Means Without End: Production, Reception, and Teaching in Kant's Aesthetics

by Gary Peters

If aesthetics is to have a role within an art school context, it must be able to engage with the work of art as an ongoing and ontologically open productive enterprise. The reception of the artwork as a completed thing or act and the aesthetic judgment necessary to take pleasure in the contemplation of it is largely irrelevant to the day-to-day work of the artist in the studio or onsite. Rarely do the tutor or student stand before a work that could be claimed to have reached completion or achieved what might be called "finality." On the contrary, in most cases an essential aspect of teaching practice is precisely to resist the impending closure of the work through a critical engagement which challenges the student to consider and reconsider the aesthetic possibilities of given forms within a situation of infinite reflection. Given this, it is important at the outset to consider Kant's notion of finality without end.