Musky Music: The Logic of Kant's Art Hierarchy

Several commentators have remarked on Kant's artistic hierarchy. Derrida notes poetry's place at the hierarchy's zenith. Yet few have dealt with music's nadir position.Footnote ¹⁷ While others note the image of music as perfume, no one has explained either the significance of the image or why music ends up at the hierarchy's bottom.Footnote ¹⁸ This section is devoted to explaining the logic of Kant's art hierarchy. He distinguishes art from craft (e.g., poetry from rhetoric), suggesting that art is better than craft at teaching an audience about freedom and autonomy. He also ranks art forms based on their ability to communicate with an audience in the realm of concepts, which in turn is useful for establishing a community (Kant finds music to be lacking here). Finally, owing to its tendency to impose itself on others, he finds music useful for teaching an audience about the improper use of freedom.Footnote ¹⁹ He thus organizes his art hierarchy based on each art's ability to teach the proper principles for citizenship. On Kant's view, music is most illiberal.

According to Kant, art communicates freedom through analogy. Art's unique aptitude in such communication is evident in his comparison of poetry and rhetoric. The poet “announces merely an entertaining play with ideas, and yet as much results for the understanding as if he had merely had the intention of carrying on its business.” Rhetoric “announces a matter of business” but carries it out “as if it were merely a play with ideas” so as to “entertain the audience” (ibid.).Footnote ²⁰ The salient factor here is play.Footnote ²¹ We are to associate play with lack of burden (freedom), but as will become evident below, Kant believes that art teaches not merely about freedom from constraint (negative liberty) but a kind of freedom in constraint (autonomy). He posits that the unfree—“contrived” and “laborious”—must be avoided, as this detracts from art's beautyFootnote ²² in the following way: the mind that encounters a work of art “must feel itself to be satisfied and stimulated … without looking beyond to another end” (V: 321). Kant here judges art based on its effect on the “consumer.”Footnote ²³ For the art to be truly beautiful-free (schön-frei),Footnote ²⁴ it must produce a particular reaction in the mind. Note that the mind is occupied—employed. It is crucial that it “feel itself to be satisfied and stimulated … without looking beyond to another end” (V: 321; emphasis added). Observing free art leads to feelings of satisfaction and stimulation within itself. While employed, the mind feels autonomous. Beautiful-free art brings about feelings of self-sufficiency in spite of, and indeed through, occupation. According to Kant, this balance of constraint and the feeling of self-sufficiency among the audience provide a sense of the right kind of freedom: autonomy.

Returning to the dichotomy of rhetoric and poetry, Kant provides summary judgment of the two: poetry provides more than its promise, rhetoric less (V: 321). Poetry is engaged in play, which provides the understanding with the results that would have been derived from business (Geschäft). Rhetoric, on the other hand, is grounded in business itself; in other words, it has a function beyond provoking a sense of freedom in the audience and is thereby more a craft than an art. Moreover, rhetoric's aim is particularly harmful: “insofar as [it] is understood [as] the art of persuasion,” Kant argues, rhetoric acts by “taking someone in for the advantage of someone else” (V: 327). Rhetoric thus “rob[s]” others “of their freedom” by using art to move an audience for the speaker's end. It thus models interested rather than disinterested action and thereby is less estimable than a fine art. Poetry is then better than rhetoric at teaching about autonomy because it lacks such mercenary aims, it does not seek to convince an audience on a particular point and thereby rob others of their freedom. Kant makes a similar distinction regarding visual art: painting is esteemed over architecture because of the absence of function. In other words, a painting is made strictly for viewing and in order to please ‘by itself.’ Rhetoric and architecture then are less useful for provoking an audience to reflect on autonomy because they have functions (e.g., does this building shelter its inhabitants well?), which can distract an audience from thinking about freedom and constraint. For Kant the fine arts are more autonomous in purpose and for this reason they are better suited as an analogy for transmitting the principle of autonomy.

