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Exemplars of Fine Art and Genius

  • Chapter
Kant’s Aesthetic

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Abstract

Although ‘a product of fine art must be recognized to be art and not nature’1 recognising it as art is recognising it as a work of genius.2 Since genius is,

  1. (1)

    a talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be given: and not an aptitude in the way of cleverness for what can be learned according to some rule; and that consequently originality must be its primary property.

  2. (2)

    Since there may also be original nonsense, its products must at the same time be models, i.e. be exemplary; and, consequently, though not themselves derived from imitation, they must serve that purpose for others, i.e. as a standard or rule of estimating,3

genius is what ‘gives the rule’ to fine art.4

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Notes and References

  1. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 166; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §45, p. 306, lines 14–15.

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  2. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 168, cf. p. 141; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §46, p. 307, lines 11–21; cf. §34, p. 286, lines 7–11.

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  3. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, pp. 168–9; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §46, p. 307, line 33-p. 308, line 5.

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  4. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, pp. 167, 168, 171; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §45, p. 307, lines 3–8; §46, p. 307, lines 11–12; §47, p. 309, line 28-p. 310, line 5.

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  5. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, pp. 165, 171; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §44, p. 305, lines 17–19; §47, p. 310, lines 6–11.

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  6. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 173; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §48, p. 311, lines 24–6.

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  7. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 169; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §47, p. 308, lines 23–32.

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  8. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 171; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §47, p. 309, lines 29–31.

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  9. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 171; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §47, p. 309, lines 31–3.

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  10. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, pp. 175–6; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §49, p. 314, lines 1–5.

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  11. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, pp.210; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §57, p. 342, lines 20–6.

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  12. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 210; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §57, p. 342, lines 15–19.

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  13. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 177; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §49, p. 315, lines 14–15.

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  14. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, pp. 177–8; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §49, p. 315, line 26-p. 316, line 29.

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  15. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, pp. 177–8; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §49, p. 315, lines 22–4.

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  16. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, pp. 92, 93, 116, 120, 134; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §23, p. 245, line 35-p. 246, line 4; §23, p. 246, lines 25–8; §29, p. 265, lines 27–30; §29, p. 268, lines 21–30; §30, p. 280, lines 8–15.

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  17. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 182; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §50, p. 319, lines 17–19.

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  18. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 178; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §49, p. 316, lines 2–7.

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  19. The Elements of Logic: Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce: Book II, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (6 vols, Harvard, 1931–60), vol. n, §291, p. 165.

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  20. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, pp. 209–13; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §57, p. 341, toe 35-p. 344, line 21.

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  21. Lindsay, Kant, p. 237; and also Cerf, The Analytic of the Beautiful, pp. 65–6; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, §67, p. 241, lines 30–1.

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  22. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 176; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §49, p. 314, lines 21–2.

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  23. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, pp. 176–7; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §49, p. 314, lines 28–33.

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  24. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, pp. 176–7; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §49, p. 314, lines 26–33.

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  25. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 177; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §49, p. 314, lines 32–3.

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  26. Norman Kemp Smith (translator), Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (London, 1933, first published 1929) p. 180; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, p. 134, lines 3–6.

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  27. Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 219–21; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, p. 169, line 31; p. 170, line 10.

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  28. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 177; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §49, p. 315, lines 16–21.

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  29. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 176; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §49, p. 314, lines 9–11.

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  30. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 177; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §49, p. 314, lines 35–6.

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  31. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, pp. 177–8; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §49, p. 315, lines 21–4.

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  35. William Shakespeare, A Winter’s Tale.

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  36. Sergei Eisenstein, The Film Sense (London, 1943) p. 46.

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  38. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 177; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §49, p. 315, lines 3–8.

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  44. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, p. 179; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §49, p. 316, line 27-p. 317, line 11.

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  45. Meredith, Aesthetic Judgement, pp. 166, 226; Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, §44, p. 306, lines 3–5; §60, p. 355, lines 24–32.

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Authors
  1. Mary A. McCloskey
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© 1987 Mary A. McCloskey

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McCloskey, M.A. (1987). Exemplars of Fine Art and Genius. In: Kant’s Aesthetic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08796-9_12

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