Universal Validity and Hermeneutics in Kant’s Theory of Art

Abstract

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790) is classically interpreted as an attempt to locate aesthetic judgments within a formalist framework. This formalism is taken to construe judgments of beauty as possessing a subjective universal validity. However, Kant’s theory of fine art, wherein artistic beauty is characterized as ‘adherent’ and aesthetic ideas are expressed through the genius of the artist, does not immediately appear to be consistent with the absolute formalism that renders judgments of taste as inter-subjectively valid. Recent commentators have attempted to integrate Kant’s theory of fine art with his broader formalism. Nevertheless, these attempts fail to overcome hermeneutical considerations that threaten the supposed ahistorical universal communicability of judgments of taste. Despite the failure of these previous analyses to contend with cultural and personal relativism, it is possible to maintain Kant’s account of normative universal assent regarding artistic beauty by virtue of its relationship to the supersensible whilst simultaneously recognising that hermeneutics has significant consequences for the personal experience of art.