Kant’s  Unsolvable Antinomy:

 Subjectivity vs. Universality

“The feeling of beauty requires that it be shared universally, but how could something that was exclusively based on the subjective feeling of pleasure be universally valid, too (Kant1987:§31)?”

According to an old saying, “One cannot dispute over matters of taste”. Kant and Bourdieu would indeed agree with this statement from different perspectives.

To Bourdieu, one’s taste and preferences are important indicators of lifestyles and class tastes. One can differentiate and position himself through his taste in a society. Different classes have different tastes. Ruling class also has a certain taste, which Bourdieu calls legitimate. In his opinion, legitimate taste is nothing more than the taste of one particular class and not genuinely good taste. However, it acts as if it is universally valid and legitimate taste. Since what is legitimate is visible to everyone, good taste is self-evident and shared by all. Therefore, to Bourdieu, it is futile and unnecessary to argue about good taste.

However, since Bourdieu adopts an empiricist attitude by generalizing the taste of ruling class into the legitimate, he leaves a lot of question unanswered with respect to the subjectivity of tastes, which is what Kant focuses on. Kant points out the antinomy, the inherent incompatibility, of these claims of “subjective” taste that is also “universally valid”. In Kant’s opinion, it is “the feeling of beauty which requires that it be shared universally” (Kant, cited in Gronow). 

One who presents his aesthetic judgment expects others to join him in his way of appreciating the object of beauty. Otherwise, his judgment could not be a real judgment of taste. To Kant, this new type of universality which is based on a single judgment cannot be equal to any logical and conceptual universality. Therefore, in Kant’s words, it can be referred to as “non-conceptual subjective universality” (Kant, cited in Gronow). The judgment is based on a “subjective principle, which determines only by liking rather than by concepts though nonetheless with universal validity” (Kant, cited in Gronow). Kant argued that it is not the empirical generality and validity of taste creating this subjective universality. Empirical generality of a preference is not relevant at all. “The fact that something is generally liked does not justify our calling it beautiful” (Gronow, 1997, p. 87). Kant justifies this universality by postulating a ‘sensus communis’, which is the people community of feeling and taste. Such a community presumed to exist every time one makes a judgment of taste.

To sum up, since taste has a private nature and reflects one’s individual preferences, “the judgment of taste itself does not postulate everyone’s agreement (since only a logically universal judgment can do that, because it can advise reason); it merely requires this agreement from everyone, as an instance of rule... Hence the universal voice is only an idea” (Kant, cited in Gronow).

REFERENCES:

Gronow, J. (1997). The sociology of taste. London: Routledge.