Kant and the Power of Imagination (original) (raw)
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Dept of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Chi-Nan University, 2004
The task consists of two parts. Part One develops a counter-exposition of Kant’s theory of free play, an exposition from the productive side of beauty rather than the appreciation. This part offers materials from Kant’s theory of art, genius and aesthetic ideas. Part Two focuses on the notion of imagination. From the three different patterns of association of this power (constrained particular associations in cognition, universal associations in theoretical and moral reflections, and aesthetic association in aesthetic reflection) an interrelation among three forms of mental determination (particular determinations, universal determinations and aesthetic determination) that structuralize the schematic form of every instance of consciousness is developed. Furthermore, the communication of aesthetic ideas between a genius and his or her animatee is used to deduce the universality of such a structure consists of three forms of determination, and such communications as commonplace phenomena and the existence of geniuses are used to deduce the existence of the structure. At the end, more comprehensions about consciousness, subjectivity, freedom and humanity are anticipated with the critique of such a structure.
A Surfeit of Thinking: Kant’s Aesthetic Ideas
The paper offers an interpretation of the notion of "aesthetic ideas" in Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment and shows how it exceeds the conceptions of art as imitation (mimesis) and as expression.
Kant's Theory of the Imagination
Routledge Handbook of the Imagination, ed. Amy Kind
In this entry, I discuss Kant’s account of the imagination as a pervasive mental capacity that contributes to the cognitive, aesthetic, and moral aspects of our lives. I examine his basic definition of the imagination as a capacity for producing representations that bridge the gap between what is sensible, on the one hand, and what is non-sensible or intellectual, on the other. I then consider the different empirical and transcendental levels at which the imagination is operative, as well as the different types of productive and reproductive activities it engages in across the cognitive, aesthetic, and moral contexts.
This essay presents a possible interpretation of the concept of beauty in Kant’s Critique of Judgment, which was itself suggested by Kant in the two introductions to the text and gained force among the Early German Romantics and Idealists. Such an interoperation introduces an alternative point of view into the concept of beauty and into the role it plays in the relationship between reason and sensibility. Through the analysis of the four moments of the Analytic of the Beautiful, beauty will manifest itself as the realm in which a special encounter between human freedom and nature takes place. Therefore, and as an alternative to some traditional interpretations of Kant’s aesthetic investigation, which understand Kant’s judgment of taste exclusively on the basis of its subjective conditions, the judgment of beauty will present itself also in the light of the relationship it establishes with the objects of nature.
The Offences of the Imagination: The Grotesque in Kant’s Aesthetics
The British Journal of Aesthetics, 2024
In the Critique of the Power of Judgement, Kant claims that ‘the English taste in gardens or the baroque taste in furniture pushes the freedom of the imagination almost to the point of the grotesque’ (KU 5:242). This paper attempts to reconstruct Kant’s views on the grotesque as a theoretical foundation for the modern conception of the grotesque as a negative aesthetic category. The first section of the paper considers and ultimately rejects the interpretation of the grotesque as a difficult kind of beauty. The second section contrasts the experience of the grotesque with similar experiences of sublimity and dreams. The third section examines the discord between faculties underlying the experience of the grotesque, defining the grotesque as a subclass of ugliness and addressing potential objections to its inclusion in Kant’s aesthetics. The fourth and final section briefly discusses the specificity of the grotesque as a subclass of ugliness.
The Moral Value of Artistic Beauty in Kant
In § 42 of the third Critique, ‘On the intellectual interest in the beautiful,’ Kant claims that it is ‘always the mark of a good soul’ (5:298) to take an ‘immediate interest’ in natural beauty because it indicates a moral interest in harmony between nature and moral freedom. In the same pages, however, he denies the possibility of a similarly morally significant interest in artistic beauty. This paper argues that according to his own theory of fine art Kant ought not to deny this value to artistic beauty. In the pages that immediately follow his discussion of immediate interest Kant defines artistic beauty as the joint product of a ‘natural gift’ of genius and a freely exercised discipline of skill and taste. This commits him to the claim that artistic beauty embodies and expresses a harmony between nature and freedom in the productive act of a human being, and thus to the claim that one can take an immediate and morally significant interest in artistic beauty, just as much as in natural beauty.
Kant: the Beautiful Alliance between Imagination and Reason
To understand the metaphorical use of language, consideration must be given, not only to living metaphors, but also to dead ones, those which no longer seem like metaphors but have become more akin to concepts, and which are present in the language, without denying that in the language there are also terms with literal meaning. As a result, we can distinguish the concept from the metaphor by its use and its meaningful function, from where we can examine the different roles or functioning that the productive imagination has on both and, finally, indicate the expressive function of metaphors or aesthetic ideas in relation to the ideas of reason.
Kant, Genius and Moral Development
Akten des XI. Kant-Kongresses 2010, 2013
In this paper I would like to approach the relation between art and morality from a slightly different standpoint than is usually done. Commentators usually focus on Kant's claim that beauty is the symbol of the morally good. This approach has generally seen beauty as a sort of auxiliary to morality, a propedeutic in Henry Allison's words, which leaves Kant's moral theory untouched. 1 However, it seems to me that though beauty is not part of the justification project of morality undertaken in the Groundwork, and the second Critique, it can play a role greater than that of merely cultivating our sense of judgment (though this is not doubt of great importance as well). In short, I take it that Kant's theory of artistic production is part of a second explanation of morality through the concept of purposiveness. This point cannot be argued for here. I will argue, however, that art in general and not just beauty, can transform our way of understanding ourselves in the world as a whole in accordance with our fundamental purpose, which is morality. I will be arguing that the problem of becoming moral lies not just in the difficulty of placing the good ahead of our desires but also in the means we choose to implement this maxim. Fine art can help us with the former, and this is Kant's official position, but I will claim that it can also help us with the latter. For example, though burning witches was thought to be a step toward making the world a better place, we now see that it was not. The problem, however, need not have been one of a court having the wrong maxim but of their simply being mistaken about the facts of the world, namely that it is just not the case that old women are sometimes witches. This is a simple epistemological point. Leaving aside the question of the development of natural science all together, I want to argue that the aesthetic domain can help us understand the world as a place in which morality can and does come to pass by improving our shared epistemic schema. Judgments of taste, as
ON IMAGINATION AND UNDERSTANDING. GADAMER AND CRITICISM OF KANT'S AESTHETIC IMAGINATION
In this paper, I would like to investigate how Gadamer explores the hermeneutic potential of Kant's aesthetic theory in the third Critique with regard to the notion of imagination. For the first time, by making some references, Gadamer discussed the question of imagination in his Truth and Method of 1960, and we can read as a further substantial contribution his essay entitled " Anschauung und Anschaulichkeit " (Intuition and Intuitiveness) published in 1980. Although Gadamer's approach was influenced by some Heideggerian impulses, he offered another alternative that is completely different from Heidegger's one. I shall argue that even if the question of imagination is not so much stressed by Gadamer, it proves important to the development and ontological basis of the Gadamerian hermeneutics in Wahrheit und Methode. My hypothesis is that through the themes of intuition and education (Bildung), the imagination is concerned with the human understanding and our interpreting work, thus, its significance transcends the scope of aesthetics.