Author: JH

Enough of Aristotle’s Camera. Back to Kant. Though I seem to have some Aristotelian intuitions, emotions are running higher when people discuss Kant. His concerns seem to still be our concerns today. Most prominently, there is the vexed question of whether aesthetic judgments are “subjective,” whatever that means.

In my own life, I’ve always taken it for granted that there are better and worse books, or better and worse images. Recall the era of film, going through contacts, and picking sometimes only one or two from a whole sheet. If one didn’t assume that there are real criteria – features that make this image better than that – I guess one wouldn’t be able to do this kind of work. And yet, it’s of course also a rather widespread experience that one person loves one image and another person hates it. And it’s annoying to be expected to like, say, opera, if you don’t like opera.

Kant seems to want it both ways, and that’s probably what makes his theory attractive. He seems to say that aesthetic judgments are subjective, and yet, when we make them, we presume that everyone else could (should?) agree. Subjective universality is how he puts this. Now, I’m not sure whether this is more than wanting to have it both ways – whether it actually contains a comprehensible proposal… To be continued.

To recap: my suggestion was that a camera might be “beautiful” because it is ingeniously designed, flawlessly functioning, everything in it performing some task and nothing superfluous. And though it is one thing to say something and quite another to understand what you are saying, it was a high-point in my philosophical life: an internationally renowned Aristotle professor seemed to like my example.

But she was also mercilessly sharp when it came to discussing what I had in mind. First, I should have expanded on the idea that something well-functioning is “beautiful.” Aristotelians seem to like the idea that something is excellent in performing its job really well. And, in a way that I find very appealing, they don’t seem to care for a distinction between moral and aesthetic excellence: excellence, it seems, is just excellence at whatever it is something is really good at. I find that most refreshing.

And then there was the implication that apparently caused some concern: was I alluding to some kind of design theory of the beautiful – the beautiful as the well-created? Careful, young man, the eyes of the professor seemed to say, and no sooner than I opened my mouth I realized: I’m about to paint myself into a corner here… Quick retreat: the idea about excellent activities is where I should have gone, if only I had read some more Aristotle before venturing to speak in the seminar… To be continued.

Before we get to the Aristotelian’s take on palaces and cameras, some more background. The seminar meeting took place in the evening, after dinner. Everyone was pretty much ready to retire, or ready for a drink, when I used up the last couple of minutes to make my anti-Kantian points. However, a well-known professor, who would usually address himself to equally well-known colleagues rather than presumed dilettantes, followed me out into the hallway, full of objections. I must have hit a nerve.

In retrospect, I think I understand a serious point of contention: what kinds of things are even plausible candidates for being called “beautiful”? Palaces? Sonatas, sculptures, poems? Trees, lakes, and sun-sets? Apparently, I still have much to learn, for almost everything seems to fail. Palaces, let’s assume, are out. But the Kantians told me that Kant’s aesthetics isn’t even as much about art as it is about nature; and yet, nature might be ‘sublime’ rather than beautiful. What’s left? Cameras?

Well, perhaps. Apparently, my intuition that ingenuity and beauty go together was a bit alien to people. The professor explained to me that Kant wasn’t interested in “entertainment” and it took me a while to explain that I wasn’t thinking of technology-qua-fun, but of technology-qua-ingenious. This is how I thought a camera might be beautiful: as a perfectly built, flawlessly functioning machine. As it turned out the next day, this steered me towards dangerous territory… To be continued.