Philosopher's Forum - Immanuel Kant.

Overview

The year is 1792, we are in Germany, and my name is Immanuel Kant. I am going to explain to you what art is and is not, and what the proper use of art is.

First I would like to mention dress, and to congratulate those of you who have attended this class dressed appropriately. It is not always the most convenient or economical thing to dress well, but I consider this to be my sacrifice to the aesthetic. It is my duty to my visitors and to myself to appear to the best advantage. There is nothing shallow or lacking in virtue about appearance, beauty is in fact an expression of virtue.

What is art?

Art is something necessarily made by human beings. Nature, while beautiful, is distinctly NOT art. Not only that, but art is always a production of the human mind. By right it is only that which is produced through an act of will that places reason at the basis of its action, that should be termed art.

Art, as human skill, is distinguished also from science, and further distinguished from handicraft. We look on the former as something which could only prove successful as play, i.e., an occupation which is agreeable on its own account; but on the second as labor, i.e., a business, which on its own account is disagreeable and is only attractive by means of what it results in.

Fine art, specifically, is a mode of representation which is intrinsically final, and which, although devoid of an end, has the effect of advancing the culture of the mental powers in the interests of social communication. I would term this quality “purposiveness” – that which does not have a purpose, yet gives one to reflect and use one’s reason and judgment in the same way as one would were it to have purpose.

This is why the creation and experience of art is necessary for learning. It is through this reflection that human judgment and reason develops. When enjoying art, one develops one’s mind - The universal communicability of a pleasure involves in its very concept that the pleasure is not one of enjoyment arising out of mere sensation, but must be one of reflection.

The requisites for fine art are, therefore, imagination, understanding, soul, and taste. If we wish children to develop these things, we must allow and encourage them to be involved in the production and appreciation of art.


Art Ranking Game

You each have before you six slips of paper. On these are written the six forms of fine art. Any other forms are simply variations on these – for instance, drama is a form of poetry, and architecture is a form of sculpture.

Given what I have told you, and what you know yourself to be true (use your reason), I would like you to rank these art forms by their aesthetic worth.



1. Poetry

Poetry, which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and is least willing to be led by precepts or example, holds the first rank among all the arts. It expands the mind by giving freedom to the imagination and by offering a wealth of thought to which no verbal expression is completely adequate, and by thus rising aesthetically to ideas. It invigorates the mind by letting it feel its faculty - free, spontaneous, and independent of determination by nature.

2. Rhetoric

Rhetoric, so far as this is taken to mean the art of persuasion, i.e., the art of deluding by means of a fair semblance and not merely excellence of speech is a dialectic which borrows from poetry only so much as is necessary to win over men’s minds to the side of the speaker before they have weighed the matter, and to rob their verdict of its freedom. What it owes to poetry earns it this rank.

3. Painting

Because it is the art of design and, as such, the groundwork of all the other formative arts; partly because it can penetrate much further into the region of ideas, and in conformity with them give a greater extension to the field of intuition than it is open to the others 
to do.

4. Sculpture

The art of sculpture, since in its products art is almost confused with nature. However, it has excluded from its creations the direct representation of ugly objects, and, instead, only sanctions, for example, the representation of death or of the warlike spirit by means of an allegory, or attributes which wear a pleasant guise, and so only indirectly through an interpretation on the part of reason, and not for the pure aesthetic judgment.

5. Architecture

In architecture the chief point is a certain use of the artistic object to which, as the condition, the aesthetic ideas are limited, as opposed to how in sculpture the mere expression of aesthetic ideas is the main intention.

6. Music

Those of you who enjoy music would do well to bear with me on this point. I grant that if we take charm and mental stimulation into account, music would be second only to poetry. However. It is certainly more a matter of enjoyment than of culture, and it possesses 
less worth in the eyes of reason than any other of the fine arts. Music advances from sensations to indefinite ideas: other arts from definite ideas to sensations. Over and above all this, music has a certain lack of urbanity about it. For owing chiefly to the character of its instruments, it scatters its influence abroad to an uncalled-for extent (through the neighborhood), and thus, as it were, becomes obtrusive and deprives others, outside the musical circle, of their freedom. This is a thing that the arts that address themselves to the eye do not do, for if one is not disposed to give admittance to their impressions, one has only to look the other way. The case is almost on a par with
the practice of regaling oneself with a perfume that exhales its odors far and wide. The man who pulls his perfumed handkerchief from his pocket gives a treat to all around whether they like it or not, and compels them, if they want to breathe at all, to be parties to the enjoyment, and so the habit has gone out of fashion.


