Please write a 3 page double spaced essay on either Hume, Kant, or Noe. In this essay you should reconstruct the main argument for each author:
1. Hume says that to make sound aesthetic judgments, a person must have a sufficient amount of familiarity with particular artistic traditions, and must be able to compare a given work to other relevant works. But then he says that in appraising a particular work, a person should focus exclusively on the nature of that work, and not let anything else enter into their mind. Are these two claims compatible? Can we say more about what’s involved in each requirement of sound aesthetic criticism to show that they can both be met?
2. Kant says that our aesthetic judgments come from subjective feelings. When we make an aesthetic judgment of any kind, we are saying that there is pleasure or displeasure involved. When making a judgment about beauty, it is a disinterested pleasure. Our judgments about beauty are also universal, we make the claim “everyone ought to find this beautiful.” Explain how our judgments can be both subjective, but also disinterested and universal.
3. For Noe the general form of art is “See me if you can”. What does this mean? Is art’s only purpose to disrupt or challenge our ideas about the world? Does art require us to “get” or understand it in order to appreciate it?
Thoughtfully engage with the text. If you would like to do something different, please email me about your idea.
Please include a citation page of some kind. This page should be on a separate page from the rest of your essay. Use the page break function on your word processing software. Use in text citations where needed.