is also in no way practical, neither like that from the pathological ground of
agreeableness nor like that from the intellectual ground of the represented
good. But yet it has a causality in itself, namely that ofmaintainingthe state of
the representation of the mind and the occupation of the cognitive powers
without a further aim. Welingerover the consideration of the beautiful
because this consideration strengthens and reproduces itself...^19Though Kant’s terminology may be difficult, the experience he is describing is a
familiar one. Beautiful objects of nature or art engage our attention. Weenjoy
them in paying active, cognitive attention to them, even if we acquire from
them neither definite theoretical knowledge of nature nor material goods nor
mere (passively received) pleasant sensations. As Martin Seel puts it, building on
Kant, we enjoy“an animated intertwinement of aspects”in the beautiful object
of nature or art, where, as in Kant, one of the central effects of this enjoyment is
the enlivening of our powers of attention:“we sense ourselves listening and
seeing and feeling”and soareconfirmedtoourselves assubjects inpossession of
attentive powers.^20 Or as Roger Scruton puts it,“beauty is always a reason for
attendingtothethingthat possesses it.”^21 A“presented form”manifestingitself
“through the senses to the mind”may either occur in nature or be made
intentionally by an artist in such a way that experience of it invites and sustains
continuing, free, imaginative exploration of its meaning.^22 This imaginative
exploration of presented form neither yields a definite cognition nor collapses
into free fantasy: the form itself holds our attention.^23
The experience of successful art then combines, according to Kant, the
experience of natural beauty with the invigorating experience of the natural
sublime.^24 In stemming from genius,“the talent (natural gift) that gives the
rule to art,”^25 the successful work of art is necessarily original. It proceeds
(^19) Ibid., §12, p. 107.
(^20) Martin Seel,Aesthetics of Appearing, trans. John Farrell (Stanford University Press, 2005),
pp. 29, 31.
(^21) Roger Scruton,Beauty(Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 6.
(^22) Ibid., pp. 26, 25. (^23) Ibid., pp. 104–07.
(^24) Kirk Pillow has argued persuasively that the work of art is seen by Kant as having a sublime
content–anindeterminatelylargeandnot quitewhollyunified fundofideas,emotions, and
attitudes that challenges the imagination in attempting to trace and presentit–somehow
coherently housed within a beautiful form. See Kirk Pillow, Sublime Understanding
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), especially chapter 3,“Sublime Understanding.”
(^25) Kant,Critique, trans. Guyer and Matthews, §46, p. 186.
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