We Create Our Understanding

Intuitions without concepts are blind- Immanuel Kant




A link to the theories of Kant and Hume.





While Hume does theorize about the subject-object relation, I wasn't quite sure of how to express it until stumbling across the link above, describing Kant's philosophy which, to me, is 100% logical and perhaps the most convincing argument I've heard for--not against--the relationship between subject and object. Hume and Kant are often mentioned simultaneously and I was inclined to further research Kant's philosophies. Building upon the gaps in Hume's works, Kant sought to use our immediate sensory experiences to explain our judgments on the outside world. Kant believed that we use concepts to make sense of our intuitions (our sensory experiences). The power of concepts, he believed, led to an understanding of objects and of the self. Furthermore, this understanding leads to the formation of rules by which we define and interpret our sensory experiences. Just as sensory experiences alone cannot be understood without conceptualizing them, rules without concepts are useless. This balance, or (in Kant's words) synthesis, is affected by our own judgment and natural inclination to try to understand the properties of and our relation to objects. We cannot judge without already having submitted to some rule regarding both the object and the concept.

If we consider these ideas, then we can better understand how we need both subjectivity and objectivity in the art world. For a painting, our immediate sensory experience is vision. Upon viewing a painting, Kant would imply that we would form a judgment based upon a somewhat unspoken rule (derived from and submitted to concepts which we have previously experienced and contemplated). Once this judgment was made, an understanding of the painting is possible. Essentially, we create our own understanding of the world around us.--ie. a piece of art. What follows, then, is the question of how to arrive at a universal judgment of the piece--and we arrive back at the antinomy with which we began Hume's chapter. Perhaps there is a commonality within the rules upon which we make judgments that constitutes as universal so that we may judge artwork objectively and subjectively at the same time. What do you all think?