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KANT AND THE POWER OF IMAGINATION

In this book Jane Kneller focusses on the role of imagination as acreative power in Kant’s aesthetics and in his overall philosophicalenterprise. She analyzes Kant’s account of imaginative freedom andthe relation between imaginative free play and human social andmoral development, showing various ways in which his aesthetics ofdisinterested reflection explains moral interests. She situates theseaspects of Kant’s aesthetic theory within the context of Germanaesthetics of the eighteenth century, arguing that his contribution isa bridge between early theories of aesthetic moral education and theearly Romanticism of the last decade of that century. In so doing,her book brings the two most important German philosophers ofEnlightenment and Romanticism, Kant and Novalis, into dialog.The book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in both Kantstudies and German philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies.

Jane Kneller is Professor of Philosophy at Colorado StateUniversity. She is editor and translator of Novalis: Fichte Studies(2003) in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series.

KANT AND THE POWER OF

IMAGINATION

JANE KNELLER

Colorado State University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Contents

Preface and acknowledgments page vii

Introduction 1

1 Kant and Romanticism 20

2 The power of imaginative freedom 38

3 The interests of disinterest 60

4 Aesthetic reflection and the primacy of the practical 72

5 The failure of Kant’s imagination 95

6 Imaginative reflections of the self in Novalis and Holderlin 122

7 Novalis’ Kantianism and Kant’s Romanticism 139

Bibliography 161

Index 168

v

Preface and acknowledgments

This book contains work that has been in process for over fifteen years,and during that time I was greatly aided by the encouragement and adviceof wonderful colleagues and students in many places: philosophers andscholars too numerous to mention here, but some of whom will perhapsrecognize their influence in parts of the book that follow. Let this serve asa gesture of my thanks and deep appreciation for their time andthoughtful discussions. Three constellations of scholars deserve mentionin connection with this book, all tied in one way or another to theNational Endowment for the Humanities (NEH): The NEH SummerSeminar ‘‘What is Enlightenment?’’ conducted by James Schmidt atBoston University during the bicentenary of the French Revolution, theNEH Workshop ‘‘Figuring the Self ’’ conducted by David Klemm andGunter Zoller at the University of Iowa over the Spring semester of 1992,and the NEH Summer Institute for College Teachers on ‘‘Nature, Artand Politics after Kant: Reevaluating Early German Idealism’’ directed byKarl Ameriks and myself at Colorado State University in 2001. Theparticipants at these NEH venues were truly inspired and inspiring, andwithout them much of this book would have remained unwritten, evenunconceived.I owe a special debt of gratitude to the faculty at the University of

Cincinnati’s Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures for thevery formative time I spent there doing MA studies in German literatureand aesthetics. They were amazingly tolerant of an Auslanderin fromPhilosophy, a new PhD in Kantian aesthetics who insisted on turningevery term paper into another philosophy essay. I want to thank especiallyRichard Schade for introducing me to the beauty of the GermanBaroque, and the humor of the German Enlightenment, and forentrusting me with a stint on the Lessing Yearbook as assistant editor. Ihope he has forgiven me for returning to the philosophical fold. Theromanticism of this book was profoundly influenced by the instruction of

vii

Hans-Georg Richert and Helga Slessarev, and (since they were notparticularly fond of Kant) I dedicate the Novalis sections of this work totheir memory.Several of the chapters in this book contain material published earlier.

I would like to thank the following publishers for granting permission toreprint parts of the following: ‘‘Imaginative Freedom and the GermanEnlightenment,’’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 51, 1990; MarquetteUniversity Press, for ‘‘The Interests of Disinterest,’’ from Proceedings ofthe Eighth International Kant Congress, ed. Hoke Robinson, MarquetteUniversity Press, ª 1995, Marquette University Press Reprinted withpermission of Marquette University Press; ‘‘The Failure of Kant’sImagination,’’ in ‘‘What is Enlightenment?’’: Texts and Interpretations, ed.James Schmidt, The Regents of the University of California, Universityof California Press, 1996 ª 1996, University of California Press, 1996;‘‘Romantic Conceptions of the Self in Holderlin and Novalis,’’ reprintedby permission from Figuring the Self: Subject, Individual, and Spirit inClassical German Philosophy, ed. by David E. Klemm and Gunter Zoller,The State University of New York Press, ª 1997, State University of NewYork, all rights reserved; ‘‘Aesthetic Value and the Primacy of thePractical in Kant’s Philosophy,’’ Journal of Value Inquiry, 36, 2002 and‘‘Novalis’ Other Way Out,’’ in Philosophical Romanticism, ed. NikolasKompridis, Routledge, 2006.I owe a special debt of gratitude once again to Hilary Gaskin at

Cambridge University Press for her ever-helpful advice and guidancethroughout the publishing process, and to Jackie Warren for her ablehandling of the final stages of production. Barbara Docherty’s keen eyefor detail was absolutely invaluable in the copy-editing of the book and Iwant to thank her in particular for the time and care she took with it.Finally, to the three philosophers closest to me – Michael, Miroslav,

and Rosavera: thank you, respectively, for your healthy skepticism aboutclaims to objectivity, your critical attitude towards all establisheddoctrine, and your ability to make ordinary things magical. I hope I’vecaptured some of that, at least in theory, here.

Preface and acknowledgmentsviii

Introduction

This book situates Kant’s aesthetic theory within the context of his overallphilosophical enterprise and also within German aesthetic theory of theeighteenth century. Although the aim of the book is not primarily his-torical, I have found it useful to frame the analysis of Kant’s theory ofimagination historically, by locating his views within a line of Germanaestheticians from the early German Enlightenment through early Ger-man Romanticism. Kant is not often viewed as an advocate of thedidactic value of aesthetics nor as a precursor to early German Roman-ticism, but the chapters at the beginning and end of the book (chapters 1and 7) argue that these are important aspects of his aesthetic project. In sodoing they situate Kant’s aesthetic theory between rationalist aestheticpedagogy and early German romantic aesthetics in a way that brings intorelief certain commonalities of these otherwise very different theories.Given a prevailing attitude that casts Romanticism as an irrationalistmysticism with sinister inheritors, connecting it to rationalist philoso-phies at all may sound implausible. This book aims to show that byfocussing on certain important but neglected aspects of Kant’s aesthetictheory, a window is opened on the common link between both per-spectives in German aesthetic theory of the eighteenth century. That linkis the recognition and gradual elevation of the power of imagination.Rationalist aesthetics and art criticism in Germany prior to Kant was

principle-bound and rigid in many ways, so that Alfred Bauemler couldsay of Gottsched and Bodmer and Breitinger and their circles that theconcept of criticism (Kritik), which Shaftesbury ‘‘handles with a fine senseof humanity, becomes in Leipzig and Zurich an instrument of punish-ment for poetical sinners.’’1 Yet Enlightenment concern for educationrequired a reconciliation, if not an overcoming, of the divide between the‘‘higher’’ and ‘‘lower’’ cognitive faculties of reason and of sensation,

1 Alfred Bauemler, Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft (Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1923), pp. 97–98.

1

perception, and inner feeling. The role of the imagination gradually tookon great significance as a mental power that interfaces with these aspectsof human experience.2 Thus we find the imagination playing an especiallycrucial role in Kant’s account of cognition, and that role in turn beingadapted and incorporated into his theory of beauty. Dieter Henrichpoints out that, since Kant regularly taught Baumgarten’s Metaphysicstext, and in his Anthropology course worked directly from the section ofthat text that dealt with empirical psychology, including the doctrine ofthe lower cognitive faculties including the imagination: ‘‘Therefore it isno surprise that Kant had developed his own aesthetics before he came toterms with the problems he intended to solve in the Critique of PureReason.’’3 Although for a time after writing the first Critique, Kant deniedthe possibility of a critique of taste – i.e. a critique of the power ofimagination in judgments about beauty – he changed his mind once herealized that he could provide an account of the universal elements ofsuch judgments, specifically the generic relation of harmonious playbetween the power of imagination and the understanding, without appealto determinate empirical or a priori rules. Henrich argues for a certaincontinuity in Kant’s view of imagination between his pre-critical and finalcritical view that taste could claim justification a priori:

When he rethought the epistemology of the Critique of Pure Reason he quicklysaw that his epistemological theorems about the relationship between imagina-tion and understanding would allow him to produce an explanation of aestheticjudgment whose sources would not be empirical throughout but rather derivedfrom the explanation of the possibility of our knowledge of objects. Hence thenew explanation would have the ‘‘a priori’’ status of a transcendental insight. Wecan now understand why Kant felt he could carry out his plan, once conceived,with little trouble. Most of the content of his aesthetics had been available to himfor a long time. Its views and its conceptual apparatus of the cognitive activitieshad only to be transferred to a new context.4

Kant did not invent or change rationalist notions of the faculties involvedso much as make them more precise, Henrich argues. Thus in the

2 This becomes apparent in Baumgarten’s attempt to discover a special ‘‘logic’’ of the lower cognitivefaculty, which included imagination. Bauemler points out that Wolff already prepared the way forthis move in his discussion of the ‘‘expectation of similar cases’’ (‘‘Erwartung ahnlicher Falle’’) as afunction of inference (induction) based in the lower cognitive faculties. Ibid., pp. 188–197. See alsoBauemler’s Das Irrationalitatsproblem im asthetischen Denken des 18. Jahrhunderts (Halle, 1923;republished Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967) for an account of the ascendencyof the imagination in this period.

3 Henrich, Aesthetic Judgment and the Moral Image of the World (Stanford: Stanford University Press,1992), p. 33.

4 Ibid., pp. 34–35.

Kant and the power of imagination2

first Critique Kant carefully delineates the nature and operation ofimagination in cognition: it operates subconsciously, at least in part, andis the source of all combinations of the sensible manifold, but not of therules that prescribe its combinatorial activity.5

Kant’s aesthetic theory in its final form still utilizes the apparatus ofrationalist psychology, but in a more articulated way. One can also add toHenrich’s point, however, that this refinement of the faculty theory ofpsychology had dramatic consequences for German aesthetic theory:Kant’s new articulation of the functions of imagination undermined thehierarchical structuring of the older rationalist approaches. In the thirdCritique Kant theorizes a new sort of relationship between imaginationand understanding, one in which the former is ‘‘freed’’ from the latter –in other words, in which the imagination is seen as capable of operatingindependently of its function of processing the material of sensation intothe products of experience via concepts a priori. It does not follow thatimaginative freedom in this sense operates free of experiential backdrop,but simply that within the context of an already synthesized experience,imagination can function in a different capacity so as to reflect upon asensory manifold without ‘‘determining’’ an object. The result is, instead,a certain kind of feeling.6 One important result of Kant’s more complexaccount of imaginative functioning is a new appreciation for the way inwhich imaginative freedom contributes to an overall awareness in us, asindividual subjects, of our own cognitive (including moral) operations.Kant’s theory, that is, highlights the fact that the power of imaginationproduces a ‘‘feeling of life,’’ making us aware of ourselves via pleasure that‘‘forms the basis of a very special power of discriminating and jud-ging’’(V: 204, 277). This complex notion of imagination’s functioning isthe essence of reflective aesthetic judgment, and takes as its object (whichis to say, it determines a priori) the feeling of pleasure and pain (XX: 208).

5 Ibid., p. 37.6 An important issue emerges here involving the question of the cognitive role of reflection. Henrich,on historical grounds, distinguishes reflection from reflective judgment. The former is a‘‘primitive’’ capacity of unconscious ideation, that concurs with the operations of the mind,keeping them distinct, and allowing an ‘‘awareness’’ of the operations of the mind. This process isdiscussed in the context of genius and fantasy in chapter 7 of this volume, but the overall role ofsuch processes and their relationship to cognitive and aesthetic judgments must be postponed here.Important work on the prior function of reflection has been done by Beatrice Longueness, in Kantand the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the Critique of Pure Reason, trans. CharlesT. Wolfe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). See also Henry Allison’s discussion ofLongueness’ views on reflection with respect to reflective judgment, in Kant’s Theory of Taste(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), chapter 1 , pp. 14ff.

Introduction 3

As such, the power of imagination takes on a central role in the mediationof the theoretical and the practical a priori (XX: 206–208).Giving the imagination a lead role is not to say it is the only star of the

human show, and Kant never contended that it was. But it certainlyopens the way for a philosophical turn towards viewing imagination asthe main player on the human mental stage. This is the connection toRomanticism that Kant’s refinement of rationalist faculty psychologymakes possible. The early Romantic theorists in Germany took thecomplex imaginative function as their central explanatory concept inanalyzing human subjectivity. Charles Larmore, in The Romantic Legacy,suggests that Kant’s primary influence on Romanticism was the view thatthe mind actively determines human experience. Yet it was not simplyKant’s ‘‘Copernican’’ insight that had such an influence on Romanticism.Romanticism also took its cue more specifically from Kant’s recognitionof a special mental activity that (somehow) connects with the ‘‘matter ofsensation’’ (the given), and is itself neither pure understanding nor purepractical reason. Charles Larmore points out that, for the Romantics,imagination came to mean more than a faculty of imaging and associa-tion, but was centrally ‘‘the enrichment of experience through expres-sion.’’ But this formulation also nicely captures Kant’s account of theimaginative ‘‘free play’’ in reflective aesthetic judgment resulting in aspecial, ‘‘disinterested’’ pleasure that is universally communicable andexpressed in judgments of taste and the sublime. Larmore goes on topoint out that ‘‘Typically the Romantics considered the imagination, sounderstood, not as one mental faculty among others, and certainly not asa mere organ of make-believe, but rather as the very essence of the mind.’’The arguments of this book make the case that the move from Kant’sthird Critique account of imagination as a central, mediating faculty tothe early Romantic view of it as the primary faculty is a logical next step,not an irrational leap, in the philosophy of human subjectivity.In her account of the concept of Darstellung (literally: a ‘‘placing

before,’’ usually translated as ‘‘representation’’ or ‘‘presentation’’) MarthaHelfer sketches the development of this notion in Kant’s philosophy as ‘‘atechnical term that designates the mediation of the imagination betweensensibility and understanding.’’ She argues that this Kantian notion ofimaginative mediation is of great significance to subsequent philosophicaland aesthetic thought:

Thus Darstellung constitutes an essential point of tangency for German Idealismand Romanticism, and the critical exposition of this Kantian notion of repre-sentation in various disciplines results in a tremendously productive interplay of


philosophy, aesthetics, literature and linguistic theory in German criticaldiscourse around 1800.7

Helfer argues that Kant’s notion of Darstellung creates problems for himin three related ways, the first of which is the heart of his problem, andresults from the fact that imaginative synthesis in cognition for Kant is ‘‘ahidden art in the depths of the human soul’’:

there is a breakdown at a crucial juncture in Kant’s argument for the underlyingsynthetic unity of intuition and understanding in cognition . . . Because thesynthetic unity of apperception falls beyond the limits of the transcendentalCritique, the sensible subject cannot represent itself to itself as it really is, as amoral subject of reason. The fact that reason imposes these limits on the scope ofphilosophical investigation points to the third problem that Kant encounters, theproblem of the rhetorical presentation or representation of his philosophicalsystem.8

I shall explore the degree to which Kant himself saw these aspects of hisaccount of imaginative mediation, or reflection as ‘‘breakdowns’’ in hissystem in chapter 5. Helfer is quite right to understand Kant’s notion of(re)presentation as imaginative mediation, but it is not clear that Kantwas concerned to give an account of the underlying source or foundationof this faculty, nor that he felt it necessary to provide a unified theory ofsubjectivity in a strong sense. If imaginative reflection, as I argue inchapter 4, is to be seen as performing the task of mediation in the sense ofproviding an interface or bridge between sensibility and reason such thathuman beings can move from one aspect of their selves to the other, itmay not necessarily be the case that in Kant’s mind, at least, these aporiaeare so thoroughly problematic as the Romantics themselves came tobelieve. Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, as well as Andrew Bowie andothers who see Kant as a catalyst for Romanticism, also tend to emphasizethe lack of a thoroughgoing account of unity between subject and object,moral demands and natural laws, and the practical and the theoretical asthe jumping off point for Romantic philosophy. Thus Bowie, like Helfer,argues that Kant left a major problem for his own theory unsolvedthanks to his inability to give an account of knowledge of freedomwhile simultaneously demanding that we must act in accordance with abelief in it: ‘‘In both the theoretical and the practical parts of his phi-losophy, then, Kant leaves a gaping hole where the highest principle is

7 Martha Helfer, The Retreat of Representation: The Concept of Darstellung in German CriticalDiscourse (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), p. 10

8 Ibid., p. 11.

Introduction 5

located.’’9 Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy explain the Romantic debt toKant, along similar lines, as the problem of what they refer to as the‘‘weakening of the subject’’ as a result of Kant’s denying the possibility ofan ‘‘original Intuition’’ – i.e., an intuition that produces its own ‘‘given’’:

As a result, all that remains of the subject is the ‘‘I’’ as an ‘‘empty form’’ . . . that‘‘accompanies my representations.’’ This is so because the form of time, which isthe ‘‘form of the internal sense’’ permits no substantial presentation. As is wellknown, the Kantian ‘‘cogito’’ is empty.10

Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy view Kant’s valorizing of morality as a sortof compensation for the weakened cognitive subject, but here again theproblem becomes one of the reality of the subject: ‘‘As a moral subject, insum, the subject recovers none of its substance. Quite to the contrary, thequestion of its unity, and thus of its very ‘being-subject’, is brought to apitch of high tension.’’ This tension is also referred to more dramaticallyby them as the ‘‘crisis’’ that Romanticism takes as its starting point.11

All of these scholars are surely right to point to precisely these issues ascatalysts to Romanticism, and yet by dramatizing the problem as a‘‘gaping hole’’ or ‘‘crisis,’’ they tend to downplay the degree to which theyounger generation of poetic philosophers adapted and developed someof Kant’s best attempts to solve these very problems. Lacoue-Labarthe andNancy grant the point that Kant did try to solve the problem in the thirdCritique, but they view that solution as failed, thanks to the merelyregulative nature of the principles Kant relies on in his attempt to unifysubjectivity. Yet in the case of Novalis, at least, the regulative nature ofphilosophy was precisely all that philosophy could be and, for him, thiswas not in itself a problem. Helfer herself, commenting on the fact thatNovalis sees philosophy resolved in ‘‘poesy,’’ points out that ‘‘Poesy,however, does not supplant philosophy in Novalis aesthetic program:‘‘Without philosophy the poet is incomplete . . . (II: 531, #29).’’12 Animportant aim of this book is to show that Kant’s own solutions went along way in the direction of Novalis’ and the early Romantics’ views:Kant’s theory enabled entertaining the importance of creative, reflectiveimagination in general as a possible source for the realization ofsubstantive changes in the world.

9 Andrew Bowie, Aesthetics and Subjectivity: From Kant to Nietzsche (Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press, 1990), p. 22.

10 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, trans. Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester, TheLiterary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism (Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1988), p. 30.

11 Ibid., pp. 31–32. 12 Helfer, The Retreat of Representation, p. 88.


Making that case requires not only a careful look at Kant’s views on thepower of imagination and its roles beyond judgments of taste, but also aless one-sided view of Romanticism. Much of the argument of this bookhinges on viewing early German Romanticism as a philosophical position –and, moreover, one that is close enough in spirit to the anti-speculativeposition of Kantianism to be able to easily connect with it. Recent workhas established this view on solid scholarly ground. Philosophers andliterary critical theorists have gone a long way toward correcting the car-icature of the early German Romantics as mystical irrationalists, and thecase has been made for some time now that philosophically the early andlate period of Romanticism in the German tradition are quite distinct.13

At the same time there has been a flowering of new studies in the pasttwenty-five years or so dealing with Kant’s philosophy in a multitude ofways that go beyond the first Critique and his moral theory as famously, ifalso misleadingly at times, summarized in the Groundwork of the Meta-physics of Morals.14 Kant’s political theory, his social and anthropological

13 The most influential work in this regard is Manfred Frank’s Einfuhrung in die FruhromantischeAsthetik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1989), trans. Elizabeth Millan-Zaibert as TheFoundations of Early German Romanticism (Albany: SUNY Press, 2004). See also Karl Ameriks’introduction to The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2000), p. 13: ‘‘The greatest problem for the philosophical appreciation ofGerman Romanticism may be simply the word romanticism itself.’’ Part III on ‘‘Idealism andromanticism’’ is a very useful summary introduction to the ‘‘Fruhromantik.’’ Several newlytranslated texts of philosophical writings of early German Romanticism have appeared, includingmy own Novalis: Fichte Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) and an Englishedition of Novalis’ Allgemeine Brouillon, ed. David Wood, is forthcoming from SUNY Press(2007). Jay Bernstein’s edition of Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2003) includes selections from earlier German theorists of art(Lessing, Moritz) and devotes large sections to works from Holderlin and Novalis as well asSchiller and Friedrich Schlegel. Frederick Beiser’s edition of works from this tradition, The EarlyPolitical Writings of the German Romantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), aswell as his important contribution to the politico-philosophical history of the era inEnlightenment, Revolution and Romanticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992)bear witness to a growing philosophical interest in the early German Romantics. At the sametime, literary philosophical interest in these thinkers is growing, with works like Azade Seyhan’sRepresentation and Its Discontents: The Critical Legacy of German Romanticism (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1992) and Andrew Bowie’s From Romanticism to Critical Theory:The Philosophy of German Literary Theory (London: Routledge, 1997) being two fine studies inthis area.

14 Enormous recent interest in Kant’s aesthetics is reflected in new translations of the third Critique,(including even a new translation of the title of the book itself) and several major new English-language interpretive works on the Critique of Judgment that pay equal attention to the aesthetictheory (John Zammito’s The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1992, is a fine example). English-language studies of Kant’s aesthetic theory tend tofocus primarily on Kant’s theory of taste in the ‘‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment,’’ the first half ofhis Critique of Judgment. Paul Guyer’s landmark earlier treatment, Kant and the Claims of Taste(Harvard University Press, 1979) along with other, less comprehensive accounts, were typical inthis regard. More recent work has paid attention to the connection of morality and aesthetics,

Introduction 7

studies, his theory of history, and his overall methodological approachhave been the subjects of interesting and close textual analytic research inseveral languages and scholarly traditions.15 Focus on Kant’s philoso-phically ‘‘lesser’’ works that were nevertheless written during the criticalperiod has proved enormously helpful in filling in gaps, accounting forinconsistencies; and, perhaps most important, the new focus has in manycases corrected common caricatures by disclosing the complexity ofKant’s theories. Allen Wood has perhaps gone as far as any scholar in thisregard.16 Focussing especially on Kant’s writings on religion and history,he has been able to counter many standard criticisms of Kant by showingthe compatibility of Kant’s moral theory with naturalist and materialistaccounts of human development, progress, and culture. By carefullyexplicating the details of Kant’s teleological conception of nature andhumanity, and by reconstructing Kant’s account of the coordination of‘‘ends of nature’’ with human rational ends in promoting culture, Wooddebunks criticisms of Kant’s moral theory that see it as oriented towards anoumenal realm outside nature, individualistic in its prescriptions, andinsensitive to material human conditions in its rigorism. A completesummary of Wood’s comprehensive account is beyond the scope of thisintroduction, but in skeletal outline, the argument hinges on naturalmechanism as the initial catalyst of human cultural development. Kant’s

especially Guyer’s Kant and the Experience of Freedom: Essays on Aesthetics and Morality(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Henry Allison’s Kant’s Theory of Taste (see n. 6)devotes a section to the link between morality and the theory of taste in Kant. Hannah Ginsborg’sThe Role of Taste in Kant’s Theory of Cognition (New York: Garland Press, 1990) looks at theconnection between aesthetics and knowledge, as does Christel Fricke’s Kants Theorie des reinenGeschmacksurteils (Kant’s Theory of the Pure Judgment of Taste, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990).

15 John Zammito’s excellent book on the genesis of the third Critique (see n. 14) links it to hisAnthropology as well as to the younger generation of ‘‘aesthetic idealists.’’ English-language worksdealing with Kant’s political writings and their connection to issues of teleology include PatrickRiley, Kant’s Political Philosophy (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1983), Yirmiahu Yovel, Kantand the Philosophy of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), and Thomas Auxter,Kant’s Moral Teleology (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1982). Important studies on Kant’santhropological writings include work, in addition to Allen Wood, by Holly Wilson, Robert B.Louden, Patrick R. Frierson, among others. Representative samples of some of their work isincluded in B. Jacobs and P. Kain, Essays in Kant’s Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge UnversityPress, 2003). John Zammito traces the historical development of the concept in the case of theconflicting views of Herder and Kant, in Kant, Herder and the Birth of Anthropology (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2002). Reinhard Brandt and Werner Stark have both publishedimportant work on Kant’s Anthropology and have been largely responsible for the rise of interest inthis area thanks to their painstaking work in compiling and editing, at the Kant Archiv at thePhilips-Universitat, Marburg, the lecture notes of students in Kant’s Anthropology classes. HannahArendt’s Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy is one of the most well-known attempts to linkKant’s aesthetic theory to political theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).

16 See his Kant’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).


well-known notion of ‘‘unsocial sociability’’ captures the drive of thespecies towards greater and greater freedom, equality and communityarising out of natural self-interested inclinations and resulting socialstruggle. Human social progress is to be interpreted (regulatively) as apurpose of nature: ‘‘Nature’s own purposes require that human beingsshould emerge at a certain point from the tutelage of nature and begin toset rational collective ends’’ (p. 298). Wood gives a compelling account ofthe connection Kant sees between nature and human reason in terms oftheir ends:

Because human beings are the only beings in nature that can set a final end, theymay be considered as the ultimate end of nature insofar as they do set a final end.Nature has no ultimate end except through human beings; or, what comes to thesame thing, it has no ultimate end at all until human beings give it one by setting afinal end . . . Kant’s philosophy of history can be regarded as a theodicy or theoryof divine providence, as he himself also regularly regards it. But if so, it is ahighly novel and perhaps unorthodox one. For in Kant’s view, the plan ofprovidence remains incomplete until we human beings complete it. (p. 311).

