Kant & Music

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Student: Alan Quinn

Student Number: 110706107

Lecturer: Dr Julia Jansen

Title: Kant and Music

Module: PH6023: Western Aesthetics

DATE: 10/01/2014

Word Count: 4,957

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Herbert Schueller credits Kant with being ‘the first

philosopher of the modern Western World to incorporate a

theory of the arts into his general philosophical scheme, and

also the first to include a theory of music as an integral

part of this system’ (Schueller, p. 218). However, although

Kant included a theory of music in his system it occupies a

confusing position in his analysis of aesthetics, so in this

essay I’m going to investigate whether music can be classed as

beautiful art within the aesthetic system devised by Kant,

specifically in his seminal work the Critique of Judgment (1790). He

seems to allow for beauty in music but, ‘it has a very

uncertain hold on its place as a beautiful art, situated in

the gap between the beautiful and the agreeable, and

confounding the distinction between form and content’ (Arden

Reed, qtd. in Weatherston, p. 56). The investigation

essentially comes down to whether music is classed as

beautiful or merely agreeable and in order to decide this it

will be necessary to do two things. Firstly I will describe

and explain the fundamental ideas involved in the Critique of

Judgement focusing on book one, the ‘Analytic of the

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Beautiful’, as this is an analysis of ‘what’s required in

order to call an object beautiful’ (Kant, 1987, p. 43). This

section is more relevant to the question at hand, and it also

includes the four ‘moments’ that will provide the analysis for

the judgement of taste; it’s worth noting here that a judgment

of taste is equivalent to a judgment of the beautiful. These

‘moments’ are intrinsic to Kant’s system and are the tools he

uses ‘to work out his aesthetics as a whole’ (Wenzell, p. 10).

Secondly, having shown what’s required in order to call an

object beautiful, I will examine music within the text with a

view to determining whether it qualifies. Kant wrote very

little about music as such and to detail suitable examples

here I will also need to refer to book two ‘The Analytic of

the Sublime’. I will argue that what he did write about music

shows it to be an agreeable as opposed to a beautiful art.

This isn’t clear cut however as Kant’s conception of music can

be hard for the reader to pin down, evidenced by the following

quote from Herman Parret: ‘Kant praises music as an art of

form, and he condemns it as a mere play of sensations. He

values it highly from the standpoint of "charm" and "mental

agitation", but rejects it from the point of view of culture

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and reason’ (Parret, p. 255). There are sections in book one

that strongly suggest that music is a beautiful art, however

when Kant’s system is examined as a whole I feel that it fails

to qualify and I will attempt to show why. I will then

conclude by examining an alternative conception of music,

specifically in reference to its form. The reason for

addressing this is due to a commonly held belief that ‘Kant

knew little about music and was not interested in it’

(Schueller, p. 218), and that he didn’t classify music as a

beautiful art due to his ‘almost complete ignorance of music

as an art, including the larger elements of musical form’

(Peter Kivy, qtd. in, Bickell, p. 258). However although Kant

may have held an incorrect conception of music’s form, I feel

that that this doesn’t have a significant impact on his

overall system, and if we were to substitute Kant’s conception

of music with an ‘improved’ version the impact to his system

would be minimal due to the fact that his ‘conception of music

has limited intrinsic importance. Rather, it serves a

heuristic goal in allowing us to better understand his

aesthetics in its totality’ (Parret, p. 251).

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The Critique of Judgement is generally regarded as ‘the

foundational treatise in modern philosophical aesthetics and

its importance and influence is still evident today’

(Crawford, p. 51); in which he describes the a priori

principle that provides the basis for a judgment of taste. His

philosophical theory of beauty therefore rests on the mind’s

faculty of judgment, and the a priori principle involved in a

judgment of beauty Kant calls ‘purposiveness’. The need for an

a priori principle for Kant is due to his belief that

judgments of beauty are necessarily universal but neither

objective nor merely subjective; they interact with the

objective and subjective but neither can provide the true

foundation for the judgment. This foundation comes from an

intrinsic human principle, which is the aforementioned a

priori principle of ‘purposiveness’. Christian Wenzell

describes the relation between the judging subject and the

object being judged ‘as a relation that is reflected in the

judgement of taste itself, or in some act that underlies that

judgement; avoiding the subjective and objective extremes’

(Wenzell, p. 2); the judgment described here derives from

‘purposiveness’. The reason a judgement of beauty can’t be

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objective, according to Kant, is that it’s the judging subject

that experiences pleasure in the object, and its beauty can’t

be inferred on to the object as there are no objective

criteria for beauty, if there were then disputes over what

does or doesn’t qualify as beautiful could be decided

scientifically by referring to these criteria and Kant doesn’t

believe that there can be a science of the aesthetics.

