Beyond the Pleasure Principle: A Kantian Aesthetics of Autonomy

RESEARCH ARTICLE Beyond the Pleasure Principle: A Kantian Aesthetics of Autonomy Dominic McIver Lopes University of British Columbia, CA [email protected] Aesthetic hedonism is the view that to be aesthetically good is to please. For most aesthetic hedonists, aesthetic normativity is hedonic normativity. This paper argues that Kant’s third Critique contains resources for a nonhedonic account of aesthetic normativity as sourced in autonomy as self-legislation. A case is made that the account is also Kant’s because it ties his aesthetics into a key theme of his larger philosophy. Keywords: aesthetic; autonomy; beauty; Kant; normativity; pleasure You should appreciate the Plumen 001 light bulb. Why? Well, it is beautiful. A theory of aesthetic normativity should answer a further question: Why does any item’s being beautiful lend weight to the proposition that you should appreciate it? Until recently, the further question has rarely been made explicit. Its answer is too obvious, given the default theory of aesthetic value, aesthetic hedonism. According to aesthetic hedonism, to be beautiful is, roughly, to have properties that ground pleasure in suitable conditions.1 An aesthetic hedonist may easily add that an item’s grounding pleasure lends weight to the proposition that you should appreciate it simply because anyone has reason to get pleasure. As obvious as it may be, some nevertheless dissent from the hedonic theory of aesthetic normativity.2 This paper argues that resources are to be found in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment for a distinctively Kantian, nonhedonic theory of aesthetic normativity, one on which the source of aesthetic normativity is autonomy, or self-legislation. I. The Scope of Aesthetic Normativity Establishing the thesis that resources are to be found in the third Critique for a distinctively Kantian theory of aesthetic normativity stops short of attributing the theory to Kant himself. A case can be made that the Kantian theory is Kant’s. Blackletter text backs it up; it meshes 1 Servaas van der Berg, ‘Aesthetic Hedonism and Its Critics’, Philosophy Compass 15 (2020): 1–15. 2 For example, K. C. Bhattacharyya, ‘The Concept of Rasa’ (1930), in Indian Philosophy in English: From Renaissance to Independence, ed. Nalini Bhushan and Jay L. Garfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 195–206; Dominic McIver Lopes, Being for Beauty: Aesthetic Agency and Value (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); ‘Feeling for Freedom: K. C. Bhattacharyya on Rasa’, British Journal of Aesthetics 59 (2019): 465–77; Robbie Kubala, ‘Grounding Aesthetic Obligations’, British Journal of Aesthetics 58 (2018): 271–85; Samantha Matherne and Nick Riggle, ‘Schiller on Freedom and Aesthetic Value: Part II’, British Journal of Aesthetics 61 (2021): 17–40. Lopes, Dominic McIver. ‘‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle: A Kantian Aesthetics of Autonomy.’ Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics LVIII/XIV, no. 1 (2021): pp. 1–18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33134/eeja.251 ESTETIKA THE EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS Lopes: Beyond the Pleasure Principle2 well with recent work by Alix Cohen, Melissa Merritt, and Samantha Matherne on Kant’s appeal to ‘common sense’;3 and it reveals a deep continuity between Kant’s aesthetics and the rest of his philosophy, especially as his project has been understood by Onora O’Neill, among others.4 These are all good reasons to attribute the theory to Kant. However, there are countervailing reasons too. Some are textual and will be addressed as the argument develops below, but one requires immediate attention. With the exception of Rachel Zuckert,5 Kant’s interpreters do not read him as addressing the question that calls for the theory of aesthetic normativity of which the distinctively Kantian theory is an example. Kant is concerned with aesthetic normativity in a different sense. If most interpreters are correct, the theory sketched below is distinctively Kantian, in as much as its elements are laid out in the third Critique, though their being available in the text sheds little or no light on Kant’s project. The elements of the distinctively Kantian theory of aesthetic normativity come together in the ‘Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments’ in § 30 to § 40, especially in light of the two introductions. The aim of the deduction is to show that what Kant calls pure judgements of taste have certain features that he attributes to them in §§ 1–22, the ‘Analytic of the Beautiful’. The ‘Analytic’ opens by defining ‘aesthetic judgements’ as those involving a ‘feeling of pleasure or displeasure’.6 A subset of aesthetic