Hume, Kant, and Social Media

Hume and Kant were two Enlightenment philosophers that were extremely influential in shaping the debate between empiricism and rationalism, which is, frankly, one of the biggest debates in philosophy. Hume was a Scottish philosopher who lived three hundred years after Descartes, and he argued that that reason was subject to desire. Reason wasn't the master. Hume is famous for his skepticism, as he stated, like Locke, that we can only have knowledge based on experience. Instead of thinking knowledge is what you can't doubt, Hume said knowledge is what you experience. But since, for example, we never experience more than one event following another, we never experience one event actually causing another, and so we can't have any knowledge of causation.  And he said that when we think of ourselves, we only conceive of  a bundle of sensations, nothing more. We never experience ourselves per se. So we really can't assume know anything about ourselves. 

Kant read Hume and responded to almost all of his critiques. He credited Hume with waking him from his “dogmatic slumber” and attempted to resolve the opposing forces of rationalism and empiricism. And many think he was successful. In his revolutionary Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argued that our experiences are structured by features of our minds. That is, we can't experience the world without providing rational concepts to shape our perceptions.  

With respect to the topic of aesthetics: Hume published his most famous work on the subject, “On the Standard of Taste,” in 1757. And in it he wrote thus: “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty."
Beauty cannot be objective because if it were, then a world without perceivers could be beautiful or ugly, or that beauty can be detected through scientific instruments, like weight and speed and the like. And what keeps the perception of beauty from being entirely subjective is good and bad taste. And that’s where the word “tasteless” originates – from this idea that something subjective can be attached to a standard of a certain type of person, one with taste. Those with good taste should be praised and looked up to, and their opinions about what they like and dislike should count more than those without taste. Hume stated that “strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to this valuable character; and the joint verdict of such, wherever they are to be found, is the true standard of taste and beauty” (“Of the Standard of Taste” 1757, 144). Beauty is in the eye of the healthy, experienced beholder, the one with good taste. If the healthy, experienced beholder likes a work of art, then it is by definition beautiful.

In a similar fashion to Hume, Kant stated that beauty depends on the eye of the beholder. It depends on enjoying the object. But he differed from Hume in that he believed it is the judging of an object that provides the experience of pleasure, not the object itself. Kant distinguishes between two main types of judgments, reflective and determinative ones.  In technical terms, a determinative judgment is one where we subsume given particulars under universals that are already known. (For example, since you have in your mind the concept of a table, you are able to place a thing with a wooden top and four legs into that concept when you see it, and thus mark it as a table.) Reflective judgments, on the other hand, occur when we have a given particular and attempt to infer a universal from it. These are harder to make. They require that a category be created to classify an object. Much of philosophy, as it turns out, is just creating categories or concepts for things. Now, a judgment of the beautiful, for Kant, is a judgment that invites the viewer into a reflective state of mind.

For the viewer, the joy in interpreting a work of art is what makes it beautiful. This is the key. Kant states that art should cause viewers to come up with their own interpretation or way of thinking about it. The struggle to describe a work of art is what we enjoy about it. This is a step above Hume's definition of beauty, as the critic must not just be a person of taste, but must enjoy interpreting the work of art for it to be considered beautiful. This is the aesthetic experience. Kant called it “the free play of the imagination.”

Turning now to social media: Hume would say that content on a social media site should be evaluated and analyzed by intelligent critics with good taste. Their consensus on a particular site should constitute what the operator of that site should change in order to create a work of beauty. Perhaps the idea of beauty in a website is questionable to some. Certainly, it takes less work to design a blog than to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. However, the basic concept is the same: beauty is in the eye of the healthy, experienced beholder, and if this beholder likes something, then it is a work of art, and therefore, beautiful. Art is not beautiful because of what it is, but because of what people think of it. 

To take this a step further, we will consider what Kant might say about social media. A website should inspire its viewer. Perhaps it might even make them uncomfortable as they confront judgments of "the beautiful and sublime," as they grapple with their current paradigms and feel the need to understand what they are viewing. If this is artfully and tastefully done, a website will leave a lasting impression on its visitors and thus, hopefully, create success for itself.