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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 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
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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 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).

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
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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 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’.

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
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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 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. 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

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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 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

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.
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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 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

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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 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

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
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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 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).

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
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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 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
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disinterestedness, with no recognition of the music involving 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 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
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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 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.

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
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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 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).

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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

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 many of the aesthetic issues still discussed energetically today’ (Crawford,

p.63).
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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

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.

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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.

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.