The problem of the institution of a just social order – the ‘‘highest good’’that Kant says is a direct command of morality – involves the impossible-sounding demand that we ourselves coordinate natural ends with moralones, so that, simply put, moral goodness and happiness are systematicallyproportional. Wood points out that this demand for systematic pro-portionality of natural and rational ends is not just a baroque, ‘‘archi-tectonic’’ feature of Kant’s theory, but is fundamental to his ethics. Kantinsists that the moral law commands that humans in concert, as a species,attempt to create this system as the only means of guaranteeing systematicprogress towards morality. Drawing on the Religion within the Limits ofReason Alone, Wood argues that for Kant ‘‘The pursuit of my ownmorality can be distinguished from the moral progress of the human race,but [Kant argues that] the two ends are necessarily linked in their pursuit.Human beings must join in free community to accomplish the task.’’ Andhe adds, ‘‘The moral progress of the human race, in Kant’s view ispossible only through the progressive extension of such a free moralcommunity to more and more people, until it eventually encompasses theentire human race’’ (p. 315). The problem with this demand is that it asksthe individual to commit to a project only the species as a whole canfulfill. This leads, in Kant’s moral theory (V: 114ff.) to the (in)famouspostulates of God and immortality, belief in which is a necessary con-dition of the rational hope each individual requires to shoulder his or herpart of the burden of this enormous command. This issue is examined

Introduction 9

in more detail in chapter 2, but here I will simply point out that Woodexplains Kant’s appeal to the postulates of God and immortality as waysof turning, not to the ‘‘beyond’’ for hope, but to an enlightened humancommunity of free believers that is not associated with the coercion of thestate.Wood rightly points out that the community of rational faith that

Kant envisioned is so far removed from the social reality of our own timethat it is nearly impossible to see how one could take heart and carry onsocial reform in any ‘‘really existing’’ religious community. Wood pleadsfor historical understanding of Kant’s case: In an era of guardedEnlightenment optimism, Kant had reason to hope for the formation of afreely affirmed, rational religious community. Interpreting Kant in thisway might suggest a kind of socialist ideal, and such a suggestion is notoff target, Wood argues, if it does not expect cataclysmic change:

such a view would be Kantian in holding that if we are to fulfill our collectivehistorical vocation, we will need to find (or invent) a form of ethical communitythat is capable of gradually reshaping our deeply corrupt social life by revolu-tionizing and uniting the hearts of individuals through the free power of reason.For Kant himself, however, the human race can no more expect to fulfill thismoral vocation apart from organized religion than it can expect to achieve justicethrough anarchy. (p. 320)

What Wood’s account shows, I believe, is how problematic the religious‘‘postulate’’ has become, and thus how unlikely it is for people to bandtogether in heart and mind to effect change in contemporary societies. Ifreligion, even a ‘‘socialist’’ version, is the only alternative community, anda rational public can no longer envision belonging to it, then a new visionmust be possible or moral progress is doomed. But if it is the case that wecannot hope for apocalyptic change, is it not equally impossible, afterdecades and centuries of possibilities closed and social reforms laid waste,rationally to hold on to hope for gradual change in the long term? I wantto propose, in the chapters that follow, that Kant’s natural teleologyprovides a ‘‘fallback’’ option when moral vision becomes clouded. Thecontingently available experience of beauty and its attendant interests,produced via a creative imagination, might also make it possible fordespairing individuals to join with others in communities aimed atchange. If no model is available at a given point in time, it is at leastpossible to model a new community in imagination, and like artists ofany medium, to find ways to ‘express’ this community in concreteexperience. That it seems to me, is the moral promise of imaginativefreedom, and the real power of the imagination in Kant.


Turning to Kant’s aesthetic theory is a useful and interesting way tosolve some of the difficulties his moral theory generates for social progresstheories. Interest in the relevance of Kant’s aesthetic theory to the rest ofhis system is certainly growing, yet much of this work to date has focusedpredominately on the pure judgment of taste and the sublime.17 Bycontrast, the chapters in this volume foreground the role of the power ofimagination as a creative activity and the interests to which that activitygives rise. Hence, although this volume discusses the nature of the ‘‘pure’’disinterested judgment of taste in some detail in various sections, I payspecial attention to Kant’s third Critique account of the interested judg-ments that Kant says aesthetic disinterest may produce, and to the role ofthe imagination in such judgments. I concentrate on Kant’s elevation ofthe function of imagination to the status of creative faculty, and to hisaccount in ‘‘lesser’’ texts (the Anthropology, and ‘‘occasional’’ essays) of thedangers and potential of this power. The chapters that follow thus do notdispute the autonomy claim of pure judgments of taste, a claim that Kantis quite insistent upon. Indeed, focussing on interested judgments ofaesthetic reflection depends on seeing ‘‘pure’’ aesthetic reflective judg-ments that comprise a realm of human experience independent of moralcognitive judgment as a condition of the interests involved. These chaptersrepresent a sustained focus on the specific ways in which the notion ofimaginative independence serves Kant’s larger purpose of describing amediating faculty between the ‘‘is’’ of nature and the ‘‘ought to be’’ ofmorality. In this respect they elaborate a theme argued for in great detail inRudolf Makkreel’s Imagination and Interpretation in Kant, that ‘‘imagi-nation is a power that both exhibits and overcomes the limits of experi-ence.’’18 This book was in many ways pathbreaking in studies of Kant’saesthetics for its breadth and depth of analysis of the role of imagination,and the thesis that reflective judgment is interpretive judgment. Makk-reel’s reading of Kant as a proto-hermeneuticist brought to light aspects ofKant’s theory of aesthetic judgment that were previously ignored, and his

17 Felicitas Munzel’s detailed work showing how moral character is chosen, developed, and sustainedvia complex interaction with morality, pedagogy, and aesthetics come closest to the sort of point Iam making here. However, her focus is primarily on moral character formation in the individual,and her analysis of the role of aesthetics in this formation rests on the role of taste and sublimity inmoral education and does not rely on an account of imagination, but rather on the feeling. Thechapters in this book focus more on the role imagination plays in the production of that feeling,and the role that feeling (of hope) plays in supporting social morality. Felicitas Munzel, Kant’sConception of Moral Character: The ‘‘Critical’’ Link of Morality, Anthropology, and ReflectiveJudgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

18 Rudolf A. Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: The Hermeneutical Import of theCritique of Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).

Introduction 11

work connects Kant scholarship that focuses on theoretical aspects of hissocial and cultural views with other philosophical accounts of its con-nection to Romanticism. A problem for such a view, however, is that Kantseems to want to give a kind of systematic privilege to practical reason overall other kinds of experience. The chapters in this book defend the viewthat the imagination in reflective judgment serves as an equally importantpower (of mediation), arguing explicitly against influential views thatpresume the ‘‘primacy of the practical’’ in Kant.Finally, the work that follows takes into account and responds to

another problem for the view that imagination can be understood as acentral faculty in Kant’s account: the accusation of some postmodernistor post-Enlightenment positions, and of some feminists,19 that Kant’sphilosophy could not truly value imagination given his philosophical andeven cultural and personal antipathy towards sensibility and the realm ofemotion and feeling. This issue has most recently been underscored bytexts such as the anthology edited by James Schmidt, ‘‘What is Enlight-enment?’’ Eighteenth Century Answers and Twentieth Century Questions.20 Itake these arguments seriously, arguing in the end that Kant is never-theless far less hostile to the significance of imaginative freedom than hesometimes appears to be.Thus I find Kant’s compatibility with early German Romanticism to

lie not only in his actual philosophical innovations with respect to thenature of the imagination and its freedom, but also, to a certain extent, Ifind their aesthetic theories temperamentally compatible. In other words,Kant was not as far removed from the ironic sensitivities of earlyRomanticism as one might think, based on standard ‘‘one-sided’’accounts of both Kant and Early German Romanticism.

general overview

The book is composed of a series of chapters, each of which reads Kant’saesthetic theory as mediating between his moral theory and his account of

19 For a sustained feminist critique of Kant along these lines, see Robin May Schott’s Cognition andEros: A Critique of the Kantian Paradigm (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press,1988), and also ‘‘The Gender of Enlightenment,’’ in Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant, ed.Robin May Schott (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), pp. 319–37.My ‘‘The Aesthetic Dimension of Kantian Autonomy’’ (pp. 173–189) in Feminist Interpretationsattempts to adjudicate some of these issues in terms of Kant’s aesthetic theory and by contrast toOnora O’Neill’s response to such criticisms, in Constructions of Reason (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1989).

20 Riverside: University of California Press, 1996.


human knowledge. The key to this reading is Kant’s conception of thepower of imagination, and especially of what I will call the ‘‘transfor-mative’’ power of imagination that Kant first develops only in the thirdCritique. Aesthetic reflective judgment, I argue, extends beyond thenarrower goals of deduction and analysis of judgments of taste in thethird Critique. Kant’s aesthetics argues for interests that attach to aestheticreflective judgment that surpass their purely aesthetic value.However, reading Kantian aesthetics as part of a larger moral project

runs into certain difficulties, one might even say ‘‘hostilities,’’ withinKant’s account of imagination. Kant frequently expresses a dim view ofthe faculty of imagination that may perhaps be diagnosed as extra-philosophical, but which nevertheless militates against taking humanimaginative capacities to be central to Kantian moral and social concerns.In chapter 5 I address criticisms of Kant’s motivation in characterizing theimagination as subordinate faculty, or as mysterious and even dangerous.This chapter argues that, in the end, such criticisms may be countered bythe fact that Kant’s attitude toward ‘‘undisciplined’’ creative imaginativepower was not uniformly negative. His defense of the ‘‘enthusiast’’ andhis self-avowed love affair with metaphysics have a continued influenceon his philosophy that re-emerge, I argue, in scattered attempts to find asecure place for speculative metaphysical imaginings in his finished phi-losophical system.Finally, given this reading of Kant’s aesthetic theory, I argue for the

claim (made on historical grounds in chapter 2) that there is substantivecontinuity between the Enlightenment values of Kant’s critical enterpriseand the values of early German Romanticism. The main focus here isupon the paradigmatic central figure of that movement, Friedrich vonHardenberg, known as Novalis. Novalis was a student and friend ofSchiller’s in Jena and, along with the rest of the so-called ‘‘Jena Romanticcircle,’’ was party to the lively debate surrounding Fichte’s revision ofKantianism. Moreover, it was in Jena that Kant’s philosophy became acenterpiece of philosophical discussion, thanks to Reinhold’s enormouslysuccessful popularizing work in the late 1780s and early 1790s at theuniversity there. Recent work has underscored the importance of Jena asthe first site of sustained study and argument over Kant’s philosophy, andto the development of Fichtean and later German idealism (see KarlAmeriks, Kant and the Fate of Autonomy: Problems in the Appropriation ofthe Critical Philosophy).21 Yet little has been written on the relation of

21 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Introduction 13

Kant’s work to the philosophy of the early German Romantics who werecentral to the debate over Kantianism in Jena at the time. Chapters 6 and7 in this book brings these two remarkable philosophies into dialog byexploring Novalis’ reception of Kant together with Kant’s own interest inquestions about the role of imagination in uniting nature and morality inthe human subject. These questions, and some of Kant’s answers, Icontend, became central to the Romantic project.

ov erview o f the book

Chapter 1, ‘‘Kant and Romanticism,’’ introduces the overall theme of thebook, that Kant’s theory of imagination is not so far removed fromNovalis’ definition of ‘‘romanticizing.’’ By showing what Novalis meansby this term, and the extent to which his meaning is at odds with ste-reotypical distortions of Romanticism as mystical and otherworldly, I setthe stage for looking at Kant’s views on such ‘‘mystical’’-sounding ideas asthat of the ‘‘supersensible.’’ In the same way that ‘‘romanticizing’’ forNovalis is a process of both recognizing the ordinary in the mysterious,and demystifying the extraordinary, I argue, Kant’s views also involve thistwofold procedure. Kant’s commitment to the possibility of expandingand developing our mental powers themselves is discussed, along with theinfluence of Rousseau on his overall view of the value of re-creatingourselves and our world.Chapters 2– 4 place Kant’s views on aesthetics in historical context and

situate them also within the larger context of his philosophy as a whole.chapter 2, ‘‘The power of imaginative freedom,’’ sets the stage with anexamination of the concept of freedom in the aesthetic theory of Ger-many beginning with Baumgarten. In particular it looks at three early andmid-eighteenth-century German accounts of the freedom of imaginationthat may be seen as precursors to Kant’s: those of Baumgarten, Bodmerand Breitinger, and Lessing. I argue that Kant’s theory provides a linkbetween these earlier more didactic theories and the visionary aesthetics ofSchiller and other early Romantic poets. The argument is based on thenew role that Kant assigns the imagination in the third Critique, where heargues that it is capable of transforming nature and exhibiting humanideals in concrete form. Given that such exhibitions would provide a basisfor rational hope when directed towards social ideals, I argue that it ispossible in Kant’s later thought to ground a rational hope for bringingabout a just world in such imaginative visions. This move would obviatethe need for the questionable reintroduction of metaphysics in the form


of postulates of God and immortality which have proven to be soproblematic for Kant, and it also suggests the possibility of a Kantianethics less hostile to imagination and sensibility.Chapter 3, ‘‘The interests of disinterest,’’ then moves from the his-

torical framework of Kant’s aesthetics to the theory itself. Here I deal withKant’s notion of the pure judgment of taste, or the judgment about thebeautiful, in light of his claim that the central element of his justificationof such judgments – the universal communicability of ‘‘disinterested’’feelings of pleasure – ‘‘must already carry with it an interest’’ for humanbeings. This chapter examines Kant’s account of the nature of theseinterests and follows the thread of his argument to show its potential forestablishing a link between morality and sensibility. Insofar as Kant isable to make a case for a close analogy between aesthetic and moralinterest, he may argue for a psychological transition from the former tothe latter. Hence he could make ‘‘love of the beautiful,’’ and the fash-ioning of conditions where it may be experienced by all, a kind of moralimperative. This chapter then explores the ways in which Kant’s con-ception of the interests of disinterested reflection on the beautiful and hisviews on genius might lead to a higher valuation of art and even humanembodiment than Kant himself seems to allow.Chapter 4, ‘‘Aesthetic reflection and the primacy of the practical,’’

refocusses the discussion from Kant’s theory of beauty to the larger rolethat his aesthetics plays within his theory of value. Having argued for alarger systematic role for aesthetic judgment on historical and textualgrounds, I here address the largest challenge to such a reading – the factthat Kant’s critical philosophy turns on the ‘‘primacy of the practical,’’and should be interpreted as a system within which all value ultimatelyderives from practical reasoning. Onora O’Neill and Christine Korsgaardhave given powerful and influential accounts of the methodological pri-macy of practical reason in Kant’s philosophy, and I look at each of thesein turn and offer criticisms. Yet, even if methodological primacy accountsare inadequate, it is possible that practical reason is primary for Kant’soverall account of human valuation in some other sense. I then addressKarl Ameriks’ account of what I label the ‘‘metaphysical’’ primacy ofpractical reason, as well as Richard Velkley’s and Susan Neiman’s dif-ferent approaches to the issue of the unification of reason. Finally I arguefor an alternative understanding of the structure of Kant’s philosophy thatis neither founded upon nor ordered ‘‘under’’ a principle of the primacyof practical judgment. This chapter claims that Kant’s philosophy isbetter understood as an attempt at a comprehensive account of nature (as

Introduction 15

known by rational, embodied beings) and of morality (as practiced byrational agents) mediated by a freely reflecting imagination. The uni-fication of these accounts, I argue, is accomplished not by placing oneunder the jurisdiction of the other, as is suggested by primacy of thepractical accounts. Rather, the two domains are mediated and, in thissense only, ‘‘united,’’ by reflective aesthetic judgment and the value ofhope to which it gives rise.In chapter 5, ‘‘The failure of Kant’s imagination’’ I address a challenge

to any interpretation that would try to center an account of humanexperience in Kant’s theory around the faculty of imagination. Thechallenge was famously laid down by Heidegger, and taken up again inrecent times by Gernot and Hartmut Bohme and by some feministphilosophers as well. It consists, in a nutshell, of the claim that Kant wasconstitutionally incapable of granting so much importance to the facultyof imagination. Heidegger reads the second edition of the Deduction ofthe Categories, wherein Kant subsumes the imaginative capacity under thefaculty of Understanding, as proof of this. The Bohmes agree, and takethe argument from the first Critique to the third, by arguing that evenhere, in his theory of taste, Kant relegates the role of imagination to mere‘‘play.’’ Chapter 5 examines these criticisms and responds by arguing thatthe third Critique account of imagination goes well beyond a theory oftaste and fine arts criticism. I argue that Kant’s account of the Ideal ofbeauty and of aesthetic ideas suggests an important role for imaginationin moral development, as do his comments on the importance of moralenthusiasm, made in his lectures on Anthropology and in the late essay‘‘An old question raised again: is the human race constantly progressing?’’This chapter concludes with a discussion of the extent to which Kanthimself opposed the metaphysical attitude in philosophizing. It arguesthat in fact, Kant was not unsympathetic to the desire for a unifiedaccount of subjectivity – and, indeed, found a place for it in his aesthetictheory.Chapter 6, ‘‘Imaginative reflections of the self in Novalis and Hol-

derlin,’’ takes up the question of the imagination and subjectivity in thephilosophical and poetic work of the early German Romantics, arguingfor a continuity between the latter and Kant’s third Critique views onimaginative power. It lays out the departure of Novalis and Holderlinfrom Fichte’s attempt to give an account of the self that claims to presentan ultimate ground or foundational account of its unity. It argues thatNovalis’ and Holderlin’s accounts bear a closer affinity to Kant’s viewsthan to those of Fichte’s idealism inasmuch as they reject the possibility of


giving a positive account of the unity of subjectivity. Instead, bothembrace a fundamentally negative account of the unity of the natural and‘‘absolute’’ in the subject: in the case of Novalis, the resemblance toKant’s account of the experience of the sublime is striking. In Holderlinthere is an explicit reversion to an account of non-conceptual aestheticexperience of beauty that owes much to Kant’s, and that in the end, likeKant’s, remains skeptical about the possibility of knowing our absolutenature.Finally, in chapter 7, ‘‘Novalis’ Kantianism and Kant’s Romanticism,’’

I return to discuss in more detail the problem of unified subjectivity inthe philosophical work of Novalis, examining the influence of Kant’sphilosophy on it. I argue that although Novalis, like other earlyRomantics, is apparently more disturbed by the problem of unifiedsubjectivity than Kant, his metaphysical position is not in the end muchdifferent from Kant’s. Novalis upholds the Kantian doctrine of theunknowability of the absolute self and is hence neither an idealist nor anirrationalist. What both share is a commitment to the faculty of creativeimagination as link between the inner world of freedom and the outerworld of nature in the human subject. The second part of this chapterpicks up on Novalis’ notion of the ‘‘genius of genius’’ to inquire moredeeply into the nature and the role such an understanding might play inKant’s aesthetic theory. Kant’s views on the nature of genius are exploredfirst in terms of his account of unconscious ideation discussed in theAnthropology, and Kant’s mention there of the nature of the performer ofthe ‘‘free fantasia.’’ The phenomenon of the ‘‘free fantasia’’ in Kant’s timeis discussed, along with Kant’s analysis of the mental state of the musicalperformer of this genre and its relationship to ordinary cognitive activityand genius. This chapter concludes that once one-sided characterizationsof both these thinkers are corrected, their views can no longer be seen asantithetical to each other. The differences, in other words, are moredifferences in attitude than in method and substance.For all its importance in the history of the philosophy of art, Kant’s

aesthetics is far more than a theory of art and beauty. This book presentsother aspects of his aesthetics, and the theory of creative imaginationupon which it is based, as both a central, integrating component of hislarger philosophical enterprise and as a keystone in the bridge betweeneighteenth- and early nineteenth-century moral aesthetics in Germanphilosophy. It is a reading Kant himself suggested, when in the intro-ductions to the Critique of Judgment he argued that both his aestheticsand his account of teleological judgment would help close the great

Introduction 17

chasm between the theories of morality and cognition established in thefirst two Critiques. Certainly a bridge between human need and humanobligation was central to German Enlightenment aesthetics, beginningwith Gottsched and carried forward by Lessing’s work, and it becameeven more crucial (and more politicized) in the early German Romantics.Kant’s aesthetics is not typically associated with his thoughts onEnlightenment, but it is the point of this book to show how they enabledthe development of the German tradition of aesthetic education theory,transforming it in the process into a critical theoretical enterprise.Historical periods are difficult, arguably impossible, to delineate and

define, and although the Enlightenment has been a remarkably resilienthistorical category (perhaps because, as Foucault emphasized, it nameditself) the question of what truly characterizes this period is still a matterof contention. Broadly speaking, then, the task of this book is to grasp theshape of the Enlightenment and of Romanticism by, as it were, studyingtheir interface. If Kant’s philosophy is taken as an exemplar (many wouldsay the exemplar) of the late German Enlightenment and Novalis’ phi-losophy as paradigm of the early German Romantic movement, then theinterface of the two is of real historical significance. It is all the moreimportant since the standard view of these two positions sets them up asdiametrically opposed. In examining the historical and conceptual con-nections between, on the one hand, a philosophy often viewed as rigidlyrationalist and formalist in its overall contours and, on the other hand,one that is often taken to be so inchoate and fantastical as to be nophilosophy at all, I hope to bring into relief important dimensions ofboth. I have long been convinced that if one looks closely at Kant’sanalysis of the faculty of imagination, especially as foregrounded, devel-oped, and expanded in the ‘‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment,’’ a good dealof the criticism of his ethics and anthropology becomes moot. During thecourse of study of Novalis and the immediate post-Kantian philosophicalcontext in Germany, I have come to appreciate the continuities of earlyGerman Romanticism with Kant’s work and to see the distortion andtired caricatures of that movement as an impediment to understandingimportant aspects of Kant’s aesthetics. Looking at Kant’s philosophyfrom the perspective of his view of imaginative freedom is surprisinglydisruptive of standard views of Kantianism, but it also undermines ste-reotypical accounts of Romanticism. On philosophical turf, an importantrecent debate has centered around the question of whether Romanticismis to be characterized as a continuation of German Idealism or as


Idealism’s most ‘‘decisive’’ opponent.22 This book skirts that issue, in partbecause there are any number of questions about what constitutes‘‘German Idealism’’ in general, and more specifically because there areequally many questions raised by calling Kant an ‘‘idealist.’’23 My aim issimply to look at the question of whether Romanticism, as characterizedby one of its leading exponents, is to be found at all in the work ofImmanuel Kant, and if so, what aspects of Kant’s enlightenment thoughtmight be seen as partially constitutive of the early Romantic point ofview. At stake is the possibility of enlivening and enriching enlightenmentcommitments to human equality and freedom with the early Romanticemphasis on community and creativity. The chapters that follow trace apath from Kant’s views on imaginative creativity and the connectionbetween aesthetic reflection and morality to late eighteenth-centuryRomanticism in Germany. In so doing the book suggests an alternativetrajectory to Kant’s aesthetics that will, I hope, bring attention to itscontinuing relevance for theories of social transformation.

22 Ernst Behler, Review of Manfred Frank’s Einfuhrung in die Fruhromantische Asthetik, Athenaum, 3,1993. Also see Karl Ameriks’ Introduction to The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism (see n.13), esp. pp. 10–13, ‘‘Idealism and Romanticism.’’

23 Ameriks, Introduction, pp. 1–10.

Introduction 19

chapter 1

Kant and Romanticism

The very idea of connecting Kant and Romanticism has raised and nodoubt will continue to raise hackles among some Kant scholars. Thesecritics typically view Kant as the last great defender of Enlightenmentvalues in the modern era of philosophy, while viewing Romanticism as areactionary, counterenlightenment development expressing irrationalisttendencies and forces whose aims are anathema to the spirit of liberty andequality. This view continues to prevail in the face of much new scho-larship documenting the broad spectrum of Enlightenment positions andcontroversies,1 and in spite of the fact that Kant himself was a greatadmirer, and in some cases friend, of several major counterenlightenmentfigures.2 Kant did not directly engage the so-called ‘‘Jena school ofRomantics’’ that included the Schlegels, Schelling, and Novalis. Yet hisphilosophy loomed so large in the German academic context that therecan be no question of his influence on them. Indeed one could argue thatit is in the claim to be Kant’s successor and remediator that Fichteattracted and fascinated the early Romantics. Kant repudiated Fichte’sappropriation of his philosophy,3 and Fichte’s Doctrine of ScientificKnowledge was criticized by the early Romantics.4 They quickly cameto reject Fichte’s basic assumptions. It is a major contention of the latterpart of this book that this rejection, most forcefully stated in Novalis’Fichte Studies, is fundamentally a rejection on Kantian grounds and bearsthe mark of Kant’s aesthetic theory. This chapter will serve to introduce

1 See for instance James Schmidt, ed., What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth Century Answers andTwentieth Century Questions (Riverside: University of California Press, 1996).

2 Most notable here is Kant’s great admiration of Rousseau, but he was also on friendly terms at onetime or another with Hamann and Jacobi.

3 Kant’s ‘‘Open Letter on Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre’’ (August 7, 1799), in Arnulf Zweig, Kant:Philosophical Correspondence 1759–99 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 253–254 isdecisive, if also somewhat peevish.

4 Most famously by Novalis (Novalis: Fichte Studies, ed. Jane Kneller, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2003).

20

this argument, along with some of the book’s other major themes, byjuxtapositing Novalis’ definition of Romanticism with key aspects ofKant’s philosophy.

kant and novalis

Kant and Novalis both gave shape to their philosophical programs ofEnlightenment and Romanticism, respectively, in the form of dicta thatbecame mottoes for these movements. Kant’s ‘‘Sapere aude!’’ – ‘‘Think foryourself !’’ – was a call to arms for Enlightenment theory and practice,and so, in its own way, was Novalis’ demand that: ‘‘The world must beromanticized.’’ Controversial as it may sound, in many ways earlyGerman Romantic philosophy carried Kant’s Enlightenment bannerlonger and higher than those who named themselves heir to Kant’sphilosophy. Even more controversial, but equally plausible, is that Kant’sown philosophy moved in the direction of carrying out a program of‘‘romanticization’’ in accordance with Novalis’ dictum. To make this lastclaim is sure to upset Kant scholars, especially those in the Anglo-American tradition who for decades have labored hard to reconstruct ananalytic, empiricist-friendly reading of Kant as primarily responding toHumean skepticism. Certainly, to associate Kant with mysticism, irra-tionalism, and otherworldly utopianism is false, and would be anathemato the no-nonsense humanism of ‘‘the Prussian Hume.’’5 Yet character-izing early German Romanticism in these terms is itself a gross mis-representation of its most lively and central tendencies. Moreover, in themid-twentieth century rush to make Kant palatable to Anglo-Americananalytic philosophers, much that was central to Kant’s own work wasinitially ignored, down-played, or simply dismissed. No one denies thatthe so-called ‘‘Copernican revolution’’ and the ethics founded on aCategorical Imperative remained basic to all his most important work,but it is equally true that Kant wrote about far more than the conditionsof cognitive knowledge and the foundations of moral obligation. Recentscholarship on Kant’s ‘‘impure’’ ethics,6 aesthetics, anthropology, meth-odology, politics, and social theory has virtually exploded, and our abilityto bring Kant’s philosophy into sharper historical focus has increasedproportionally.