judgements Kant calls ‘judgements of taste’, which are the judgements we typically express by calling things beautiful (CJ, 5:210; see also 5:223). Notice that Kant’s ‘aesthetic judgements’ are what we would now call ‘hedonic judgements’, and his ‘judgements of taste’ are what we now call ‘aesthetic judgements’. When doing aesthetics, it is hard not to use ‘aesthetic’ in the usual, contemporary sense, which clashes with Kant’s idiom. Henceforth, in this paper, let ‘aesthetic judgement’ name those judgements typically expressed by calling things beautiful.7 Four features demarcate aesthetic judgements from other hedonic judgements. First, a judgement, this is beautiful, involves disinterested pleasure. Other hedonic judgements bear ‘a relation to the faculty of desire’ (CJ, 5:209): they amount either to a gratification of the inclinations or to taking satisfaction in the goodness of a means to an end or in the goodness of an end itself. In aesthetic judgement, pleasure is not felt because an object satisfies a need or fulfils an aim, or because an end is finally worthy. Second, aesthetic judgements are universally valid. Someone who judges that an item is beautiful takes the judgement to apply not just to herself, but to everyone (CJ, 5:212). Third, aesthetic judgement is an awareness of formal purposiveness in the item judged beautiful and also in the operation of the judge’s cognitive powers in the process of aesthetic judgement (CJ, 5:220, 5:222). More on this below. Finally, the ‘Analytic’ culminates in the claim that a judgement that this is beautiful represents the item as ‘the object of a necessary satisfaction’ (CJ, 5:240). The modality Kant intends is normative. Aesthetic judgements ‘lay claim to necessity and say, not that everyone does so judge […] 3 Alix Cohen, ‘Kant on the Ethics of Belief’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 114 (2014): 317–34; ‘Kant on Science and Normativity’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 71 (2018): 6–12; Melissa Merritt, Kant on Reflection and Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); and Samantha Matherne, ‘Kant on Aesthetic Autonomy and Common Sense’, Philosophers’ Imprint 19 (2019): 1–22. 4 Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant’s Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 5 Rachel Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the ‘Critique of Judgment’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 6 Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 5:204; see also 5:214. Hereafter: CJ (page references follow the Akademie Ausgabe pagination). 7 A bad habit of recent philosophy is to interchange ‘aesthetic’ and ‘artistic’. This article is principally concerned with aesthetic judgement and aesthetic normativity. Lopes: Beyond the Pleasure Principle 3 but that everyone ought to so judge’ (CJ, 20:239). Hence, ‘whoever declares something to be beautiful wishes that everyone should approve of the object in question and similarly declare it to be beautiful’ (CJ, 5:237; see also 5:239).8 Interpreters agree that the task of the deduction is to demonstrate that aesthetic judgements are ‘legitimate’ in the sense that they do indeed have the four features. For most interpreters, to demonstrate that they do have the four features is just to ‘ground the normativity of [aesthetic] judgements’, in the words of Henry Allison.9 On this approach, a theory of aesthetic normativity is just a theory that answers the following question: How can a judgement that is subjective nevertheless involve disinterested pleasure and demand that everyone should share in it? Alternatively, how can we go wrong, and fail to judge as we should, when aesthetic judgements are pleasures and when beauty is not a property in any object? Without doubt, these are core questions of Kant’s aesthetics, and they do concern aesthetic normativity, but they do not exhaust the phenomenon. Return to appreciating the Plumen 001. According to Kant, appreciation is making the aesthetic judgement, this is beautiful. Now take two cases. Arsineh is visiting the Cooper Hewitt Museum, has chanced upon the light bulb, and is judging it to be beautiful. In judging it to be beautiful, she is making the judgement that anyone should make. By contrast, Fionn is in the next room and has never seen the Plumen 001. He should also judge it to be beautiful: he should look at it and make an aesthetic judgement. So, he should go to the light bulb display and position himself to judge it to be beautiful. A theory that explains why Arsineh’s judgement is one that anyone should make is not automatically a theory that explains why Fionn should position himself to make the same judgement. In particular, a theory that justifies Arsineh’s judgement as having the four features that