Toward Ideas: A Kantian Aesthetic Virtue

Abstract When responding well to beautiful art [schöne Kunst], what kind of attitude does the appreciating subject hold? It could be argued that if we turn to Kant’s aesthetics for an answer to this paper’s motivating question, then we might be led either to arrogance or hubris. In full recognition of this concern, Matherne (2023) has argued that it is also possible to interpret Kant’s aesthetics as offering promising resources for a model of aesthetic humility. In this essay, my primary claim is that Kant’s aesthetics provides a further dimension of aesthetic humility beyond those identified by Matherne, namely, an artwork-directed dimension. My secondary claim is that this model of aesthetic humility is not constrained by contingent features of late eighteenth-century art; it also applies to the appreciation of conceptually difficult contemporary art. According to this Kantian model, in the context of our aesthetic judgments of both beautiful art and conceptually difficult contemporary art, aesthetic humility shows up in three ways: (1) in one’s reflecting judgment of the artwork; (2) in one’s experience of the artwork’s symbolic reference to that which exceeds one’s understanding; and (3) in the expansion of one’s sensual and cognitive capacities. This paper argues, then, that aesthetic humility allows for the judging subject to be enlivened in and through their experience of beautiful and challenging art.