Ouphilpo

Kant’s investigation of the inherent experience of beauty and Baudelaire’s theory of beauty both illustrate the inherent essence of beauty. Kant proposes that the experience of finding something beautiful is the same for everyone, the judgment behind the claim is the same process for each individual, but the specific object of beauty may differ for various individuals. Baudelaire states that beauty is bifurcated into two elements, the rational and the historical, where the rationality serves as the common ground, rather than Kant’s experience, and the historical is used as a way of understanding or manifesting the rational.
Kant separates beauty into two parts: imagination and understanding. He claims, when the two are united, this is “the basis of this pleasure in the harmony of the cognitive faculties” (Kant 6). The pleasure we experience when we see something beautiful is the harmony of our imagination and understanding. Kant claims the pleasure in this synthesis is “universally communicable” (ibid), “pleases universally” (Kant 7), and is inherent in each experience of aesthetic judgment. Additionally, this “universality which does not rest upon concepts of the object…is in no way logical, but aesthetic, i.e., does not involve any objective quantity [sic] of the judgment, but only one that is subjective…” (Kant 5). We can never speak of beauty itself, as in, what beauty is, however the experience of people’s judgments of beauty are the same—we are objectively subjective. No matter what one seems as beautiful, the experience of that judgment—the synthesis of imagination and understanding, will be the same. Our understanding of the universal statement ‘this is beautiful’ paired with our imagination of taste—similarly having an expectation and having it met (and possibly beyond), is the experience of the beautiful. In this way, the object we experience as beautiful acts as a caricature of beauty, insofar as we objectify and possibly idealize an object based on its fulfillment of our expectation or notion of beauty. To denote something as beautiful becomes to denote something as the exemplary object in itself, worthy not of necessity but of preference.
Baudelaire takes a similar view, arguably a macrocosm of earlier Kantian theory in that where Kant was concerned with the individual’s experience, Baudelaire is concerned with entire histories of individuals and the unfolding of their rationalities. He refers to the “relative, circumstantial element…its fashions, its morals, its emotions” (Baudelaire 3) as the historical viewpoint, similar to Kant’s previous assertion that what is beautiful is different between people.  What is useful about Baudelaire’s theory is its application over long periods of time in phenomenological investigations, whereas Kant’s theory applies more intimately to the individual. Baudelaire suggests his addition is an imperative, and “without this second element [historical analysis]…the first element [rational experience] would be beyond our powers of digestion or appreciation” (Baudelaire 3). This viewpoint considers the dialectical relationship of individuals (rationality) and institutions (history/society) and how beauty is constructed within.
As I think both Kant and Baudelaire have used the same overall schema of aesthetic analysis, it is hard to say which I feel is more convincing. Depending on whether you are looking at an individual level or a larger scale would determine the effectiveness of either.