5 Lewis White Beck’s term in ‘‘A Prussian Hume and a Scottish Kant?’’ in Essays on Kant and Hume(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978).

6 The term is due to Robert Louden and is the title of his book on Kant’s Anthropology: Kant’s ImpureEthics: From Rational Beings to Human Beings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Kant and Romanticism 21

Let us begin by looking at what Novalis means when he defines themovement known as Romanticism in terms of ‘‘romanticizing.’’ As itturns out, he has in mind something quite specific: to romanticize is toconvert what is ordinary and mundane into something extraordinary andmysterious, and conversely, to make what is unknown, known:

The world must be romanticized. In this way one rediscovers the originalmeaning. Romanticizing is nothing but a qualitative raising to a higher power[Potenzirung]. The lower self becomes identified with a better self. Just as weourselves are such a qualitative exponential series. This operation is still quiteunknown. Insofar as I give the commonplace a higher meaning, the ordinary amysterious countenance, the known the dignity of the unknown, the finite anappearance of infinity, I romanticize it. The operation is precisely the oppositefor the higher, unknown, mystical and infinite – these are logarithmized by thisconnection – they become common expressions. Romantic philosophy. Linguaromana. Alternating elevation and lowering. (II: 545, #105)

Novalis characterizes romanticizing as a two-part process. As Ernst Behlerexplains it, it is ‘‘a dual, counteractive movement . . . in which roman-ticizing constitutes the expansion of the mind into the mysterious andunknown, yet eventually reverses itself into a return into the ordinary andfamiliar.’’7

The first part of this process – giving the commonplace a highermeaning, mystifying the ordinary – is stereotypically associated withRomanticism. But it is equally important in understanding Novalis andearly German Romanticism that equal weight be placed on the secondpart of the process – lowering or ‘‘logarhythmizing’’ [‘‘logarythmisirt’’] themystical. Andrew Bowie points out that

The neologism ‘‘logorhythmised’’, which combines the sense of rational order-ing, verbalisation and mathematical progression with the sense of the musicinherent in the use of everyday language, epitomises the Romantic position.8

Bowie goes on to argue that for Novalis, as for Friedrich Schlegel,romanticizing by no means meant a ‘‘surrender to indeterminacy.’’9WhileNovalis certainly sympathized with the urge to idealize, he was insistentthat although a ‘‘tendency to seek the universal’’ [Universaltendenz] isessential to the scholar,

7 Ernst Behler, German Romantic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 207.8 Andrew Bowie, From Romanticism to Critical Theory: The Philosophy of German Literary Theory(London and New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 80.

9 Ibid., pp. 78ff and p. 313, n. 19.


one must never, like a phantast, seek the undetermined – a child of fantasy – anideal. One proceeds from determinate task to determinate task. An unknownlover of course has a magical charm. Striving for the unknown, the unde-termined, is extremely dangerous and disadvantageous. Revelation must not beforced. (3: 601, #291)

This fragment may serve to remind contemporary eighteenth-centuryscholars that a genuine appreciation of the ‘‘practical, technical and real’’(Novalis, 3: 600, #291) in science was not the sole property of Enligh-teners. In fact, on Novalis’ account of romanticizing, a reductionistapproach in the sciences can be viewed as a legitimate and integral part ofthe romantic program.Recognizing the ‘‘naturalizing’’ side of the process of romanticizing

helps to correct the misreading of Novalis’ program as irrationalist, but itis just as important to emphasize that even the expansive side of theprocess is not a call for mystification. To make the familiar unfamiliar isnot to seek cognitive oblivion, but simply to learn to look at the worldagain with wonder. Understood in this way, then, there is certainly a verygeneral sense in which Kant, along with other great philosophers beforehim, ‘‘romanticized’’ in both these senses of the term. The very procedureof Kantian ‘‘critique’’ is one of painstaking analysis and ordering ofmental phenomena that had previously been considered ‘‘unknown’’ ormystical. For example, one could say without exaggeration that, in Kant’sview, he was demystifying Hume’s hand-waving conception of the causalconnection as a ‘‘gentle force’’ or Descartes’ mystical ‘‘stamp of God’’view of innate ideas, or Locke’s substance – a ‘‘somewhat, I know notwhat.’’ One might very well characterize the analytic of the Critique ofPure Reason as a process of demystification of formerly metaphysicalnotions like substance, causal connection, possibility, and necessity, andthe very notion of ideas knowable a priori. Certainly in Kant’s own time,the depressingly deflationary nature of Kant’s transcendental move wasclear, as was attested to in the famous case of Kleist’s ‘‘Kant crisis.’’ Evenwhere it seemed impossible to reduce phenomena to functions of humancognition – for instance, in the case of the uniformity of naturalappearances and the systematic regularity of nature, as in the appearanceof systematic interconnectedness of nature according to empirical laws, orin the existence of natural organisms (entities with purposes) – Kantpushed the critical philosophy to its limits, introducing ‘‘regulative’’principles, or principles of reflection (in the third Critique) as necessaryconditions of our recognition of these contingencies.


Even the human tendency to ‘‘surrender’’ to the infinite is analyzed as apsychological phenomenon by Kant in the Dialectic of the first Critique,and can thus be viewed as a ‘‘logarythmizing’’ of the unknowable in thevarious forms in which Reason seeks it. Kant does not deny the existenceof reason’s irrepressible desire to strive to know the unknown and theinfinite. But by carefully cataloguing the various specific traps and pitfallsthat human reason is liable to, he systematically reduces the search for theunknown itself to a part of human cognitive functioning. Where thisdesire to surrender to the infinite is aestheticized, as in our fascinationwith that in nature which appears infinitely large or powerful, Kant alsogives a detailed analysis of the cognitive functions involved. He assures hisreaders that the sublime is really not to be located in natural objectsthemselves, but rather

all we are entitled to say is that the object is suitable for exhibiting a sublimitythat can be found in the mind. For what is sublime, in the proper meaning of theterm, cannot be contained in any sensible form but concerns only ideas ofreason, which . . . can be exhibited in sensibility. (V: 245–246).

Kant goes on to explain in great detail the way in which the imaginationattempts to estimate in intuition the magnitude and power of vast, eveninfinite nature, and how this striving eventuates in a feeling (of inade-quacy or fear) that refers us to an aspect of ourselves that is ‘‘independentof nature.’’ This reference itself gives rise to a second feeling of over-coming the inadequacies of our imagination. In other words, Kantproffers a highly nuanced and complex psychological account of theorigins of our feeling of the mysteries and majesty of nature. And, beyondthe theory of the sublime, as Rudolf Makkreel points out, Kant’s accountof reflective judgment and imagination in the third Critique also attemptsto analyze and explain ‘‘one of the greatest metaphysical mysteries – thefact that matter can at times partake of life’’ by way of aesthetic pleasure.10

To be sure, as Behler (echoing Friedrich Schlegel) points out, Kantrecognized a ‘‘dark’’ and mysterious element of the human psyche in theguise of the faculty of imagination.11 It was for him the ‘‘blind butindispensable function of the soul without which we would have no

10 Rudolf A. Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: The Hermeneutical Import of theCritique of Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). This book is an excellentaccount of Kant’s developed theory of imagination and severely undermines any argument thatKant had an impoverished account of imagination that placed it at the very lowest level ofphilosophical inquiry, as suggested by, e.g., ‘‘Ernst Behler uber Manfred Frank,’’ Buchbe-sprechung, Athenaum, 1 (1991).

11 Behler, Review of Manfred Frank’s Einfuhrung, p. 249.


knowledge but of which we are scarcely ever conscious’’ (Critique of PureReason A78/B103). Yet it does not follow even from this characterizationthat Kant was unwilling to admit the possibility of the scientific study ofthe ‘‘dark’’ side of imagination, e.g. in unconscious ideation, or what hecalled ‘‘obscure ideas.’’ When he talks about unconscious ideas in theAnthropology he says that ‘‘the theory of obscure ideas belongs only tophysiological . . . anthropology’’ (VII: 136), suggesting that althoughthese may be inaccessible to investigation a priori, and hence beyond thereach of critique, still there is room for empirical study of these phe-nomena.12 This view is completely compatible with transcendental ide-alism and also in keeping with the naturalist side of Novalis’Romanticizing program.That Kant’s work could be seen as deflationary, a bringing down to

earth, or naturalizing of metaphysical and previously mysterious notions,ought not to be too surprising, of course. More strange, and certainlymore likely to offend traditional Kant-scholarly sensibilities, is the sug-gestion that Kant performed the ‘‘romantic operation’’ in the first senseoutlined by Novalis. Can it plausibly be maintained that Kant ‘‘made ofthe ordinary and commonplace something mystical and profound?’’ Wehave only to consider, for a start, the extent to which Kant’s projectinvolved ‘‘denying knowledge to make room for faith.’’ I argue in chapter 4that contemporary Kantians who take Kant’s theory of practical reason tobe the absolute center and determining focus of his philosophy go too far,but it is undeniable that Kant’s concern for this ‘‘unknowable’’ side ofhuman experience was a central concern. Kant devotes a great deal oftheoretical energy to explaining and analyzing moral judgment, yet heexplicitly states that, morally speaking, the foundation of that investiga-tion lies in the dignity and absolute worth of humanity as an end in itself.This is not to say that the recognition of individual human dignity is amystical experience, but rather that, in the tradition of making what ismost familiar into something that appears fresh and new, Kant’s philo-sophy ‘‘re-enchants’’ our humanity, makes us marvel in awe at the ‘‘morallaw within.’’Similarly Kant’s notorious ‘‘fact of reason,’’ ultimately allows of no

explanation, practical or theoretical:

12 I have examined this aspect of Kant’s theory of imagination and creativity in two papers, ‘‘Kant’sApology for Sensibility,’’ delivered at the APA Pacific Division in New Orleans in 1999, and also in‘‘Fantasts and Fantasias: A Kantian Theory of Imaginative Free Play,’’ delivered at the EvelynDunbar Early Music Festival Symposium, Northwestern University (February 2003). A discussionalso appears in chapter 7 of this volume.


The consciousness of this fundamental law [the Categorical Imperative, themoral law] may be called a fact of reason, since one cannot ferret it out fromantecedent data of reason such as the consciousness of reason (for this is notantecedently given), and since it forces itself on us as a synthetic proposition ‘‘apriori’’ based on no pure or empirical intuition. It would be analytic if thefreedom of the will were presupposed, but for this, as a positive concept, anintellectual intuition would be needed, and here we cannot assume it. In order toregard this law without any misinterpretation as given, one must note that it isnot an empirical fact, but the sole fact of reason, which by it proclaims itself asoriginating law (sic volo, sic iubeo)[This is my will and my command, fromJuvenal: Satire]. (Critique of Practical Reason, V: 31)

In other words, consciousness of the law is a given, and no account,transcendental or empirical, can suffice to explain it. Kant was no poet,but the few passages that come close to poetry in his work are those thatrefer to the dignity, the ‘‘jewel-like’’ radiance, of the good will inhumanity. And although in contemplating the ‘‘moral law within,’’ Kantallows his mind to ‘‘expand into the mysterious reaches of the unknown,’’it is an expansion that any ordinary human being can accomplish, con-sciousness of which is a given.So even though in his theoretical work Kant clearly exemplifies the

‘‘logorythmizing’’ or reductionist tendency of ‘‘natural philosophy,’’ hismoral philosophy provides the complementary enlargement that com-pletes the twofold contraction – expansion dynamic of Romanticismdescribed by Novalis. Properly understood, Novalis’ dictum covers thecritical philosophy in spirit and in letter: Kant made the unknownknown, reducing cognition to functions of judgment discoverable tophilosophical inquiry; and in the very process of humanizing the cosmos,he transformed the most intimate aspects of human nature into anunknowable but awesome thought: a ‘‘thing-in-itself.’’Of course, it may be objected that there is a perfectly good sense in

which all pathbreaking philosophy will qualify for the label ‘‘Romantic’’if taken in the sense just outlined, since all progress in philosophy may beunderstood as a kind of elevation of certain fundamental assumptions to‘‘foundational,’’ ‘‘original,’’ or ‘‘primitive’’ notions that remain unques-tioned, while at the same time reducing and making ‘‘mundane’’ otherphenomena that then are explained by these assumptions. In this sense,one could say that Descartes, Plato, even Hume, also ‘‘romanticized.’’13

In response it may first of all be pointed out that indeed, on Novalis’

13 I thank Michael Losonsky for first raising this objection, and also an anonymous reviewer atCambridge University Press for making the same point.


account, they did. For Novalis, philosophizing is a variety of romanti-cizing, wherein we search for a ground, for an absolute:

Philosophizing must be a unique kind of thinking. What do I do when Iphilosophize? I reflect upon a ground. The ground of philosophizing is thus astriving after the thought of a ground . . . All philosophizing must therefore endin an absolute ground. Now if this were not given, if this concept contained animpossibility – then the drive to philosophize would be an unending activity –and without end because there would be an eternal urge for an absolute groundthat can be satisfied only relatively and that would therefore never cease.Unending free activity in us arises through the free renunciation of the absolute –the only possible absolute that can be given us and that we only find through ourinability to attain and know an absolute. This absolute that is given to us thuscan only be known negatively, insofar as we act and find that what weseek cannot be attained through action . . . This could be called an absolutepostulate. All searching for a single principle would be like the attempt to squarethe circle. (#566)

Novalis goes on to distinguish the activity of doing philosophy fromPhilosophy as product of that activity:

Philosophy, the result of philosophizing, arises accordingly through interruptionof the drive towards knowledge of the ground – through standing still at thepoint where one is. (#566)

Hence all true philosophers are indeed driven by the same motive force,and their work will be characterizable as the attempt to reduce previouslyinflated notions to simple ones while at the same time simply assuming asgiven an ‘extraordinary’ point towards which that reduction is aimed, andwhich itself cannot be proven or further explained. Philosophizing is itselfa conceptual version of the expansion and contraction process ofromanticizing. At least, it is until it becomes ‘‘Philosophy’’ – i.e. the pointat which the philosopher ‘‘interrupts’’ herself, and claims to have finallyfound ‘‘the answer’’ and, in so doing, quits the activity.Thus, although in one interesting sense for Novalis, philosophers

always ‘romanticize’ in the process of their thought, they also cease to doso at that point where they declare that they have uncovered or produceda systematic solution. Kant, like most philosophers, claimed to havefound ‘‘the answer’’ in his Copernican turn and the systems of cognitiveand moral experience that eventuate from that turn, and perhaps to thatextent he too ceased ‘‘romanticizing’’ in favor of ‘‘standing still at thepoint where he was.’’ What is unique about Kant, and what connects himdirectly to Novalis and the system-eschewing early Romantics in a waythat other philosophers are not so connected, is that the revolution in


philosophizing that his approach articulated involved the self-conscious,methodical recognition of both the limitations of human knowledge (ourinability to know either nature or ourselves in their entirety), and at thesame time of the ineliminable, natural human drive to surpass thoselimitations. In the third Critique, Kant explicitly takes on the project ofbringing these two aspects of human nature together in a coherentaccount. A particularly good example of his ‘‘romanticizing’’ here is theuse that he makes of the notion of the ‘‘supersensible’’ (das Ubersinn-liche)14 or what he earlier called the ‘‘noumenal.’’ In the third Critique theidea of a substrate that underlies and makes possible objects of knowledgeand ‘‘good-willed’’ action is problematized, since, Kant worries,

an immense gulf is fixed between the domain of the concept of nature, thesensible, and the domain of the concept of freedom, the supersensible, so that notransition from the sensible to the supersensible . . . is possible, just as if theywere two different worlds, the first of which is to have no influence on thesecond; and yet the second is to have an influence on the first, i.e., the conceptof freedom is to actualize in the world of sense the purpose enjoined by itslaws. (V: 175–176)

Kant goes on to argue that it must therefore be possible to think ofnature as amenable to our moral purposes,

So there must after all be a basis uniting the supersensible that underlies natureand the supersensible that the concept of freedom contains practically, eventhough the concept of this basis does not reach cognition . . . though it doesmake possible the transition from our way of thinking in terms of principles ofnature to our way of thinking in terms of principles of freedom. (V: 176)

Odd as this language may sound,15 the talk of a noumenal ‘‘realm thatis unbounded but that is also inaccessible to our entire cognitive power’’should be understood, as Kant himself suggests, as simply an assumptionwhich serves as a necessary basis for our ‘‘way of thinking [Denkungsart].’’We can think ‘‘in terms of principles of nature’’ (based on the assumptionof something that is first given to experience that we can never know initself) and ‘‘in terms of principles of freedom’’ (based on the concept offreedom, which we must postulate in order to act). The question posed

14 Again, I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer at Cambridge University Press for this point.15 Werner Pluhar, in his Introduction to his edition of the Critique of Judgment makes the concept of

the supersensible and its determinability into a Leitfaden (guiding thread) for interpreting the wholeof the book and its place in the Critical project. He begins with the importance of the aestheticreflective judgment in this regard, and points out that although Kant appears to be introducing three‘‘supersensibles’’ (whatever that could mean!) in this passage, he is suggesting rather three ideas of onesupersensible (Pluhar, Translator’s Introduction, p. lxiii).


by the third Critique is: ‘‘On what basis, can we move seamlessly inthought from one way of thinking to the other; from thinking in terms ofnature to thinking in terms of freedom?’’ Or, more accurately, how do wecombine both ways of thinking to effect moral improvement in nature,including in our ‘‘natural’’ selves?16

Kant’s answer is complicated, indeed, ‘‘obscure’’ even by his ownstandards, as he admits in his Preface (V: 170). The ability to transitionfrom one way of thinking to another rests upon an experience of whatappears to be nature’s purposiveness for the human mind, an experiencethat is itself neither cognitive nor moral, but contains elements of both. Itis an experience that involves perception of nature, but that goes beyondimmediate sensory input to linger over and play with these perceptions inimagination. Such ‘‘play’’ makes no claims to know and no demands toact, but simply eventuates in a judgment that the object is beautiful, aclaim that at its core expresses a feeling of pleasure that we derive fromcontemplating nature’s harmonious forms. This is a special pleasure, anaesthetic reflective pleasure that for Kant, might be rooted in noumenalground: ‘‘the basis that determines the judgment lies, perhaps, in theconcept of what may be considered the supersensible substrate ofhumanity’’(V: 340). The supersensible ‘‘substrate,’’ or basis, is the aes-thetic counterpart to the cognitive and moral notions of the thing-in-itselfand to the postulate of freedom. It is in essence twofold, befitting its roleas mediating ‘‘principle’’: It involves feeling that is disinterested (i.e. notself-interested), similar to the feeling of respect that the moral law elicitsin us, and it also refers to nature, both in ourselves (pleasure is after all ananimal sensation) and in the world around us.Details of Kant’s account of the connection between the moral and the

beautiful will be discussed in the chapters that follow. What is importanthere is the way in which Kant both demystifies the human being’s ‘‘twoworld split’’ by reference to a way of adjudicating reflectively, whilerecognizing at the same time the ultimate inscrutability of this process:

As for the subjective principle – i.e., the indeterminable idea of the supersensiblein us – as the sole key for solving the mystery of this ability [the capacity to

16 Felicitas Munzel’s book Kant’s Conception of Moral Character: The ‘‘Critical’’ Link of Morality,Anthropology, and Reflective Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999) deals with theissue of a ‘‘moral Denkungsart’’ and ‘‘moral Gesinnung’’ – the rational and sensible sides of humancharacter – in great detail. Her focus is upon the positing and development of moral character in theindividual, but much of her discussion, some of which will be noted later in the book, is relevant toissues of reason’s unity with itself. Since her focus is on the unity of character in the individual, the‘‘external’’ problem of the human being with the world is not taken up in the same detail.


experience the beautiful and express it in a judgment of taste] concealed from useven as to its sources, we can do no more than point to it; but there is nothing wecan do that would allow us to grasp it any further. (V: 341, emphasis added)

Or, as Novalis would later say, such an idea is ‘‘just a little connectinghook used for hanging things on pro forma – it only appears [to connectthings] – it just grasps a handful of darkness’’ (FS: #3, 6). It may beuseful to recall a claim that Kant made much earlier, in discussing thenature of human cognition in the deduction of the categories in theCritique of Pure Reason. Kant here admits that his analysis must simplyassume the independence, or ‘‘givenness,’’ of that which is intuited andsynthesized by cognition:

This peculiarity of our understanding, that it can produce ‘‘a priori’’ unity ofapperception solely by means of the categories, and only by such and so many, isas little capable of further explanation as why we have just these and no otherfunctions of judgment, or why space and time are the only forms of our possibleintuition. (B: 145–146)

It is a given that we have an understanding that structures but is not theoriginal, controlling source of the sensible world. It is similarly a given ‘‘factof reason’’ that we have a will that imparts to the sensible world the form ofa supersensible rational-moral system (V: 43). What the analysis of taste andbeauty add to these unquestionable claims is a third ‘‘given’’ that med-iates the other two: We are capable of sensible feelings, shareable with otherhuman beings, of nature’s possible attunement to a supersensible rational –moral system. Kant assumes, ironically and (early) romantically, anextraordinary, unknowable purpose that is grasped in ordinary humanfeeling (a sensus communis aestheticus). This feeling is the naturalexpression of supersensibility – and is the vehicle for our human ability tothink from nature to morality and back again: It is at once both elevatedand everyday.

kant and rousseau

Considerations of this sort will serve as an initial argument for the claimput forward in what follows: that aesthetic considerations shape Kant’soverall philosophical program, a program that is proto-romantic in manyrespects. Novalis’ philosophical insights are deeply indebted to Kant. Theformer’s romantic imperative, like the latter’s Enlightenment one, issueda challenge to philosophy to self-consciously present and carry out anew program. Precisely this self-consciousness characterizes the criticalphilosophical project, which was in Kant’s own mind, epoch-making. His


‘‘mission,’’ stated explicitly, was to dethrone the queen of the sciences,metaphysics, and set up in her place a more humble ruling body, namely,the principles of human cognition in general. 17 At the same time Kantrecognized the inevitability of human striving for the absolute, for a finalunification of knowledge under a single principle, and as we shall shortlysee, embraced this striving to a far greater degree than Novalis himselfwould have allowed, if we take Novalis’ fragment from the observationson medicine and physics seriously.For all his anti-metaphysical posturing, Kant embraced the view that

metaphysical ‘‘Schwa rmerei’’ has an important role to play in the devel-opment of human cognitive faculties and of progressively better socialinstitutions. We shall examine the role of enthusiasm and imagination intransforming society in what follows, especially in chapter 5. The firstclaim, that imaginative speculation might itself develop our abilities, ismade in the First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, in a footnote to adiscussion of a transcendental definition of the feeling of pleasure. Thenote will serve as something of a guiding thread in the chapters that follow.It deals with the question of why, in Kant’s words, ‘‘nature has given us thepredisposition to such fruitless expenditure of our forces as we see inempty wishes and longings (which certainly play a large role in humanlife).’’ Kant recognizes that human beings in fact often long for theabsolutely impossible. Such dangerous longings ‘‘are often nourished bynovels and sometimes also by mystical presentations, similar to novels, ofsuperhuman perfections and fanatical bliss.’’ But even as he is attacking the‘‘Roman’’ (the novel, one of Kant’s own cherished pastimes was readingthem) and other devices of mystification, he is suggesting that such pro-jects have a natural role to play in human intellectual development:

It seem s to me that here, as in all else, nature has made wise provisions . For if wehad to assure ou rselves that we can in fact produce the object, b efore thepresent ation of it could determin e us to apply our force s, our forces woul dpresuma bly remain largely unu sed. For usually we do not come to know whatforce s we have except by tryin g them out. So nature has provided for theconnec tions betw een the determ ination of our force s an d the presentati on of theobject [to be there] even before we know what ability we have, and it is oftenprecisely this effort which to that very mind seemed at first an empty wish, thatproduces that ability in the first place. Now wisdom is obligated to set limits to

17 See Frederick Beiser’s description of Kant’s attack on metaphysics in ‘‘Kant’s IntellectualDevelopment: 1746–1781,’’ chapter I of The Cambridge Companion to Kant (New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1992).


that instinct, but wisdom will never succeed in eradicating it, or [rather] it willnever even demand its eradication. (XX: 231)

This passage will be referred to again, and it is crucial to the argumentsthat follow in this book. Kant suggests here, first, that natural,‘‘instinctive’’ forces – forces not identified as rational – drive creativityand the development of our cognitive capacities. The ‘‘power of imagi-nation, that blind but indispensable function of the soul, without whichwe should have no knowledge whatsoever, but of which we are scarcelyever conscious’’ (A78/B103), is the force that makes human intellectualdevelopment possible. Imaginative striving – we might call it a kind of‘‘straining to understand’’ what appears impossible – allows us torecognize in theory and then possibly to realize in practice what ‘‘seemedat first an empty wish.’’ Without this natural impulse surely no progressof reason is possible. It is this impulse that is also at the heart of Novalis’program, and constitutes the Romantic debt to Kant.Kant was profoundly aware of the role that nature plays in human

experience and progress.18 Considering the source for Kant’s revolu-tionary turn in ethics, the Urromantic Rousseau, this should come as noreal surprise. Kant’s Rousseauistic turn is well known, especially hisfamous claim in the ‘‘Remarks’’ on the Observations on the Beautiful andSublime that reading Rousseau ‘‘set him straight’’ and taught him tohonor humanity above all else.19 Richard Velkley has made a strong casefor the pervasive influence of Rousseau not only on Kant’s moral andpolitical views, but for his view of reason in general.20 Velkley takes thedefining moment of Kant’s project to arise from Rousseau’s character-ization of the problem of reason as the problem of the relationship ofhuman reason to human happiness. If, as Rousseau so forcefully argues,becoming progressively more rational only makes us progressively moremiserable (the more we know, the more we desire), then how can thedevelopment of reason as humanity’s ‘‘vocation’’ or destiny be asserted?Recognition of Rousseau’s problem with reason, Velkley argues, forcesKant to attempt a ‘‘theodicy of reason.’’ He argues that Kant’s philosophyis driven by the need for an account of Reason’s final purpose, and that