demarcate it from other hedonic judgements is not a theory that answers the question, why should Fionn put himself in the same position as Arsineh? Fionn heads for the museum café, and Arsineh intercepts him: A: You should go next door see the light bulb display! F: Why? A: They have the Plumen 001. It’s beautiful. F: So what? A: When you see it, you will take a disinterested pleasure in formal purposiveness, and anyone should take that pleasure. F: I have excellent taste; I grant that if I see it, I will take the pleasure that anyone should take. So what? He is in a caffeine-deprived snit, but if the final ‘So what?’ is a question with an answer, then there is more to aesthetic normativity than is explained by a demonstration that there are judgements with the four features attributed to aesthetic judgements in the ‘Analytic’. A failure to do as one should when one is in conditions to make an aesthetic judgement is not the same as a failure to do as one should by getting into those conditions. Mary Mothersill and Jerrold Levinson brilliantly argued that key features of Hume’s aesthetics remain hidden from view until we read him as concerned with how Arsineh should 8 As Kant insists, the aesthetic should or ought is not moral or epistemic (CJ, 5:236–37). 9 Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 160; see also 164–66 and Donald W. Crawford, Kant’s Aesthetic Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974), 26–28; Hannah Ginsborg, ‘In Defence of the One-Act View: Reply to Guyer’, British Journal of Aesthetics 57 (2017): 421–35; Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 107, 228–29. Lopes: Beyond the Pleasure Principle4 answer Fionn.10 One might go further: no aesthetic theory can be fully adequate as long as it lacks resources to help Arsineh answer Fionn. It will have nothing to say about why we should send our children to music lessons, why we should allocate state resources to the arts, or why we should make the arduous hike to Machu Picchu. It will satisfy us only on the question why we judge as we should when we judge aesthetically. We also want theory that explains why we should ever judge aesthetically. If no aesthetic theory is fully adequate unless it answers Fionn, and if there are resources in the third Critique for a distinctively Kantian theory that answers Fionn, then it is worth taking seriously the proposal that the distinctively Kantian theory is also Kant’s theory. Possibly, Kant is not interested in a theory of aesthetic normativity that answers Fionn. If the distinctively Kantian theory is not Kant’s, then it is nonetheless worth serious attention as a distinctively Kantian theory. II. Criteria for a Kantian Theory Writing on the deduction, Zuckert distinguishes three questions with which she sees Kant as grappling, through which he articulates progressively stronger conceptions of aesthetic normativity.11 First, why is it the case that all are able to judge aesthetically? Second, why must it be the case that all are able to judge aesthetically? Third, why should all judge aesthetically? These three questions lay out a road map to a distinctively Kantian theory of aesthetic normativity. An answer to the first question will point to a principle whose operation is constitutive of aesthetic judgement and that is part of our cognitive endowment. We are all able to judge aesthetically because the capacity for aesthetic judgement comes with our capacity to judge empirically. In answer to the second question, the operation of this principle turns out to be necessary for having any experience at all – not just aesthetic experience. Hence, as long as we have a capacity to experience the world at all, we must also have the capacity for aesthetic judgement. Question three requests a theory of aesthetic normativity that answers Fionn. An explanation, in answer to the second question, of why we must all be equipped with such cognitive powers as enable us to make aesthetic judgements does not explain why we should ever use the equipment we must have. Zuckert’s three questions also hint at a pair of conditions that must be met by a distinctively Kantian theory of aesthetic normativity. A theory is distinctively Kantian only if it is a product of the reasoning in the ‘Analytic of the Beautiful’ and the ‘Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgements’. That is, first, it had better explain aesthetic normativity by appeal to the features that demarcate aesthetic judgement from other kinds of hedonic judgement. Call this the ‘demarcation condition’. Second, a distinctively Kantian theory had better tap the ambition of the ‘Deduction’, explaining aesthetic normativity using the special apparatus of a transcendental deduction that appeals to a priori principles that are needed for any kind of experience (CJ, 20:239, 5:280–81, 5:288). Call this the ‘deduction condition’. Together the demarcation and deduction conditions tell us when a theory of aesthetic normativity is not merely in the text of the third Critique but is a product of the philosophical project of the text. 10 Mary Mothersill, ‘Hume and the Paradox of Taste’, in Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology, ed. George Dickie, Richard Sclafani, and Ronald Roblin (New York: St Martin’s, 1989), 269–86, and Jerrold Levinson, ‘Hume’s Standard of Taste: The Real Problem’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60 (2002): 227–38. 