Written by Jack Thomson (7 min read)
Introduction
Immanuel Kant distinguishes three faculties of knowledge, each made the subject of considerable analysis in three separate Critiques published between 1781 and 1790. The first, the Critique of Pure Reason, describes the objects of scientific cognition; the second, the Critique of Practical Reason, considers these same objects in relation to the ‘ends’ of practical or ethical reasoning, whilst the third, the Critique of Judgement, considers them in relation to the values of aesthetic judgement. Though these ways of knowing are distinct, Kant considered that practical reason in particular constituted their unifying principle. The connection between pure and practical reason has received much critical attention; here I shall discuss only the connection between practical and aesthetic judgement, in particular how this was better elucidated by the C20th philosopher of ethics and aesthetics Wilhelm Dilthey.
Ethics and aesthetics as disinterested
For Kant, practical reason, reasoning about what one ought to do, is perfected when an action is undertaken, not for the sake of some particular aim, but unconditionally, that is, for the sake of an absolute duty which he calls the categorical imperative. Supposing some ethical dilemma arose, Kant argued that the right course of action would have to be capable of being reproduced by anyone else in that situation. The unconditionally good ends of pure practical judgements are naturally disinterested with respect to context, otherwise they would be conditioned by personal desires and thus cease to be unconditional.
Aesthetic judgements are ideally disinterested in the same way. They are, for Kant, expressions of the contemplation of extant qualities. For this reason, Kant suggests that the imposition of subjective ‘ideas’ on aesthetic objects undermines aesthetic experience: it is better to remain detached and to allow the aesthetic object to reveal its own depth of aesthetic intelligibility. The point of connection between pure practical judgements and aesthetic judgements is precisely this disengagement of the subject with respect to the object — be this an aesthetic object or a particular end for which to act besides the categorical imperative.
Whilst pure practical judgments are disinterested, Kant specifies that they may well be interesting in the sense of being rationally, perhaps aesthetically compelling without being personally compelling. Thus, whereas aesthetic judgement is entirely passive, the categorical imperative is a genuine motive for practical judgment and action, albeit an unconditional one.
How disinterestedness divides ethics and aesthetics into an intellectual and sensible component
This connection can be better understood — and in making this argument I draw upon the recent work of Professor Jacob Phillips (University of St Mary’s, Twickenham) — with the connection Wilhelm Dilthey drew between the ‘enhancement and expansion of one’s existence’ in aesthetic experience that arises from Kantian disinterestedness, and the heightened ‘volitional activity’ in courageous actions, arising from unconditionally motivated actions. In both aesthetic and practical judgment, Dilthey observes, there is the expansion of the personality by virtue of disinterestedness: it is not simply that the pure objects of both forms of judgment draw us out of our subjectivity, but that our subjectivity is shown to be intimately rooted in reality and thus entirely capable of constituting reality — and this way of expressing the situation is far closer to Kant’s own formulation of the relation between the subject and the object as this is presented in the ‘Transcendental Deduction’ of the first Critique.
The problem, for Dilthey, is that Kant’s insistence on ‘pure’ practical and aesthetic reasoning, his sharp separation of the rational process that lends itself to disinterestedness and the aesthetic or practical experience as such, makes it impossible to relate the subject and the object positively, in the manner that Kant had done in the first Critique. Whereas Kant had defended there the radical thesis that it was not the mind that conformed to the object, but objects that conform to human ways of knowing, thereby indicating a natural and necessary affinity between subjectivity and objectivity, it seems in the second and third Critiques that the subject is rather obtrusive of objective aesthetic and practical judgments.
Dilthey on the unity of thought and sensation in ethical and aesthetic experience
Dilthey considered that the kind of necessity that we associate with disinterestedness cannot be an ‘add-on’ to experience but must be poised by experience itself. Consider, for instance, an extreme ethical dilemma such as the call to martyrdom — to die for one’s faith or one’s country, or simply to give one’s life for another. Such actions could never be absolute duties binding on everybody, first, because they are characterised as acts of love or charity, which are incompatible with duty; second, because the circumstances under which individuals are called to such actions are highly variable and incapable of generalisation (survey, for instance the diversity of the lives of the countless martyrs for the Catholic faith); third, because the realisation of the call to action is not an independent rational process but occurs ‘in the moment’, and not everyone placed in that moment would experience the same sense that they were called to act. Dilthey terms this kind of necessity that emerges in the moment as ‘having-to-be-thus’ (Sosein-Müssen). It means to convey that experience is constituted by activities ‘deeply bound-up with human “form” or Gestalt’: it cannot be divided up by the intellect into an intellectual and sensible component, as Kant taught, but the two must be constituted by a ‘characteristic unity’.
Poetry is a striking example of this. The aesthetic impression it leaves on the reader is not purely intellectual but is thoroughly bound up with the poet’s own subjectivity, that is, the way the Gestalt of the world appeared to him. The objective of poetry is to come to see the world through the eyes of another. Thus the intellectual and the sensible, the objective and the subjective, are inseparable in aesthetics. Disinterestedness is no longer a purely intellectual phenomenon; it is the call to enhance one’s own perspective through alternative viewpoints.
Having-to-be-thus, as a paradigm of the necessity that is baked into certain experiences, discounting which those experiences are misunderstood, is clearly a point of commonality between aesthetics and ethics. Dilthey is able to say that such experiences are disinterested, in the sense of being necessary, without sacrificing the experiencing subject for which that necessity arises and for whom it is in fact personally compelling.
Beyond absolute duty?
Whilst it is arguable that ethical imperatives are seen as originating in contexts and communicating something which must be done here and now, and whilst Dilthey correctly saw Kant’s sharp separation of thought and sensation as an obstacle to this, this view in its present form does not support the ethics of absolute duties that Kant envisioned. It remains an open question whether there are circumstances that permit the genuine universalisability of an experience of having-to-be-thus. This appears impossible at first, since we associate universalisability with abstraction from experience. However, this only shows that Dilthey continues to separate universal and particular in the traditional manner, as one would separate thought and sensation. If it could be shown that the universal and particular subsist together in the present moment of experience, an ethics of universal dictums would be possible without abstracting from experience.
Further Reading
Wilhem Dilthey. Selected Works II, ed. Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi. NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Immanuel Kant. Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
_____________ Critique of Judgement, trans. Werner Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hacket, 1987.
Jacob Phillips. “’Having to be thus’: On Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s reading of Goethe’s Iphegenia in Tauris”. Literature and Theology. August 2020.
Beyond the Text 