Kathryn Evering: Immanuel Kant

Kant in his Critique of Judgement argues that to claim that something is beautiful does not enhance one's ability to understanding that thing. One can say something is beautiful without knowing or understanding what it is. A personal example would be when babysitting a young boy he commented that my nail polish was beautiful and said he wanted his nails to be beautiful too. Without understanding that if he had beautiful nails then he would be judged by society being that painted nails are not a masculine trait in which this society practices. The same way someone sees a vase of artificial flowers asking, "How did you get those flowers so beautiful?" reality is that they are artificial, but in an instance they are beautiful by the viewer. Therefore critics, Kant argues, do not understand art because they think. He claims that critique of art should spontaneous and that thinking creates an inaccurate judgement. Judgement he says gives a false critique. Below are two photos, one of a rose produced by nature, and another made from silk, yet they are both beautiful and only through thinking and touching might you be able to distinguish if one was fake or not. One would then make the judgement that because one is fake that it is no longer beautiful, but it is, it is still a piece of art that someone has painstakingly created in order to imitate the real thing, therefore it should still be beautiful.