11 Zuckert, Kant on Beauty, 335; see also 346, 360, and 366–67. Lopes: Beyond the Pleasure Principle 5 III. Hedonic and Super-Hedonic Normativity Before turning to Zuckert’s theory and then the autonomy-based theory, here are two obvious theories of aesthetic normativity that are not distinctively Kantian. Seeing where these theories go wrong for Kant illustrates how the reasoning in the ‘Analytic’ and the ‘Deduction’ points to a distinctively Kantian approach. Aesthetic hedonists hold roughly that to be beautiful is to have properties that ground pleasure. From aesthetic hedonism it is a short step to a hedonic theory of aesthetic normativity. Fionn admits that if he visits the Plumen 001, he will take the pleasure in it that anyone should take in it, but then wonders why he should visit it. Many will regard Arsineh’s reply as obvious: anyone always has reason to get pleasure. His having reason to get pleasure lends weight to the proposition that he should see the light bulb. Explanations of normativity bottom out at pleasure: the correct answer to ‘What is so great about pleasure?’ is a shrug. Even if Kant is not an aesthetic hedonist, one might think he could adopt a hedonic theory of aesthetic normativity. According to Kant, something in an item together with the operations of cognition in response to the item grounds an aesthetic judgement; aesthetic judgement is awareness of ‘the subjective purposiveness of that form for the power of judgment’ (CJ, 5:290). So long as what gets grounded is aesthetic judgement rather than beauty, Kant is not strictly speaking an aesthetic hedonist.12 All the same, if seeing the Plumen 001 grounds aesthetic judgement and aesthetic judgement implicates pleasure, then one might think that the reason why Fionn should go judge the light bulb to be beautiful is that anyone always has reason to go get pleasure. The correct answer to ‘What is so great about aesthetic judgement?’ is ‘It is pleasing’, followed by a shrug. Call this the ‘simple hedonic theory’ of aesthetic normativity. The hypothesis that the simple hedonic theory is in fact Kant’s would have the virtue of explaining why Kant does not make explicit the resources he has to answer Fionn. The simple hedonic theory’s answer is too obvious to need spelling out; it can be taken for granted. However, the simple hedonic theory is not a distinctively Kantian theory, because it satisfies neither the demarcation nor the deduction condition. According to Kant, aesthetic normativity is not plain hedonic normativity; it is grounded in some demarcating feature of aesthetic judgement in a way that requires a deduction. The failure of the simple hedonic theory to satisfy the demarcation condition suggests another, more Kantian, hedonic theory of aesthetic normativity. We ask whether we can answer Fionn by latching onto a demarcating feature of aesthetic judgement – its being disinterested or universal, or its involving awareness of formal purposiveness. Universality is the eminently eligible candidate. Someone who judges that an item is beautiful takes the judgement to apply not just to themselves, but to everyone (CJ, 5:212). Moreover, in as much as aesthetic judgements are universally valid, they are grounds for sharing. According to the ‘super-hedonic theory’ of aesthetic normativity, Fionn has reason to go judge the Plumen 001 beautiful because anyone has special reason to take pleasure in 12 The matter is hardly straightforward. Kant denies that beauty is an objective property of an item, one attributable on the basis of a rule, or concept (for example, CJ, 5:280–84, 5:337–41, 5:346–50). Contemporary aesthetic hedonists agree. They say that the grounds of pleasure in an item constitute beauty only in relation to a subjective response. ‘Beauty,’ as Kant writes, ‘is nothing by itself, without relation to the feeling of the subject’ (CJ, 5:218). Accordingly, aesthetic judgement ‘consists precisely in the fact that it calls a thing beautiful only in accordance with that quality in [the item] by means of which [the item] corresponds with our way of receiving it’ (CJ, 5:282). For contemporary aesthetic hedonists, such assertions suffice to endorse