very related to his time

>>6060034
>I'm a Hegelian
>I believe idealism has any place in modern thinking
you're funny!

>>6060028
I'm not that well versed in his moral philosophy, sorry, but from what I know, I have a hard time understanding your argument.

>Would you care to explain why the very "experience" of morality justifies it
Does he write that? Doesn't he exactly write, that you have to be able to will something, as in having it to be logically contingent, in order to call something moral? As I understand it, the logical contingency of the action can be adressed a priori, by use of the categories. The question, instead of a discussion about whether it is a priori or a posteriori, would be how you abstract an act so it becomes a maxime to follow or not.

For instance: Can I kill a muslim?
If you abstract this to "Can everybody kill muslims?", then it might be logically possible and therefore ok. If you abstract it to "Can I kill another human being?" Then you can't, since at one point there would only be one human being left, an he would not be able to kill another person, and therefore it is logically incoherrent and not permitted.

As far as I know he doesn't adress how to limit these abstractions.

>taking to account that simply hearing a sound does not actually mean a sound "exists" just that we experience it.
How does this relate? And also, Kant strongly suggests that it does in fact exist, but not necissarily as we experience it.

>>6060087
You should reread on the categorical imperative, you are getting it wrong

>>6060103
Okay. How?

>>6060087
Yo
>>6060103
Aint me (the guy who originally asked the question)

But, as far as I know, that is Kant's argument.
I am afraid of not being coherent though, maybe the other dude can explain better, let us hope he is not a troll.

>>6059640
Young Schop

>>6059607
My class used this. Had plenty of everything.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1405154357/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I'd recommend "Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime". It's a very stimulating and simple essay by Kant

>>6060251
>from Schiller to Gadamer, and more recent work
b-but Gadamer is still publishing... right?

It sounds like a decent mix, but it doesn't say what authors are there. Do you have some virtual syllabus to copy and past who's in there?

>>6059607

the first and last book in aesthetics

>>6060326
Adorno had people doubting his words and finding wholes in his ideas since before WW2. it's a great starting point, but its not even close to an end all book.

>>6060123
>>6060118
>"Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature."
Logical coherence is NOT logical contingence. Contingence is something that is neither impossible nor necessary, and Kant does not base the categorical imperative on it.

For instance, I could argue that not upholding a promise I made is a morally sound choice, but Kant would refute it by saying: If NOBODY upheld their promises (my action became an universal law) then in that hypotetical world nobody would win anything by not upholding them, therefore not upholding your promises can't serve as a principle of action for a rational man, because it does not follow the categorical imperative. Same goes for not killing your neighbour or not letting your dog poop on someone else's lawn.

Sorry if this is not very clear, English is not my 1st language and those are tricky concepts

>>6060428
True, the only reason I wrote contingence was because spaghetti.
Of course i meant coherence, which I think the rest of the post kinda suggests also.

>>6061064
Yes, although it implies coherence with the categorical imperative, which for Kant is the one and only fundamental commandment from which all morality stems