Poetry claims “the highest rank of all” the fine arts (V: 326). It does this for two interrelated reasons: effect and form. According to Kant, poetry communicates concepts in a manner that music does not. Poetry frees the imagination while remaining within the constraints of given concepts (provided by words). In so doing, poetry elevates itself to the level of ideas and enables the mind to

For the moment, the important element in this passage is that poetry, through its ability to transmit concepts, provokes a sense of freedom.Footnote ²⁵ Poetry as an approximation of freedom inspires a feeling of freedom.Footnote ²⁶ Emphasizing feeling, however, only overlooks the question of poetry's form. Kant esteems poetry because it, as a medium, can be experienced without infringing upon others. Someone can experience the feeling of freedom while quietly reading poetry (and reading is the form poetry takes for Kant).Footnote ²⁷ To make further sense of the significance of medium in Kant's art hierarchy, it is useful to return to music.

Where Kant esteems poetry, he criticizes music. To begin, music suffers from a concept problem. Music “speaks through mere sensations without concepts.” While it “moves the mind in more manifold and … deeper ways” than poetry, its effects seem to be less enduring (V: 328).Footnote ²⁸ By communicating in the realm of concepts, art can facilitate “the enlargement of the faculties that must join together in the power of judgment for the sake of cognition” (V: 329). Kant characterizes this enlargement, and what it provides for cognition, in terms of “culture.” Without concepts that can be communicated and shared by a community, music is less able to provide grounds for common understanding in Kant's view. Rather than providing the concepts useful for a common understanding, music “merely plays with sensations” (ibid.). For this reason, Kant suggests that music is more about “enjoyment than culture”Footnote ²⁹ and claims that reason decrees that music has “less value than any other of the beautiful arts” (V: 328).

Here a distinction between Kant and the empiricists (e.g., Burke) becomes particularly useful in further understanding this concept problem. For Burke, the commonality of our empirical organs would make it relatively simple to judge a particular piece of music. For Kant, this commonality is insufficient for similar judgments and the social expectation of agreement entailed by such judgments.Footnote ³⁰ Thus music in particular suffers from an indeterminacy that, say, pictorial art does not. In Kant's view, music's path is from sensation to indeterminate concepts. The experience of a picture, on the other hand, is from determinate concepts to sensations. The cultural strength of the latter is the presence of that which can be determined. If something can be determined within a discussion, the participants will have arrived at some kind of cognition—moreover one that has a better chance of facilitating common understanding. Thus because of its indeterminacy music does not enlarge our faculties in as fruitful a manner as poetry and painting. As Arendt rightly points out, the enlargement of faculties precedes our ability to think (as if) in the place of another.Footnote ³¹ Accordingly if music is less able to enlarge our faculties, it is presumably less effective in helping us think in the place of another.Footnote ³² This poverty, then, explains Kant's assertion that music suffers from a dearth of culture.Footnote ³³

Kant further describes why music as a medium ends up placed at the bottom of his art hierarchy. This returns us to his liberal sensibility. In this case, he condemns music's antisociality. To a certain extent, he says, music lacks “Urbanität.” Note the use of “urbanity.” One association with the word is of living within the city. With large population concentrations, music is adverse to city life. The second association provides a better clue as to what is at stake: civility or manners. Music, according to Kant, lacks urbanity “because of the character of its instruments.” It “extends its influence further (into the neighborhood) than is required, and so as it were imposes itself, thus interfering with the freedom of others, outside of the musical circle” (V: 330).

Lest we assume that this is a fleeting moment of cantankerousness, we ought to recall that Kant is reported to have “asked the mayor of Königsberg to intervene when the inmates of a prison near his house spent the entire day singing”Footnote ³⁴ and who also railed against the “children and thoughtless people who disturb the thinking section of the community by banging, shouting, whistling, singing, and other noisy pastimes (and often even by noisy religious devotions).”Footnote ³⁵ In a footnote in the CJ, Kant uses the same language to attack devotional singing.Footnote ³⁶ Those who advocate such activities (in addition to being “pharisaical”) clearly “have not considered that by means of such a noisy … form of worship they have imposed a great inconvenience on the public, for they have forced the neighborhood either to join in their singing or to give up their own train of thought” (V: 330).

While it seems reasonable to employ these quotations as evidence of an aging curmudgeon, or of hypersensitivity to noise and nothing else, we ought to take their proliferation more seriously. Music, according to Kant, infringes upon the freedom of others.Footnote ³⁷ This point reinforces the importance of autonomy as the ranking criterion in the art hierarchy. While music—as a beautiful art—is grounded in freedom, its performance interferes with the freedom of others in a way that poetry and painting do not. With the latter two, art “speak[s] to the eyes” and thus “one need only turn one's eyes away if one would not admit their impression” (V: 330). Thus where the latter two arts might also produce a certain amount of interference, one can reasonably escape such influences by turning away. They are pursued in such a way that they are relatively private. The freedom that is evinced in the performance of painting and poetry may infringe slightly but it is not domineering.