18 No one, in my opinion, has argued more persuasively for this awareness, and the systematicconnection of Kant’s naturalism with his ethics than Allen Wood, in Kant’s Ethical Thought(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

19 Ak XX: p. 44.20 Richard Velkley, Freedom and the End of Reason: on the Moral Foundations of Kant’s Critical

Philosophy, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989)


the need to articulate that purpose leads Kant on a quest for what Velkleycalls ‘‘the teleological consummation of reason in a new legislation of theorder of the soul’’: an order that ‘‘proceeds in the direction’’ of ‘‘one formof human perfection’’ and that ‘‘can be achieved only through a certainkind of willing’’(p. 66). The need for a theodicy of reason, according toVelkley, leads Kant to assert the primacy of practical reason in theseterms: ‘‘The moral foundation of Kant’s critical philosophy can beuncovered in the manner in which this ‘primacy’ determines thecontent and direction of all inquiries belonging to the ‘criticism’ ofreason’’ (p. 2).This is a dramatic claim, to which I will return in chapters 2 and 4. At

the very least, Velkley’s argument shows that Kant’s sense of urgency aboutthe need for philosophy to justify reason as the final arbiter of truth owes asmuch to Rousseau as to Hume, and it is persuasive in making its case that,in important respects, the Rousseauian turn in his thinking was even moredefinitive of Kant’s overal critical program. Rousseau’s worry about vin-dicating Reason as a final moral court of appeal was certainly a wakeup callfor Kant, who had no intention of abandoning the tribunal of reason as themoral final court of appeal. On Velkley’s account, Kant’s moral philo-sophy takes on epic, (if not Quixotic) proportions consistent with aromanticizing of philosophy in the expansive direction. However, it doesnot follow from the centrality of this issue that Kant’s expansion of reasonbeyond the theoretical can be billed as the saga of his quest for the HolyGrail of the unity of reason, nor even as a quest to unify Reason under theconception of an ideal of practical willing, as Velkley argues. In chaptersthat follow, I argue against reading Kant as identifying the ‘‘philosophiclife’’ with ‘‘seeking the perfection of the will’’ (p. 66). In other words, it is avery different tendency in Kant’s later philosophical work that this bookexplores. Kant’s views on aesthetic (imaginative) reflection and its role inmorality undermine single-focus, idealist readings of the sort Velkleyadvocates – i.e. readings that situate Kant at the foundation of Germanicphilosophical system-building beginning with Fichte. Of course there areconceptual and historic continuities, but Kant himself disowned theFichtean system and, I am convinced, would have disavowed the viewof philosophy as an epic quest for the Holy Grail of a single, unifyingteleological account of human nature. As Allen Wood puts it:

For Kant, the task of philosophy is not (as it is for Hegel) to reconcile us to thehuman condition. Kant thinks that as rational creatures our condition must beone of dissatisfaction, self-alienation, and endless striving. Philosophy should not


try to transcend that condition but only to help us live with its inevitability, andmore important, to make progress in the painful tasks it sets us.21

This does not preclude that for Kant, as Wood also claims, the task ofphilosophy ‘‘in an age of enlightenment is to make [rational collectiveends] explicit and then to look for social institutions and historical ten-dencies that promote them.’’22 But Kant’s insistence on the regulativenature of all such accounts, and his increasing attention in the laterCritical philosophy to the sensible and contingent conditions of moraljudgment and human creativity is continuous, not with idealist system-building, but with the more modest and ironic approach of early GermanRomanticism. For all its insight into the connection of Kant’s philosophyto Rousseau, I would disagree with Velkley’s central claim. A finaltheodicy of reason for Kant was never fully worked out, and for a verygood reason: it could not be accomplished on Kant’s own terms. Noconcrete, ‘‘substantive’’ notion of the end of Reason could ever bedelivered solely by reason to itself. Reason can regulate but never, byitself, create these ends.Although Velkley claims that the principle of reason’s final end, to be

realized historically, is a regulative one not in conflict with individualchoice (p. 162), there are several places in the book that suggest that he hassomething more substantive in mind. He claims that ‘‘In light of thisideal,’’ all of reason comes under the legislation of the critical philosopherso as to secure the grounds for humanity’s unobstructed progress toward afinal practical goal – the achievement of a definitive ‘‘culture’’ thatembodies the ideal (p. 15), and he speaks of ‘‘the practical advance ofhumanity toward a consummate ‘‘culture’’(p. 43). Towards the end of thebook (p. 161) he argues that, for Kant, reason must reshape humanhappiness itself: ‘‘the individual’s conception of happiness has not keptpace with reason’’ and ‘‘the individual is in great measure himself toblame if he is at odds with the species’ rational advance.’’ ‘‘Moral obli-gation taken in a very wide fashion, thus includes the effort to refine theconcept of happiness’’ and ‘‘The final system of culture must rest on aplan that dictates the mode of pursuing happiness if not its content . . . Aculture organized on a moral plan requires that happiness be grounded inrational self-activity and not in passive enjoyment.’’ There is certainlytextual evidence in Kant to support this view of the Highest Good, but italso ignores Kant’s views on the importance of contemplative, aesthetic(passive?) pleasures – moments of happiness that are not ‘‘dictated’’ by

21 Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought, p. 334. 22 Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought, p. 309.


pure reason, but partake in the contingencies of the world outside humancontrol.Hence in the second Critique, at the very place where he also describes

the ‘‘primacy of the practical,’’ Kant also feels obliged to resort to thepostulation of a higher power to lend hope to reason’s demand that westrive for individual virtue and community justice. The chapters thatfollow explore the possibility that it was the inadequacy of this theologicalturn as a theory of motivation for human moral behavior that motivatedKant’s attempts in the ‘‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment’’ to uncover,among the contingencies of human feeling and imagination, a morehuman ‘‘bridge’’ to the moral.I do not want to argue that Kant actually built the bridge, nor that an

aesthetic theory of moral development can be entirely successful. Whetherthe experience of imaginative freedom and of beauty in all its manifes-tations can indeed resolve the crisis is a matter for debate. It may be thatin the attempted resolution to the problem of making reason accountableto human nature and happiness, in the words of Lacoue-Labarthe andNancy, ‘‘an abyss opens where a bridge should have been built’’(p. 30).23

The point, however, is that Kant’s philosophy, especially as articulated inthe third and final Critique, becomes a signpost pointing away fromFichte and rationalist–idealist resolutions to the problem. As Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy put it:

in the absence of a subject whose self-presence is guaranteed by originaryintuition and whose mathesis of this first evidence organizes the totality ofknowledge and the world more geometrico, the system as such, although it isdeeply desired by Kant . . . is continually lacking precisely where it is in greatestdemand. (p. 32)

Their point is that Kantian practical reason requires (‘‘desires’’) a sys-tematic connection between nature and intellect if the human moralagent is to have an effect on the world (including upon her own char-acter). But knowledge of a natural moral system (hence also, knowledgeof our ‘‘moral substance’’) is impossible on Kant’s account. Denyingknowledge of this unified moral natural realm famously cleared a spacefor belief in it (since the denial also includes denial of knowing itsnonexistence), but at the cost of rendering the moral furniture of this

23 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, trans. Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester, TheLiterary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism (Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1988).


space intangible. Kant thus created a tension that is not resolved by thepostulation of freedom, God, and immortality. In explaining the linkbetween the third Critique and the early German Romantics, Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy continue:

this ‘‘subject’’ of morality can only be defined negatively, as a subject that is notthe subject of knowledge . . . as a subject without mathesis, even of itself. It isindeed posited as freedom, and freedom is the locus of ‘‘self-consciousness.’’ Butthis does not imply that there is any cognition – or even consciousness – offreedom, for freedom in turn is posited only as ratio essendi of the moral lawwithin us, which, because it is only a fact . . . can provide only a ratio cognoscendiof freedom, which produces no cognition. This fact (the imperative, the uni-versality of the law) is neither an intuition nor a concept. As a moral subject, insum, the subject recovers none of its substance. (p. 31)

In other words, early Romantic doubts about the analyzability of the ‘‘I’’ –that is, of the human subject, and their concomitant skepticism about afinal, total system within which it resides, are continuations of a trajectoryset by Kant’s philosophy, not a break with it. Interpretations that fix Kantwithin the Idealist tradition ignore this trajectory.Nevertheless, focussing as Velkley does on Rousseau’s problematizing

of reason and its impact on Kant helps make sense of aspects of Kant’saesthetic theory that formalist readings ignore.24 Kant’s acknowledgedand profound debt to that earliest of early romantics is certainly a drivingforce, but not, I argue, behind an attempt to unify reason in a singleteleological principle. Rousseau’s insight, I would suggest, spurred him toexpand aesthetics beyond the conventional theory of ‘‘taste’’ towards atheory of imagination as a creative force in human motivation and innature. Whatever other influences it had on his contemporaries andsuccessors in German philosophy, Kant’s philosophy, especially his aes-thetic theory with its pathbreaking new view of the power of imagination,contained the seeds of early German Romanticism. As such it continuedto propagate a strain of German moral philosophizing that had beendeveloped throughout the century by philosophers and literary theorists

24 Reception of Kant’s aesthetics in the mid-twentieth century focussed on Kant’s arguments for adisinterested attitude on the part of the judging subject, and on definition of the aesthetic objectpurely in terms of its formal characteristics (design, figure, etc.). It tended to ignore or dismissother aspects of the text that struggled to connect aesthetic reflection with moral interest andfeeling. Donald Crawford’s work, as well as that of Paul Guyer, began to move analytic approachesto Kant’s aesthetics towards a more serious analysis of these sections of the third Critique. DonaldCrawford, Kant’s Aesthetic Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974); Paul Guyer,Kant and the claims of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979).


who saw the potential for enlightening the populace through art. Inchapter 2, I examine aspects of this pre-history in Germany, and argue forreading Kant’s theory of imaginative freedom as being of a piece with hisGerman predecessors. Their concerns for human emancipation throughaesthetic education were certainly an important influence, like that ofRousseau, on Kant’s own views of human nature and morality.


chapter 2

The power of imaginative freedom

Just as the concept of freedom is central to the political and moralphilosophy of the Enlightenment, it is also important to the aesthetictheory of this period. This is clearly true of the German Enlightenment.Beginning with Baumgarten, the concept of the autonomy of the ima-gination in aesthetic judgment and artistic production becomes anessential feature of German aesthetic theory, culminating in Kant’sdetailed account of the free activity of the imagination in judgmentsabout the beautiful.A study of Kant’s notion of imaginative freedom also reveals a continuity

inGerman philosophy from Lessing to Schiller that is not apparent in otherapproaches to his aesthetic theory. That is, in spite of an apparent breakwiththe German enlightenment tradition created by Kant’s insistence thataesthetics is essentially irrelevant to morality, his account of imaginativefreedom suggests the possibility that political and moral progress may beintimately connected with our ability to make universally valid aestheticjudgments. This in turn suggests that Kant’s system left room for an‘‘enlightened’’ commitment to the view that our experience of beauty andart may have an indispensable role to play in our moral improvement.In what follows, I first briefly trace the development of the concept of

imaginative freedom fromBaumgarten to Lessing and then go on to outlineKant’s account of this concept. In the last section I argue thatKant’s accountof imaginative freedom provides a solution to the problem of how reasoncan command us to strive to bring about the highest good – that is, a moralworld – on earth. I conclude by suggesting that in view of the possibilitiesthat his notion of imaginative freedom hold out to morality, Kant’s aes-thetic theorymay be seen as a ‘‘missing link’’ between Lessing’s views on thedidactic nature of art and Schiller’s views on aesthetic education.1

1 Lewis White Beck first suggested the phrase and provided much helpful advice in improving earlierdrafts of this chapter. I am also grateful to members of James Schmidt’s NEH 1989 summer seminar

38

imaginative freedom from baumgarten to kant

Aesthetics as a distinct philosophical discipline was first developed, andthe term ‘‘aesthetics’’ first coined, by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, astudent of the rationalist philosopher Christian Wolff. Although Baum-garten was a loyal disciple of Wolff and a committed rationalist, henevertheless argued that there was a need within this tradition for anaccount of the logic of judgments about sensation. For Wolff’s philoso-phical predecessor, Leibniz, sense perception was too unclear and indis-tinct to give rise to a systematic structure of its own. In Leibniz’s words:‘‘Taste as distinguished from understanding consists of confused per-ceptions, for which one cannot give an adequate reason. It is somethinglike an instinct.’’2 For Wolff, too, sensation is only confused perceptionand hence belongs to the ‘‘lower’’ cognitive faculties. To the extent thatsense perception exhibits order, it is for these philosophers imposed from‘‘above’’ by reason. The problem, as Baumgarten saw it, was that sensoryknowledge in the rationalist tradition is thus either equated with some-thing like instinct (and is not knowledge at all) or is seen as an inferiorspecies of knowledge.Baumgarten was a poet as well as a philosopher, and he wanted to

secure for art an objective validity and a claim to truth that was equal tothat of cognition. In his Meditationes Philosophicae . . . (Reflections onPoetry), published in 1735, Baumgarten claimed that the so-called lowerfaculties of sensation, memory, and imagination had a logic of their ownanalogous to, but not identical with, that of reason.3 Reason’s methodinvolves making sensations clear and distinct through abstraction, defi-nition, and demonstration. But beauty is destroyed by the tools of reasonprecisely because these processes minimize the sensuous, concrete, andindividual nature of the beautiful. The ‘‘analogon of reason,’’ as Baum-garten called the combined faculties of sensation, memory, and imagi-nation, has a logic of its own specific to judgments of beauty and free

‘‘What is Enlightenment?’’ for further commenting on the chapter and encouraging me to pursuethe argument outlined here. Finally, I am grateful to John Fisher and Rudolf Makkreel for valuablecriticisms and suggestions.

2 ‘‘Le gout distingue de l’entendement consiste dans les perceptions confuses, dont on ne saurait assezrendre raison. C’est quelque chose d’approchant de l’instinct’’ (Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,Philosophische Schriften, ed. C. I. Gerhardt [Berlin, 1875–90], III, 420); trans. from PhilosophicalPapers and Letters, ed. and trans. Leroy Loemker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), II,1031.

3 Alexander G. Baumgarten, Meditationes Philosophicae de Nonnullis ad Poema Pertinentibus (Halle,1735), trans. K. Aschenbrenner and ed. W.B. Holther as Reflections on Poetry (Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1954).

The power of imaginative freedom 39

from the laws of abstraction, definition, and demonstration that reasonimposes on cognition.4 Thus the birth of rationalist aesthetics inBaumgarten’s philosophy clears the way for a philosophical account ofaesthetic judgment in which exemption from the constraints of cognitivejudgment is a dominant theme.The movement in German philosophy for the emancipation of beauty

from cognition was an echo of what had begun earlier in German literarycircles. Bodmer and Breitinger, the so-called ‘‘Swiss Critics of Zurich,’’had been critical of the rule-fetishism of the ruling rationalist literary anddramatic theory associated especially with J. C. Gottsched. Gottschedtook his task to be the improvement of the German literary niveau, andto that end he rigidly applied rules originally laid down by Horace andAristotle and adapted by recent French aesthetic theorists such as Boileau.Gottsched’s insistence on a literal application of classicist rules led to suchabsurd prescriptions as, for instance, banning monologues (‘‘‘Intelligentpeople are careful not to speak aloud when they are alone’’) and asides(‘‘It is then as if those present had lost their hearing for this short time’’)on the grounds that they were ‘‘unnatural’’ and ‘‘improbable.’’5 Exclusiveemphasis on ‘‘reasonableness’’ (Vernunftigkeit) and insistence on follow-ing specific rules was taken by Gottsched’s critics to be a denial of theimportance of imagination and of artistic creativity. Bodmer and Brei-tinger, like Baumgarten, remained rationalists. That is, they did not denythe need for rulegovernedness in aesthetic experience and creation, butthey believed that the imagination of both artist and critic could andshould be free to play a greater role in art and criticism.6

By far the greatest exponent of artistic freedom in Germany, however,was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. He is perhaps better known for hisadvocacy of religious freedom and tolerance in such works as DieErziehung des Menschengeschlechts and Nathan der Weise, but aesthetic aswell as religious freedom was extremely important to him. In terms of hispersonal philosophical development, the literary arguments came first

4 Alexander G. Baumgarten, Aesthetica (Hildesheim, 1961), Sect. I and 555–565. Cf. also Lewis WhiteBeck, Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press ofHarvard University Press, 1969), pp. 279–280.

5 ‘‘Kluge Leute aber pflegen nicht laut zu reden, wenn sie allein sind’’ and ‘‘es ware denn, dass dieanwesende Person auf eine so kurze Zeit ihr Gehor verloren hatte’’ (J. C. Gottsched, Versuch einerCritischen Dichtkunst: Ausgewahlte Werke, eds. Joachim Birke and Birgitte Birke [New York, 1973],p. 353).

6 Cf. J. J. Bodmer and J. J. Breitinger, Von dem Einfluss und Gebrauche der Einbildungs-Kraft; ZurAusbesserung des Geschmackes; Genaue Untersuchung Aller Arten Beschreibungen, Worinne dieausserlesenste Stellen der beruhmtesten Poeten dieser Zeit mit grundtlicher Freyheit beurtheilt werden(Frankfurt, 1727).


and, I would argue, helped shape his later works on religion. Lessing, likeBodmer and Breitinger before him, reacted sharply to the excessiverationalism of German literary theory, and his polemics against Gotts-ched are well known. Great art, Lessing argues, is the result not offollowing recipes but of genius, and genius is its own rule. In his famous‘‘Seventeenth Letter on Literature’’ published in a series that ran from1759 to 1760, Lessing argues that the Germans, rather than looking to theoverly ‘‘delicate’’ and ‘‘polite’’ drama of the French, would do better toturn their attention to British drama, especially to Shakespeare, whosegenius lay in his ability to excite passion in his audience.7

Thus Lessing entered the fray in the debate over the role of rules inartistic production and criticism, and he went far beyond Baumgartenand the Swiss critics in urging the centrality of feeling to art and insistingon the freedom of the artist to arouse feeling in whatever manner wasmost effective.8 In the Laokoon, published in 1766, Lessing argues that thepoet ought to evoke feelings by whatever would require the reader to usehis or her imagination. The means available to the painter are differentfrom those of the poet; the painter works with bodies in space, the poetwith events in time. But the end goal of both painter and poet is toproduce in the audience an imaginative response. ‘‘That alone is fruitful,’’Lessing says, ‘‘which allows the imagination free play.’’9 For Lessing,imaginative freedom is important because it allows for the strongestpossible emotional response to a work of art. Since for Lessing imagi-native freedom is also the key to the success of the artist, to insist onmechanical application of rules in art is not to improve it but to guaranteeits continued mediocrity. And yet Lessing does not go so far as to say thatartistic genius is subject to no rule, but rather that genius has its owninner logic. He says: ‘‘Not every critic is a genius, but every genius is aborn critic. Genius has the proof of all rules within itself.’’10 Geniusdemonstrates its autonomy not by ignoring all rules, but by deriving therules from itself. Sensation (Empfindung) and intuitive knowledge mustbe capable of being expressed in words – of being generalized – if genius

7 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Briefe. Die neueste Literatur betreffend (1759), Werke, ed. Herbart G.Gopfert (Munich, 1973), V: 71ff.

8 Indeed, the Laokoon may be read as primarily a plea for the freedom of the poet from theemotional constraints of Winckelmann’s neo-classicism.

9 Lessing, Laokoon, Werke, ed. Herbart G. Gopfert (Munich: x, 1973), VI, 25–26, Sect. III: ‘‘Dasjenige aber nur allein ist fruchtbar, was der Einbildungskraft freies Spiel lasst.’’

10 Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Werke, ed. Herbart G. Gopfert (Munich: x, xxxx), IV, no. 96,673. ‘‘Nicht jeder Kunstrichter ist Genie; aber jedes Genie ist ein geborner Kunstrichter. Es hat dieProbe aller Regeln in sich.’’


is to improve on its own first attempts: ‘‘Who reasons correctly alsoinvents, and who wishes to invent must be able to reason.’’11 Thus Lessingby no means rejects rationalist aesthetics altogether, and for Lessing asmuch as for the rationalists the final purpose of art is education.Lessing’s account of the autonomy of genius bears some resemblance to

Kant’s account of moral freedom, according to which the freedom of theindividual consists not in ignoring law but in giving the law to oneself as arational being and thereby to all rational creatures generally. On Lessing’saccount, genius follows its own law but in such a way as to be able tocommunicate its inventions with its audience. Given Lessing’s strongconviction that art should educate, one might expect to find in his theorysome sort of aesthetic counterpart to Kant’s categorical imperative formorals. Nothing of the kind, however, is to be discovered. Lessing’sfamous dictum, ‘‘The most sympathetic person is the best person,’’12

comes closest to giving generalized expression to his own first principle ofdramatic invention – that the writer should attempt to produce sympathyin the audience. Yet it is not stated explicitly as a formula universally validfor all artistic production; nor is this surprising, since Lessing was notconcerned to produce a systematic aesthetic.13 Although he believed thatthe goal of all art was to further human moral progress, his more specificinterests in dramatic theory no doubt made the need for a detailedaccount of artistic imagination seem less urgent. Yet Lessing’s essentiallyrationalist belief in the didactic nature of art would seem to require thatsome such account be possible if the precise role of aesthetics in theeducation of human beings is to be described. It is therefore somewhatsurprising that this account first appears in the aesthetic theory of Kant,where the view that art and beauty should serve the purpose of moralperfection is abandoned. Nevertheless, it is not until Kant that thecreative possibilities of imaginative freedom first receive detailedsystematic treatment in German aesthetic theory.

11 ‘‘Wer richtig rasoniert, erfindet auch; und wer erfinden will, muss rasonieren konnen’’ (Werke, ed.Herbart G. Gopfert, IV, no. 96, 675).

12 ‘‘Der mitleidigste Mensch ist der beste Mensch, zu allen gesellschaftlichen Tugenden, zu allenArten der Grossmutt der aufgelegteste’’ (letter to Nicolai, November 1756, Werke, ed. Herbart G.Gopfert, IV, 163).

13 Cf. a typical statement in the Hamburgische Dramaturgie Werke, ed. Herbart G. Gopfert, no. 95,670: ‘‘Ich erinnere hier meine Leser, dass diese Blatter nichts weniger als ein dramatisches Systementhalten sollen. Ich bin also nicht verpflichtet, alle die Schwierigkeiten aufzulosen, die ichmache.’’ (Here I remind my reader that the last thing that I intend these pages to contain is adramatic system. I am therefore not obliged to solve all the difficulties that I create.)


Kant’s account of moral freedom is well known. In the Foundations ofthe Metaphysics of Morals Kant gives what he calls a negative and a positiveaccount of this concept. On the one hand it means freedom from cau-sation by the lower, sensuous desires; on the other it means freedom toact according to a law of practical reason that we give to ourselves asrational beings.14 In the circle of concepts that make up the core of Kant’smoral theory, the moral law stands at the very center. However, Kantsays, aesthetic reflective judgment has its own ‘‘territory,’’ within which,although not sovereign, it still enjoys freedom from the constraint ofadministering laws of cognition and morality.15 That is, in aestheticreflection, judgment is not immediately subject to the legislation of theunderstanding (i.e. to the categories). It is free of cognitive determination –it does not involve predicating empirical concepts of the object. Nor isjudgment concerned directly with applying the Categorical Imperative inaesthetic reflection. It is therefore free of moral determination: we maynot ask, in the context of a purely aesthetic experience, whether or notthis object is virtuous or promotes virtue. So although judgments aboutbeauty must always be ‘‘directed to cognition in general’’16 and no activitybased on aesthetic judgment may violate the Categorical Imperative,judgment in its reflective capacity is not compelled to apply a rule ofeither cognitive or moral judgment. Moreover, aesthetic experience of thebeautiful is also free from what Kant calls ‘‘mere’’ subjectivity – that is,the desires of the senses for immediate pleasurable response are notdetermining factors in the perception of beauty. Thus aesthetic freedom,like moral freedom, is characterized by a lack of determination bysensuous and selfish desires.The foregoing may be called Kant’s ‘‘negative account’’ of imaginative

freedom. But Kant also has a positive account of imaginative freedom,and it is here that the radical nature of this sort of freedom can be seen.For within the territory of aesthetics judgment takes a holiday from moraland cognitive work; no concepts must be applied, no commands must befollowed. Our judgments about the beautiful are not determined by theselaws. Rather, the object of an aesthetic reflective judgment is determinedsolely by the ‘‘mental state in which we are when the imagination and the

14 Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. 4: 446; Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, V:28–29.

