Kant's Concept Of Beauty And Art

Aesthetics as a study of beauty has been the keystone for development of art and architecture, which cuts across philosophical, tactile, intuitive, mathematical and socio-cultural realms. The subjectivity of which, has given rise to innumerable attempts to quantify, measure and theorize aesthetics in art and architecture. To comprehend aesthetics, one needs to understand the changing definition of beauty. Definition of beauty has had cultural variations in the development of human civilization. It has a philosophical and theological accord. Baumgarten’s [considered as the founder of aesthetics] definition of beauty is in the order of parts in their mutual relation to each other and their relation to the whole, the aim of beauty is found to be pleasing and to arouse desire. However, Kant’s concept of beauty is based on human perception of nature – nature outside himself and himself in nature. Nature being outside man, according to Kant, seeks the true, thus being a matter of pure reason, while, within himself, man seeks good, which is practical reason or freedom. Therefore, according to Kant, “beauty is in a subjective sense that which without concepts and without practical benefit, is generally and necessarily pleasing, and in an objective sense is the form of a purposeful object in so far as it is perceived without any notion of …show more content…
Architecture is a discipline that operates through medium of image. In this discipline, aestheticization remains a background for cultural condition. The process of aestheticization is a necessary consequence of the profession [5]. Over a period of time visual perception has been gaining importance in architecture, thereby giving much emphasis to image than the social space or the other sensory perceptions - A condition that is exacerbated by the representation techniques used in architecture profession. An image driven architecture has various consequences