Aesthetics, Judgement and the Sensus Communis in Kant, Derrida and Since

Year 2024, Issue: 30, 32 - 43

Lewis Johnson

https://doi.org/10.56074/msgsusbd.1557973

Abstract

This article ofers an account of Jacques Derrida’s reading of Kant’s Critique of Judgement, drawing out its implication for an understanding of the signifcance of aesthetic judgement in Kant, and in general. It argues that strictures identifed by Derrida, concerning aesthetics and judgment, the role of analogy, instability in diferentiations of beauty and the sublime, in ideas of the parergon and problematics of the sensus communis, are interrelated. It indicates how such problematics recurred in Clement Greenberg’s Modernist accounts of painting, echoing displaced reiterations of aesthetic criteria in Kant’s articulation of the sensus communis and in analogical argumentation, concerning the theorisation of art, and judgements of beauty and the sublime. The article concludes by showing how readings of the sublime, by Jean-Luc Nancy, Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Rancière, and the beautiful, by Paul Guyer, fail to allow for the productive plurality of responses that Derrida’s reading suggests.

Keywords

Aesthetics, judgement, sensus communis, Kant, Derrida

Kant, Derrida ve Sonrasında Estetik, Yargı ve Sensus Communis

Abstract

Bu makale, Jacques Derrida'nın Kant'ın Yargı Yetisinin Eleştirisi okumasının bir açıklamasını sunmakta ve özelde Kant’ın felsefesinden olmak üzere genel olarak estetik yargıların öneminin anlaşılmasına yönelik çıkarımlar ortaya koymaktadır. Derrida'nın okumasında estetik ve yargı, analojinin rolü, güzel ve yüce ayrımlarındaki istikrarsızlık, parergon ve sensus communis ile ilgili olarak işaret ettiği sorunsalların birbiriyle ilişkili olduğunu savunmaktadır. Aynı zamanda, bu tür sorunsalların Clement Greenberg'in Modernist resim anlatılarında nasıl yinelendiğini, Kant'ın sensus communis ve sanatın kuramsallaştırılması yoluyla, güzel ve yüce yargılarıyla ilgili analojik argümantasyonda estetik kriterlerin yerinden edilmiş yinelemelerini yankıladığını göstermektedir. Makale bu iddiayı, Nancy, Lyotard ve Rancière'de yüce ve Paul Guyer’de güzelin Derrida'nın okumasının önerdiği üretken yanıt çoğulluğuna nasıl izin vermediğini göstererek sona ermektedir.

Keywords

Estetik, yargı, sensus communis, Kant, Derrida

Thanks

This is a revised version of a paper given at the Kant symposium The True, The Good, The Beautiful held at Mimar Sİnan Fine Arts University in April 2016. Thanks are due to all those who enabled this event and to those whose suggestions and queries I have sought to respond to.

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