Kant and Fine Art. An Essay on Kant and the Philosophy of Fine Art and Culture (review)

672 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ~6:4 OCTOBER a988 on natural law, and nothing is made of Blair's criticism of Hutcheson's posthumously published System of Moral Philosophy. Sher also attributes to Blair a pamphlet entitled Objections against the Essays on Morality and Natural Religion Examined, which was probably written by Kames himself, who incorporated it into the second edition of his Essays on Morality and Natural Religion. Sher here underestimates the extent of Kames's influence on Blair, as he seems to have overlooked or ignored the influence of Adam Smith on both Blair and Robertson. Even the Common Sense philosophy of Reid and Beattie originated with Kames's Essays, as Blair reminded Beattie in 1774. But when the influence of Hume, Kames, and Smith is given its due it becomes hard to view the Scottish Enlightenment centered in Edinburgh as primarily an ecclesiastical enlightenment. These three pioneers were directly influenced by the science of the day, even if some of their camp-followers may not have been. But like most~writers on the Scottish Enlightenment , Sher pays insufficient attention to the scientists. These criticisms notwithstanding , Sher has produced a solid and readable study which greatly increases our knowledge of its subjects. DAVID R. RAYNOR The University of Ottawa Salim Kemal. Kant and Fine Art. An Essay on Kant and the Philosophy of Fine Art and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1986. Pp. x + 348. $55.oo. Salim Kemal's approach to Kant's Critique ofJudgrnent promises to restore faith in the significance of Kant's deepest explorations. The aim is neither to seek out and destroy all the weak parts of Kant's arguments, nor to scrutinize Kant's failure in his "Deduction " of the pure aesthetic judgment. Kemal prefers to see the transcendental purpose of the Critique ofJudgment as a legitimate investigation into the relation between "nature and reason" or "theory and practice." There is ample evidence to show that the theory of fine art (w167 is meant to introduce an essential element into our thoughts concerning the supersensible ties between the realm of freedom and the domain of nature. The key concept in this relation is the necessity that characterises a prior/ judgments of taste. Kemal interprets Kant to be searching for a sense of aesthetic necessity that binds nature to practical reason in such a way as to explain how the former accommodates itself to human moral purposes. The transition from one realm to the other requires an advance into the consideration of fine art and culture. It is in one's culture, after all, that the "universal voice" claiming the authority of a necessary judgment is heard. Culture is a sensus communis that strives toward the ideal of the attunement between the law of freedom and our susceptibility to natural inclinations. For Kemal, the relation between fine art and culture is to be found in "fine art's participation in culture" 038, a74)- This relation assumes its importance in Kant's ' A notable exception is Roger Emerson. See his "Natural Philosophyand the Problem of the Scottish Enlightenment," Studieson Voltaireand theEighteenthCentury242 (1986): 243-91. BOOK REVIEWS 673 aesthetic theory from the alleged precedence of fine art over natural beauty in the explanation of the necessity ascribed to pure judgments of taste. The consideration of natural beauty in the "Deduction" can, at best, provide a justification for the subjective necessity claimed for pure aesthetic judgments. Kemal argues that the deduction adequately fulfills this purpose, but that further argumentation is required to ground the claim that the feeling of beauty can warrant our demand for the agreement of others in our aesthetic estimates. That is, the inter-subjective necessity that taste claims for its pronouncements is better illuminated and supported by reference to artistic rather than natural beauty. The priority of artistic beauty in the fulfillment of this project is exhibited by Kemal's focus upon the intentionality of the artistic enterprise implicit in the production of fine art. Genius is what makes fine art possible and it can at the same time be construed as a property of the rational will. Natural beauty does not give us insight into the...