ABSTRACT
Aesthetic disinterestedness is often assumed to have taken root in the reception of Kant’s Critique of Judgment. However, as critics have pointed out, the German cultural context was very different from the British one. This chapter rethinks the British understanding of disinterestedness by providing a reading of political economic and utilitarian discourses that discusses the transformation of interests into economic interests. The chapter reads thinkers such as Adam Smith, William Hazlitt, John Stuart Mill, and Oscar Wilde to discuss the way in which individuals are conceived as having economic interests managed by a fundamentally disinterested State, which radically transforms value at a collective level. Aesthetic value, read through this context, is heteronomous rather than autonomous. Attitudes towards disinterestedness—and disinterested representation—differ, and they differ in accordance with views on the efficacy and promises of emergent liberal democracy.
