The find it beautiful, not the other way

In the presence of beautiful things, we are liberated from our base, human desires, and elevated to disinterested interest in something other thanourselves. Kant’s next dimensionof our aesthetic experience is the quantitative dimension. Kant thinks thatwhen we see something that we believe to be beautiful, we believe it to beuniversally and objectively so. When we experience the beauty of the sunset, our faculties are excited in such a way that we know anyone with the samefaculties in the same circumstance would also experience the sunset asbeautiful. Our faculties are freed by our own self-transcendence caused by thedisinterested interest we experience in the object, and the pleasure we feel isdue to the free-play of our faculties and imagination during the experience. Inother words, when we are moved to say, “ this is beautiful”, we don’t mean thatit is beautiful to us, or beautiful right now.

We mean that this is beautifulto everyone who is made like us, and we are willing to defend our beliefagainst someone who claims differently, often with the expectation that we willbe able to change the doubter’s mind. Francesco Belfiore in his book TheTriadic Structure of the Mind: Outlines of a Philosophical System assertsthat “ The aesthetic judgment is conceived as a sort of free play that, ratherthan according to definite concepts, would act in harmony with the general lawof understanding” (P. 269). This quantitative dimension of aesthetic experienceties in nicely with another dimension Kant names, which is modality. This isthe idea that something you find to be beautiful is necessarily so, and someonewho says they don’t find it beautiful isn’t seeing it correctly, or aren’tleaving themselves open to aesthetic experience. Next, Kant’s mostimportant dimension addresses the relation that we try to assign to beautifulthings. Objects of beauty cause us to recognize a certain purposive nature ofit; yet, we are unable to ever pinpoint the exact purpose of it.

Although our experience of the sublime initially causes us to feel atdanger in the world, it doesn’t end here, for Kant. At first, Kant’s view thatthe sublime causes us to feel that we don’t belong in the world seems to bequite the opposite of Kant’s view of beauty’s effect on us, but the two stillrelate. Kant thinks that in the face of the sublime we not only recognize howfragile life can be, but we also have a sense of the untouchable freedom thatlies within us. Although nature has the power to absolutely destroy you, it cannever touch your freedom. We are still free to confront the sublime in nature, even knowing its power over us.

In the experience ofour smallness, we are enlightened as to how great we really are. Therealization of our own freedom lifts us up above this world that can decimateus at any moment, but cannot touch our intellect and personal freedom. It isliberating to know that there is a certain dignity inside of us that isn’tthreatened by the sublime, although it threatens our physical existence. Although we may often feel alone, unsafe, or out of place in the world, it cannever rob us of our own freedom. Experiencing the sublime is an opportunity forus to recognize a certain dignity we have that can’t be taken away from us bynature’s might. And, for every ravenous tornado, there is an intrinsicallybeautiful flower that reminds of us our own ability to self-transcend our ownselfish interests, and reassures us that we do belong in this world, alongsidenature’s delicacies, as well as nature’s life-threatening sublime.