As the corruption of the sensual taste discovers itself by a relish for only those delicate and high seasoned dishes, in which all the refinements of art have been employed to excite a forced sensation of pleasure; so the depravity of intellectual taste manifests itself by an attachment to far‐fetched and studied ornaments, and by want of relish for those beauties which are unaffected and natural. The corruption of the sensual taste, which makes us delight in such aliments as are disgusting to those whose organs are in a good state, is in reality a kind of disease; nor is that depravity of the intellectual taste which makes many prefer the burlesque to the sublime, and the laboured stiffness of art, to the beautiful simplicity of nature, less a disease in our mental frame.
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There are vast countries, where taste has not yet been able to penetrate. Such are those uncultivated wastes, where civil society has never been brought to any degree of perfection, where there is little intercourse between the sexes, and where all representations of living creatures in painting and sculpture are severely prohibited by the laws of religion. Nothing renders the mind so narrow and so little, if I may use that expression, as the want of social intercourse; this confines it’s faculties, blunts the edge of genius, damps every noble passion, and leaves in a state of languor and inactivity every principle that could contribute to the formation of true taste. Besides, where several of the finer arts are wanting, the rest must necessarily languish and decay, since they are inseparably connected together, and mutually support each other. This is one reason why Asiaticks have never excelled in any of the arts, and hence also it is that true taste has been confined to certain countries in Europe.
IIC6 Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) from Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime
Kant’s three great works of critical philosophy (the Critiques of Pure Reason, of Practical Reason and of Judgement) were published relatively late in his life, between 1781 and 1790. They are resolutely abstract works which aspire to deal with the structure of human consciousness unobstructed by any contingencies of time and place. This does not hold for his varied earlier work, particularly the extended essay on feelings for the sublime and the beautiful of 1763. In the nature of the case this is more directed to the particularities of things which are the occasion of such feelings – works of literature, natural phenomena and so forth – and also to the differences which might be expected to exist between individuals who have such feelings: such as characterological differences between individuals or between people of different genders as well as the different ‘characters’ often attributed to people coming from different places. It is Kant’s final chapter discussing such ‘National Characteristics’ that has brought the text its recent notoriety. By his own admission, Kant had read Hume on ‘national characters’ (cf. IIC1), and his text falls prey to the same racist stereotypes. Sometimes these stereotypes can be relatively mundane, as when he attempts to discuss differences between European cultures. But when he expands his view to address differences on a global scale, the flaws become fatal. Islamic cultures, Indian cultures, Chinese cultures are all criticized with the then normative litany of clichés. The inhabitants of North America, on the other hand, receive a dusting of ‘noble savage’ romanticization. It is – needless to say – Africans who suffer the greatest contempt. Perhaps the most appropriate response to this is to note that the parochial Kant, who almost never left his native Königsberg in East Prussia, was as much a creature of the prevailing cultural and religious ideologies of his day as any other citizen. It is of course alarming to find Kant (just as it is to find Hume before him and Hegel after him) giving credence to such demeaning stereotypes. Yet it is arguably more worrying to find the introduction to the modern edition of the work, which first appeared in 1960, completely neglecting to mention the racist dimensions of its final chapter, and indeed concluding with a panegyric to Kant’s ‘noble respect for the underlying dignity of all humanity’. Blindness to racism in the epochs of slavery and imperialism is one thing, it is another to be reminded of its untroubled presence less than a lifetime ago. The present extracts are taken from Section Four, ‘Of National Characteristics, so far as They Depend upon the Distinct Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime’ of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime [1763], Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960, pp. 97–9 and 109–12. (Further extracts from Kant can be found in Art in Theory 1648–1815, VA10, pp. 779–88.)
Of the peoples of our part of the world, in my opinion those who distinguish themselves among all others by the feeling for the beautiful are the Italians and the French, but by the feeling for the sublime, the Germans, English, and Spanish. Holland can be considered as that land where the finer taste becomes largely unnoticeable. […]
I shall mention only fleetingly the arts and the sciences, the choice of which can confirm the taste of the nations which we have imputed to them. The Italian genius has distinguished itself especially in music, painting, sculpture, and architecture. All these beautiful arts encounter a similarly fine taste in France, although their beauty there is less moving. Taste in respect to poetic or oratorical perfection in France falls more into the beautiful, in England more into the sublime. Fine jests, comedy, laughing satire, enamored flirting, and light and naturally flowing writing are native to France. In England, on the other hand, are thoughts of profound content, tragedy, the epic poem, and in general the solid gold of wit, which under French hammers can be stretched to thin leaves of great surface. In Germany wit still shines very much through a foil. Earlier, it was flagrant, but through examples and by the understanding of the nation it has become more charming and noble – but the first with less naïveté, the second with a less bold energy, than in the aforementioned peoples. The taste of the Dutch nation for a painful order and a grace that stirs one to solicitude and embarrassment causes one to expect little feeling also in regard to the inartificial and free movements of the genius, whose beauty would only be deformed by the anxious prevention of faults. Nothing can be more set against all art and science than an adventurous taste, because this distorts nature, which is the archetype of all the beautiful and noble. Hence the Spanish nation has displayed little feeling for the beautiful arts and sciences. […]
If we cast a fleeting glance over the other parts of the world, we find the Arab the noblest man in the Orient, yet of a feeling that degenerates very much into the adventurous. He is hospitable, generous, and truthful; yet his narrative and history and on the whole his feeling are always interwoven with some wonderful thing. His inflamed imagination presents things to him in unnatural and distorted images, and even the propagation of his religion was a great adventure. If the Arabs are, so to speak, the Spaniards of the Orient, similarly the Persians are the French of Asia. They are good poets, courteous and of fairly fine taste. They are not such strict followers of Islam, and they permit to their pleasure‐prone disposition a tolerably mild interpretation of the Koran. The Japanese could in a way be regarded as the Englishmen of this part of the world, but hardly in any other quality than their resoluteness – which degenerates into the utmost stubbornness – their valor, and disdain of death. For the rest, they display few signs of a finer feeling. The Indians have a dominating taste of the grotesque, of the sort that falls into the adventurous. Their religion consists of grotesqueries. Idols of monstrous form, the priceless tooth of the mighty monkey Hanuman, the unnatural atonements of the fakirs … What trifling grotesqueries do the verbose and studied compliments of the Chinese contain! Even their paintings are grotesque and portray strange and unnatural figures such as are encountered nowhere in the world….
The Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the trifling. Mr Hume challenges anyone to cite a single example in which a Negro has shown talents, and asserts that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who are transported elsewhere from their countries, although many of them have even been set free, still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality, even though among the whites some continually rise aloft from the lowest rabble, and through superior gifts earn respect in the world. So fundamental is the difference between these two races of man, and it appears to be as great in regard to mental capacities as in color. The religion of fetishes so widespread among them is perhaps a sort of idolatry that sinks as deeply into the trifling as appears to be possible to