However, although there is a subjective element in the

judgment of beauty it isn’t a mere matter of personal opinion;

Kant argues that someone claiming an object is beautiful is

making a normative claim on everyone else’s agreement because

‘judgments of beauty, unlike judgments of the merely

agreeable, are not only expressions of the individual’s liking

for the object but are, in Kant’s terms “universally valid”;

therefore someone who judges an object to be beautiful speaks

with a “universal voice”’ (Wenzell, p. 7). This refers to

Kant’s theory of ‘subjective universality’ which is a

necessary effect of the a priori principle of ‘purposiveness’.

I will now examine both in more detail while describing the

‘four moments of a judgment of taste’.

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Kant is interested in the analysis of the judgement of taste

as he wants to discover what’s required for calling an object

beautiful. The ‘Analytic of the Beautiful’ is made up of a

description of the four moments that will provide this

analysis and therefore illustrate what’s required for calling

an object beautiful. The use of the term ‘moment’ here doesn’t

just refer to a moment in time, it denotes more of a ‘decisive

circumstance, or influence’ (Wenzell, p. 13). The four

‘moments’ are ‘disinterestedness, universality, purposiveness

and necessity’ (Wenzell, p. 10), and these are the causal

activities which essentially give life to the judgement of

taste. Kant refers to them as being what ‘judgement takes into

consideration when it reflects’ (Kant, 1987, p. 43). The

reflective judgement Kant mentions here is an ‘indeterminate

judgement that does not begin with a determinate concept, nor

conclude by forming a concept’ (Burnham, p. 186), an example

of which is an aesthetic judgment as it doesn’t conclude by

forming a concept, it essentially reflects for the sake of

reflection, this relates to the first moment of a judgement of

taste which is ‘disinterestedness’.

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The explication of the beautiful inferred from the first

moment is that ‘taste is the ability to judge an object or a

way of presenting it, by means of a liking or disliking devoid

of all interest; the object of such a liking is called

beautiful’ (Kant, 1987, p. 53). Therefore the first moment of

a judgment of taste, ‘disinterestedness’ is the cause, and a

person’s liking, or disliking, of an object that they have

reflected on is the effect which has derived from this cause.

However for the object to qualify as beautiful this liking or

disliking has to be ‘devoid of all interest’ hence

‘disinterestedness’. To explain what he means here Kant

describes three different ways of liking; the first way is

what I have just described, one that is devoid of all

interest, this type of liking is necessary for a judgment of

taste and the object of this type of judging is called

beautiful. The second and third types are a ‘liking for the

agreeable’ (Kant, 1987, p. 47) and a ‘liking for the good’

(Kant, 1987, p. 48), both of which are ‘connected with

interest’ and therefore the object being judged in both cases

cannot be classed as beautiful as the reason for the liking is

separate from the object itself and based on a conception of

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something that can be gained from the object. A liking for the

agreeable is of most interest here, as deciding whether music

can be classed as beautiful essentially comes down to whether

it’s classed as a liking for the beautiful or a liking for the

agreeable. A liking for the agreeable includes an interest in

the object as it will provide gratification; this liking rests

entirely on sensation whereas a liking for the beautiful rests

on reflection. An example of a liking for the good is an

interest in the moral good ‘which carries with it the highest

interest’ (Kant, p. 51). What Kant means by the term

‘connected with interest’ is that the objects being judged in

both the liking for the agreeable and the liking for the good

are objects that are liked for a purpose or a gain of some

sort, the judging subject has an interest in them because of

this. Our liking for the beautiful however ‘does not require

that we take it to fulfil any goal or purpose; nor does it

intrinsically involve the arousal and satisfaction of desire

for the object’ (Ginsborg, p. 330), because a judgment of

taste is an aesthetic judgement that refers the content of the

object experienced back solely to the judging subject, it’s

‘indifferent to the existence of the object’ (Kant, 1987, p.

