Book Review: The Problem of Free Harmony in Kant’s Aesthetics

May 19, 2009 by Farhang Erfani

A review of Kenneth Rogerson’s The Problem of Free Harmony in Kant’s Aesthetics

Kant claims that the experience of beauty rests on what he calls a “harmony,” or a “free play” of the faculties of imagination and understanding, punctuated by pleasure. Famously, this free play is supposed to be “without concept” (§9, 5:217-9; 102-4).[1] In his new book, Kenneth Rogerson argues that “only the doctrine of beauty as the expression of ideas gives Kant a plausible explanation of how we can see objects of beauty as free harmonies” (p. 3).[2] The novelty of Rogerson’s approach is twofold. First, he argues that aesthetic ideas can explain not only artistic, but also natural beauty. Second, he stresses the importance of expression: both nature and art talk to us, as it were, and thereby bring about the free play of our faculties. Rogerson bases his solution to the problem of the concept-less harmony on a sharp distinction between concepts and ideas. Since his solution involves ideas rather than concepts, it meets Kant’s “no-concept” requirement head on: “an artwork (or natural object) that can be interpreted as expressing an aesthetic idea will accomplish this expression via a mental state that is free of concepts and yet orderly due to the fact that it expresses an idea” (p. 3).

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