Hinduism And Immanuel Kant Analysis

What is beauty? Hinduism and Immanuel Kant

“Beauty is an integral quality of the soul and God. If God is beautiful, the entire universe has to be beautiful. There can be nothing ugly in the universe.” (Hindu Janajagruti Samiti)¬¬

Hinduism is the oldest of all living religions. It was not man-made and is based on a set of dogmas. Unlike Islam or Christianity, it was not started as a system. It was developed by the teachings of such teachers as Avataras, Rishis, Vedas, the Upanishads, the Gita and Itihasas. Hindus fundamentally believe that there is a peculiar and mysterious spiritual force that guides them.

Hinduism is a religion of freedom. It allows absolute freedom from the rational mind of man. It never requires any limits
This theme is connected with the theory of sentiment or rasa, a unique part of ancient Indian poetry. They seemed to write lengthy and elaborate verses on different parts of both male and female parts of the body. The poems were about humans as well as celestial beings. Art historians have claimed that religious Indian art is not focused on carnal beauty, but with higher spirituality. From the Indian poetry came many religious hymns that describe the physical beauty of the goddess. The Saundaryalahari, which is believed to have been in the eighth or ninth century by Shankaracharya, is a hymn celebrating the beauty of the goddess Tripurasundari. The title of the hymn. Saundaryalahari, literally means waves of beauty. It clearly and vividly describes each of her physical features from head to toe. The title also means enjoyment of spiritual delight in the euphoric union with the Divine. (Nilma Chitgopekar)

A very different view of beauty came from Immanuel Kant, an 18th century German philosopher whose work sparked changes in many fields including aesthetics. He holds our mental faculty of reason in high regard and believes that it is our reason that fills the world we experience with structure. He argues that it is our capability of judgment enables us to have experience of beauty and grasp those experiences as part of an ordered, natural world with purpose. (Douglas
It is an innate part of the activity to expect others to agree with us. We may say, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, but instead we debate and argue about works of art and think something can actually achieve something from this. Kant insists that necessity and universality are product features of the human mind and labels this ‘common sense’, and that there is no objective property of an object that makes it beautiful. (Douglas Burnham)

The fourth theme states that beautiful objects appear to be ‘purposive without purpose’ or more commonly thought of as ‘final without end’. An object’s purpose should be according to which it was made. The object appears to have been made or designed, but it is part of the experience of beautiful objects, Kant argues. He believes that they should affect us as if they had a purpose, although no specific purpose can be found. (Douglas Burnham)

Kant’s thoughts on aesthetics were very different from others in his field. Baumgarten, who invented the modern use of aesthetics’ in the 18th century, argued that all sense perception was merely ‘confused’ cognition, or cognition by way of sensible images. He argued that although beauty certainly appears to our senses, this by no means demonstrates that beauty is non-cognitive. Baumgarten believed that it had more to do with rational ideas such as harmony, rather than physiological. (Douglas