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51), and only relates the object to a feeling of pleasure or

displeasure.

The second moment is ‘universality’. The explication of the

good inferred from the second moment is ‘beautiful is what,

without a concept is liked universally’ (Kant, p. 64). The

phrase ‘without a concept’ is linked to the first moment of

‘disinterestedness. If an object is judged by means of its

concept then it’s a cognitive judgment and the judging subject

has an interest in it meaning that it can’t be a liking for

the beautiful. The fact that this liking is universal

introduces Kant’s theory of ‘subjective universality’ and also

lays the foundation for the a priori principle of

‘purposiveness’ in the third moment. ‘The domain of the

universality is the domain of all possible judging subjects’

(Wenzell, p. 11), and for an object to be beautiful it must be

liked universally. Kant argues that ‘if someone likes

something and is conscious that they do so without any

interest, then they cannot help judging that it must contain a

basis for being liked that holds for everyone’ (Kant, 1987, p.

54). To like something without interest an individual judging

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subject will be unable to discover any personal reason for

this liking, no private conditions specific to them because it

isn’t a liking based on any inclination; ‘the judging person

feels completely free as regards the liking he accords the

object’ (Kant, 1987, p. 54). The liking is ‘free’ because it

isn’t connected to any concept of, or need for, the object

being reflected on; this is contemplation for the sake of

contemplation. Therefore there is a belief that it’s justified

to require a similar liking from everyone else as even though

the judgment is subjective the reasons for the judgment have

no foundation in the unique nature of the individual. This is

only true of judgments in the beautiful, as in a judgment in

the agreeable the individual will recognise an interest in the

object which is one of personal choice, this does have a

foundation in the unique nature of the individual, one which

the individual is aware needn’t necessarily be shared by all.

Flavours provide a good example here, someone who likes the

flavour of wasabi for example doesn’t feel justified to

require a similar liking from everyone else, and this is

therefore a judgment of the agreeable. Kant states however

that ‘the judgement of taste itself does not postulate

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everyone’s agreement’ (Kant, 1987, p. 60), so this claim to

subjective universality is a normative one, everyone should

agree with my judgement of taste whenever I make one. To

conclude the second moment it’s worth reiterating that even

though the terminology used regarding beauty makes it sound

like it takes the form of a conceptual judgement, for example

‘we speak of beauty ”as if it were a property of things” and

say “the thing is beautiful”’ (Crawford, p. 53-55), the

judgment of taste is without concept.

The third moment is the a priori principle of ‘purposiveness’,

and the explication of the beautiful inferred from the third

moment is that ’Beauty is an object’s form of purposiveness

insofar as it is perceived in the object without the

presentation of a purpose’ (Kant, 1987, p. 84). This third

Moment aims to explain the foundational catalyst of a

judgement of taste which is at the core of Kant’s aesthetics.

‘Purposiveness’ is the a priori principle possessed by all

judging subjects which is necessary for the ‘subjective

universality’ described in the second moment. However

‘purposiveness’ is commonly thought of as ‘a property of a

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thing or action by which it appears to be a means to some

further purpose’ (Burnham, p. 186), but in this case Kant

paradoxically describes the a priori principle as having

‘purposiveness without a purpose’ (Kant, 1987, p. 65). This is

a difficult concept to explain, to say that an object has a

purpose is to say ‘that the concept of it being the way it is

and having the form it has came first and is the cause of its

existence. For example the knife’s form makes sense because we

understand what it is supposed to be; it has a purpose’

(Crawford, p. 55). However to judge something as beautiful

it’s form can’t be judged as having a purpose as this would be

something that’s connected with interest, either by providing

gratification through sensation or some utility. In a judgment

of taste then we can find an object to be purposive in its

form even though we don’t see it as having a definite purpose.

