Blog #9 - Kant's Formalism

In class through Higgin's book, we were given an introduction to Immanuel Kant’s “Four Moments” of aesthetic judgments in the Critique of Judgment. As we learned from the reading, Kant regards form as the basis for an intersubjective experience of an aesthetic object, a social and experiential role. In his “Moments”, Kant characterizes aesthetic experience as a combination of “imagination and understanding.” He applies this idea to his analysis of music, but he retains an intellectual appreciation of music as his central focus (as formalism would suggest). 

We also analyzed Hanslick's view on formalism and contrasted it with Kant's view. In the reading, Higgins proposes that Kant’s formalist account is better since he is more accepting of the experience of music. Through his intersubjective basis of aesthetic value, he describes musical experience in a social aspect. Kant proposes that the “most fundamental aspect of music is something that everyone shares: a state of mind.” Kant does not object that those who are more “musically trained” may have more thought-provoking evaluations of music; however, he does not dismiss the aesthetic evaluations of the other listeners as worthless. Instead, he insists that everyone is capable of an aesthetic appreciation of music, and that this appreciation “proceeds by means of a common ‘state of mind’.” As a result, we can conclude that Kant’s aesthetic theory allows “form” to be described more broadly and realistically than Hanslick’s.