15 Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, V: 177.16 Cf. Section 9, V: 217, and also Section 22, V: 240–241, where Kant speaks of the ‘‘free lawfulness of

the imagination’’ (freie Gesatzmassigkeit der Einbildungskraft), and argues that imagination in purejudgments of taste is free from any compulsion to ‘‘proceed according to determinate law’’ but isnot thereby self-legislating (autonomous).


understanding are in free play.’’17 Imaginative free play may occur eitherin ‘‘merely judging’’ the object in a wholly disinterested way, allowing myimagination to play freely with the forms that the object presents toperception; or it may occur in ‘‘productive’’ form in the artist, where it isused to produce and exhibit ‘‘aesthetic Ideas’’ – indeterminate ‘‘innerintuitions’’ that ‘‘prompt much thought’’ but cannot be grasped dis-cursively.18 In both cases judgment determines its object in accordancewith feeling rather than objective law.19

But what is the ultimate value of this radical freedom – this lack ofconstraint described by Kant’s aesthetics? It is quite clear that moralfreedom is priceless, as Kant would say. It has an absolute value as anecessary condition of virtuous behavior. But the time off for free playthat Kant grants the imagination within the carefully circumscribed ter-ritory of reflective judgment at the same time suggests a certain imma-turity and lack of importance relative to those realms of human endeavorthat are capable of self-governance and autonomy.To be fair, Kant, like Lessing, allows that beautiful art is valuable as a

means to civilizing human beings (V: 433–434). Moreover, Kant believesthat our experience of the beautiful is social – that is, our interest in thebeautiful actually arises only in society, where the possibility of com-municating aesthetic feelings exists (V: 296ff, V: 205n.). And althoughKant argues that aesthetic experience does not make us more virtuous, heholds that respect for objects in nature may facilitate respect for ourfellow human beings (V: 354). Nevertheless, at best it seems that for Kantthe exercise of our imagination in aesthetic judgment of the beautiful maysocialize us by producing in us a sense of the worth of other humanbeings as part of the natural world.20

But it can and should be objected at this point that a feeling ofharmony produced in us by imagination’s freely reflecting upon thebeautiful and actually being free and in harmony with the world around

17 Kant, Section 9, V: 217–218.: ‘‘der Gemuthszustand in dem freien Spiele der Einbildungskraft unddes Verstandes.’’

18 Cf. Section 48, V: 313 for the distinction between taste and artistic production, and Section 49,V: 313–314 for the introduction of the notion of aesthetic Ideas.

19 The sense in which feeling can be the determining ground of a judgment of taste is discussed in myarticle ‘‘Kant’s Concept of Beauty,’’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 3 (1986): pp. 311–324.

20 In ‘‘Imagination and Temporality in Kant’s Theory of the Sublime’’ ( Journal of Aesthetics and ArtCriticism 42 [1984], pp. 303–315) Rudolf Makkreel argues quite convincingly that Kant’s account ofthe imagination’s judgments of the sublime may play an important role in the integration of thefaculties in Kant’s overall theory. If I am correct, then the imagination’s function in makingjudgments about beauty must also have a key role to play in reintegrating imagination.understanding, and practical reason.


us are two different things. Moral freedom is no illusion because it isbased on a requirement of practical reason – it is necessary for the pos-sibility of any moral action whatsoever. But freedom of the imaginationon Kant’s account is the precondition only of our being able to look atthe world as if it were orderly and in harmony with our understanding.Imaginative freedom does not constitute this order and harmony. In fact,as moral agents we are constantly faced with evidence that the naturalworld is not well ordered with respect to our best efforts. That is, we areregularly faced with the sight of moral virtue going unrewarded. It seemsthe best thing an imagination ‘‘at play’’ can offer is a way of forgettingthis fact for the time it takes us to judge an object in a wholly disin-terested, ‘‘playful’’ manner, since during the time in which we are con-templating the beauty of an object we are free from all interest. Thejudgment that something is beautiful is not made for the purpose ofproducing an interest (V: 205n.). Kant’s aesthetic theory is unique in theEnlightenment insofar as it gives up the rationalist view that the ultimatepurpose of art is the perfection of humanity. So the challenge for Kantremains: Does the freedom of the imagination have any value beyondproviding a temporary respite from a morally hostile world?

imagining the highest good

Already in the Critique of Pure Reason Kant shows some discomfort overthe apparently unbridgeable gap that his philosophy creates between thehuman being as a causally determined member of the sensible world andthe human being as a free member of an intelligible world or ‘‘realm ofends.’’ The problem emerges here in the following form: practical reasontells me what I ought to do – i.e., what is moral – in the command: ‘‘Dothat through which you become worthy of happiness.’’ But if I do so act,may I therefore hope to obtain happiness in this world? The answer mustbe ‘‘yes,’’ Kant says, for in our thinking about morality it is necessary ‘‘toassume that everyone has reason to hope for happiness to the extent towhich they have, through their conduct, become worthy of it . . . Thesystem of morality is therefore inseparably . . . bound up with that ofhappiness.’’21 In the intelligible world – a world of purely rational crea-tures – happiness would necessarily be proportionate with morality, sincein such a world our only desire would be a rational one – namely, the

21 Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft A809/B837.


desire to be reasonable. In such a world moral freedom would itself be thecause of happiness.But Kant immediately qualifies his claim that the hope for happiness in

proportion to virtue is a necessary assumption with the reminder that‘‘such a system of self-rewarding morality is only an Idea, the carrying outof which rests on the condition that everyone do what they ought’’ (A801/B838). Our moral obligations remain binding, however, even if others donot behave morally; and in the natural world, where motives and forcesother than reverence for the moral law are at work, there is no guaranteethat the consequences of our moral actions will be happy ones. So, Kantconcludes here, ‘‘The alleged necessary connection of the hope of hap-piness with the necessary endeavor to render the self worthy of happinesscannot, therefore, be known through reason.’’The existence of a moral world cannot be known, and yet in the

Critique of Practical Reason Kant tells us that obedience to the moral lawrequires that we adopt the highest good (summum bonum) as our goal,where the highest good is interpreted as ‘‘the systematic connection ofmorality as the supreme good [bonum supremum] with the totality ofother goods (summed up as ‘happiness’).’’22 In other words reasoncommands us to try to create the moral world on earth even though this isan end whose practical possibility cannot be known. If morality requiresthat we strive to bring about the highest good, and yet we cannot knowthe present or future existence of such a world, then, Kant says, we mustat least be able to believe it is possible to bring it about, for otherwise themoral law itself would be illusory: ‘‘If, therefore, the highest good isimpossible according to practical rules, then the moral law which com-mands that it be furthered must be fantastic, directed to empty imaginaryends, and consequently inherently false’’ (V: 114).Our hope to bring about the highest good can be founded only on a

rational belief in its possibility; and this in turn is possible, Kant argues,only if we postulate the immortality of the soul (so that, since the highestgood is conditional on the moral perfection of individuals, somethingthat can be completed only in an ‘‘infinite progress’’ can be renderedpracticable) and the existence of a supreme being capable of seeing to itthat the realm of ends is actualized in a life hereafter (V: 122, 124).

22 Critique of Practical Reason, V: 110–111. Allen Wood’s explanation (in Kant’s Ethical Thought,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) of the summum bonum in the second Critique isexceptionally clear and helpful in laying out the relationship of the concept’s component parts. Seechapter 9 Sect. 4.2, ‘‘The highest good,’’ pp. 311–313.


This move is highly problematic within the context of the Criticalphilosophy, however. First of all, it reintroduces into the heart of Kant’sethics fundamental concepts of speculative metaphysics that had beendiscredited by critical reason, a deeply inconsistent move on the surface ofit. We shall return to this issue in chapter 5. Lewis White Beck argues thatKant does loosen the strictures of critique at this point, allowing the truthof the postulates a role in theoretical reasoning, if only a very small role:‘‘I think there can be no doubt that he regarded his argument as anargument for that which was posited in this way and not merely as anargument for the necessity of this positing’’(p. 264), although Beck alsopoints out that ‘‘all that Kant’s argument, if otherwise valid, entails is thenecessity of making certain postulations as acts, and not the truth of thepostulates thus made’’ (p. 263).Rather than accept this methodological inconsistency on Kant’s part, it

is tempting to see the introduction of God and immortality as strategi-cally placating the reactionary forces coming to power in Prussia at thattime. Thus, Frederick Beiser suggests that at a juncture in the Criticalphilosophy where they might be seen as doing least ‘‘harm,’’ religiousdoctrines are used in a way calculated to put the censors off and allowKant to make the more pressing argument for freedom of speech.23

Certainly, as Beiser points out, the introduction of a supernatural powerto hold out the promise of accomplishing what ought to be a human taskconstitutes a deep betrayal of his political values, suggesting that a juststate can be accomplished only with the help of God, in the hereafter.Susan Neiman agrees that Kant’s postulation of God and immortality

amounts to an admission of the impossibility of accomplishing thecommand of the moral law to create a moral state within nature. Shetakes issue with claims, made by Velkley and Yovel, that the notion of thehighest good is intended by Kant to be realizable in this world, even ifonly in the course of a long history towards progress. Neiman sees Kant asprofoundly skeptical about the possibility of this realization. Even ifhuman beings could manage to perfect themselves as moral agents and doeverything right, the cosmic injustice of natural evil remains to thwart ourplans and dash our moral hopes of instituting the highest good within theworld of nature. At the same time, Kant recognizes that ‘‘restructuringhuman affairs according to [reason’s] laws would go a long way toward

23 Frederick Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution and Romanticism (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1992). He calls it, and not without some justice, ‘‘a compromise with thestatus quo’’ on Kant’s part, p. 53.


achieving it’’ and therefore, she says, Kant ‘‘emphasizes’’ it.24 Thus sheargues that there is simply an irresolvable tension in Kant’s criticalphilosophy that the invocation of the concept of the ideal of the highestgood and the postulation of God and immortality does not alleviate. Theadoption of postulates of progress might serve better, Neiman argues, tosolve the needs of practical reason for rational hope by ‘‘substituting faithin human progress for faith in God’’:

Since rational faith does not concern the objects themselves but our moral needsand capacities, Kant might well allow that the content of the postulates couldchange while the form of the argument for their necessity remained the same.Thus it might be the case that reason’s needs have changed to the point that wedo not, two hundred years after Kant, need to represent to ourselves a personalGod to sustain our moral convictions but can make do with some more generalassumption. The extreme indeterminacy of Kant’s postulate of God’s existencelends weight to this idea . . . Might this very minimal postulation of God’sexistence be replaced by the postulate that the world as a whole is progressingtoward the best? There is some reason to think so. Kant connects the latterpostulate with the former one and holds its assertion to be a need of practicalreason. (p. 179)

In other words, what matters to morality is not what we postulate somuch as how we postulate it. Neiman argues that the postulates’ functionis not to make truth claims about the world, but to regulate our attitudeand consequent behavior. What matters is not that we assert the existenceof some particular object (although, as Beck points out, in fact we do) butthat we adopt an attitude or ‘‘Denkungsart’’ – a way of thinking – thatinvolves trust or confidence in our own abilities. Kant’s definition ofrational faith in the ‘‘Critique of Teleological Judgment’’ lends support tothis interpretation:

‘‘Faith (as habitus, not as actus [as attitude, not as an act]) is reason’s moral way ofthinking in assenting to what is not accessible to theoretical cognition. It is themind’s steadfast principle to assume as true what we must necessarily presupposeas a condition for the possibility of achieving the highest moral final purpose,and to assume this because of our obligation to this final purpose and despite thefact that we have no insight into whether achieving it is possible (nor conse-quently, into whether the conditions are possible under which alone we canconceive of achieving that aim). (V: 471–472)

24 Susan Neiman, The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994),p. 178.


Felicitas Munzel makes the parallel argument with respect to the con-ditions required for the perfection of character and rational faith, namelythat character development requires putting our trust in the ‘‘promises’’of reason. In Kant’s Conception of Moral Character, she argues that the aimof the postulates is steadfastness of character such that we may fulfill ourduties to ourselves and to the world around us without faltering. Arguingthat feeling will not do, Munzel defends the view that the rational faith ofthe postulates is just the application of the reflective principles of judg-ment – i.e., adopting belief in God’s existence or in our own immortalityare simply applications of the maxim of rational faith that Kant defines inthe Critique of Judgment. As she puts it:

In view of the moral task, practical reason in a reflective mode of judgment availsitself, against the doubts raised through the failure of speculative attempts atdemonstration, of the subjective principle of ‘‘regarding as true what is inac-cessible to theoretical cognition,’’ but necessary from a moral point of view. Todo so is just what it means to have rational faith. (pp. 206–207)

Munzel’s account skirts the issue of whether the postulates make anexistence claim and its attendant difficulties. Like Neiman, she sees theissue as one of adopting an attitude or ‘‘conduct of thought’’: Adoption ofthe postulates, on Munzel’s account, is the adoption of a ‘‘moral Den-kungsart,’’ or way of thinking in which the ‘‘human subject’’ makes adecision about how to think, not about the world, but about herself. InMunzel’s words, ‘‘she invokes the maxim of rational faith’’ and thus‘‘reconfirms’’ her moral resolve:

What this renewed steadfastness consists in, what judgment has brought about, isa relationship of inner trust between practical reason and the human agent, atrust that undergirds the proactive working toward the good by the morally goodcharacter in the world. (p. 213)

The judgment made by the individual subject is, on Munzel’s account, akind of contract or ‘‘promise’’ with her own practical reason: ‘‘it is aninner promissory note’’ with reason promising the realizability of thegood in nature, and the subject accepting and responding to the promiseby striving ‘‘steadfastly’’ to fulfill it. In essence, Munzel’s account sees thepostulates as the subject’s morally motivated leap of faith into the abyss ofhuman reason, an act of trust that energizes the mind for the long trudgedown the road of moral rectitude.There is much to be said for this de-ontologized account of the

doctrine of rational faith and the postulates. It avoids the issue of Kant’s


‘‘betrayal’’ of the Critical view of metaphysical speculation, andemphasizes what was surely an important point for Kant, namely that ifthe moral law commands us to do something, we are necessitated to act,and that means adopting whatever conditions are themselves necessary forthat action. It is easy to move from Neiman and Munzel’s insight that theconditions themselves are not Kant’s concern so much as the attitude ofsteadfastness that they make possible, to the conclusion that the condi-tions themselves are internal: They involve setting up a relationship oftrust with one’s own reason. Faith in God on these accounts becomes justone version of what is at bottom a faith in reason.As appealing as this move is, I think it misses one crucial aspect of the

problem: the postulates, in order to work, must connect us to the worldin all its contingent variability. It is after all this world that causes theproblem for reason, both with respect to developing our moral characterover a lifetime and to developing a more just social environment over thecourse of history. Whether in this world or the next, it is hard to see howany mere postulate of reason, whether as a belief in God and immortality,or in human progress in history, or as a pact with reason itself, reallysolves the problem for Kant, because the problem is not just one ofattitude, but of rational motivation: It is a matter of having good reason toimagine ourselves achieving what reason demands, of feeling that possiblywe ourselves can accomplish a just world. I might decide to believe inGod, try to believe in God, but if I don’t really feel or can’t imagine thatGod exists, there is, on this view, no hope for me. It may be true thatsome people do feel God exists, and imagine that they know God, butone person’s revelation is another’s delusion, and no amount of moralcommanding can force a feeling on the unbeliever. What is needed isreally twofold: First, some concrete, natural evidence that the world isrational and amenable to our moral projects, and second, evidence thatwe can, ourselves, accomplish them.Kant was painfully aware of the lack of such evidence in most of

human experience. Neiman correctly points out that Kant was no opti-mist, arguing that nonetheless for him ‘‘optimism becomes . . . a moralobligation’’ (p. 181). But hope is not a purely rational attitude – it is anincentive, and incentives involve feelings.25 Feelings cannot simply beadopted at will, much less rightfully commanded. True, the moral law

25 That is, with one notable exception: the moral law can be an incentive, although ‘‘why it suppliesan incentive’’ is an ‘‘insoluble problem for human reason.’’ But the moral laws’ effects can be feltand hence can be motivating in a negative way, since the suppression or eradication of feeling isalso felt – as pain (V: 72–73).


demands that we mortals strive to bring about the highest good, andconsequently our hope to achieve this end must rest on a belief in our ownability to do so. But it will not do merely to ‘‘postulate’’ that a God existswho will complete the task for us, or that we have an infinite amount oftime in which to accomplish our goal, since such a position amounts toadmitting the hopelessness of our quest as mere mortals.26 Finally, even(following Neiman’s suggestion) postulating as a regulative idea that ‘‘theworld as a whole is progressing toward the best,’’ remains a hopeless beliefif we do not really feel that it is true. Reason’s command, Kant says, is thatwe strive to bring about the highest good here, in the world and on ourown power. Unless we can imagine ourselves accomplishing progress forourselves, sooner or later we will be overcome with despair over the Sisy-phian dimension of the task reason has set for us to accomplish. Lewis W.Beck’s somewhat dismissive position would thus appear to be the onlyfriendly interpretative option: Kant’s claim that reason commands us toseek the highest good could amount to no more than a reiteration of thecommand to obey the Categorical Imperative, and ‘‘[the concept of thehighest good] is not important in Kant’s philosophy for any practicalconsequences it might have.’’27

It may be argued that postulating God’s existence does not relievehuman beings of their duty to work for a better world here and now,because God is only postulated as the necessary ground and guarantor ofthe possibility of our eventual success. Yirmiyahu Yovel argues this way inKant and the Philosophy of History: ‘‘At most, God helps us to helpourselves. The solution that Kant suggests to the antinomy is to be foundin the ability not of God but of man, although man’s ability presupposesthe existence of God and cannot be deduced from his own immanentcharacteristics.’’28 But, again, this is a solution to the antinomy only if wecan give a plausible, genuinely motivating account of how it is possiblethat we ‘‘help ourselves’’ create a moral world. I want to suggest thatKant’s account of imaginative freedom in the Critique of Judgmentprovides the material for such an account.Kant’s purpose in introducing the postulates of God and immortality

was to provide a rational ground for our hope for the possibility of

26 John R. Silber, ‘‘Kant’s Conception of the Highest Good as Immanent and Transcendent,’’Philosophical Review 68 (1959), pp. 474–475, makes a similar criticism of Kant’s argument. SeeAllen Wood’s response to this article in Kant’s Ethical Thought, p. 407, n34.

27 Lewis White Beck, Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1996), p. 245.

28 Yirmiyahu Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980),p. 96.


bringing about the highest good, so that it is not, in Yovel’s words, ‘‘just adelusion of the imagination and the faculty of desire.’’29 But in the thirdCritique imagination is not treated as a faculty of illusion, but as apowerful creative faculty, a capacity to reform nature:

For the imagination (as a productive cognitive power) is very mighty when itcreates, as it were, another nature out of the material that actual nature givesit . . . In this process we feel our freedom from the law of association . . . foralthough it is under that law that nature lends us material, yet we can processthat material into something quite different, namely, into something that sur-passes nature. (V: 314)

Through imagination we are capable, in thought at least, of taking whatnature gives us and working it up into ‘‘another nature.’’ As naturalphysical beings we are bound by the laws of nature, as moral agents by thelaw of practical reason, but as imaginative creatures we are constrained byneither and thus have creative power.This suggests that Kant’s account of imaginative freedom in the third

Critique offers a solution to the problem of grounding our belief in thepossibility of bringing about the highest good. The existence of a moralworld presupposes agency that can bring it about, and the command toseek it presupposes that we can believe it possible through our ownagency. Our ability to represent such a world in imagination would allowus to believe in the possibility of a moral world on earth and in ourselvesas creators of that world.30 Human beings as members of the naturalrealm are in a position, to some extent at least, to rearrange the physicaland social order of which they are a part. Moreover, as beings capable ofreflective sensuous response to that world – that is, as beings with ima-ginations – it is open to us to represent intuitively a natural world inwhich individual human needs are met to such a degree that we all behaverationally and are happy.31 Such a world would be the highest good – aperfectly moral world.Kant grants that we are able to think the highest good as a rational Idea

and to represent in imagination a world that ‘‘surpasses nature.’’ But this

29 Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History, p. 59.30 Here I am in agreement with Yovel’s account of the development of the concept of the highest

good in Kant: It is with the third Critique that this concept takes on great practical significance forhuman action and becomes ‘‘the summit of the historical enterprise.’’ Yovel, Kant and thePhilosophy of History, p. 75.

31 Allen Wood, in Kant’s Ethical Thought, pp. 314 ff., points out that achieving a moral world forKant necessarily requires acting in concert with others. This then would become part of anyimaginative construction of the highest good: that it is carried out with others in community.


is all that is needed for the activity of trying to bring it about: the concept(in this case the Idea) of what we want, and the motivation to act on it.All Kant needs in order to claim that the Idea of the highest good is anecessary condition of morality is that we can believe it to be possible. Toreword Lewis W. Beck’s account of the postulate of God’s existence:‘‘acknowledgment of the moral law . . . requires only that I believe in thehighest good’s [possible future] existence. Even if it does not exist and willnot exist, the practical consequences for obedience to the moral law arethe same.’’32 A major contribution of the third Critique is the argumentthat feelings of a special sort – aesthetic ones resulting from the free playof the imagination – can be universally communicable and valid for all.Thus the felt possibility of the highest good in imagining it may be allthat is required to justify reason’s command that we try to bring it about.To make the point in yet another way, the ‘‘productive’’ imagination,

in Kant’s account of empirical knowledge, serves the function of pro-viding schemata for concepts – that is, of taking purely intellectualconcepts and fitting them to intuitions. Why not suppose, then, that theimagination, when allowed freedom in aesthetic reflection to producewhat Kant calls aesthetic Ideas, ‘‘inner intuitions’’ (V: 314), may therebybe capable of ‘‘schematizing’’ rational ideas like that of the highest good?Kant himself points out that the two are counterparts. Aesthetic ideashave no adequate concept, rational ideas no adequate intuition – bothpoint beyond the realm of nature (V: 314). In Kant’s own language ofschematism, the one ‘‘fits’’ the other.In his discussion of genius and the production of beautiful art Kant

says that poetry ‘‘lets the mind feel its ability to use nature on behalf ofand, as it were, as a schema of the supersensible’’ (i.e. of the intelligible orrational) (V: 326). He also says that aesthetic Ideas lend a ‘‘semblance ofreality to rational ideas’’ (V: 314). Moreover, as we saw, Kant believes thatthe human imagination is powerful enough to envision new worlds. Hesays that imagination in poetry, for instance, ‘‘ventures to give sensibleexpression to rational ideas of invisible beings, the realm of the blessed, therealm of hell, eternity, creation, and so on’’ (V: 314, emphasis mine). Butif the imagination can represent these exalted ideas, why not also therealm of ends existing on earth?At this point, however, a problem arises. In the penultimate section of

the ‘‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment’’ (§ §59) Kant talks of beauty as asymbol of morality. Reflective aesthetic judgment may symbolize

32 Beck, Commentary, p. 262.


morality, he says, inasmuch as it presents morality by analogy to beautifulnatural forms. But, he continues, it cannot schematize morality; it cannotprovide the sensible representations adequate to the task of representing anatural world that is also moral. A state, Kant tells us, can only berepresented (vorgestellt) symbolically – for instance, as an animate body ifit is ruled by constitutional law, or by a handmill if it is despotic – thussuggesting that no portrait – that is, no concrete representation – of themoral condition of society is possible.Yet it is difficult to see why Kant insists on the complete inability of

imagination in free play to portray moral Ideas, given what he has alreadysaid about its creative power in reflective judgment. Part of the problemmay lie with his definition of schemata as provided by imagination onlyfor concepts of the understanding (Categories), together with his claimthat ‘‘all intuitions supplied for concepts a priori are either schemata orsymbols. Schemata contain direct, symbols indirect, exhibitions of theconcept.’’33 Thus Kant quite emphatically precludes the possibility of anyother type of schematization than that discussed in the first Critique. Yetat section 17 of the third Critique he suggests that a judgment is possiblein which the imagination is in free play and at the same time directed torepresenting something in a non-symbolic way:

Idea properly means a rational concept, and ideal the representation [Vorstellung]of an idea. Hence that archetype of taste, which does indeed rest on reason’sindeterminate Idea of a maximum, but which still can be represented [vorgestellt]not through concepts but only in an individual exhibition [Darstellung], maymore appropriately be called the Ideal of the beautiful. Though we do not havesuch an Ideal in our possession, we do strive to produce it within us. But it willbe merely an ideal of the imagination, precisely because it does not rest onconcepts but rests on an exhibition, and the power of exhibition is theimagination. (V: 232)

Later in this same section Kant suggests that some degree of success inexhibiting the Ideal of beauty is possible if ‘‘pure ideas of reason areunited with a very strong imagination’’ in the viewer or the artist. HereKant does not seem to have in mind mere symbolic representation of thebeautiful. The Ideal of beauty has two components (Stucke): the rationalIdea and the ‘‘aesthetic normal idea’’ (Normalidee, V: 233). In explicatingthe empirical component of normalcy, Kant is quite clear that here there

33 V: 352–359: ‘‘Alle Anschauungen, die man Begriffen a priori unterlegt, sind also entweder Schemate,oder Symbole, wovon die erstern directe, die zweiten indirecte Darstellungen des Begriffsenthalten.’’


will be definite (non-symbolic) characteristics to represent although thesewill vary relative to the collective experiences of particular groups ofpeople. His discussion of the possibility of ‘‘making visible’’ moralattributes like ‘‘goodness of soul, or purity, or fortitude, or serenity etc.’’and an earlier footnote in the same section (V: 235) make it quite clearthat Kant has ordinary portraiture, not symbolism, in mind. Granted,here he argues that only humanity in the individual can be an Ideal of theimagination. But if the moral law requires us not only to be virtuous asindividuals but also to attempt to bring about a moral society, then wemust add social virtues to the list of human virtues that can be portrayedin imagination. Portraits of the truly moral human being must thereforealso somehow convey the context within which individual morality canbecome effective: that is, such an art work would portray, if onlyimplicitly, a moral world. At the very least it would seem that if the idealof beauty can embody morality in individual human beings, then itshould be equally possible (if not equally easy) to portray the socialdimension of morality in the human community. If this is the case, thenthe imagination in its free reflection may be ‘‘applied’’ in the service ofthe ideal of beauty to enable us to believe in the possibility of the highestgood as a result of human agency alone.Thus Kant could have used his account of imaginative freedom to

reintegrate the sensuous and moral aspects of human nature. He does notdo so, however, and it is important to ask why. It seems to me that Kantshrinks from the implications of his theory of imaginative freedom for atleast two reasons.34 One is that his concern in the third Critique isprimarily with contemplation of natural beauty, while it is in the creativepower of the imagination that its possible value for the moral realm firstbecomes evident. Of the sixty sections that make up the ‘‘Critique of

34 There are, of course. many possible accounts of why Kant relies solely on the postulate of asupernatural being as ground of our hope to bring about the highest good. Yovel points to Kant’sdetermination to make the finite nature of human reason the Leitmotif of his philosophy (Kant andthe Philosophy of History, p. 24) . It may also be argued that Kant intended to combat enthusiasm(Schwarmerei) not only in such irrationalists as Jacobi but also even in ‘‘rationalist’’ philosopherslike his friend Mendelssohn, who relied on the notion of an unexplained and apparentlyinexplicable ‘‘common sense’’ as the only check on the speculative flights of reason. To the extentthat imagination is for Kant bound up with the notion of a common aesthetic sense and to theextent that imagination remains for him a ‘‘blind but indispensable function of the soul’’ (CPRA781B1O3), it may be argued that Kant feared letting enthusiasm into philosophy through thedoor of imaginative fiction masquerading as ‘‘common sense.’’ Cf. Kant’s essay ‘‘Was heisst. Sichim Denken orientiren?’’ VIII: 133–147. ‘‘What is Orientation in Thinking?,’’ in Critique ofPractical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy, Lewis White Beck, ed. (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1949), pp. 293–305. Thanks to James Schmidt for suggesting this lastexplanation.