their view of what beauty is. See also Zuckert, Kant on Beauty, chap. 5; Brian Watkins, ‘The Subjective Basis of Kant’s Judgment of Taste’, Inquiry 54 (2011): 315–36. At any rate, one need not be an aesthetic hedonist in order to adopt a hedonic theory of aesthetic normativity. Lopes: Beyond the Pleasure Principle6 what pleases everyone else. When pleasures are shared, their being shared is special reason to undergo them. Hume beautifully observes how everyone has the most ardent desire of society, and is fitted for it by the most advantages. We can form no wish, which has not a reference to society. A perfect solitude is, perhaps, the greatest punishment we can suffer. Every pleasure languishes when enjoy’d a-part from company, and every pain becomes more cruel and intolerable.13 Kant agrees that human beings naturally tend to sociability and are often not ‘content with an object if [they] cannot feel [their] satisfaction in it in community with others’ (CJ, 5:297). Indeed, sociability causes a refinement of pleasure, so that sensations have value only to the extent that they may be universally communicated; at that point, even though the pleasure that each has in such an object is merely inconsiderable and has in itself no noticeable interest, nevertheless the idea of its universal communicability almost infinitely increases its value. (CJ, 5:297) Here Kant confesses a deep appreciation of how aesthetic judgement contributes to social life. Surely the importance of social life can ground an answer to Fionn. Arsineh can say, ‘look, we have come here to be together and, as you have just admitted, sharing in an aesthetic judgement is a way of being together’. Alas, the super-hedonic theory (partly) satisfies the demarcation condition but not the deduction condition. Kant is adamant on the point. Our interest in sociability and in aesthetic judgement as promoting sociability is ‘empirical’. Hence, ‘it is of no importance for us here, for we must find that importance only in what may be related to the judgment of taste a priori, even if only indirectly’ (CJ, 5:297; see also 5:218). A distinctively Kantian theory of aesthetic normativity is not merely one that answers to anthropological truths; it must be established through a transcendental deduction that invokes a priori principles needed for any kind of experience. Seeing why the hedonic and super-hedonic theories of aesthetic normativity are neither Kant’s theories nor distinctively Kantian theories displays the kinds of resources we should seek within the third Critique to assemble a Kantian theory of aesthetic normativity. IV. Cognitive Normativity As we saw, Zuckert reads Kant as cumulatively answering three questions. First, why is it the case that all are able to judge aesthetically? Second, why must it be the case that all are able to judge aesthetically? Third, why should all judge aesthetically? Kant’s answer to the third question combines the answer to the second with a commitment that animates his larger project. In outline, the reasoning is that anyone should go judge the Plumen 001 to be beautiful because, C1. aesthetic judgement is awareness of formal purposiveness, C2. so, aesthetic judgement is awareness of the harmonious free play of imagination and understanding, and 13 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. P. H. Nidditch. 3rd ed. (1777; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 363; see also Paul Guyer, ‘The Standard of Taste and the “Most Ardent Desire of Society”’, in Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 37–74; Andy Egan, ‘Disputing about Taste’, in Disagreement, ed. Richard Feldman and Ted A. Warfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 247–92. Lopes: Beyond the Pleasure Principle 7 C3. the harmonious free play of imagination and understanding provides for conceptual amelioration, and C4. anyone always has reason to do what provides for conceptual amelioration. Aesthetic normativity is cognitive normativity. Notice how the theory meets the demarcation condition: it is anchored in the claim that aesthetic judgement is awareness of purposiveness. Kant introduces formal purposiveness as a twofold phenomenon. On one hand, an aesthetic judgement is an awareness of formal purposiveness in the item judged (CJ, 5:279). On the other hand, an aesthetic judgement is also an awareness of formal purposiveness in the operation of our own cognitive faculties: it ‘bring[s] to our attention […] the purposive form in the determination of the powers of representation that are occupied with [the item]’ (CJ, 5:228). The two folds integrate as an awareness of how formal purposiveness in the item ‘suits’ formal purposiveness in the operation of the faculties (CJ, 5:189–90, 5:194, 5:279, 5:292). The transition from (C1) to (C2) ties