Kant's Aesthetics

The conclusion to Kant’s Aesthetics revolves around his conception behind the sublime. Kant proposes that all experiences of sublimity evoke the experience of pleasure within the individual experience the sublime. The pleasure derives from a negative liking within the person as they experience displeasure at the awareness of the limitations of their imagination, yet this results in pleasure at knowing the ability of our human reason (Kant, 1987). Kant’s characterisation of the sublime presents a good conception of aesthetics applicability in philosophy however Kant’s convoluted writing and lack of comprehension detracts from the validity as it is difficult to interpret his intentions.
Kant divides the sublime into two categories; the mathematically …show more content…
His explanation for this pleasure is not that the phenomena or object is beautiful in itself or that they are presented in a pleasurable manner; instead he poses that the pleasure derives from the observer discovering that the sublimity comes from their human reason and awareness of the capabilities of the mind at being able to process and interpret our reaction to the object (Kant, 1987). Kant writes that sublime experiences highlight the capability of humans to match and overcome nature, validating human ability and evolutionary progress (ibid.). Kant’s proposal for the pleasure engendered by sublime experiences is well found and based upon valid premises. Kant theorises that the experience of the sublime is merely the agency that results in analytic introspection that allows people to discern the immense ability of human superiority over nature and how reason allows us to comprehend experiences beyond imagination (ibid.). This proposition follow a valid and convincing argument for how experiences of the sublime lends into internal pleasure. Kant further extrapolates that this pleasure actually comes from slight displeasure at the awareness of our imaginations limitation at comprehending vast numbers for the mathematical sublime and our physical inadequacy for the dynamically sublime …show more content…
Universality of the sublime refers to Kant’s perception that all humans will have this same revelation of internal awareness. His reasoning for this is that all humans poses reason which will be automatically engaged when faced with an object or scenario that exceeds imaginations capabilities (Kant, 1987). This follows fairly logical premises in the sense that the human mind obviously can't imagine the concept of infinity whilst looking at the night sky and yet we know that is that the reality of the situation of how many stars there truly are, so there must be something in our mind that overrides imagination and allows us to understand the magnitude. This idea presents fairly convincing arguments that experiences of the sublime evoke human reason to allow us to overcome the limitations of the imagination. Kant’s argument loses some of its validity when he states that experiences of the sublime will definitely result in one’s awareness of our reason. This lacks any grounding in reality other than subjective experience on Kant’s behalf. It is obvious that this awareness does not happen automatically to everyone by the simple fact that theorists present disagreements to his notion of the sublime and therefore it can’t be universal. Kant’s characterisation of the sublime has merit in his theory behind the limitations of the imagination resulting in