Aesthetic Judgment’’ only eleven are given over to a discussion of art andgenius. Moreover, Kant believes that ‘‘a direct interest in the beauty ofnature is always a mark of a good soul’’ since it involves respect fornature’s products. Interest in beautiful art, he states flatly, is no proof atall that someone is inclined to be moral. But he gives no argument for thelast claim and he exhibits a general lack of appreciation for the fine arts.So his failure to draw out the consequences of the power of reflectiveimagination may be due simply to bias. What Kant could have said aboutart’s possible contribution to morality will be taken up in chapter 3.Another possible explanation for Kant’s failure to develop the impli-

cations of his theory of imaginative freedom for social change is byreference to his problematic views on obedience to the authority of thestate and the nature of legitimate social change. Although he sympathizedwith bourgeois revolution in the American colonies and in France, Kantremained a vocal supporter of Frederick the Great and the Prussian stateunder that king. And although what is most egalitarian and humanistic inKant’s ethics is due to Rousseau rather than Frederick, the Prussian leaderexercised a strong influence on the intellectuals of his time, includingKant.35 In ‘‘On the Common Saying, ‘That may be right in Theory, butit doesn’t work in Practice’ ’’ he argues that the claim that there is a rightof public resistance would involve a contradiction inasmuch as noinstitutionalized power can provide for its own destruction, and in the‘‘Metaphysical Elements of Justice’’ he argues for the same reason that ‘‘itis the people’s duty to endure even the most intolerable abuse of supremeauthority.’’36 Kant’s ‘‘Rousseauistic revolution’’37 in morals thus appearsto be followed by a ‘‘restoration’’ in his political thought, where respectfor outside authority seems to win out on both moral and legalisticgrounds. A number of biographical explanations are possible, of course.In Enlightenment, Revolution and Romanticism, Frederick Beiser arguesthat political conditions in Prussia at the time forced Kant to prioritizehis political values, and that the strategy he opted (or in Beiser’s view,coopted) for in the end was to call for freedom of the press at the cost of

35 In the third Critique Kant even quotes one of Frederick’s poems to illustrate a point about the wayin which genius animates rational ideas (Section 49, V: 315–314 [184]).

36 ‘‘Uber den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein. taugt aber nicht fur die Praxis’’VIII: 303; the Rechtslehre of Metaphysik der Sitten. VI: 319 (trans. John Ladd as The MetaphysicalElements of Justice [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1965], p. 85); and Ak. VI: 372 (140–141).

37 Cf. Lewis White Beck, ‘‘Was haben wir von Kant gelernt?,’’ in 5. Intemationaler Kant Kongress,Akten II (Bonn, 1982), p. 8 and ‘‘What Have We Learned from Kant?,’’ in Self and Nature in Kant’sPhilosophy, ed. Allen W. Wood (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 22.


suppressing his support for revolution.38 Manfred Kuehn suggests that inKant’s own mind, there was a distinction to be made between a right torebellion and the case of the French revolution, which technically was nota rebellion and hence permissible on legal grounds. 39

But however we explain Kant’s failure to attribute a ‘‘visionary’’ role toimaginative freedom – and this question will be taken up further inchapter 5 – we can nevertheless carry one step further the view, put forthby Beck and more recently by Allen Wood, Richard Velkley, and others,that Kant’s sympathetic attitude toward those revolutions that hadalready occurred was consistent with his teleological account of history.40

If Kant can argue that it is part of nature’s plan that humanity progressmorally even through such ‘‘evils’’ as revolution, it would be plausible forhim to hold that human imagination in its aesthetic reflective role isequipped literally to envision this progress – that is, to exhibit it in theimaginative Ideal of a moral human community. In other words, SusanNeiman’s suggestion that the highest good could rest on a secular pos-tulation of human progress could actually become a vehicle for hope, butonly once it is ‘‘embodied’’ in an imaginative and concrete vision of thissociety.41 That Kant did not propound this solution need not be attrib-uted to the requirements of either his moral or aesthetic theory but, in theend, may be due to the problematic nature of his views on politicalauthority. Too much imaginative freedom can threaten the establishedorder, and good Bu rger that he was, Kant could applaud Frederick theGreat’s imperative ‘‘Think for yourself!’’ and yet comfortably follow upwith ‘‘But do as you are told.’’ 42 Still, the concept of steadfast obedienceto authority come what may was by no means Kant’s philosophical view,and such attitudes were already suspect in Kant’s time. A younger gen-eration of poets and visionary reformers, both within Germany andoutside its borders, was relying on Kant’s aesthetic theory to provide thegroundwork for a metaphysics of social change. I hope to have shown thattheir use of that aesthetics was based on a consistent application of Kant’s

38 Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism, chapter 2, p. 53.39 Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 375.40 Lewis White Beck. ‘‘Kant and the Right of Revolution,’’ Journal of the History of ldeas x 32 (1971),

pp. 417ff.; Richard Velkley, Freedom and the End of Reason: On the Moral Foundations of Kant’sCritical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

41 Neiman, The Unity of Reason.42 Cf. Kant. ‘‘Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklairung?’’ (Ak. VIII: 33–42) and in Lewis White

Beck, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (pp. 85–92). For an interpretation of Kant assomewhat less of a conservative, see John Christian Laursen, ‘‘The Subversive Kant: TheVocabulary of ‘Public’ and ‘Publicity,’ ’’ Political Theory 14 (1986), pp. 584–603.


account of aesthetic freedom to his moral theory, whether or not Kanthimself would have condoned this application.I began by suggesting that Kant’s account of aesthetic freedom provides

an important link between Lessing and Schiller, and it should now beeasier to see how this could be so. Schiller was among the earliest andmost important artist–philosophers to be influenced by Kant and toadvocate the importance of aesthetics to the moral progress of the humanrace. Although Schiller’s letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man aretypically viewed as the mature philosophical result of his coming to termswith Kant’s moral philosophy, Schiller was first introduced to Kantthrough the latter’s philosophy of history, and it was through it thatSchiller first came to know Kant’s moral theory.43 Moreover, his seriousstudy of Kant began with the Critique of Judgment, and it was Kant’s longfirst introduction to this work that served as his introduction to theKantian edifice as a whole.44 It is thus plausible, in light of the course ofhis Kant study alone, to read Schiller’s views on aesthetic education as aworking out of Kant’s teleological notion of historical progress in termsof theories advanced in the third Critique. Although the letters On theAesthetic Education of Man involve a rejection of Kant’s emphasis on theabsolute autonomy of moral experience in favor of a more integratedaccount of human nature, this is not necessarily an outright rejection ofKant’s views on morality. As we have seen, Kant himself brings theprocess of repatriating citizens of the moral world into the realm of natureby claiming in the second Critique that reason commands us to seek thehighest good. Moreover, he provides the means according to which thisrepatriation may be carried out by outlining an extremely powerfulnotion of imaginative creativity as a human faculty capable of trans-cending nature without separation from nature.In light of this aspect of Kant’s philosophy, the Letters may be seen as a

further development of the notion of imaginative freedom first given lifeby Lessing and philosophical depth by Kant. Schiller’s analysis of theformal and sensuous aspects of human life, and his account of a med-iating and humanizing drive to ‘‘play’’ (der Spieltrieb) would have beenimpossible without Kant’s account of the free play of the imagination andthe disinterested nature of judgments of taste. The crucial differencebetween Kant and Schiller lies in the latter’s claim that reconciling

43 Reinhard Buchwald, Schiller (Wiesbaden: Insel Verlag, 1954), II, p. 173.44 Buchwald, Schiller, p. 174.


the rational and natural aspects of human nature is a requirement ofreason:

Reason must make this demand because it is reason – because it is its nature toinsist on perfection and on the abolition of all limitation, and because anyexclusive activity on the part of either the one drive or the other leaves humannature incomplete and gives rise to some limitation within it. Consequently, assoon as reason utters the pronouncement: Let humanity exist, it has by that verypronouncement also promulgated the law: Let there be beauty.45

Kant argues only that taste may enable us ‘‘to make the transition fromsensible charm to a habitual moral interest without making too violent aleap’’ (V: 354). Yet the requirement of reason that we strive to attain thehighest good, being a command both to strive for moral perfection and totry to reward that perfection with material happiness, really amounts to nomore or less than the command that we strive to be fully human; or inSchiller’s words, it amounts to the pronouncement, ‘‘Let humanity exist.’’ If,as I have argued, the possibility of perfected humanity rests on the ability torepresent this perfection in imagination, then Schiller simply gives voice to aview implicit in Kant’s philosophy – that reason requires the imaginative freeplay typical of our contemplation of beauty to fulfill its command.In concluding, it should be noted that On the Aesthetic Education of

Man, in a Series of Letters (hereafter, Letters) is more than an explicitworking out of a line of reasoning available to Kant in the third Critique.It is also an instantiation of an imaginative portrayal of the highest good.More often than not, Schiller’s Letters is read as a work of visionaryliterature, and rightly so. Even though by 1793, when the original letterswere written, Schiller was thoroughly suspicious of artists with revolu-tionary intentions, still the Letters is clearly meant to be a portrait of apossible human community dominated by neither physical nor moralforce.46 Schiller’s ‘‘Aesthetic State’’ is an attempt to portray in Kant’sterms an ‘‘Ideal of the imagination.’’47 In so doing he embodies a positionthat Kant appeared unwilling to work out fully: ‘‘The human being hasno need to flee the material world in order to prove himself as spiritualbeing.’’48 It would be left to one of Schiller’s most brilliant students,Friedrich von Hardenberg, later known as Novalis, and his Jena cohort toturn this insight into a poetic philosophical program.

45 Friedrich Schiller. On the Aesthetic Education of Man, in a Series of Letters, trans. Elizabeth M.Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 15th letter, para. 4,p. 103.

46 Cf. Letters, p. 197 and commentary, pp. 286–287.47 Letters, p. 219. 48 Letters, p. 189.


chapter 3

The interests of disinterest

Kant’s deduction of our ‘‘peculiar ability’’ (sonderbares Vermogen, V: 281)to make universally valid judgments about particulars without the aid ofconcepts and based solely on a feeling is as well known as his ‘‘deductionof judgments of taste’’ in the Critique of Judgment. Less familiar is hiscontention that this aesthetic reflective capacity involves certain demandson how we value the world around us. Having just presented hisdeduction, Kant claims that we can more readily understand the judg-ment of taste’s demand for agreement if we see that the mere ‘‘universalcommunicability as such of our feeling must already carry with it aninterest for us’’ (V: 296).1 That is, judgments of taste make demands onus analogous to the demands of morality, because, like moral interest inthe good, aesthetic interests are bound up with a kind of duty. However,these interests of disinterest are more important to Kant than just asvehicles for explaining why taste can command the assent of everyone,and they clearly have implications beyond the justification of judgmentsof taste. In what follows, I want to suggest that Kant’s discussion of theinterests of disinterest has significance for his views on art and morality, aswell as for his position on how we ought to value nature.

moral interest and intellectual interestin the beautiful

Before looking at the broader implications of his views, it is necessary todiscuss briefly Kant’s doctrine of ‘‘interest’’ and also to look closely at hisarguments in Sections 41 and 42 to the effect that beauty gives rise tointerests in us.

1 This interest, Kant says, helps us to understand why we demand of others that they feel the pleasure wedo in the beautiful. That is, we understand that reason has an interest in the morally good, and that thisinterest is bound up in certain ways with our duty to be moral. Similarly, our interest in the beautifulwill be bound up with an analogous duty to be ‘‘aesthetic’’ (sensitive to beauty) (V: 296).

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‘‘[A]ll interest consists in pleasure in the existence [ ein Lust an derExistenz] of an object’’ (V: 296). Interest, therefore, is aesthetic in char-acter. As we know already from Kant’s moral theory, interest is ‘‘thatthrough which reason becomes practical’’ (reason becomes ‘‘a causedetermining the will’’) (IV: 459). Thus an interest is practical and voli-tional in nature: ‘‘To will something and to have a liking for its existence,i.e., to take an interest in it, are identical’’ (V: 209). Here Kant furtheridentifies the will with ‘‘the power of desire determined by reason,’’ sothat it follows that to take an interest in something is rationally to desirethe existence of the thing, or, to phrase it in such a way as to preserve itsaesthetic aspect, to take an interest in something is to feel the need for theexistence of something, where this feeling is itself determined by reason.In the Critique of Judgment, Kant defines ‘‘interest’’ to include a desire forthe existence of something that is conditioned ‘‘pathologically’’ – that is,determined directly by some positive stimulus rather than by reason.Here, a sensation arouses a desire for the object, as in the case of the spicydish that Kant is inclined to eat even though he knows, ‘‘by reason’’ thatit will lead to bad consequences for his digestion (V: 207, 208 ).2

An interest can be either ‘‘direct’’ or ‘‘indirect [mittelbar, unmittelbar]’’(IV: 459, V: 208). That is, something is desired for its own sake, or for itsusefulness to some other desired end. The pathological (sensuous) kind ofinterest is ‘‘direct’’ – we like the thing as ‘‘good in itself [ an sich gut ]’’ –but, being conditioned by contingent factors, it is not capable of beinguniversal. Other interests may be ‘‘indirect’’ – when we like somethingbecause it is useful to us – that is, when we consider it ‘‘instrumentallygood.’’ But there are two kinds of interest which are both direct andcapable of universalization: the morally good, which Kant says, ‘‘carrieswith it the highest interest’’ (V: 209), and the beautiful (V: 208: ‘‘Whatwe call beautiful is also liked directly’’). A great deal has been written onthe interest in the morally good that in the Foundations Kant says is theonly pure (non-empirical) interest.3 It is the notoriously difficult notion ofa moral feeling of respect, a sensuous feeling itself conditioned only by ‘‘amere thought containing nothing sensuous’’ (IV: 460) that motivatesthe truly moral action. In what follows, I will bracket the problemssurrounding this doctrine in Kant’s moral theory in order to look moreclosely at the noteworthy fact that in the Critique of Judgment Kant no

2 In the Foundations he called these mere ‘‘sensuous impulses’’ (sinnliche Antriebe), not interests at all(IV: 459).

3 A very helpful summary of Kant’s ‘‘phenomenology of respect’’ is given in Henry E. Allison, Kant’sTheory of Freedom (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990 , chapter 6 , especially pp. 123 ff.).

The interests of disinterest 61

longer holds that the moral feeling of respect is the only direct non-empirical interest of which we are capable.For Kant, our pleasure in the object of the judgment of taste is not

bound up with the desire for the existence of the object. This is what itmeans to say that we take a disinterested pleasure in the beautiful. ‘‘But,’’Kant says, ‘‘it does not follow from this that, after the judgment has beenmade as a pure aesthetic one, an interest cannot be connected with it.’’He continues somewhat cryptically:

This connection, however, must always be indirect. In other words, we mustthink of taste as first of all connected with something else, so that with the likingof mere reflection on an object there can [then] be connected, in addition, apleasure in the existence of an object . . . For what we say in the case of cognitivejudgments (about things in general) also holds for aesthetic judgments: a posse adesse non valet consequentia [An inference from possible to actual is not valid].(V: 296)

This may be glossed as follows: In order for there to be an interest, therehas to be an object whose existence is desired, but the ‘‘object’’ of ajudgment of taste is the mere form of an actually existing object. Thisform may or may not really exist (I could be having a beautiful hallu-cination). Thus the disinterested pleasure (Wohlgefallen) in the form ofthe object (judgment of taste) must give rise to (be ‘‘connected’’ (ver-knupft) with) the interested pleasure (Lust)4 in the existence of that objectvia something other than this mere formal presentation. Kant allows twopossibilities for this mediating connection of disinterest to interest: one‘‘empirical’’ and the other ‘‘intellectual.’’ In the first case, the pleasure inthe existence of the object arises because of an ‘‘inclination inherent inhuman nature’’ to ‘‘sociability.’’ Because taste allows us to communicateeven a feeling, it naturally furthers this inclination that all human beingshave, and thus we are naturally interested in the object of the judgment oftaste on these grounds. Kant uses contractarian metaphors (‘‘the concernfor universal communicability is something everyone expects anddemands from everyone else on the basis, as it were, of an originalcontract dictated by our very humanity’’ (V: 297)), but the ‘‘empiricalinterest in the beautiful’’ may be understood as a natural social urge thatwe have to share our delight in the beautiful object with others. This urgeruns so deep that, Kant argues, we would cease to seek the beautiful in the

4 All pleasures are in themselves the same for Kant, and can be distinguished only by the conditionsthat give rise to them. Thus the terminology is somewhat arbitrary (cf. Werner Pluhar,‘‘Introduction to Kant’s Critique of Judgment,’’ trans. Werner Pluhar, Indianapolis and Cambridge:Hackett, 1987, p. 49n.).


absence of others with whom to share it. He does not argue that wewould cease to be capable of experiencing beauty altogether, however. Itis simply that my disinterested delight in the formal features of an objectnaturally gives rise to a pleasure in its existence because I want to bringothers to it to share in my initial aesthetic pleasure.Having introduced the notion of an empirical interest in the beautiful,

Kant divulges that he is now turning away from the deduction of taste toask whether taste can be used ‘‘purposively’’ as a ‘‘transition from senseenjoyment to moral feeling’’ (V: 297–298). Because the empirical interestis just an inclination, albeit a very deeply rooted one, it is easily confusedwith other social inclinations and passions, and ‘‘can provide only a veryambiguous transition from the agreeable to the good.’’ So, in Section 42,he turns his attention to the other possibility available for connecting thepleasure of taste with a pleasure in the existence of the beautiful object:namely, a non-empirical connection. This connection of the two sorts ofpleasure is intellectual, made a priori via ‘‘the will’s property of beingdeterminable a priori by reason’’ (V: 296).The argument at Section 42 is one of Kant’s more fascinating ones, and is

far-reaching in its implications if it succeeds. A great deal actually hangs on it,not only for his account of moral development but also for the problem ofthe unity of human subjectivity. As Kant himself says, if taste can be usedpurposively, ‘‘we would also be showing that judgment is the mediating link inthe chain of humanity’s a priori powers’’ (V: 298). What Kant wants to do hereis to show that the interest connected with the beautiful is sufficiently likethat of moral interest to allow a kind of psychological transition-through-close-association from aesthetic values to moral values. He wants to do thisby showing that a direct (non-instrumental) interest in the beautiful ‘‘isalways a mark of a good soul’’ and ‘‘indicates at least a mental attunementfavorable to moral feeling.’’ (That he limits this to the beautiful in nature,excluding art, is a point that I shall return to shortly.) He does not want toshow that interest in the beautiful, even an a priori interest, is identical tomoral interest: ‘‘the feeling for the beautiful is distinct in kind from moralfeeling’’ (V: 298). The similarity is that, like aesthetic reflective judgment,moral judgment is not based on an interest.We know from Kant’s ethical theory that moral judgment gives rise to

an interest that we call ‘‘moral feeling’’: an interest in obeying the morallaw or, Kant says ‘‘respect for the moral law itself’’ (V: 75ff., 80):

But [this feeling of respect] is a feeling which is directed only to the practical andwhich depends on the representation of a law only as to its form and not on


account of any object of the law; thus it cannot be reckoned either as enjoymentor as pain, and yet it produces an interest in compliance with the law which wecall moral interest, just as the capacity to take such an interest in the law (orrespect for the moral law itself) is the moral feeling properly speaking. (V: 80)

This practical interest of reason in the moral law is also an interest infulfilling it: that is, in doing what the law commands. Although purepractical moral interest – respect for the law – is not a feeling of pleasureor pain in the presence of ‘‘the object’’ of the law, it does depend on therebeing at least a possibility of our being able to bring about that which thelaw demands. As we saw in chapter 2, in the Antinomy of Pure PracticalReason (V: 113ff.), Kant insists that reason requires us to strive to bringabout the highest good, understood by him as the greatest possibleconnection of moral virtue with happiness in this world. Reason has aninterest, as Kant puts it, in the ‘‘objective reality’’ of its moral ideas. Kantreturns to this issue in his aesthetics, arguing at Section 42 that when wecontemplate the beautiful it cannot be a matter of complete indifferenceto us that nature here ‘‘shows a trace or gives a hint that it contains somebasis or other for us to assume’’ an orderliness that may be conducive tothe state of justice we morally desire. ‘‘Hence,’’ Kant says, ‘‘if someone isdirectly interested in the beauty of nature, we have cause to suppose thathe has at least a predisposition to a good moral attitude’’ (V: 300–301).Thus a direct interest in natural beauty is akin to, but not identical

with, moral interest in the good. Caring for beauty in nature suggests thata person is moved by the possibility that she belongs there, too. Thedifference is that intellectual interest in the beautiful is ‘‘free’’ whileintellectual interest in the moral is based immediately upon ‘‘objectivelaws’’ (V: 301). Indeed, this difference is precisely why we can call ourinterest in the beautiful a direct interest: we do not care about the exis-tence of the object because of its instrumental link to our own moralinterests (e.g. the moral idea of the highest good), but rather we care for itjust for what it contingently is. Kant says here that what we are (directly)interested in is ‘‘rather the beauty’s characteristic in itself of qualifying forsuch a link, which therefore belongs to it intrinsically [die ihr innerlichzukommt].’’This can be illustrated in the following way: In the process of making

an aesthetic reflective judgment about the beauty of an object I am also(concurrently, as a moral being) feeling the need for the existence of thisobject for its own sake. This direct interest in the object is possiblebecause I am charged by my own reason with the task of bringingmoral order into the natural world – a severe demand on my nature


that hardly seems possible. As such I am ‘‘morally’’ interested in findingthat nature outside me, because of what appears to be the rationalorderliness and purposiveness of the object I am contemplating, may besuited to beings like myself. Thus my disinterested aesthetic reflectionupon the object also gives rise to my caring about the object, wanting it toexist, for its own sake, even though it may be of no use to me, ormay even cause me harm. I take a direct interest in it. Kant explains asfollows:

Cons ider som eone who is all b y himse lf (and has no intention of communi catinghis observ ations to oth ers) and who contem plates the bea utiful shape of a wildflower, a bird , an insect, etc., out of admi ratio n and love for them, and woul dnot want nature to be entirely witho ut them even if th ey provid ed him noprospec t of benefit but instead perha ps even som e harm . Such a person is takin ga dire ct inte rest in the beauty of na ture, and this interes t is inte llectual. That is,not only does he like nature ’s product for its form, but he also likes its existe nce,even tho ugh no cha rm of sen se is involve d; and he also does not connec t thatexistenc e with any purpose whatever. (V: 299 )

The reason I am capable of desiring the natural object for its own sake,however, has to do with my intellectual/moral need to find at least a‘‘hint’’ in nature that my moral actions will not be in vain. My interest inthe object is direct – it is not for the sake of morality that I admire and loveit and desire its existence – rather that direct interest that Kant also calls‘‘admiration’’ and ‘‘love’’ is ‘‘at least an attunement favorable to moralfeeling.’’5 Love of nature, in other words, is a climate of the spirit withinwhich respect for our duty flourishes.6

Kant ends this section with the remarkable claim (for him) that we canand do require this admiration and love for nature of everyone:

for we conside r som eone’s way of thinking to be coa rse and ignoble if he has nofeeling for bea utiful nature . . . and sticks to the enjoyments of me re sense that hegets from meals or the bottle. (V: 302–303)

5 See Karl Ameriks, ‘‘On Paul Guyer’s Kant and the Experience of Freedom,’’ Philosophy andPhenomenological Research, 60 (2) (1995), 361–367.

