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Philosophy is littered with questions that are easily stated, but difficult to answer.

What is—well, you choose: What is justice? What is knowledge? What is virtue? What is love?

Many such questions are probably unanswerable or at least unanswerable in any fashion that is profitable. Whatsoever answer that's accurate also is likely to exist and then general as to exist vacuous.

That certainly seems to exist the case with another popular "What is …?" question, namely "What is fine art?"

It might once have been possible to answer this question with a fair degree of accuracy.

These days, however, Andy Warhol seems to have preempted definition with his remark that "Fine art is what you can get away with." Certainly, his own career was a testimony to the force of that sentiment.

In other words, these days, the question "What is fine art?" marks a identify on the intellectual map that used to be emblazoned with the legend, "Here be monsters."

One 24-hour interval, perhaps this slice of our cultural landscape will again be brought under the rule of civilisation. Simply for the time being, when confronted with the question "What is art?" it'south the amend part of prudence to prefer the Cole Porter defense: "Anything goes."

So permit's subclass the question "What is fine art?" That all the same leaves us with a number of puzzles.

Caring About Art

For case, why practise we intendance so much about fine art?

That we care is graven in the stones of our museums, theaters, and concert halls, embossed on the pages of novels and volumes of poetry, enshrined in the deference—financial, social, spiritual—that the institutions of art command in our society.

Amongst other things, art is big business, and big business ways big money, an inarguable argument that nosotros have something seriously.

Merely why? Fine art satisfies no applied need; it isn't useful in the sense in which a constabulary court or a hospital, a farm, or a machinist'south shop is useful.

And yet, we invest fine art and the institutions that represent it with enormous privilege and prestige. Why? Why is something apparently useless accorded such honor?

Ane reason, of course, is that utility isn't our merely benchmark of value. We care about many things that aren't in whatever normal sense useful.

Indeed, for many of the things we intendance virtually most, the whole question of use seems peculiarly out of place, a kind of existential category mistake.

Merely nosotros nevertheless can ask: What is it about art, about artful experience, that recommends itself and then powerfully to our regard?

A lot of ink has been spilled trying to answer that question.

The word "aesthetics" wasn't coined (and the subject area it names wasn't born) until the middle of the 18th century, but a fascination with beauty is perennial.

From Plato on down, philosophers and artists—and philosopher-artists—accept eulogized beauty every bit providing intimations of spiritual wholeness and lost unity.

Ane problem with this tendency to invest art with unanchored religious sentiment is that it makes information technology difficult to keep art'south native satisfactions in focus.

The difficulty is compounded considering aesthetic delight involves a feeling of wholeness that is easy to mistake for religious exaltation. Art does offer a balm for the spirit, only it'southward non a religious balm. Exactly what sort of balm is it?

Disinterested Satisfaction

A adept place to begin to endeavour to answer this question is with some observations made past the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804).

"Tantalizing" is not a word nigh people associate with the work of Kant. Simply the starting time half of his book "Critique of Judgment," which deals with the nature of aesthetic judgment, is full of tantalizing observations.

Kant saw that the appeal of aesthetic experience was strikingly different from the appeal of sensory pleasance, on the one hand, and the satisfaction we take in the good, moral, or practical, on the other.

For one thing, with both sensory pleasure and the good, our satisfaction is inextricably bound up with interest, which is to say with the existence of whatever it is that is causing the pleasure.

When nosotros are hungry, a virtual dinner will not exercise—we want the meat and potatoes.

It'due south the same with the good: a virtual morality is not moral.

But things are different with aesthetic pleasure. There is something peculiarly disengaged about artful pleasure itself.

When it comes to our moral and sensory life, we are constantly reminded that nosotros are creatures of lack: we are hungry and wish to eat, we see the good, and know that we fall short.

But when we judge something to be cute, Kant says, the pleasance nosotros take in that judgment is ideally an "entirely disinterested satisfaction."

(It is worth recalling the difference between "disinterested" and "uninterested," words that are often mistakenly conflated. We can be very interested in cultivating disinterested satisfaction.)

The great oddity near artful judgment is that it provides satisfaction without the penalty exacted by want. This accounts both for its ability and for its limitation.

The power comes from the feeling of wholeness and integrity that a disinterested satisfaction involves. Pleasure without desire is pleasure unburdened by lack.

The limitation comes from the fact that, unburdened by lack, aesthetic pleasure besides is unmoored from reality.

Precisely because it is disinterested, there is something deeply subjective about artful pleasure. It tin even exist said that what we savor in aesthetic pleasure isn't an object only our state of listen. Kant spoke in this context of "the free play of the imagination and the understanding"—it is "free" because it is unconstrained by involvement or desire.

It's a curious fact that in his reflections on the nature of aesthetic judgment, Kant is merely incidentally interested in art. The examples of "pure dazzler" he provides are notoriously trivial: seashells, wallpaper, musical fantasies, architectural ornamentation.

Only Kant wasn't attempting to provide lessons in art appreciation. He was attempting to explicate the mechanics of gustatory modality. Information technology isn't surprising that the "Critique of Judgment" became an of import theoretical document for those interested in abstract art: on Kant'south view, the purest beauty was also the most formal.

Mutual Footing

There is, however, some other side to Kant'due south discussion of beauty. This has to do with the moral dimension of aesthetic judgment.

If the pleasure we take in the beautiful is subjective, Kant argued, it's however not subjective in the same manner that sensory pleasure is subjective. You lot like your steak well done, I like mine rare: that's a mere subjective preference.

But when it comes to the beautiful, Kant observes, we expect broad agreement. And this is considering we have organized religion that the performance of taste—that free play of the imagination and understanding—provides a mutual basis of judgment.

Nosotros cannot prove that a given object is cute, because the signal at issue isn't the object just the state of mind information technology occasions. Nevertheless, Kant says, we "woo" the agreement of anybody else, "because nosotros have for information technology a ground that is common to all."

Which is to say that judgments virtually the beautiful are in one sense subjective, but in another sense, they exhibit our common humanity.

The feeling of freedom and wholeness that artful feel imparts is thus not merely private only reminds u.s.a. of our vocation as moral beings.

In this context, Kant famously spoke of dazzler as being "the symbol of morality" because in aesthetic pleasure, "the heed is made conscious of a certain ennoblement and elevation." Thus, it is that although gustatory modality is "the kinesthesia of judging an object … by an entirely disinterested satisfaction" information technology is also "at bottom a kinesthesia for judging the sensible illustration of moral ideas."

It would exist paltering with the truth to say that Kant'south give-and-take in the "Critique of Judgment" is crystal clear. Merely it is certainly suggestive. Kant may take us no nearer to answering the question "What is art?"

Simply if he raises some doubts about the idea that "art is what you can get abroad with," our time pondering his thoughts won't take been wasted.

Roger Kimball is the editor and publisher of The New Criterion and publisher of Encounter Books. His most recent book is "Who Rules? Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Fate of Freedom in the 21st Century."

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Roger Kimball is the editor and publisher of The New Benchmark and publisher of See Books. His most recent book is "The Critical Temper: Interventions from The New Criterion at 40."

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