Before moving on it’s worth re-clarifying ‘purposiveness

without a purpose’ in more simplistic terms. A liking for

something because of the gratification it gives, for example a

bar of chocolate, is a liking for the agreeable because there

is an interest due to the taste and pleasing sensation of

eating it. A liking for something due to a concept of that

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thing, for example a to do what’s morally right, is a liking

in the good as an understanding of the concept of what’s

morally good compels someone to a liking of it; as in a

judgment of taste this is universal but the difference is that

it is based on a concept. In a liking for the beautiful

however, there are no interests or concepts attracting someone

to the object, no reasons that could be given to justify the

liking, but there is nonetheless an inexplicable attraction or

urge to experience the beautiful object; It’s ‘purposiveness’

that causes this urge and it’s intrinsic to all judging

subjects but there are no interests involved, we merely find

the object purposive for aesthetic contemplation; therefore

the ‘purposiveness’ is without purpose, a liking for beautiful

entails a reflection on the object and contemplation for the

sake of contemplation. This contemplation isn’t random

however, the object is being judged as it ought to be judged,

and not just by the judging subject in question but by all

judging subjects.

The fourth moment is necessity, and the explication of the

beautiful inferred from the fourth moment is that ‘beautiful

is what without a concept is cognised as the object of a

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necessary liking’ (Kant, 1987, p. 90). The second and third

moments ‘are the essential ones and constitute the main result

of Kant’s analysis’ (Wenzell, p. 11), and effectively whenever

the conditions of the first three moments are met an object is

necessarily judged as beautiful. The ‘necessary liking’ that

Kant refers to here is a normative form of necessity, in that

although a liking for the beautiful is universally valid not

everyone who perceives the object will share the liking and

agree with the judgment, but they ought to. This necessity

isn’t based on concepts, Kant argues that it isn’t a

theoretical or practical necessity, because we can’t prove

that everyone will share the same liking or should act in a

specific way, but an ‘exemplary’ (Kant, 1987, p. 85)

necessity. He defines this as ‘a necessity of the assent of

everyone to a judgement that is regarded as an example of a

universal rule that we are unable to state (Kant, 1987, p.

87). The condition required for this necessity, according to

Kant is the idea of ‘common sense’; this is a ‘subjective

principle which determines only by feeling rather than

concepts, though nonetheless with universal validity, what is

liked or disliked’ (Kant, 1987, p. 87); he maintains that

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judgments of taste can only be made under such a

presupposition. To summarise thus far, Kant wants to build an

aesthetic philosophy and in doing so the main discovery he

makes in his analysis of the judgement of taste is that there

is an a priori principle that belongs to our powers of

judgement, the importance of which can be seen in the

following quote from section 8:

‘The special characteristic of an aesthetic

judgement of reflection, the universality to be

found in judgements of taste, is a remarkable

feature, not indeed for the logician but certainly

for the transcendental philosopher. This

universality requires a major effort on his part

if he is to discover its origin, but it

compensates him for this by revealing to him a

property of our cognitive power which without this

analysis would have remained unknown’ (Kant, 1987,

p. 213).

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Now that I have explained the fundamentals of Kant’s

aesthetics I will use them to address the question of the

essay, whether music qualifies as a beautiful art. What it

boils down to is whether music is beautiful or merely

agreeable, and as we’ve seen for it to be beautiful the

judgment of taste involved must be devoid of all interest,

without concept, universally liked and purposive without a

purpose; an ultimately decisive factor though will be Kant’s

perception of the form of music. The importance of form is

evidenced in this quote from book Two: ‘In all beautiful art

the essential thing is the form, which is purposive as regards

our observation and judgment’ (Kant, 1914, p. 214). I will now

show with examples from the text that music fails to meet

these requirements and therefore merely qualifies as an

agreeable art. In book one Kant’s description of music

arguably seems to qualify it as a beautiful art; he refers to

tones as being pure, stating that ‘sensations of tone claim to

deserve being considered beautiful only insofar as they are

pure. And that is an attribute that already concerns form’