Music, on the other hand, is domineering. It spills out into the “neighborhood,” infringing on the rights of “the public.” Hence its comparison to the perfumed handkerchief in the quotation at the beginning of this essay. Such a handkerchief “treats everyone in the vicinity to it against their will, and forces them, if they wish to breathe, to enjoy it at the same time” (V: 330; emphasis added). It is thus a manifestation of boorish (antisocial) behavior that has fallen out of fashion for good reason: it gives the odoriferous rogue unwarranted power over his neighbors. This notion applied to music leads to a further conclusion: music is the most illiberal of all the arts owing to its form. Kant argues that the salient characteristic of art is its freedom. Furthermore, he claims that for art to be beautiful, it needs a certain constraint (which I noted above is analogous to autonomy). By overstepping the boundaries of its freedom and infringing on others, music shows freedom used impolitely, excessively, and without the proper restraint.Footnote ³⁸ Where art in general allows us to feel our freedom,Footnote ³⁹ music specifically allows us to experience the excessive infringements of others. Thus the problem with the musician is what happens when we try to make hisFootnote ⁴⁰ maxim universalizable: cacophony. If everyone were to attempt to pursue his own music, no one would be able to concentrate on it and the result would be anarchy.Footnote ⁴¹ This state of affairs is the same as everyone pursuing what Kant elsewhereFootnote ⁴² calls “natural freedom” which leads to a “state of antagonism,” that is, one without harmony.

Music is lower on the hierarchy because it lacks the culture and urbanity of the other arts. Due to its indeterminacy, it does not enlarge the faculties as well as the other arts. In turn, this makes it less cultured because it is less able to help us think in the place of another. Furthermore Kant claims that music, in light of its public effects, should be considered the least estimable art. One can pursue and experience the other (‘higher’) arts in such a way that they do not infringe substantially on others. Music dominates others in the public sphere in that it imposes itself on those nearby. As such, and in keeping with art's utility for teaching about freedom through analogy, music demonstrates the effects of an uncivil use of freedom.

Genius

If art has a virtue, then the genius is its virtuoso. The genius is located at the apex of the artistic-production hierarchy and therefore is the exemplary manifestation of freedom. As such, this figure is useful for teaching an audience lessons relevant for social life.Footnote ⁴³ This section considers what is at stake in Kant's treatment of genius. It suggests that while he believes that the genius is an exemplar of freedom, Kant makes clear that this virtuosity should be bounded. Here a comparison with Arendt is instructive for understanding what Kant is after. Dana Villa points out that Arendt links freedom to virtuosity because its greatness and great deeds break from the “commonly accepted.”Footnote ⁴⁴ Turning to Kant, we find that virtuosity is tempered. While he is clearly drawn to genius because of its ability to teach an audience about freedom, he is at the same time uncomfortable with its excesses. This tension pervades Kant's account of genius. To better understand the heuristic utility of the genius, it is useful to begin with the theme of responsibility. For Kant the question of responsibility is critical when it comes to genius: without responsibility genius can teach nothing about freedom. The section then examines the originality of the genius. Here the didactic power of the genius's autonomy becomes apparent. Section 2 concludes with an exploration of the relationship between imagination and genius. Kant also notes the importance of restrictions on the freedom of the imagination, asserting that it must remain lawful. This attention to freedom and lawfulness provides further evidence that Kant believed that art could prompt an audience to reflect on the duties of liberal citizenship.

We might wonder how the genius fits into the art hierarchy. Considering why Kant places music at the bottom, it seems possible to deduce that musical geniuses would then be the most boorish for Kant. While this might be true, this is not the central point. Instead genius is meant as another exemplar of freedom due to its effect on those who experience it (artist and audience). Yet, with genius and the values that it is supposed to exemplify, a similar problem to what we found with music exists: excessive freedom. The genius, in spite of being exemplary, poses a threat for Kant. This threat becomes evident in Kant's treatment of imagination as well as in taste, which I consider in section 3 below.