awareness of formal purposiveness to the harmonious free play of the imagination and understanding. Kant contrasts the harmonious free play of imagination and understanding in aesthetic judgement with their harmonious relation in empirical judgement. Aesthetic judgement accompanies the common apprehension of an object by the imagination, as a faculty of intuition, in relation to the understanding, as a faculty of concepts, by means of a procedure of the power of judgment, which it must also exercise for the sake of the most common experience: only in the latter case it is compelled to do for the sake of an empirical objective concept, while in the former case (in the aesthetic judging) it is merely for the sake of perceiving the suitability of the representation for the harmonious (subjectively purposive) occupation of both cognitive facilities in their freedom, i.e., to sense the representational state with pleasure. (CJ, 5:292) In seeing an item as a flower, imagination supplies a structured sense impression, understanding supplies a concept, and the faculty of judgement subsumes the structured sense impression under the concept of a flower. Stable equilibrium is achieved, and the play of imagination and understanding halts. By contrast, aesthetic judgements work as follows. You see an item. Imagination structures sense impressions, while understanding delivers concepts, but no stable equilibrium is achieved. Rather, you are confronted with how the item is suitable for both imagination and understanding to keep on operating in free or dynamic equilibrium, both ‘enlivened through mutual agreement’ (CJ, 5:219). Aesthetic judgement is ‘consciousness of the merely formal purposiveness in the play of the cognitive powers’ (CJ, 5:222).14 Now to the deduction condition. Nature is diverse, and no experience is possible unless the faculty of judgement deploys a scheme of empirical concepts that find order and interconnection in nature’s diversity. The principle of purposiveness is an a priori principle necessary for any experience, for it enjoins that the faculty of judgement find such order and 14 Alternatively, for consistency with ‘two-act’ interpretations, the claim can be restated to say that aesthetic judgement is grounded in awareness of the harmonious free play of imagination and understanding. See Paul Guyer, ‘One Act or Two? Hannah Ginsborg on Aesthetic Judgement’, British Journal of Aesthetics 57 (2017): 407–19; comp. Hannah Ginsborg, ‘Kant on Aesthetic and Biological Purposiveness’, in Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls, ed. Andrews Reath, Barbara Herman, and Christine Korsgaard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 329–60; ‘In Defence of the One-Act View’. Lopes: Beyond the Pleasure Principle8 interconnection in the diversity of nature as can make experience possible (CJ, 5:180, 5:183– 86, 5:193–94). However, many schemes of empirical concepts are possible, and some capture more order and interconnection than others. We should therefore check to see whether we can ameliorate our scheme of empirical concepts. To do this, we rely on the harmonious free play of imagination and understanding. When imagination and understanding are in harmonious free play, we ‘glimpse sensibly given objects as more fully determined than our conceptual apparatus allows us to see’.15 Hence, aesthetic judgement is ‘a microcosmic, sensible, unconceptualized image of the unity among the contingent, heterogeneous aspects of nature to which we aspire in empirical cognition’.16 Our aspiring to conceptual amelioration is reason for us to put ourselves in conditions where imagination and understanding are in harmonious free play. What about (C4)? The assumption that anyone always has reason to do what serves conceptual amelioration is a general commitment of Kant’s philosophy. Zuckert’s proposal is a good model of a theory of aesthetic normativity that satisfies the demarcation and deduction conditions and that relies on an assumption about a source of nonhedonic normativity at the centre of Kant’s project. V. Autonomy-Based Normativity Why can all judge aesthetically? Why must it be that all can judge aesthetically? Why should all judge aesthetically? This paper locates resources for an answer to the third question by combining the answer to the second question with the commitment to autonomy as selflegislation that animates Kant’s larger project. The resulting theory of aesthetic normativity also meets the demarcation and deduction conditions. In outline, the reasoning is that anyone should go judge the Plumen 001 to be beautiful because, A1. aesthetic judgement is awareness of formal purposiveness, A2. so, aesthetic judgement is awareness of the harmonious free play of imagination and understanding, A3. so, aesthetic judgement