6 See Felicitas Munzel, Kant’s Conception of Moral Character: The ‘‘Critical’’ Link of Morality,Anthropology, and Reflective Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999 , chapter 5 ,‘‘Moral Spiritedness and the Relation of Aesthetic and Moral Cultivation’’). Munzel’s account stillinsists on the ‘‘hierarchical’’ nature of the aesthetic response (feeling) to moral reason. She does notsee love of nature – i.e., this climate of spirit – as a source for moral heartiness and cheerfulness –i.e., for moral hope. (See, esp., p. 305.)


intellectual interests in nature, art,and other people

To summarize so far: I have tried to unravel and make somewhat moreintuitive Kant’s distinction between moral interest and intellectualinterest in the beautiful. In the remainder of this chapter, I want to focuson this last claim that we ‘‘can’’ and ‘‘do’’ require a feeling of love fornature. I use the term ‘‘love’’ here intentionally, for, as we saw, it is theterm Kant himself uses, following Burke (V: 277) for the feeling we havefor nature when we value it for its own sake.7 The claim that love can berequired is a startling one in light of Kant’s sharp division betweenpathological and practical love:

for love as an inclination cannot be commanded. But beneficence from duty,even when no inclination impels it and even when it is opposed by a natural andunconquerable aversion, is practical love, not pathological love; it resides in thewill and not in the propensities of feeling, in principles of action and not intender sympathy [in schmelzender Teilnehmung]; and it alone can be com-manded. (Foundations IV: 399)

Where does the love for nature that we can and do require of others fitinto this division? It cannot be an inclination. That much we alreadyknow from what Kant tells us about the nature of an interest in thebeautiful, which is based on contemplative pleasure and not mere sensestimulation. Hence it is not pathological. Yet it is based on feeling – adisinterested feeling, to be sure, not tender sympathy – but a pleasurenonetheless. And although it is an interest that involves the will – that is,it is a desire determined by reason – still it cannot be called practical or besaid to lie in ‘‘principles of action.’’ The love of nature (the direct interestbased on disinterested pleasure) is not practical love (although thecapacity for practical love may be a necessary condition for it), but is itselfbased rather on contemplation. It seems as if Kant has made theoreticalroom for a third kind of love, neither practical nor pathological: a kind of‘‘reflective’’ love for nature.Given that Kant has already argued that we may ‘‘demand agreement’’

for judgments of taste based on their reflective nature, it is not surprisingthat he would argue that reflective as well as practical love can be com-manded. Kant seems to suggest as much when he claims that we requirethat others take a direct interest in beautiful nature. But this commandcannot be a categorical imperative, because the conditions under which

7 See also V: 267: ‘‘The beautiful prepares us for loving something, even nature, without interest.’’Here Kant should be read as meaning ‘‘indirect’’ or instrumental interest. See also V: 380.


such an interest are first made possible are contingent on our experienceof beautiful nature. Kant tells us that ‘‘the mind cannot meditate aboutthe beauty of nature without at the same time finding its interest aroused’’(V: 300). But that ‘‘the mind’’ finds itself in the presence of beautifulnature in the first place, or has the leisure to meditate upon it when in itspresence, is not entirely within our control. Growing up in a poverty-stricken urban environment might very well preclude the possibility ofcontact with beautiful nature. Whereas Kant would argue that even themost deprived human being, so long as she retains her ability to reason atall, can always turn inward for the motivation necessary to be moral, theremay well be situations where natural beauty is simply not accessible. Ifthere is a command, it would, like the interest itself, have to be of adifferent type than any Kant has so far distinguished: it would have to becommanded on the condition that beautiful nature exists and is accessiblefor contemplation.Given Kant’s view that a direct intellectual interest in the beautiful

explains the possibility of ‘‘a transition from sense enjoyment to moralfeeling’’ (V: 297), it might also follow that we have a moral obligation todevelop a love for nature in ourselves.8 It may also follow that, if love ofnature furthers and develops moral feeling, and if, as Kant suggests in theGroundwork (IV: 417), ‘‘Whoever wills the end . . . wills also the indis-pensably necessary steps to it,’’ then we may have an obligation to bringabout the conditions under which reflective judgment of beautiful nature ispossible for others as well as for ourselves. All of which suggests interestingrefutations of those who malign Kant’s philosophy as inimical to a seriousenvironmental ethic because Kant has no room for intrinsic value in nat-ure.9 But Kant’s notions of aesthetic reflective interest have implications fortwo other areas where Kant is often criticized, namely his views on thevalue of art relative to nature and of the value of human embodiment.Kant’s claim that an intellectual love for nature is associated with a

moral attitude came to have a certain intuitive value in the early twentiethcentury, when baser human instincts put wilderness so seriously at risk allover the globe. (Although, had Kant had occasion to speak with sometwentieth-century proponents of ‘‘deep ecology’’ he might have seen thatlove of nature and respect for humanity are not necessarily conjoined.)What does not make sense is his insistence, in the same passage, that love

8 See Paul Guyer’s argument in Kant and the Experience of Freedom: Essays on Aesthetics and Morality(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

9 I discuss these issues at length in ‘‘Beauty, Autonomy and Respect for Nature,’’ L’Esthetique deKant/Kants Asthetik/Kant’s Aesthetics (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995).


for art is no indication whatsoever of a ‘‘beautiful soul.’’ Of course, evenamong philosophers Kant is accused of being something of a Philistinewhen it came to art. Certainly he maintained a certain contempt for thebourgeois man of taste:

virtuosi of taste, who not just occasionally but apparently as a rule are vain,obstinate, and given to ruinous passions, can perhaps even less than other peopleclaim the distinction of being attached to moral principles. (V: 298)

By ‘‘taste’’ in this context, however, Kant is not referring to pure judg-ments of taste, but rather to the ability to ‘‘judge the products of fine artwith the greatest correctness and refinement.’’ Such connoisseurship is ofcourse not the result of simple aesthetic reflection, but requires a greatdeal of theoretical knowledge of art, and finesse in applying it. For Kant,such knowledge apparently taints the connoisseur’s interest in the objectso that it is never valued purely for its own sake, but always for its useonly. The sheer bias of Kant’s position is apparent when his view of artistsis contrasted with his view of scientists. The parallel case of the scientist’stheoretical knowledge does not, it seems, interfere with his ability toadmire and love the object being studied for its own sake. In the Critiqueof Practical Reason (V: 160) he recounts approvingly the tale of Leibnizcarefully replacing the insect upon its leaf after studying it as proof of howan ‘‘observer of nature finally comes to like objects that at first offendedhis senses.’’Perhaps Kant’s views were occasioned by his own lack of interest. He

does give an argument for why we may require others to take a directinterest in nature, but no such requirement holds for a direct interest inart. This is so, he says, for one of two reasons: Either because art is such agood imitation that it is deceptive – it fools us into taking it to be nature,so that our liking for it is really a (deluded) direct interest in nature; or weare aware of it as art and hence aware of the intention to please that wentinto its making. In the latter case, he concludes, our interest is onlyindirect – we desire the existence of the object not for the sake of theobject in itself, but for the sake of the intentions (to please) that broughtit into existence. What is missing from the art object, he asks, that makesus value it so differently from the natural object? In other words, why is itnot possible to value an art object for its own sake? His answer is that theregularity in nature which we crave as moral agents seeking to be effectivein nature is ‘‘hinted’’ at by beautiful natural objects, but not by artobjects. Art objects are the product of ‘‘art’’ after all, and so cannotprovide a clue of any sort about the world of nature in which we must


operate. They can tell us only about human intentions (when they are notaltogether deceiving us). Thus they may ‘‘minister to vanity and perhapsto social joys,’’ but they cannot interest in a direct way.What is truly odd about this position is that Kant follows it almost

immediately with a theory of fine art that defines it as ‘‘the art of genius,and genius as ‘‘the innate mental predisposition [he also calls it a ‘‘naturalendowment’’ eine Naturgabe] through which nature gives the rule to art’’(V: 307). Shortly thereafter he repeats that ‘‘nature in the subject gives therule to art’’ (V: 307). So, fine art is the product of a gift from ‘‘the hand ofnature’’ (V: 309) through which nature gives the rule to art. That prac-tically makes the object of fine art a natural object; at least as much as abeautiful waterfall obeying laws of physical nature. It certainly mitigatesthe sharp division between natural and art objects, thus also mitigatingthe distinction between kinds of possible interest. After all, a beautifulartifact that cannot be explained by the artificer’s intentions, being theresult of her natural inspiration, might be just as worthy of our interest onthe grounds that some intrinsic natural order is manifested by it. That is,a work of natural genius ought to suggest ‘‘a trace or give a hint that[nature] contains some basis or other for us to assume in its products alawful harmony with [our moral feeling]’’ (V: 300). In that case, however,Kant could conclude that fine art should be interesting (loved by us) forits own sake, and that a feeling for beautiful art would after all indicate‘‘at least a mental attunement favorable to moral feeling.’’Finally, on moral grounds Kant may be able to conclude that love of

art could be ‘‘required’’ of everyone in the same sort of way that love ofnature is required, as a kind of duty that we have if and when we areexposed to the arts. It might then follow, as in the case of natural beauty,that we have obligations to ourselves and to others to cultivate the con-ditions necessary for aesthetic, artistic experiences. Reflective exposure tothe arts, like reflective exposure to nature, might then turn out to be ademand made upon us by our moral nature.Kant, as we saw, called reflective interest in nature ‘‘love’’ for nature for

its own sake. This sort of love, though not pathological, is also not whatKant labels practical love, because it is not determined by ‘‘principles ofaction.’’ It is, as I said earlier ‘‘reflective love,’’ and I have suggested thatKant’s own theory of fine art allowed extension of this sort of interest innature to one in art. But when Kant speaks of ‘‘love’’ in the context ofobligations, as when he insists that love as an inclination cannot becommanded, he is typically thinking of love of others. Thus he speaks of‘‘tender sympathy,’’ ‘‘sympathy with the lot of others,’’ as ‘‘pathological.’’


Kant also speaks of duties of mutual aid and beneificence, but these aredictated by the Categorical Imperative – that is, they are purely practical,and need not involve any sympathetic feelings towards others. And ofcourse, insofar as Kant assumes that sympathetic love is a mere inclina-tion, there can be no requirement of feeling for others.What I want to suggest, in closing, is that the argument in Section 42

of the third Critique, which ends by asserting a requirement of everyonethat they have some feeling for beautiful nature, suggests the theoreticalpossibility of an analogous requirement for a feeling (of love) for others.In ‘‘Radical Virtue Ethics’’ Kurt Baier suggests in passing that it may bethat for Kant a third kind of duty is in order, a duty ‘‘to cultivate ordevelop or preserve such feelings [of pathological love] to the extent wecan do so.’’10 I think something like this might fall naturally out of Kant’sargument at Section 42. By analogy it would go as follows. Reason has aninterest in finding a trace or hint of order in nature that would suggestthat our efforts to create a more moral world are not necessarily in vain.The ‘‘starry heavens above’’ provide such a hint, but so, too, does themoral law embodied within myself and my fellow human beings. Thelatter may arouse pure practical interest, but it also may be contemplatedaesthetically by reflecting on the form of the ‘‘objects’’ involved. Here it isimportant to recall Kant’s position, stated in Section 17 of the ‘‘Critiqueof Aesthetic Judgment,’’ on the aesthetic contemplation of the humanfigure: ‘‘It is the human being [der Mensch], alone among all objects in theworld, who admits of an ideal of beauty’’ (V: 233):

we must still distinguish the ideal of the beautiful, which for reasons alreadystated must be expected solely in the human figure. Now the ideal in this figureconsists in the expression of the moral; apart from the moral the object wouldnot be liked universally and in a positive way [nicht allgemeine and dazu positivgefallen wurde]. (V: 235)

Kant believes that it is not possible to make a purely disinterested aestheticjudgment about human forms. (Which is not to suggest that the qualityor ‘‘correctness’’ of the presentation – e.g. in a portrait or sculpture –cannot be appreciated, as he says, ‘‘negatively’’ (by ‘‘virtuosi of taste’’).)But an aesthetic reflective response ‘‘taken from experience’’ of a concretevisible human form is possible in which a ‘‘great’’ intellectual interest isproduced.Kant drops the discussion to go on with the analysis of judgments of

taste, and does not elaborate on the sort of interest involved in aesthetic

10 Midwest Studies in Philosophy 13 (1988), pp. 126–135.


reflection on human forms. But it is clearly an intellectual interest, and itis similar to that sort of interest of reason that we are required to take inall beautiful objects of nature. It is a kind of reflective ‘‘love andadmiration’’ for the natural embodiment of moral order. It should followthat for Kant the same sort of (conditioned) requirement holds: Giventhe chance and the leisure to contemplate ‘‘beautiful humanity’’ aesthe-tically, we ought to take a direct interest in it: ‘‘we consider someone’sway of thinking to be coarse and ignoble if he has no such feeling forhuman beings.’’ This is not ‘‘tender sympathy’’ or sentimentality, still lessa prurient interest. But it is also not merely moral respect for the other asa rational end. It is a ‘‘positive’’ feeling, a desire for the existence of the‘‘object,’’ this beautiful embodiment of human virtue, for its own sake.Again, as with natural beauty, Kant could conclude that an intrinsic

valuing (a rational desire for the existence of, a direct interest in) humanbeings, even if they ‘‘provide . . . no prospect of benefit but insteadperhaps even some harm’’ is required, but only on the condition that wehave opportunities to see humanity portrayed in beautiful ways. Andagain, it might follow, as in the case of natural beauty, that we haveobligations to ourselves and others to cultivate the conditions necessaryfor aesthetic appreciation of the beauty of human beings in various stagesand of various types, ages, etc. The cultivation of this sort of aesthetic/intellectual love for others might then turn out to be a demand madeupon us by our moral nature.Of course, the last two arguments for a requirement that we take a

direct intellectual interest in both art and in human beings qua physicalbeings, go well beyond what Kant himself said. In the case of art I doubthe would ever concede such an interest, in spite of his proto-Romanticaccount of genius. But I am inclined to think that in his account of anIdeal of beauty Kant was moving, perhaps in spite of himself, towardsfinding a place in his philosophy for a reflective love for human beings,bodies and all.


chapter 4

Aesthetic reflection and the primacyof the practical

Chapter 3 argued that aesthetic reflection produces interests, and thatthose interests might well issue in obligations on how we value ourselvesand our world. This sort of claim poses a certain challenge to inter-pretations of Kant that reduce his account of value to moral or purelypractical value. Since in recent years this view has had some very per-suasive and powerful advocates, this chapter engages the topic of the roleaesthetic reflective imagination might play in understanding the ‘‘primacyof the practical’’ in Kant’s philosophy. The notion of the primacy ofpractical reason, which Kant introduces explicitly in the second Critique,has been adopted by a number of Kantians as the correct lens for viewingKant’s philosophy as a whole. This development has in many respectsbeen a much-needed pendant to what might be called ‘‘second-wave’’Kantianism in the US, when mid-twentieth-century analytic philosophersbegan a serious re-evaluation of the first Critique for developments in thehistory of modern theories of knowledge and metaphysics. The turntowards interpretive strategies that prioritize the practical philosophy, duein large part to Rawls,1 has allowed scholars to put the theory ofknowledge in context, and has provided the motivation and basis forfurther important developments in contemporary theories of moralconstructivism and Kantian-type ethics.While acknowledging the enormous contribution to ethical and poli-

tical theory that these interpreters have made, the tendency to read Kantas primarily an ethical theorist who subsumed all theory to practice ismisleading. Exclusive emphasis of the moral dimensions of Kant’sthought may in fact lead scholars away from much that is fascinatingand philosophically innovative in his theory of value, including in his

1 See in particular A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).

72

theory of moral value. In particular, Kant’s account of aesthetic value hasbeen ignored or subordinated by the recent stress on the ‘‘primacy of thepractical’’ in his system. In what follows, I make a case for closer con-sideration of Kant’s incorporation of aesthetic reflection into the criticaledifice. In doing so, I hope to undercut to a certain extent the view thatKant’s theory of practical reason has absolute pride of place in his phi-losophy.

the primacy of the practical: methodological

In an essay entitled ‘‘Kant, Fichte, and the Radical Primacy of the Prac-tical,’’ Karl Ameriks suggests three ways of understanding the primacyattributed to Kant’s account of practical reason by various interpretors. Heargues that pure practical reason may be understood as primary for Kant inthe sense of having special significance because it is the sole source ofrevelation to us of ‘‘what is of unconditional interest and value, the moralwill.’’ It may also be primary in the sense of revealing, through the pos-tulates of pure practical reason, a ‘‘positive and relatively ‘filled in’ versionof our ultimate destiny.’’ Ameriks goes on to reject a third possible sense ofprimacy – namely, what he calls a ‘‘methodological primacy’’ that attri-butes to practical reason the ability to ‘‘set the fundamental conditions ofphilosophical argument.’’2 I shall return to Ameriks’ first two senses ofprimacy in the next section, but want first to look at two important recentinterpretations of Kantian practical reason that attribute what Ameriks calls‘‘methodological primacy’’ to practical reason in Kant.Some of the strongest arguments that Kant’s philosophy must be seen

as fundamentally practical have come in recent years from the camp ofneo-Kantian constructivists following more or less in the footsteps ofJohn Rawls. Of the many important contributions, Onora O’Neill, inparticular, has argued most strenuously that Kant’s entire philosophymust be understood as procedurally practical to its very core. She arguesthat since Kant has repudiated Cartesian introspective procedures, hemust launch his entire project in a novel way:

Where does Kant start? If he can’t begin by vindicating philosophical method,where can he begin? The motto offers the clue that we must see the enterprise aspractical: It is a task, not a body of opinions, and moreover a task that has to be

2 Karl Ameriks, ‘‘Kant, Fichte, and the Radical Primacy of the Practical,’’ in Kant and the Fate ofAutonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 190.

Aesthetic reflection and the primacy of the practical 73

shared. The first move must then presumably be to recruit those others who willform the task force.3

O’Neill argues later that ‘‘The central point that Kant makes with theseanalogies is that reason’s authority must (since it receives no antecedent ortranscendent vindication) be seen as a practical and collective task, like thatof constituting political authority.’’4 Furthermore, ‘‘Critique of reason ispossible only if we think of critique as recursive and reason as constructedrather than imposed.’’5

Reason’s method is essentially practical, the exercise of autonomousagency, and this autonomy is also its vindication, according to O’Neill.The Copernican revolution is not itself a method but a preliminary‘‘trial.’’ It is a hypothesis that leads to an ‘‘estimate or inventory’’ orassembling of materials available for use in the actual ‘‘tasks’’ of reason.The real unveiling of methodology comes only later, after the preliminaryassemblage of materials:

At the beginning we had no ‘‘material’’ to discipline; now a hypothesis abouthow we might embark on the tasks of reason has supplied some material, but hasnot shown how this material is to be combined into the edifice of knowledge. Ithas, however, provided a vantage point for a reflexive task, which could not beundertaken initially, but only retrospectively, reflectively, toward the end.6

Because the Doctrine of Elements of the Critique of Pure Reason inven-tories materials but does not provide ‘‘a determinate account of theirintegrated deployment,’’ O’Neill argues, in the end that, ‘‘maxims toregulate the use of these capacities in thinking and acting’’ must beadopted. The supreme principle of reason is identified with that ofpractical reason. It is, in fact

the requirement that any fundamental principles of thought and action wedeploy be ones that it is not impossible for all to follow . . . Here we begin tounderstand why Kant held that the Categorical Imperative was the supremeprinciple not just of practical but of all reasoning.7

O’Neill proposes interpreting Kant’s critical philosophy as a generalizedversion of the social contract theory for all aspects of human experienceand valuing. In this dramatic reconstruction of Kant’s project, the criticaledifice is seen as a sort of all-encompassing compact drawn up by rationalindividuals who take the Categorical Imperative as their sole proceduralprinciple. This is a bold interpretive move and, not surprisingly, it suggests

3 Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 8.4 Ibid., p. 18. 5 Ibid., p. 27. 6 Ibid., pp. 13–14. 7 Ibid., pp. 19–20.


some novel interpretive results. The analogy to social contract theory,some versions of which view social and moral values as only first becomingpossible upon agreement of the parties to the terms of contract, raisesquestions. Does it then follow that the values of all rationality, expressedgenerally by the terms of the rational contract as autonomy in thought andaction, but including cognitive and aesthetic value, must likewise waitupon the contract itself? O’Neill’s reading seems to suggest that all rationalvalue is socially constructed, including even the ‘‘truth value’’ of thecategories, principles, etc. ‘‘inventoried’’ in the first Critique , insofar asreason itself is vindicated only later, in the course of the constructiveprocess.In general, it is an odd feature of this reading of the priority of the

practical that it relegates the Copernican turn in the theory of knowledgeto the status of a mere hypothesis in Kant’s overall philosophical enter-prise, and the results of the Deduction and Principles to an ‘‘inventory’’of materials for knowledge, rather than granting that the theory is arelatively free-standing account of empirical knowledge. The subordina-tion of Kant’s theory of cognition to the project of practical reason alsoseems to pull the rug out from under Kant’s stance that he has ‘‘had todeny knowledge to make room for faith’’ (including autonomous free-dom). The ‘‘denial’’ of knowledge is of course not a repudiation orsubordination of cognition, but an explicit claim that the method andpurposes of a theory of cognition are in an important sense external totheories of human moral practice. A prior and independent account of theconditions of the possibility of cognition, most of which take place in uswithout our explicit awareness, is the very locus from which Kant dis-covers a space outside or beyond those conditions where practical reasonmight operate. To interpret the work of the Analytic as mere hypothesisand inventory on the way to an account in which knowledge is defined asreflexive social practice undermines the self-standing nature of Kant’saccount of empirical knowledge, and with it the stance from which to‘‘deny’’ that knowledge. In sum, it is hard to square O’Neill’s claims forthe methodological primacy of practical reason with Kant’s stated need toestablish separate domains for the various applications of reason.8

For Kant, vindicating reason not only requires a methodological dis-tinction between principles of thought (knowledge) and of action

8 See Karl Ameriks, Kant and the Fate of Autonomy: Problems in the Appropriation of the CriticalPhilosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), chapter 4 , for a general criticism alongthese lines of all claims for methodological primacy of the practical. Ameriks argues convincinglythat these approaches follow in the footsteps of Fichte’s idealism rather than Kant’s philosophy.


(morality), but the introduction of a third ‘‘faculty,’’ (Vermogen desGemuths), namely feeling, along with its own principle [of judgment].9 Farfrom identifying theory and practice under a single principle, Kantreiterates their separation, and then seeks to show how they can possibly bereunited in the human subject through the mediation of a reflectiveconcept of purpose and its human manifestation in a universally com-municable feeling.10 Because O’Neill sees the problem for reason as that ofuniting thought and action under a single principle, she tends to neglectKant’s own characterization of his third and final Critique as ‘‘mediatingthe connection of the two parts of philosophy to [form] a whole’’(V: 176) –i.e. that of finding a mediating principle to negotiate and harmonize, notunder which to subsume, the two capacities of reason.O’Neill’s interpretation is motivated by a commitment to Kant’s

Enlightenment political values and especially to the value of non-coercivepublic discourse.11 She assumes that ‘‘critique of reason is only possible ifwe think of critique as recursive [reflexive] and reason as constructedrather than imposed.’’12 She repeatedly poses the following dilemma:Reason must be the product of a ‘‘never passive’’ constructive enterprisecarried out in accordance with the generalized Categorical Imperative (allprinciples employed must be ones that all can follow), or it is tyranny. Onthis account, if rationality is not actively constructed by us, it is imposed onus. There is no alternative.13

9 ‘‘Introduction to Kant’s Critique of Judgment,’’ trans. Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis andCambridge: Hackett, 1987), V: 198.

10 Cf. ‘‘Introduction to Kant’s Critique of Judgment,’’ and also the First Introduction to the Critique ofJudgment (published separately as vol. XI of the collected works, and included as an appendix inPluhar’s translation).

11 Cf. O’Neill, ‘‘Vindication Reason,’’ chapter 9 of The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. PaulGuyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 293.

12 O’Neill, Constructions of Reason, p. 27.13 Even if we agree that this contract, or procedural model of reason is appropriate, it may still be

objected that, as with any contract theory, the question of who is to be party to the originalcontract is not irrelevant: to whom do we refer when we say that ‘‘all’’ must be able to follow theprinciples of reason adopted? O’Neill argues that the political analogy should not be pressed toofar, that the contract ‘‘need not be taken literally, or as referring to historical events’’(Constructionsof Reason, p. 18). But the many and varied postmodern attacks on the notion of the tribunal ofreason and of Enlightenment optimism in general have underscored the importance of thequestion of origins. Who will be admitted to the all-important team constructing reason? Who willbe excluded? What about questions of development? How will the rationally immature bedistinguished from the mature thinker, and who will train them for maturity? What methods willbe used by the trainers to ensure that their trainees become autonomous? Those who cannot orwill not submit to the discipline of reason as already constructed at any given historicalmoment will presumably never be party to the process. For a collection of essays expressing thesesorts of criticisms, from both Kant’s own time and from contemporary authors, see What isEnlightenment? Eighteenth Century Answers and Twentieth Century Questions, James Schmidt, ed.


I want to suggest in what follows that for Kant, at any rate, thisformulation harbors a false dilemma. If ‘‘construction’’ is understood asany activity of the mind that in any way shapes our experience it may betrue for Kant, but as O’Neill appears to understand him, active con-struction involves self-legislation, self-legislation means giving the law tooneself, and the latter involves the ‘‘willful’’ activity of reason. The pic-ture is one of a struggle for rational self-definition against external,‘‘alien’’ forces, an image that Kant himself surely encourages in manyplaces. Yet in the third Critique, especially in the ‘‘Critique of AestheticJudgment,’’ Kant’s concern is with a less interventionist, less defensivemode of rational engagement with the world of nature and with others.His account of aesthetic contemplation is certainly about mental activity.Reflecting on beauty, however, is not willful activity, nor the impositionof form on nature. It is mere imaginative ‘‘play’’ with natural forms, andin this sense, at least, might be considered more passive. Still, Kant takesthis activity to be the connecting link between reason in its cognitive/theoretical and in its moral capacities. Interpretations that unify reasonunder practical reason and the autonomy of the will fail to account for thecentrality of reflection in Kant’s overall account of human reason. Thesense in which reflective judgment defines rationality will be exploredlater. First, however, it will be useful to turn briefly to another importantrecent argument for the primacy of practical reason that does takeaccount explicitly of the role of contemplation in relation to practicalreason.Christine Korsgaard also interprets Kant’s overall account of rationality

in terms ultimately of practical reasoning, the spirit of which she traces tohis humanism. That is, she argues, for Kant the source of all value isultimately humanity itself – or, to be more precise, humanity insofar as itis capable of ‘‘full rational autonomy’’(p. 241). Like O’Neill, she, too, seespractical reason as the fundamental source of all values and, like O’Neill,she believes that choices, to be truly human, can be determined only bypractical reason, and not inclination and pleasures:

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant claims that good is a rational concept.This means that if ends are to be good, they must be determined by reason, notmerely inclination or pleasantness . . . Behind the assumption that if everyrational being could acknowledge something to be good . . . then it is indeed

(Riverside: University of California Press, 1996). For a feminist version of these sorts of criticismsand a suggestion for reconstructing Kant’s aesthetics as a part of the solution, see my ‘‘TheAesthetic Dimension of Kantian Autonomy,’’ in Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant, ed.Robin May Schott (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), pp. 173–190.


good . . . is the idea that it is rational beings who determine what is good;rational nature confers value on the objects of its choices and is itself the sourceof all value.14

Korsgaard then argues that rational nature for Kant must be understoodas fundamentally practical. Theoretical knowledge is limited to themechanism and not the ends of nature, while speculation about finalcauses is also banished from the realm of knowledge. Thus Korsgaardargues, theoretical reflection relinquishes any claim to being the source –i.e. ultimate justification – of human values. For this reason, she says,Kant’s rationalism, unlike Aristotle’s, values agency over contemplation,and ‘‘Morality replaces metaphysics as the highest expression of ourrational nature.’’15

Since Korsgaard’s account of Kant’s subordination of the con-templative side of human nature to the practical dovetails with O’Neill’sview that practical reason unites all aspects of reason under a singleprinciple, a response to Korsgaard’s arguments against contemplation alsoraises questions for O’Neill. Korsgaard outlines two Kantian argumentsagainst contemplation as the source of value. The first she takes from theCritique of Judgment, Section 86 ‘‘On Ethicotheology,’’ in which Kantstates that

it is not by reference to man’s cognitive power (theoretical reason) that theexistence of everything else in the world first gets its value, i.e., it is not [because](say) there is someone to contemplate the world. For if all this contemplationoffered to man’s presentation nothing but things without a final purpose, thenthe fact that the world is cognized cannot make its existence valuable; only if wepresupposed that the world has a final purpose, could its contemplation itselfhave a value by reference to that purpose.16

Korsgaard reads this as follows:

while speculative reason hopes vainly to discover or prove that this ideal of reasonis already realized in the world, practical reason – or morality – is the attempt toimpose this ideal on action and on the world insofar as action shapes the world.

