QuestionsIs beauty in the eye of the beholder?The beautiful pleases all, without concept and without interest
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?Subjective yet universal

The beautiful pleases all, without concept and without interest

The judgment of taste (Kant)

Immanuel Kant 1724 · 1804Set the limits of reason; act from duty.
See profile
What it claims

The beautiful is what pleases universally without a concept: the judgment of taste is subjective, but it demands the assent of all.

Why

Pleasure in beauty serves no personal interest, so we can expect it of everyone, though no rule says what is beautiful.

The same idea through history
Immanuel Kant1790Critique of the Power of Judgment, Analytic of the Beautiful: the version presented here, in four 'moments' (quality, quantity, relation, modality).
David Hume1757Kant partly answers the empiricist tradition of taste (Hume, Burke). For Hume the standard is the verdict of true judges; for Kant the demand for agreement cannot rest on experience.
In short

"The beautiful pleases all, without concept and without interest" is an argument by Immanuel Kant (Critique of the Power of Judgment, 1790, §§ 2, 6-9, 17, 22, 1790) on the question "Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?" (answer: subjective yet universal). Its claim: The beautiful is what pleases universally without a concept: the judgment of taste is subjective, but it demands the assent of all. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P7). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Critique of the Power of Judgment, 1790, §§ 2, 6-9, 17, 22
Valid with an implicit premise

When I say 'it is beautiful', I speak as if beauty were in the thing, and I expect everyone to agree. Yet this is no proof: no rule can demonstrate that a thing is beautiful. Kant solves the puzzle like this: the pleasure in the beautiful is disinterested, it depends neither on the existence of the object nor on my desire. So I know myself free of any private motive, and I assume this pleasure holds for everyone. The judgment of taste is subjective (it comes from my feeling) but it demands the assent of all.

P1The pleasure taken in the beautiful is disinterested: we do not ask whether the existence of the thing matters to us, only whether its mere representation pleases us.
P2Someone who knows himself free of all interest in his pleasure cannot trace it to private conditions: he therefore judges that the thing must please everyone.
P3This claim is not that of the pleasant: of the beautiful we do not say 'it is beautiful for me'. We do not expect others to agree because we have already found them agreeing, we demand it.
P4This universality does not come from concepts: no objective rule determines by concepts what is beautiful, for the ground of the judgment is the subject's feeling.
P5Beauty is the form of an object's purposiveness, perceived without any representation of a purpose: the object looks made to be judged (harmony of imagination and understanding), without any definite end.
P6The demand for agreement presupposes a common sense, an ideal norm: it does not say that everyone will agree, but that everyone ought to.
P7 · implicit premiseWhen we say 'beautiful', we mean the object of a pleasure with these four traits: disinterested, demanded of all, without concept, based on a purposiveness without a purpose.
Therefore the beautiful is what pleases universally without a concept: the judgment of taste is subjective, but it demands the assent of all.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P7, the computer finds a case where a pleasure has the four traits and yet 'beautiful' would name something else (for example, a moral or intellectual pleasure): the definition would not be that of the beautiful.
Without P7, the premises describe the judgment of taste but do not say that 'beautiful' is the name of the object of such a pleasure. Kant makes this step by analysing what we mean when we speak of the beautiful: his four 'moments' are drawn from that analysis of the language of taste.
Analogy. When two mathematicians say 'it is true', each demands the other's agreement, but through a proof. For the beautiful the demand is the same, yet there is no proof: one invites, one shows, one waits for the other to 'see'.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1835 · attacks the conclusion

Artistic beauty stands higher than nature. For the beauty of art is the beauty that is born, born again, of the mind; by as much as the mind and its products are higher than nature, by so much the beauty of art is higher than the beauty of nature. A theory of beauty that starts from taste for natural forms begins with the lowest.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1835, after the author's death (1804).
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: the last sentence of the objection's text is our application of Hegel to Kant. Kant does take flowers as examples of free beauty (§ 16, 'flowers are free natural beauties'), but he also treats art and genius later in the Critique (§§ 43 to 54).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: should the beautiful be thought from ordinary taste experience, or from art as a work of the mind? An open point: modern aesthetics has followed both paths.
Friedrich Nietzsche 1887 · attacks premise 1

'The beautiful is what pleases without interest,' says Kant. Compare Stendhal, a real spectator and an artist, who calls the beautiful a promise of happiness. Kant thought of the beautiful only from the spectator's point of view, without the experience of the one who creates or desires.

Kant replies
Immanuel Kant 1790 · Kant's anticipated reply (§ 2)
Kant defines interest as the satisfaction tied to the representation of the existence of an object. He does not deny that the beautiful can be desired or loved; he says that in judging 'it is beautiful' one sets aside what the existence of the thing brings us.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: this passage only defines what Kant means by 'interest'. It does not answer Nietzsche's complaint that a judgment of taste detached from all desire would not be that of an artist or a lover of the beautiful.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: does pure taste require setting desire aside (Kant), or is the experience of beauty first desire and the promise of pleasure (Stendhal, Nietzsche)? An open point.
Pierre Bourdieu 1979 · attacks premise 1

The 'pure gaze', the disinterested taste that Kant presents as universal, is the product of a social condition: someone who does not have to worry about necessity can afford to judge without interest. This class taste passes itself off as a capacity of all.

no reply
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1979, after the author's death (1804).
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Kant could not answer Bourdieu. He says the judgment of taste 'demands' the agreement of all (§ 7) without saying all attain it (§ 22: 'ought to agree', not 'will agree'). What remains is whether this demand is a social illusion or an ideal to be reached.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: is the universality of taste a normative ideal that social inequalities prevent us from reaching, or an illusion that hides domination? An open point.
What today's voices say
Defend it
Roger ScrutonInspired by Kant, he argued beauty is a real, universal value rooted in our rational nature, while rejecting both pure subjectivism and pure objectivism as incomplete. Asked whether beauty's rules are given by nature, he replied that they are the byproduct of successful solutions, not laid down a priori.