Before continuing with the discussion of genius, it is important to consider what role autonomy plays here. The fact of genius serves to demonstrate a freedom akin to the moral freedom of all men. Are we all geniuses then? As we find out in Kant's discussion of genius and epigone,Footnote ⁴⁵ the answer is an emphatic No. Rather, Kant is using genius as evidence for moral and political agency (freedom) precisely because it shows freedom's proper use in one field of human endeavor.Footnote ⁴⁶ The creative capacity of the genius is analogous to, not the same as, the human capacity for moral and political freedom. Thus like the other elements of artistic endeavor discussed above, Kant believed that it might function as a heuristic device for instructing an audience about this capacity.

According to Kant, the genius is useful insofar as he is responsible for his products. In order for the genius to be responsible, he must be free. Yet Kant describes genius as a “natural gift” (V: 307).Footnote ⁴⁷ The question then becomes whether nature or the genius is responsible for his product—that is, whether the genius is free in his genius. Kant asserts that the genius's products are his own in that nature provides a capacity that can be employed or not, depending on what the genius decides. Thus, in spite of the source of the gift, the genius is responsible for his products.Footnote ⁴⁸ This question of responsibility is critical in that without responsibility the genius can teach an audience nothing about freedom or autonomy. Therefore Kant makes a point of asserting the genius's responsibility in spite of having this natural gift.

The “primary characteristic” of genius is “originality” (V: 307). This characteristic is embodied in the absence of formulae or “determinate” rules. While the presence of originality is necessary, Kant claims it is not sufficient “since there can also be original nonsense” (V: 308). Genius must also be exemplary, its products able to be used as models. Products of this faculty then function as objects of imitation for those who lack genius. This is not the genius's only function. His product serves fellow geniuses as an example

In this passage, a work of genius provokes another genius. Kant deliberately reminds us that the second genius (the “consumer”) does not imitate the first. In imitation the second individual would be taking up the rule given by the first, thereby relinquishing the autonomy or freedom of his own genius. The freedom of the second individual would be reduced. Instead a strange form of communication takes place: from the production of the first work to the second there is a jump from the phenomenal realm to the noumenal and back into the phenomenal. Upon encountering the work of genius, the second individual is, Kant claims, “awakened” to a feeling. More specifically this is the feeling of a particular capacity. In this case, the second genius feels his own originality in production. As Susan Shell notes, “Genius is, and arouses in others, a sort of self-motion (Kant later speaks of ‘autonomy’) that is analogous to, though not identical with, moral freedom itself.”Footnote ⁴⁹ Here, as in the poetry discussion above, the ‘inspired’ is enabled to feel his freedom. Given what Kant suggests in his fine art hierarchy, some forms (poetry) do this in a better manner than others (music) by avoiding infringements on the freedom of others. In any event, the second genius is awakened from the slumber of rule-based contingency. His art, then, is imbued with originality, demonstrating an absence of coercion such that the piece acquires its own new rule. It is thus exemplary.

Much has been said in the literature about the genius as one who gives rule to art.Footnote ⁵⁰ For Kant, the genius demonstrates autonomy in the exercise of freedom in that he gives rule—creates constraint—by himself. His constraint will become grounds for both emulation (among his peers) and imitation (among those lacking genius). Kant finds the actions of the genius, manifested through his products, estimable because they balance freedom with constraint. This balance is another instructive analogy that art provides for the education of citizens.

Imagination also plays a prominent role in Kant's section “On the faculties of the mind that constitute genius.” It is very powerful as a “productive cognitive faculty.” Imagination allows us to create “as it were, another nature” (V: 314). The presence of “as it were” is meant to keep us from getting carried away: it is as if we create another nature though we do not actually do it. The presence of this ‘as if’ is then mitigated as Kant proceeds:

The “we” here refers not solely to geniuses, but rather to all of us with imagination. This in turn implies that whatever the outcome, the product of imagination can be applied to all, which bolsters its utility for educating citizens. Experience (that which is grounded in the contingent/empirical) is transformed through an act of will, and in accordance with higher principles—those of freedom. These principles are natural to us yet distinct from those on which our understanding is grounded. In other words, this experience moves us into a realm that resembles what we know but is accompanied by something of which we have no empirical cognition: freedom. Hence we are transported beyond the “is” and into the “ought.” Imagination allows us to say: “It might be thus.”Footnote ⁵¹

