The Influence of Kant’s Critical Philosophy on Formalism in Music

Eduard Hanslick, the first formalist thinker in music criticism, believed that music is the moving forms of tones. He argues that music is nothing but a form without any content or theme outside of its form. Therefore, music cannot express the feeling that comes from the outside, but if there is a feeling, it is the result of the forms and the structure of the music itself. The difference between music and other arts is that it cannot represent reality. Therefore, aesthetic judgment on music should be thoughtful and based on reflection rather than feeling. The content of music cannot be conceptual and the beauty of music is not objective. We can find these concepts by Hanslick in Immanuel Kant's The Critique of Judgment. Kant believes that beauty appears in the form of phenomena, on which  any aesthetic judgment should be based. Also, Kant believes that aesthetic judgment should not be based on personal interest or a specific goal, but should be general and universal so that it can be presented as a universal (subjectively necessary) judgment, that is, individual and personal feelings should not be involved in the judgment. Hanslik's approach to music criticism is also based on this concept.