Resources on Kant’s personality:

From the introduction of Houston Stewart Chamberlain's Immanuel Kant, published by John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1914.
Found at http://www.hschamberlain.net/kant/kant_00_introduction.html.


“If under Chamberlain's guidance you penetrate into the great man's sanctum, you will find a small wizen man, hardly above a dwarf in stature, with sharp inquisitive features, and an eye that penetrates your very soul, and seems to flood the whole room with light. His portrait by Döbler shows him dressed with scrupulous care. Beruffled and be-frilled, his appearance is that of an old French Marquis of the Oeil-de-Boeuf. Fine clothes are his one sacrifice to the Arts; he conceives it to be his duty to his visitors and to himself to appear to the best advantage. One feels inclined to wish that some of the modern men of learning would take a leaf out of his book, slovenliness and economy of soap being in his esteem no emblems of wisdom. He, on the contrary, is as well groomed as any Beau Brummell, and, great philosopher as he is, no petit maître was ever more delicately turned out. Such was the appearance of the man.
And his conversation! He has read every book of travel that he can lay his hand upon. His knowledge of the cities of Europe, especially of Italy, is so accurate that you would imagine that he had spent his life in traveling. An Englishman arrives in Königsberg and the conversation happens to turn upon Westminster Bridge. The Briton is at fault, but Kant sets him right with as great accuracy as if he had been the surveyor who took out the quantities for the builder. His delight is in works on anthropology, architecture, natural science, and history. Don't presume to talk to him of philosophy! he will have none of it — nor does he seem even to have read the works of contemporary thinkers, save in the case of Fichte, where he was eager to show that the man had had the audacity to pretend that he based his philosophy upon him.
Little short of miraculous were Kant's grip and persistence. He was a mere boy when he chose “the lonely furrow“ which he was to plough. During the eighty long years of his life he kept to the course which he had laid for himself. Never for an instant did he swerve to the right or to the left, and it was not until he was sixty years of age that he conceived himself to be sufficiently equipped to face the public with his masterpiece. It must be allowed that this showed phenomenal determination.
As to his moral courage there can be no two opinions. He was the deadly foe of all that is false, of all superstition, of all dogma, — of all slavery. He preached the freedom of man, — the “freedom of freedom.“ Religion he looked upon as the duty which man owes to himself, as “the recognition of all our duties as Divine Commands“; God is a moral necessity, something beyond comprehension: yet “that there is a God in nature“ cannot be disputed. And this is the man whom churchmen have been apt to hold up to execration as irreligious!
His physical courage was no less than his moral courage. Fear was unknown to him. Upon one occasion a burglar broke in upon him. He had mistaken his man. In that puny body there was, to borrow an image from Eöthen, “the pluck of ten battalions.“ Kant rushed upon the thief with the concentrated rage of a wounded tiger: the intruder was so taken aback by the sudden fury of the attack that he decamped, leaving the small philosopher master of the field. What did the burglar expect to find in that simple home? It was bare of all ornament, for art did not appeal to Kant. Save only for the portrait of Rousseau his walls were callow; he looked upon pictures as mere witnesses of the vanity of those who hung them.”


From “Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists"

Immanuel Kant: Evolution from a Personality ‘Disorder’ to a Dementia

Bogousslavsky J, Boller F (eds): Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists. Front Neurol Neurosci. Basel, Karger, 2005, vol 19, pp 76-84

The philosopher Immanuel (or Emmanuel) Kant is felt by many to be one of the most influential thinkers of the modern age. For example, in his monumental work the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason) he showed how one can use the mind’s faculties of knowledge to determine the limits of these very faculties. His life is of interest to neurologists for several reasons. He had a peculiar personality, he suffered from headache and he died with dementia. Kant was a man of legendary calm and regularity. For instance, his morning walks occurred always at the same time and it has been stated that people could set their watch when seeing him go by. He always followed the same itinerary and even walked the same number of minutiously counted steps. It is felt, however, that he did not fit the criteria of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. He suffered from headaches which were probably a true migraine. It has long been thought that a compulsive personality is often found in migraine sufferers. Finally, in his last years, Kant showed clear symptoms of dementia. Various etiologies have been considered such as vascular dementia or a slow growing tumor such as a frontal meningioma. Because he showed marked fluctuation of his cognitive symptoms, reported hallucinations and experienced repeated falls, we propose that Kant was affected by Lewy body dementia.