is autonomous and A4. anyone always has reason to go judge autonomously. Aesthetic normativity is sourced in the normativity of autonomy. The idea is not to equate autonomy with freedom in the play of imagination and understanding.17 That facile idea satisfies neither the demarcation nor the deduction conditions, and it caricatures Kant’s conception of autonomy. To cash out the proposal, we need to examine the details of (A1) to (A4), especially (A3), the key claim. Section IV addressed (A1) and (A2). Following a few words about (A4), this section traces two routes to (A3) that meet the demarcation and deduction conditions. V.1. Autonomy Suppose that (A3) is true and aesthetic judgement is autonomous. From this it follows that anyone should go judge the Plumen 001 to be beautiful only given (A4), the claim that anyone always has reason to go judge autonomously. 15 Zuckert, Kant on Beauty, 265. 16 Ibid., 367. 17 See also Karl Ameriks, ‘On the Many Senses of “Self-Determination”’, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 92 (2018): 258–83. Lopes: Beyond the Pleasure Principle 9 Commentators agree that, for Kant, anyone has reason to act and think autonomously, but they disagree about why. For some, Kant regards autonomy as an ultimate source of normativity: it is primitive that we have reason to act and think in ways that express autonomy.18 The correct answer to ‘Why act autonomously?’ is a shrug. For others, autonomy is reason-giving because it comprises having a good will,19 or because it confers dignity,20 or because it realizes our humanity and rational nature.21 The jury remains out, and it is beyond the jurisdiction of this paper to issue new instructions from the bench. Different positions on what makes autonomy a source of normativity might put some spin on the autonomy-based theory of aesthetic normativity, but the possibility must remain speculative until the theory is on the table. More pressing is what constitutes autonomy in the first place, rather than its normativity. Obviously, no interpretation of Kant’s aesthetics should be saddled with a conception of autonomy as moral autonomy, or freedom of the will. Just as it is a mistake to conflate the aesthetic ought with a moral ought, it is also a mistake to conflate autonomy in appreciation with moral autonomy. Again, Kant is explicit: aesthetic pleasure is not produced by the determination ‘of the higher faculty of desire through pure reason’ (CJ, 5:190, see also 20:225, 5:176–77, 5:196–97). Presumably, aesthetic and moral autonomy are species of a broader phenomenon. The consensus among commentators is that autonomy is, broadly speaking, self-legislation.22 Yet, these same commentators disagree about the details. In as much as the present task is to put the autonomy-based theory of aesthetic normativity on the table, let us defer to another day any inquiry into whether the autonomy-based theory is subtly affected by varying accounts of autonomy as self-legislation. Making do with a broad conception of autonomy as self-legislation does not leave us bereft of detail, for Kant may be read as articulating two conceptions of autonomy in the third Critique. Self-legislation occurs twice in Kant’s aesthetics, once at the level of the principles by which the faculties operate, and then again at the level of what Kant calls ‘common sense’, which has to do with the policies that individuals should adopt. Each of the next two subsections makes a case for (A3): one at the level of principles and the other at the level of policies. V.2. Autonomy at the Level of Principles: Purposiveness Kant defines the higher faculties as those that ‘contain an autonomy’ (CJ, 5:177–78, 5:196– 97). Each higher faculty operates by means of a constitutive principle that is unique to it but that is determined by the higher faculties. In one sense, self-legislation just is the condition wherein the constitutive principle of a higher faculty is determined by the higher faculties. Reason gives the rule to desire. That is moral autonomy. Understanding gives the rule to cognition. That is epistemic autonomy. Judgement gives its constitutive principle to itself. 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How to cite this article: Lopes, Dominic McIver. ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle: A Kantian Aesthetics of Autonomy.’ Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics LVIII/XIV , no. 1 (2021): pp. 1–18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33134/eeja.251 Submitted: 09 December 2019 Accepted: 08 May 2020 Published: 17 March 2021 Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics is a peer-reviewed open access journal published by Helsinki University Press in cooperation with the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. OPEN ACCESS