On the Theory and Practice of Aesthetic Judgment: Edith Landmann-Kalischer's Perspective

Abstract How is the fact of widespread aesthetic disagreement in practice to be reconciled with a cognitivist theory of aesthetic judgment? If aesthetic judgments are cognitive, then why don't we find more agreement about them? Sensitive to this tension, in one of the most original stretches of her aesthetics, Edith Landmann-Kalischer offers a cognitive explanation of the fact of widespread aesthetic disagreement that turns on the notion of aesthetic deception. According to Landmann-Kalischer, although aesthetic judgments are, in theory, cognitive judgments, given their complexity, we are especially liable to deception when we attempt to make them in practice. With this account of aesthetic deception, Landmann-Kalischer not only offers an insightful explanation in a cognitivist framework of why there is so much widespread aesthetic disagreement, but also advances a normative vision of how we, liable to deception as we are, should proceed in the practice of aesthetic judgment, which merits attention today.