Enlightenment: What is it?

      Alexander Pope writes of an idiosyncratic criticism, noting "'tis with our judgments as with our watches, none go just alike," (Pope 349) and "both must alike from heav'n drive their light, these born to Judge, as well as those to Write." (349)

Therefore, the job of the critic is not merely to judge, but to assert the limitation which imagination shirks off: "be sure your self and your own Reach to know, how far your Genius, Taste, and learning go." (Pope 350) Therefore, the genuine source of criticism is the same as the genuine source of inspiration, nature: "First follow Nature, and your Judgement frame, by her just Standard, which is still the same." (Pope 351) Similarly, therefore 'learning' or formalizing can cap both critical and creative endeavors: 'a little Learning is a dang'rous Thing; drink deep, or taste not the pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the Brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.' (Pope 352) Thus criticism becomes an all-encompassing attitude, rather than a partisan effort: 'Most Criticks, fond of some subservient Art, still make the Whole depend upon a Part' (Pope 353) and 'Some praise at Morning what they blame at Night; But always think the last Opinion right. A Muse by these is like a Mistress us'd, This hour she's idoliz'd, the next abus'd' (Pope 357) which ultimately results in a selfish attitude: 'Fondly we think we honour Merit then, When we but praise Our selves in Other Men.' (Pope 357) Better is the open school of criticism which makes assertions but doesn't live and die by them: 'Men must be taught as if you taught them not; And Things unknown propos'd as Things forgot.' (Pope 358) Therefore, a supreme critic exists somewhere between the poles, such as Longinus 'whose own Example strengthens all his Laws, And Is himself that great Sublime he draws.' (Pope 361.) 

       Kant teaches us an aesthetics that stresses 'suitability to the cognitive faculties that are in play in the reflecting power of judgement' (Kant 412) highlighting an objective/subjective union in that 'apprehension of forms in the imagination can never take place without the reflecting power of judgment.' (Kant 412) Beauty to Kant is a passive interest, or a benign disinterestedness sans a concept: 'someone who feels pleasure in mere reflection on the form of an object, without regard to a concept, rightly makes claim to the assent of everyone else, even though this judgement is empirical and is an individual judgment " (Kant 413) Kant describes the agreeable, or the faculty of sensation, as a matter of pure inclination rather than developed taste: 'Hence one says of the agreeable not merely that it pleases but that it gratifies. It is not mere approval that I give it, rather inclination is thereby aroused.' (Kant 416) Beauty is a matter of taste, but taste is not purely subjective because it does not rise merely from the agreeable, but from a space which sparks cognitive reflection: 'one solicits assent from everyone else because one has a ground for it that is common to all.' 429 Kant also grounds the sublime as that which is fundamentally different from the beautiful because it highlights the inadequacy of form rather than embodying it with disinterest: "But just because there is in our imagination a striving to advance to the infinite, while in our reason there lies a claim to absolute totality, as to a real idea, the very inadequacy of our faculty for estimating the magnitude of the things of the sensible world awakens the feeling of a supersensible faculty in us. (Kant 433) Therefore, whether beautiful or sublime, the domain of art is always essentially formal, deriving its beauty not from content but from form: "the beauty of art is a beautiful representation of a thing." (Kant 446) Kant's idea of enlightenment is twofold: one, the enlightened person should strive to use their own understanding (in correspondence with their culture,) and 2, the enlightened person should leave an openness so that previous generations can expand upon their development. 

     Hegel puts a fine point on enlightenment by naming 'the self' as that construction which is not born, but made: "self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another." (Hegel 541) If a person were to grow in a vacuum, that person's sense of self would be greatly reduced. We think of selves as autonomous, but people are always existing in constant shifting relationships, prompting Hegel to write of inwardness and outwardness as fundamentally intwined: "self-consciousness is faced by another self-consciousness; it has come out of itself as an essential being.' (Hegel 541) The famous master-slave dialectic begins with the concept that 'each is indeed certain of its own self, but not of the other, and therefore its own self-certainty still has no truth.' (Hegel 543) Therefore, the master limits his self-knowledge by fixing the other in a role, his "desire has reserved to itself the pure negating of the object and thereby its unalloyed feeling of self. But that is the reason why this satisfaction is itself only a fleeting one, for it lacks the side of objectivity and permanence. (Hegel 546) The slave, on the other hand, finds invariable flexibility in the master's construction of itself, and can reinvigorate its life through a manipulation of work (finding itself and its spirit incompatible to that material which it works within.) His material "has received the baptism of the spiritual." (Hegel 549) The artist's work, to Hegel, culminates in the 'transcendence of the Ideal as the true Idea of beauty,' (Hegel 555) such as in romantic art where the form and the substance are fundamentally incompatible. 

Works Cited:

 Pope. "An Essay on Criticism." ed. Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print. 

 Kant "Critique of the Power of Judgment." ed. Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.
 Hegel. "Phenomenology of Spirt." ed. Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.

 Hegel. "Lectures on Fine Art." ed. Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.