On this account Linda Zerilli is correct in pointing to the importance of imagination in Kant and the resources it provides for agency and new beginnings.Footnote ⁵² Yet there are limits as to how far one can go with Kant in this Arendtian direction. In his treatment of the master-student relationship in art production, Kant notes that the imagination is to remain lawful. The master stimulates the student's imagination “toward the suitability for a given concept … through severe criticism” (V: 355). Criticism prevents examples from becoming models for imitation—and thus obstacles to the student's genius. Even with its freedom, the imagination remains lawful for Kant. Indeed without this lawfulness “no beautiful art nor even a correct personal taste for judging of it is possible” (ibid.). Put differently, restraint facilitates freedom in imagination. This lawful component of imagination's freedom provides further evidence of Kant's concerns regarding the excesses of freedom.

For those lacking the quality of genius, attempts at originality and deviation lead to mannerism: “another sort of aping, namely that of mere individuality” (V: 318). Thus by including the concept of the exemplary Kant contains the effects of a proliferation of “individuals.” The exemplary applies only to those worthy of imitation. It is therefore only those whose freedom has been properly constrained, that is, can be turned into a maxim and applied beyond a subjective position, that are to be held in the highest esteem. This exemplarity is, however, sufficiently unreliable for teaching the proper use of freedom that Kant uses taste to emphasize the importance of restraining freedom from excess.

The Sociality of Taste: Controlling the Unruly Genius

How is the freedom of genius to be controlled? That the genius needs to be controlled is not at all obvious. Recall for a moment the discussion of genius from the previous section. There the genius appeared as the proper blend of freedom and restraint.Footnote ⁵³ Indeed this blend was what seemed to make the genius estimable. It will become clear in the proceeding discussion that Kant believes this blend to be insufficient for teaching the proper values. Indeed Kant's desire to control the genius is instructive as to what is at stake for him: the excesses of freedom. Taste, as the communal sense, guards against geniuses who overstep their bounds. In spite of genius's exemplary autonomy, Kant feels the need to emphasize a mechanism to restrain its potential excesses. This emphasis embodies a concern for the protection of the freedom of others, one that is akin to the notion of negative liberty. Kant provides evidence of this concern in two ways: first, he asserts that geniuses need schooling and second, he argues that in a confrontation, taste must supersede genius.

To begin, Kant asserts that the genius needs schooling. He directs the animadversion toward those who pronounce themselves “free of the academic constraints of all rules, and [who] believe that one parades around better on a horse with the staggers than one properly trained [Schulpferde]” (V: 310). Genius without the “form” (ibid.) learned in academic training will not be able to withstand the scrutiny of judgment. If we apply the argument regarding the genius from the foregoing section, Kant's concerns become better defined. The genius—as a strong manifestation of freedom and as one who does not submit to the laws of othersFootnote ⁵⁴—is something of a threat to a community of the law-abiding. Now of course this is only within the artistic realm, but if, as I suggest, the genius teaches others about freedom, the untrained genius ought to provoke an audience to reflect on the dangers of anarchy. If the genius communicates only freedom to those with whom he has contact, he leaves them with the impression of unrestrained virtuosity, that is, the same excesses found in music. Hence, in addition to including the notion of exemplarity in genius's definition, Kant also posits that geniuses must be “properly trained.” Thus, for Kant, geniuses too must go to school (“Schul-”) if they are to parade around. The image of a parade is noteworthy in that this demonstrates the importance of publicity in the genius's work. Of course this might mean merely that the parade will be easier for the potential genius—the ride will be less jolting in that those who have been to school will perhaps be more comprehensible to everyone else than they might otherwise be. This said, the presence of the ability (through schooling) to withstand judgment should dispel this interpretation: for genius to even hold up it must encounter the rules of the school. Kant's genius is not merely an example of unrestrained agency or virtuosity. His genius is not Romantic.

