Comparing Kant And Bullough's Analysis Of The Beautiful
686 Words3 Pages
Prominent philosophers, Emmanuel Kant and Robert Bullough, draw a distinction between the agreeable and the beautiful. In Kant’s essay “Analytic of the Beautiful” he shares his views on what we should consider agreeable and what we should consider beautiful. Bullough also states in his essay “Physical Distance” what he believes to create the difference between the two descriptors. Although both of these philosophers share the same view that beauty is not the same as agreeable they believe so for differing reasons.
According to Kant there is a line that must be clearly drawn between what one considers beautiful and what one considers agreeable. He states that beauty is “an object of delight apart from any interest” (275). Meaning that the viewer…show more content… He states that distance is obtained by creating the separation between the object and its appeal from “one’s own self, by putting it out of gear with practical needs and ends” (300). By doing so one is able to explicitly contemplate the object itself. Although this ‘distance’ is created it does not mean that the personal ties that the viewer may have are broken. It does not imply an impersonal purely intellectual relation, it is oppositely a personal relation full of emotion. According to Bullough we must separate beauty from the agreeable since not all pleasure is beauty. He goes on to explicitly state that “the agreeable is a non-distanced pleasure”, thus displaying to the reader the difference between the two (304). Beauty is not at all possible without the presence of distance between the object and the audience and a separation from the practical means of the subject. Distance lies between ourselves and such objects which cause the affective emotions that are created. The presence of distance in an experience causes a “special mental attitude” (307). Bullough contradicts the traditional theory that often the agreeable utilizes our lower-senses such as taste, touch, and smell. Whereas the beautiful utilizes out higher-senses which include sight and sound. He believes that those who reject the lower-senses only mediate on agreeable