“That is beautiful,” says Kant, “which pleases without interesting.” Without interesting! Compare this definition with this other one, made by a real “spectator” and “artist”⁠—by Stendhal, who once called the beautiful

une promesse de bonheur . Here, at any rate, the one point which Kant makes prominent in the aesthetic position is repudiated and eliminated⁠— le désintéressement . Who is right, Kant or Stendhal? When, forsooth, our aesthetes never get tired of throwing into the scales in Kant’s favour the fact that under the magic of beauty men can look at even naked female statues “without interest,” we can certainly laugh a little at their expense:⁠—in regard to this ticklish point the experiences of artists