same volume, in which he accurately states: “The most influential part of Kant’s theory
of aesthetic value concerns the notion of beauty, which he treats as applying primarily to
natural objects and only secondarily to works of art. However, he considers the value of
a work of fine art to depend not only on its beauty, but also on its being the vehicle for
aesthetic ideas,” which “‘body forth to sense’ empirical notions such as love, death and
fame, but ‘with a completeness of which nature affords no parallel.’” Companion to
Aesthetics, 250. More recently, James Shelley has succinctly observed: “A steady diet of
nothing but Kant’s ‘Analytic [of the Beautiful],’ which contains next to nothing about art,
is partly responsible, I think, for the prevalence of the view that Kant is a formalist with
respect to art” (review of The Nature of Art: An Anthology, ed. Thomas Wartenberg
[Wadsworth, 2001], ASA Newsletter, Spring 2004). Similarly, in the view of Kant schol-
ars Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer: “[T]he most compelling parts of Kant’s analysis are
directed at objects of nature, and this has made it singularly difficult for contemporary
theorists to assimilate [his] work, for they have read these passages as if [he] were talk-
ing about art. Only very recently has the philosophy of art begun to... integrate [his]
actual insights about art rather than simply contend with his claims for the superiority of
natural beauty.” “Introduction to Kant’s Aesthetics,” in George Dickie, Richard Sclafani,
and Ronald Roblin, eds., Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology, New York: St. Martins’s
Press, 1989, 309–310; reprinted from Essays in Kant’s Aesthetics, Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1982.- Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement[1790], tr. J.H. Bernard (2nd ed., rev.,
1914), §49 in Theodore M. Greene, ed., Kant: Selections, New York: Scribner’s, 1957,
426, italics in original. As Halliwell argues, in the sections of the Critiquethat do deal
with the fine arts “Kant not only admits the involvement of concepts in the experience
of those arts but treats them in a way that falls within the terms of the mimeticist tradi-
tion” (Aesthetics of Mimesis, 10). In the same tradition, Hegel maintained that the pur-
pose of art was “revealing the truthin the form of sensuous artistic shape”—although he
confused the issue by treating architecture as one of the “fine arts,” albeit the least “spir-
itual” (see more on architecture in note 11 below). Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics,
tr. Bernard Bosanquet and ed. Michael Inwood, London: Penguin, 1993, 61, 90–92. - Kant, ibid., 429. On Plato’s view of mimetic art, see Halliwell, Aesthetics of
Mimesis, ch. 4, “More than Meets the Eye: Looking into Plato’s Mirror.” Regarding
Aristotle’s view of mimesis in poetry (and, by extension, in the other arts), Halliwell
writes: “Poetic fictions offer (or should do [so]... ) more than the simulation of ordi-
nary particulars in the world, because they are constructed in unified patterns of proba-
bility or necessity. In this respect, there is more of the universal visible in them, and they
are accordingly more intelligible.... [P]oetic structures of action will seem to make bet-
ter or richer sensethan much actual experience does” (ibid., 200, emphasis in original). - In tracing the genesis of the concept of the “fine arts” in his landmark essay
“The Modern System of the Arts,” Paul Oskar Kristeller regrettably downplayed the
importance of the ancient concept of the mimetic arts. On his errors of both fact and
interpretation, see What Art Is, 420 note 18 and 421 note 22. Halliwell, too, finds fault
with Kristeller’s account; see Aesthetics of Mimesis, 7–9. Further, he argues (13–14 and
elsewhere) that the standard practice of translating mimesisand mimeticas “imitation”
and “imitative” is wholly inadequate to convey the richness and complexity of the con-
cept. On this point, see also Göran Sörbom, “The Classical Concept of Mimesis,” in Paul
Smith and Carolyn Wilde, eds., A Companion to Art Theory, Oxford: Blackwell, 2002
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/smithwilde1.pdf. On the exclusion of archi-
202 Notes to Pages 40–41