Next, Kant feels compelled to set genius against taste.Footnote ⁵⁵ Taste emerges victorious. At first glance, this victory is perhaps strange. Commentators have dealt with it in a number of ways. Before explaining why taste wins for Kant, it is instructive to examine what others make of this confrontation. Zammito claims that this is an attack on Herder and the Sturm und Drang movement's enthusiasm for genius.Footnote ⁵⁶ Tonelli identifies taste's limiting power as a prevalent notion in eighteenth-century aesthetics (in fact, he includes Herder in a list of thinkers advancing this idea).Footnote ⁵⁷ Guyer finds this victory to be perplexing to the point that he despairs, giving up and labeling taste's triumph as based on “fiat.”Footnote ⁵⁸ Indeed he interprets it as a sign that Kant is shying away from the abyss that the genius's freedom opens up. Guyer then concludes that “Kant really provides no argument for this preference.”Footnote ⁵⁹ While Kant does not provide much of an argument here, he certainly is not giving taste precedence over genius based on “fiat.”Footnote ⁶⁰ The interpretation advanced in this essay provides an explanation for the preference, revealing that it rests on a theoretical foundation.Footnote ⁶¹ Indeed the confrontation allows Kant again to emphasize that art can teach principles for citizenship.

It is noteworthy that Kant feels the need to confront genius with taste. This desire suggests his nervousness with what genius represents. While I have not treated taste at length directly, one of its prominent characteristics should already be clear: sociality. Judgments of taste are accompanied by the expectation of agreement on the part of others. One does not add “…to me” onto the end of such judgments.Footnote ⁶² Rather there is something intersubjective (i.e., social) about this expectation. This is what allows us, so Arendt (among others) argues, to think in the place of another. Thus Kant participates in a long-running discussion that relates taste to a “sensus communis” (V: 293).Footnote ⁶³ By this sense “must be understood the idea of a communal sense, i.e., a faculty for judging that in its reflection takes account (a priori) of everyone else's way of representing in thought … and thereby avoid[s] the illusion which, from subjective private conditions that could easily be held to be objective, would have a detrimental influence on judgment” (ibid.). Taste, as the communal sense, is therefore the means by which the private is distinguished from the “objective” (public). Thus when the logic of taste is applied to genius, it becomes clear how taste functions—in a battle between the individual and the public, the public takes precedence.Footnote ⁶⁴ This precedence is akin to what was evident in Kant's problematization of music: freedom is to be maximized so long as it does not infringe on others.

Given Kant's move into a mental language of imagination and understanding, it is easy to lose sight of what he is doing. The language deployed further on brings us back to the point and reinforces Kant's political message. Taste “is the discipline (or corrective) of genius, clipping its wings and making it well behaved [gesittet] or polished [geschliffen]” (V: 319). While we might let “Disziplin” pass innocuously, the presence of “gesittet” and “geschliffen” forces us to note well the nature of the relationship. Gesittet not only means “well-mannered” but also carries the connotation of being civilized. As in the music discussion, the issue of civilization emerges again. Taste works actively, clipping wings, and thereby keeping genius from exercising too much lawlessness. For Kant the community of taste (expected or established in history) functions to keep the use of freedom civil. Thus the excessively imaginative (i.e., free) will be brought back into civil/social bounds by the force (clipping!) of this community:

Taste provides civil ordinances for genius—“you may do X here, but not there … you may go as far as Y in your actions, any further you will be out of bounds.” Note also the effect that taste produces: enjoyment of a future among others, and finally ever progressing culture. Taste (law) is what allows genius (freedom) to remain possible among others. Put this way, the notion is similar to the following liberal political claim: “Right is the restriction of each individual's freedom so that it harmonizes with the freedom of everyone else.”Footnote ⁶⁵ The freedom of everyone else is manifest in the expectation of agreement insofar as when taste is exercised, it is applying what everyone else would say as well. Thus, when an individual's freedom is exercised out of harmony with that of everyone else, others would step forward and describe this exercise as uncivil. Furthermore, the use of freedom in this manner without the disciplining force of taste threatens the community. Taste allows the community to have a future because it restrains the negative effects of natural freedom, thereby avoiding “a state of antagonism” that the confrontation produces.Footnote ⁶⁶ Despotism of taste would then be that which puts too many restrictions on genius. And yet that the restrictions on genius must remain in place to control its autonomy demonstrates what is at stake for Kant: the principles of community. He believes that taste in the artistic realm can work to guard against infringements in an analogous manner to a political order in which individuals are given freedom so long as that freedom does not infringe upon others. In this again art provokes an audience to reflect on key elements of a just political order.