Disinterestedness

The concept of disinterestedness comes from the discipline of aesthetics. It refers to a necessary detachment from subjective feeling that permits an accurate appraisal of beauty. Thus, the concept of disinterestedness, as commonly used in aesthetics, is closely linked to objectivity.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant first used the term disinterestedness in 1790 in the Critique of Judgment. Kant argued that the problem of rendering a judgment of beauty is the powerful presence of subjective desire. Kant claimed that this is different from a cognitive problem of reason, where objectivity alone rules. Therefore, to make a judgment of taste, it is necessary to overcome one's own attraction or repulsion toward the object under consideration and to strive for an indifferent stance. Only through such a position of disinterestedness could one render a judgment that was more than personal preference. In fact, through disinterestedness, a judgment of taste could become a rule to which others should rightly adhere. For Kant, disinterestedness is a mental stance that recognizes the necessary presence of subjectivity and strives to keep it in check. This is different from objectivity, which rejects subjectivity completely.

Postmodern philosophers such as Pierre Bourdieu have challenged Kant's framework for aesthetic [Page 226]analysis. Bourdieu suggested that disinterestedness produces only cultural capital—objects that have no intrinsic worth to individuals but are useful in the advancement of social status. It also provides a framework for excluding the working class, whose members are unsophisticated enough to genuinely value those objects that they find attractive or beautiful. Furthermore, postmodern semiotic theory suggests that there is no essential quality or character to be grasped through disinterested analysis. Therefore, disinterestedness is best regarded as an oppressive tool that facilitates totalizing and colonizing theories.

Hannah Arendt and Clifford Geertz offered a different postmodern interpretation of disinterestedness as guiding moral action within liberal democracy. In this view, disinterestedness allows reflective analytic action to come out of felt response. Rather than attempting to force their feelings to conform to an external moral guide, individuals respond to their own feelings in a dispassionate and authentically moral manner.

Geertz sees disinterestedness as an exquisite balance between the tensions of subjective aesthetics and mechanical objective scientism. He maintained that real science can occur only in the space between these two tensions. Research that swerves too far into either rudderless subjectivity or narrow scientism is ultimately flawed and potentially morally irresponsible.

Interpreting Kant's concept of subjectivity as a valuable presence that must be rigorously disciplined, and seeing the tension of the presence of subjectivity as essential to the ethical conduct of science, has influenced the late 20th-century qualitative methodologies of educational criticism, narrative storytelling, portraiture, and a/r/tography.