(Kant, 1987, p. 70). Therefore tones deserve to be considered

beautiful if they are pure; however he refers to ‘sensations

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of tone’, and if tones merely appealed to sensation then they

would be empirical aesthetic judgments based on sense and

wouldn’t qualify, as ‘only pure aesthetic judgments, since

they are formal, are properly judgments of taste’ (Kant, 1987,

p. 69). In other words, to qualify the judgment needs to be

based purely on the form of the object being judged, in this

case the tone, and not on any pleasure derived from the senses

like emotion, as this would be connected with interest and be

a liking for the agreeable. It isn’t completely clear at this

stage if tone is sufficient but he seems to clarify things

later in the same section by claiming that ‘tone would not be

mere sensations but would already be the formal determination

of the manifold in these, in which case they could even by

themselves be considered beauties’ (Kant, 1987, p.71). This

suggests that tones are considered pure beauties as they’re not

‘mere sensations’, and he goes further in section sixteen by

claiming that all music not set to words may be included as

examples of free beauty, he develops this by claiming that

‘when we judge free beauty then our judgement of taste is

pure’ (Kant, 1987, p.77). Free beauty implies

disinterestedness, with no recognition of the music involving

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a concept or satisfying a need or purpose, it’s a judgment

based purely on the object’s form. Based on this it seems

rational to claim that both music generally and individual

tones qualify as examples of beautiful arts, with Kant clearly

referring to tones as examples of pure beauty, and music (at

least not set to words) as an example of free beauty. However

book two provides a different view.

Kant only really refers to music in sections 51-54 of book

two. In section 51 he classifies the beautiful arts in a

tentative scheme corresponding to ‘three kinds of expression:

the arts of speech, the formative arts, and the art of the

beautiful play of sensations’ (Kant, 1914, p. 207-213).

However even after doing this the position of music is still

unclear. He places music in the third category of the

‘beautiful play of sensations’ and investigates the question

of whether music tones1 can be beautiful, but he doesn’t come

to a conclusion as such, and he ends the section by stating

that the definition of music differs depending on whether ‘we

must explain it as the beautiful play of sensations, or as a

play of pleasant sensations; according to the former music is

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represented altogether as a beautiful art; according to the

latter, as a pleasant art’ (Kant, 1914, p. 213). Even though

he has placed music in ‘the beautiful play of sensations’

category it’s still unclear at this stage whether it actually

qualifies as such, the implication in book one that it’s both

free and pure would suggest that it falls in the former

category but Kant himself appears indecisive here. The

footnote on this section seems to allude to this by Kant

stating that ‘the reader is not to judge this scheme for a

possible division of the beautiful arts as a deliberate

theory’ (Kant, 1914, p. 207). In section 53 he compares the

respective aesthetical worth of the beautiful arts and makes

the confusing claims that tone ‘has less worth than any other

of the beautiful arts.’ (Kant, 1914, p. 217) and music has

‘the lowest place among them because it merely plays with

sensations’ (Kant, 1914, p. 219); both of which would suggest

that although music may have the lowest place among the

beautiful arts that it is nonetheless a beautiful art. However

in the same paragraph he classifies music as ‘perhaps the

highest among those arts which are valued for their

pleasantness’ (Kant, 1914, p. 219) and it is from this point

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on that it becomes clearer that Kant’s conception of music is

that of an agreeable as opposed to a beautiful art. He expands

on this in section 54 suggesting that the pleasure derived

from music is merely sensory, essentially providing a vehicle

for pleasing sensations and consisting of ‘a feeling of bodily

health brought about by the lively alternation of the various

emotions it arouses, and comparing it to the telling of jokes,

claiming that both deserve to be considered more as agreeable

arts than as beautiful arts (Ginsborg, p. 336). So the

judgment involved in music’s case isn’t based purely on its

form but on the pleasure derived from the senses which as

we’ve seen are connected with interest and to a liking for the

agreeable. Overall music in the Critique of Judgment gives a sense

of being devalued due to the fact that it ‘continually

oscillates back and forth between the agreeable and the

beautiful’ (Parret, p. 254) and he has received a level of

criticism for this. The main criticism however is that it’s

his misconception of music’s form stops him for classing it as

a beautiful art and I will now examine the reasons for this

argument.

