Kantian Aesthetics

Painting by Irving Guyer
Illustration for “Aesthetics, Immanuel Kant and Imagination”
From “Four By Three” Magazine

(Regarding the “Critique of Judgment: Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime” by Immanuel Kant)

the thing about beauty
those pleasant sensations
it stimulates differ from
how we perceive the sublime

beauty suggests maths
of harmony order
a delicate balance of
serenely fixed truths

sublime evokes wonder
a wild splendid terror
of unfixed infinity
whelming with power

each is a matter of taste
an intensely felt noumenon
lacking psychology
an exemplar of judgment

the pleasure from beauty
the pain from sublime
apprehensions attained
without cognitive reason