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We have seen the importance of the form of an object in Kant’s

aesthetics, and the reason music doesn’t qualify as a

beautiful art is mainly due his belief that the judgment of

music is not purely formal but based on pleasure derived from

the senses, making it an agreeable art form. The main problem

is that music is commonly perceived as relying on form for its

existence, its formal nature is intrinsic to it. Martin

Weatherston criticises Kant’s analysis of music as being

‘inadequate and moving from the initial transcendental

analysis towards a conception of music that is increasingly

both personal and implausible2, and his rejection of form in

music is unsatisfactory’ (Weatherston, p. 63). Weatherston

believes that when taking pleasure from music that the charms

of sensation can be put aside to allow solely for a reflection

of music’s form, as it is the form that is purposive in

creating the music, therefore allowing the judging subject to

take pleasure in its beauty. Kant however rejects the

possibility of deriving pleasure from music’s formal

structure, rather viewing it a series of pleasing tones. While

he doesn’t deny that form is a fundamental part of music he

claims that ‘while the effect of music is dependent upon the

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mathematical relationships of the tones, the appeal of music

lies in the meaningless succession of intense and varied

aesthetic ideas’ (Weatherston, p. 62). In other words he

admits the integral nature of mathematical relations but

denies the possibility of solely judging music’s formal

nature, feeling that this is overwhelmed by the ‘succession of

affects that the harmony and melody produce’ (Weatherston, p.

63). Kant seems to be of the opinion the mathematics only

controls the transition of individual tones, which is the

change from one tone to the next within a musical composition,

so the form only covers these individual moments of

transition. Weatherston argues that this is a mistaken view

of musical form which if corrected would change music’s

classification. He claims that ‘if we can perceive formal

relations over a stretch of time, as anyone who is not

completely unmusical indeed can, we have a clear case for

music being a beautiful art’ (Weatherston, p. 63).

So in conclusion music can’t be classed as a beautiful art

within the aesthetic system devised by Kant if you use Kant’s

conception of music, but it may well be possible by using a

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different conception, like Weatherston’s. However in the

greater scheme of Kant’s philosophical system I feel that

music is of little importance. Music wasn’t of primary concern

to Kant and his assessment of it plays a minor role, as

illustrated by the limited number of references to music in

the text. And although his appraisal of music has the

‘reputation of being the least satisfactory of all the arts,

the truth is that his theory of literature or painting,

scrutinized as his theory of music has been, is little better

and no less shallow’ (Schueller, p. 219). This is because

Kant’s interest was in an analysis of the judgment of taste,

not in developing a philosophy of art and therefore his

treatment of the arts in general is marginal and not meant to

be taken as a deliberate theory; evidence of which is found in

section 51 where he states that his classification of the arts

‘is only one of various attempts which we may and ought to

devise’ (Kant, 1914, p. 207). Whatever Kant’s view on music

his philosophical analysis of aesthetics was hugely

influential, impacting on the later theories of the likes of ‘

Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, as well as encompassing

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many of the aesthetic issues still discussed energetically

today’ (Crawford, p.63).

Endnotes

1. He invariably discusses tones and colours together

throughout the Critique of judgement, but for the purpose

of the essay it is only tones that are relevant,

therefore references to colours have been left out.

2. An example of Kant’s conception of music becoming both

personal and implausible can be found in section 53 when

he discusses ‘music’s want of urbanity’ (Kant, 1914, p.

220).

Works Cited

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Bicknell, Jeanette. 2002. Can Music Convey Semantic Content? A

Kantian Approach. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,

60, 3: 253-261.

Crawford, Donald W. 2000. ‘Kant’, in Berys Gaut and Dominic

McIver Lopes (eds), The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics.

Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 51-64.

Ginsborg, Hannah. 2011. ‘Kant’, in Theodore Gracyk and Andrew

Kania (eds), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music.

Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 328-338.

Kant, Immanuel. 1987. Critique Of Judgement: Translated, with

an Introduction, by Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett

Publishing Company.

Parret, Herman. 1998. Kant on Music and the Hierarchy of the

Arts. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 56, 3: 251-

264.

Schueller, Herbert M. 1955. Immanuel Kant and the Aesthetics

of Music. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 14, 2,

Second Special Issue on Baroque Style in Various Arts: 218-

247.

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Weatherston, Martin. 1996. Kant’s Assessment of Music in the

Critique of Judgement. British Journal of Aesthetics, 36, 1:

56-65.

Wenzel, Christian Helmut. 2005. An Introduction to Kant’s

Aesthetics: Core Concepts and Problems. Malden: Blackwell

Publishing.