The argument against contemplation as a source of value she summarizesconcisely as

The world must have a final purpose in order to be worth contemplating, socontemplation cannot be that final purpose.17

14 Christine M. Korsgaard, ‘‘Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value’’, in Creating the Kingdom ofEnds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 241.

15 Ibid., p. 246. 16 Kant, Critique of Judgment, (V: 442).17 Korsgaard, ‘‘Aristotle and Kant,’’ p. 241.


This is a good summary of Kant’s point, but it does not follow from theclaim that contemplation cannot be the final purpose of the world that italso cannot be a source of value. Contemplation, like moral judgment, isan activity. Final purposes or ends are objects of desire. It may well bethat the highest end or final purpose of humanity is essentially moralwithout it following that our method of creating or producing it beessentially practical. In fact, in this section of the ‘‘Critique of Tele-ological Judgment’’ Kant is speaking about the way in which even themost ordinary mind meditates (nachdenkt) about the existence of things.The citation Korsgaard uses occurs in a context in which Kant is con-cerned to explain teleological reflection upon the universe, and to argue,as Korsgaard points out, that there is a moral component to this reflec-tion. The reflective product, the judgment itself, however, does not reston determinant principles of judgment, either cognitive or moral, but ona principle of reflective judgment that, as Kant has already argued, isindependent of both:

The effect [at which we are to aim] according to the concept of freedom is thefinal purpose which (or the appearance of which in the world of sense) ought toexist; and we [must] presuppose the condition under which it is possible [toachieve] this final purpose in nature (in the nature of the subject as a being ofsense, namely, as a human being). It is judgment that presupposes this condition‘‘a priori,’’ and without regard to the practical, [so that] this power provides uswith the concept that mediates beween the concepts of nature and the concept offreedom: the concept of a purposiveness of nature, which makes possible thetransition from pure theoretical to pure practical lawfulness, from lawfulness interms of nature to the final purpose set by the concept of freedom. For it isthrough this concept [of the purposiveness of nature] that we cognize [erkennen]the possibility of [achieving] the final purpose, which can be actualized only innature and in accordance with its laws.18

Korsgaard argues that Kant rejects contemplation as the source of value,but in fact all he really rejects is the claim to know anything throughcontemplation, in the very limited sense of knowledge characterized byhim in the first half of the Critique of Pure Reason. She claims that ‘‘forKant . . . teleological thinking is not knowledge, and such grounding as ithas lies in practical religious faith and so in ethics.’’19 But as we have justseen, teleological thinking is grounded in a concept of reason that isneither theoretical nor practical, but that belongs nonetheless to the

18 Kant, Critique of Judgment, V: 195–196. 19 Korsgaard, ‘‘Aristotle and Kant,’’ p. 245.


system of the faculties of the mind a priori. It is grounded in reflectivejudgment.Korsgaard then goes on to conclude that ‘‘we cannot, through theo-

retical thinking, participate in the final purpose of the world. We can onlydo this in practice.’’20 Here she presents her own version of what I havesuggested is the false dichotomy in O’Neill’s constructivism: either wethink theoretically, or we act according to the principles of practicalreason. There is no alternative. Kant’s account of the relatively inde-pendent mediating activity of reflection on both thinking and acting issimply ignored.21

Korsgaard’s second argument for the devaluation of contemplativeactivity in Kant is taken from the Critique of Practical Reason. Kant claimsthat intellectual pleasures are no different in kind from physical pleasures,since the possibility of both rests on feeling, and feeling, being a merepassive susceptibility to causes, is ‘‘firmly divorced’’ from autonomy.22 Itis certainly undeniable that Kant tends to belittle the contribution offeeling to rationality, but it ought to be noted immediately that charges of‘‘passivity’’ will apply equally to all sorts of feeling, including not onlypleasures of the sense and intellect, but also to the satisfaction we take inthe moral. The latter type of feeling is one that Kant certainly neitherwants to deny nor belittle. Kant’s tendency to characterize pleasure alwaysas a kind of contingent a posteriori feeling vanishes with the advent of thetheory of reflective judgment. In the third Critique, Kant’s claim is that‘‘the feeling of pleasure and displeasure is only the subject’s receptivity to a[ certain] state.’’23 Pleasure in itself is only receptivity, indeed, but always areception of a certain state of mental activity. Thus, for Kant pleasures arenot all created equal: they are to be distinguished in terms of the con-ditions which give rise to them, and the important new contribution ofthe ‘‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment’’ is to introduce and argue forpleasures of reflection whose conditions are universal and a priori. Suchpleasures are the result of the conditions that hold a priori of a form ofcontemplation, albeit not an intellectual one: aesthetic reflective judg-ment. The argument from passivity does not in the end constitute an

20 Ibid.21 Kant refers to this relative independence as the ‘‘heautonomy’’ of judgment, in which it gives the

law only to itself, not to nature or freedom, for reflection upon nature. Cf. Critique of Judgment, V:185, and First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, XI: 225.

22 V: 185–186, XI: 225.23 First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment (XX: 208). See also the Critique of Practical Reason

(V: 75) where Kant has already made this point about the origins of the feeling of respect for themoral law.


argument against the pleasures of contemplation as a source of value,since some pleasures are ‘‘conditioned’’ only by activities of judgmentthat are universal and a priori. In part, Korsgaard’s arguments againstcontemplative reason as a source of value rest on a conflation of Kant’saccount of theoretical reason and speculative metaphysics with con-templation. Kant, however, has a more fine-tuned account of reason’sactivities. Theoretical reason needs to speculate upon the unconditioned,and this need, for Kant, should, for the most part, be sublimated topractical reason. But Kant’s account of contemplative thought, or‘‘reflective judgment,’’ is a different sort of thinking altogether, whosefunction is not to subordinate theoretical to practical reason, but tonegotiate the rift between them.Korsgaard’s and O’Neill’s readings of Kant’s overall theory are in many

respects inspired, and stand in their own right as important Kantianreconstructions. Still, based on the arguments just presented, I believethat any accounts that locate the source of all value, and define rationalityitself, primarily in terms of practical reason fail to do justice to one ofKant’s greatest insights, namely, that reason is a system of the interplay ofboth thinking and acting. A fully developed critique of reason musttherefore provide an account of this connection – the interface as it were –of theoretical and practical reason.24 The third Critique, where Kantargues that this interface is just the mediation of reflective judgment,must be taken seriously. Whatever else reflective judgment is – and it hasmany aspects and various applications both practical and theoretical, it isnot of itself practical or ‘‘constructive.’’ It is contemplative, where thisalways presupposes a reflective principle of purposiveness ‘‘without regardto the practical.’’

the primacy of practical reason: metaphysical

To argue that practical reason is not primary or prior in the sense of beingthe origin or justificatory source of all value is not to suggest that there isno sense in which practical reason and agency are primary for Kant. In hiscomparative study of Kant and Fichte, Karl Ameriks argues that thevalues of practical reason are primary in the sense of having somehowmore significance for human beings than either cognitive or aesthetic or

24 This is in no way to deny that in some sense reason is a unity for Kant. But I would argue for theposition that Dieter Henrich and many others have advocated, that it is crucial to Kant’sphilosophy that the unifying basis of reason itself cannot be known.


other values. Ameriks suggests that pure practical reason ‘‘in Kant’sphilosophy has a kind of preeminence because it discloses the basicsources and goals of what is valuable’’ and he argues that the moral lawfor Kant is

the most significant object of our attention in the sense that it alone reveals whatis of unconditional interest and value, the moral will. Although Kant recognizedthat mere theoretical and prudential activities also have considerable positivevalue, he insists that by themselves they are rooted in secondary interest that[has] nothing like the incomparable worth of morality.25

The language of revelation and disclosure is important here. Ameriks’understanding of the primacy of the practical depends on a metaphysicalinterpretation of transcendental idealism that is the polar opposite ofO’Neill’s constructivism. For Ameriks, the Copernican turn and its‘‘denial of knowledge to make room for faith’’ is not the end of meta-physics but simply its redirection from the theoretical to the practicalrealm. The transcendental idealist account of nature is the methodolo-gical condition of our discovery, as moral agents, of a new practicalmetaphysics. It provides our ticket out of determined nature into anotherrealm:

the spatiotemporal laws covering all the ordinary appearances of our life need notconstrain our inner or noumenal reality, and so, rather than having to give upmorality in the face of a law-governed nature, we can and should accept moralityas the guide to a nonspatiotemporal realm that exists and is more fundamentalthan nature.26

Ameriks goes on to argue that transcendental idealism has thus providedfor ‘‘the only escape from ‘nature’ . . . .’’ So that, on this reading, ournoumenal being is revealed to us as a result of our denial of knowledge, ina sort of Critical reversal of the fall from grace. The details of this newmoral landscape are a further disclosure of practical reason, given in theform of the postulates of God, freedom, and immortality.27

Ameriks is correct in pointing to the fact that Kantian practical reasondepends on his account of the limitations of theoretical reason and, hence,in the overall structure of his philosophy, cannot be methodologically orlogically prior. Yet Amerik’s unrepentant metaphysical account of thepractical leaves it open to a criticism that Kant himself wanted very much

25 Ameriks, ‘‘Kant, Fichte,’’ p. 190. 26 Ibid., p. 191. 27 Ameriks, ‘‘Kant, Fichte,’’ pp. 190–91.


to avoid. That is, it portrays human beings as hopelessly alienated fromthemselves – if not at war with their own physicality, then at least ser-iously alienated from their own basic nature as embodied ‘‘beings ofneed.’’28 There can be no doubt that recognition of this concern in Kant’sphilosophical enterprise is key to understanding him. Both versions of hisintroduction to his third and final Critique mention the need to recon-nect nature and reason and, as we have already seen, the need to connectthe rational/ethical and the theory of nature is urgent on moral grounds.In the last section of this chapter, I shall argue that Kant is also concernedabout theoretical reason’s stake in this reconnection.As we saw earlier, Kant was painfully aware of this potential problem

in Chapter III of the second Critique, when he assumes that the moral lawmust have an effect on the will of human beings through some natural,subjective path – that is, through some sensuous impulse. Here, Kantallows for such a feeling, albeit a rather tortured one caused by thefrustration by reason of sensuous inclination:

For all inclination and every sensuous impulse is based on feeling, and thenegative effect on feeling (through the check on the inclinations) is itself feeling.Consequently, we can see a priori that the moral law as a ground of determi-nation of the will, by thwarting all our inclinations, must produce a feelingwhich can be called pain. Here we have the first and perhaps the only casewherein we can determine from a priori concepts the relation of a cognition(here a cognition of pure practical reason) to the feeling of pleasure ordispleasure.29

Assuming the plausibility of this move, it is still not much of an answer tothe criticism that a bifurcated account of reason leads Kant inevitably to anotion of moral being that is essentially alienated from its natural self.Humiliation, even when rechristened as a feeling for the majesty of duty,as Kant himself puts it, ‘‘has nothing to do with the enjoyment of life.’’30

Even with the addition of an account of moral feeling, the doctrine of theprimacy of the practical interpreted as resting on a metaphysical ‘‘escape’’from nature, as Ameriks claims it does, leaves us with a rather disin-tegrated and desolate picture of the human condition. It is surely to avoidthat portrait that Kant, even already at the end of the second Critique,begins to move towards the theoretical incorporation of other sorts of

28 Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (Macmillan: 1988), V: 61.29 Critique of Practical Reason, V: 72–73. 30 Ameriks, ‘‘Kant, Fichte,’’ p. 88.


‘‘case[s] wherein we can determine from a priori concepts the relation of acognition to the feeling of pleasure or displeasure.’’31

Another account of the metaphysical primacy of practical reason thatexplicitly recognizes the depth of the alienation problem for Kant, isRichard Velkley’s teleological reading in Freedom and the End of Reason.Velkley argues that the problem of the unity of nature and reason was firstapparent to Kant after his reading of Rousseau’s account of humanity’sprogressive alienation from its own nature:

The difficulties are subsumed under the heading of the ‘‘teleological problem’’ inthe modern ‘‘individualistic’’ emancipation of the passions. If reason has noother end than to serve the passions aiming at freedom and mastery, whatprevents reason, as a modifiable and expanding power, from unfolding in waysthat exacerbated the passions and that increase human servitude to sociallygenerated and factitious desires? By suggesting that the whole modern emanci-patory effort may be self-defeating, Rousseau initiates the later modern criticismof the modern world as the realm of ‘‘alienation’’ in which man is subjugated byhis own creations.32

In Velkley’s view, Kant solves the problem by asserting the primacy ofpractical reason, which Velkley interprets as the position that Kant’sphilosophy has an ‘‘overarching moral project’’ that is actually a con-tinuation of the modern project of the emancipation from nature:

the modern critique of speculation is not neutral to all human purposes or humanfinality. The rejection of metaphysical first causes is to make room for thesupremacy of human final causes. The order of cosmic final causes is replaced bythe legislated order or by the ideal construct supported only by human volition –the establishment of a new universal nomos that promotes the maximum of humanfreedom from the evils and unwelcome constraints of the natural order . . . Kant’sown critique is quite clearly a continuation of this emancipatory project.33

Whether or not the characterization of replacing cosmic order with ‘‘thelegislated order or . . . the ideal construct supported only by humanvolition’’ is true to the intentions of modern philosophy prior to Kant, itis certainly true that Kant follows Rousseau in foregrounding the problemof reason, and as a result is moved by the need for a ‘‘theodicy of reason’’

31 In the ‘‘Methodology of Pure Practical Reason,’’ Kant outlines two ‘‘exercises’’ for enabling moralcultivation that are rough sketches of his account of judgments of taste and the sublime. Cf.Critique of Practical Reason, V: 160–161.

32 Velkley, Freedom and the End of Reason: On the Moral Foundations of Kant’s Critical Philosophy(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 13–14.

33 Ibid., pp. 18–19.


to establish that ‘‘reason is a beneficent force in human life’’ (p. 2).According to Velkley, Kant ultimately finds that justification in theview that ‘‘reason is governed by a single organizing principle or tel-os’’(pp. 17–18), and already in the 1760s Kant was beginning to see the‘‘subjective need that human reason has of the metaphysical concepts ofsubstance, force and causality, which is above all a moral need – theinexorable concerns with the fate of the soul, God and freedom . . . ’’(pp. 119–120). Velkley thus sees ‘‘the ‘core’ of metaphysics shift[ing] to itspractical‘telos-giving part and away from theoretical inquiry’ in Kant’sphilosophy’’(p. 119). Ultimately, Velkley claims, Kant developed a‘‘practical metaphysics’’ that has been revived in recent twentieth-centuryidealisms:

One can say Kant’s idealism marks the high point of a certain effort that hasbeen renewed, but not surpassed, by later phenomenological and hermeneuticaldefinitions of the ‘‘horizon’’ of experience. It would confine the reflection on theabsolute (whose meaning and content are ultimately moral), within the sphere ofhuman freedom and practice . . . that is kept distinct from the speculativenoumenal realm of modern idealism. (p. 135).

The primacy of the moral end, for Kant, limits ‘‘the true metaphysicalwhole’’ (pp. 112–113) and since philosophy is only critique, not discovery,‘‘theoretical inquiry is primarily self knowledge’’ so that ‘‘the true callingof humanity is to legislate unity where disunity reigns’’ (p. 116). Ofcourse, it is in nature that disunity appears to reign. Thus Velkleycharacterizes Kant’s solution as a triumph of reason – i.e., of the will –over nature: Rousseau’s emphasis on the ‘‘unnaturalness’’ of the will(p. 74), of its increasingly greater separation from nature, posed theproblem of reason, but also set forth its solution: the will can be free ofnatural impulses, hence ‘‘autonomous’’ and hence capable of acting as a‘‘restorative’’ for the ordering of the human soul: ‘‘Kant tends towarda single form of perfection in the teleological consummation of reason ina new legislation of the order of the soul’’ (p. 66).For all its historical insight, Velkley’s interpretation of Kant is, in my

view, flawed in two important ways. First, he presents a version of a flightfrom nature in Kant’s philosophy that ignores the importance of aestheticjudgments about natural beauty in Kant’s notion of teleology. These arenot less important than his account of teleology in the second half of thethird Critique, and indeed, Kant suggests that methodologically they aremore fundamental to his account of the connection of nature and reason,and of practical and theoretical aspects of human functioning. The


Preface to the second Introduction to the Critique of Judgment ends witha short paragraph in which Kant says ‘‘With this I conclude my entirecritical enterprise.’’ The directly preceding paragraphs are devoted toexplaining why a transcendental account of the ‘‘aesthetic power ofjudgment’’ is necessary, and the role this power plays in solving the riddleof finding a principle for the power of judgment. Kant’s ‘‘entire criticalenterprise,’’ in other words, comes to an end with an account of howjudgment ‘‘whose correct use is so necessary and universally required thatthis power is just what we mean by sound understanding’’ (V: 169) itselfrelies on an account of aesthetic – i.e, feeling-based – reflection. To insistthat Kant’s enterprise was intended ultimately to overcome or transcendnature ignores the mediating role that imagination, disinterestedness, andpleasure play in his critical enterprise. Certainly in the ‘‘Critique ofTeleological Judgment’’ Kant is concerned with human culture andprogress, and is aware of the ever-increasing artificial desires that technicaldevelopment brings. But precisely this concern sends him ‘‘back to nat-ure’’ in the ‘‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment,’’ where he focuses on theneed to reconnect directly (non-instrumentally, but also non-morally)with nature, in such a way that we come to feel, via the pleasure ofreflection on perceptual forms, the possibility of nature’s conforming toour moral calling. Velkley’s reading leaves no room for this direct con-nection to nature, privileging instead the rational projection of a unitaryideal of human freedom that not only elides but in fact ‘‘overcomes’’nature in human subjectivity. It is exceedingly difficult, then, to see howthe problem of the alienation of reason from nature that Velkley socarefully traces from Kant back to Rousseau, is solved on this reading.A second problem with this interpretation, in my opinion, is that it

places extraordinary power in the hands of the philosopher. On Velkley’sreading, it is that elite group that plans a global ‘‘revolution in theoreticaland moral foundations’’:

According to Kant, the philosopher is to be defined as a legislator, not as a meretheoretician. His legislation establishes the architectonic order of reason whereinthe various investigations of philosophy and science are to take their places andin which they are to be viewed as collectively furthering the ultimate end that thephilosopher defines. In other words, the philosopher legislates the systematicunity of reason as governed by a single organizing principle or telos. The revo-lution taking place in the foundational inquiries of theoretical and moral phi-losophy has a principal architect – the philosophy as legislator. That is to say thatthe ‘‘local’’ revolutions in theoretical and moral foundations are reflecting alarger, more comprehensive revolution planned and initiated by the legislativeactivity of the critical philosopher. (p. 18)


Philosophy takes on far more importance, on Velkley’s reading of Kant,than the limiting function Kant claims for it in the first Critique. ForVelkley, this is part of Kant’s response to Rousseau, who questionedwhether ‘‘modern philosophy [can] maintain its position as the dominantforce in human affairs and continue to promote the emancipation andenlightenment of humanity’’ (p. 13). An ideal ‘‘definitive culture’’ is to bedetermined by philosophy as part of this answer, which according toVelkley involves an overwhelming commitment to practical concerns overtheoretical ones: ‘‘all supersensible realities and causes are understood assubordinated to freedom’s essential projects . . . Kant could not statemore directly the primacy of the practical in the profoundest sense inwhich he intends it; the practical determines the direction of and even thecontent of theoretical inquiry’’ (p. 144).Velkley’s notion of the primacy of the practical is not to be accused of

escapism, as Ameriks’ might, but it is all the more worrisome for that veryreason. Freedom of inquiry and belief themselves seem to disappear in theall-encompassing quest for unity of reason. This is surely too high a priceto pay for conquering alienation, and it is hard to believe that Kanthimself would entertain, let alone subscribe to, such a vision. Indeed, thevery spirit of the ‘‘Rousseauistic revolution’’ in his way of thinking aboutordinary humanity appears to give way, on this account, to an extremepaternalism that is precisely the wrong answer to the question ‘‘What isEnlightenment?’’ Paradoxically, on this account the elevation of thepractical over theory opens the door to the very authoritarianism it wassupposed to combat. As we shall see shortly, Kant was aware of the dangerof letting practical reason take over all aspects of human experience, andwanted to block the possibility of its dictating content to theory.Richard Eldridge, in The Persistence of Romanticism, also sees Kant’s

philosophy as centrally engaging the alienation problem, but he is lessinclined to read Kant as assigning the role of instituting a higher moralculture on earth to the philosopher:

Kant regards his own philosophical writing as advancing this work, helping tofree us from tutelage or service to our animal nature so as to achieve collectiverational freedom. His articulation of the principle of morality is to help to moveus first to found a liberal state and then further, through culture, to bring ourends into rational harmony with one another. This advance toward freedom firstthrough politics and then through culture is not however, the work of philo-sophy alone. Art has a crucial role to play in this development.34

34 Richard Eldridge, The Persistence of Romanticism: Essays in Philosophy and Literature (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 38.


Eldridge takes the separation of nature and freedom problematized in thethird Critique to be an expression of a latent ‘‘deep anxiety’’ in Kantabout the possibility of actually manifesting our freedom in the world(p. 36). Kant’s ‘‘imaginative narratives’’ about the (possible) progress ofhuman history are ways of dealing with that angst, and perhaps even ofcombatting the miserable human conditions that cause it. Moreover, hepoints out, the artist’s imaginative and communicable work might do thesame. In ‘‘How is the Kantian Moral Criticism of Literature possible?,’’he discusses Kant’s characterization of the domain of philosophy – i.e. ofthe overall human condition – in the second introduction to the thirdCritique.35 Eldridge glosses Kant’s worry as follows: ‘‘we will not restcontent with an empty, speculative freedom that is not intelligiblyactualizable and we must somehow come to see the world as supportingthe actualization of freedom’’ (p. 75). Eldridge recognizes, in other words,that the third Critique takes up the problem of alienation, and presents athird way between metaphysical accounts of morality (whether noumenalor politically ideal) and first-person practical reasoning approaches, bothof which only perpetuate the alienation of human freedom from humannature. ‘‘It is too little recognized,’’ Eldridge writes, ‘‘that Kant began inhis last writings, particularly in the Critique of Judgment, to rethink theproblem of how there can be morality and freedom in the sensible world’’(p. 75).Eldridge is particularly interested in the role that genius plays in

actualizing freedom through art, and I shall return to this point in laterchapters. For now, his point about the role of the third Critique is welltaken: By the time he wrote his final critical work, Kant had changed hisviews about the role of the sensible, of feeling, and of imagination withrespect to morality. What he had declared impossible in the first Critiqueand unlikely in the second, became the focus of the entire first half of thethird Critique: the possibility of pleasures – not painful humiliations –based on conditions that were universal and a priori. There he argues thatreflection gives rise in aesthetic judgment to a feeling whose universalvalidity depends upon its independence from practical and theoreticaldetermination. Since aesthetic reflection itself involves the conditions ofcognition in general (imagination and understanding in free play) theresulting feelings have a pedigree every bit as pure as that of the humbledfeeling of respect for the moral law. Some reflective feelings, like the

35 Ibid., pp. 71–84.


feeling of the sublime, involve the faculty of pure practical reason and ourrecognition of our moral autonomy in the face of purposeless nature. Butothers, and indeed the paradigm case of aesthetic feeling – namely, ourfeelings for the beautiful – depend entirely on conditions of cognition ingeneral. Such feelings not only are independent of practical reason, buttheir very right to claim universal validity depends on this indepen-dence.36

the mediated primacy of practical reason

I want now to return to the problem of alienation raised by what I havebeen calling metaphysical readings of the priority of the practical, andKant’s initial attempt to bring the practical back into the realm of nature.Kant went on to address the issue of the causal efficacy of the moral in theDialectic of Pure Practical Reason, by introducing the conception of theHighest Good as the necessary objective of practical reason. The morallaw, Kant argues, demands that we strive to produce, in nature, a state inwhich ‘‘happiness [is] in exact proportion to morality.’’37 But if we areincapable of so doing, then the moral law itself must be ‘‘fantastic,directed toward imaginary ends, and consequently inherently false.’’38

The famous solution to this problem of the potentially debilitating moralalienation from our natural selves was of course the postulates of practicalreason – of immortality and of God. It is as a springboard for thisdangerous leap of reason, which in effect involves breaching theboundaries of theoretical reason for the sake of practice, that Kantexplicitly argues for the primacy of practical reason. Having looked atseveral interpretations of Kant’s doctrine, it is perhaps time to examinehis own account.Unfortunately, Kant’s own statement of the primacy of the practical

turns out to be far from transparent. To begin, as already mentioned, itsplacement in the Critique is clearly strategic, if not ad hoc. To preservethe doctrine of the highest good, and the need for a more integratedaccount of morality that motivates it, Kant has taken up a precariousposition. He has allowed reason to suspend the Copernican turn in order,

36 Cf. Paul Guyer, ‘‘Feeling and Freedom: Kant on Aesthetics and Morality,’’ in Kant and theExperience of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 1–47, esp. pp. 46–47.Guyer sees this independence as ultimately serving pure practical reason. The argument of thischapter is slightly different – namely, that this independence does also serve pure practical reason.It is not, however, independence for the sake of morality.

37 Critique of Practical Reason, V: 110. 38 Ibid., V: 114.


for the sake of practice, to make the bald metaphysical claims of thepostulates.39 To prepare the ground for this un-Critical move, he arguesthat under certain circumstances speculative reason ought to

take up these principles [of practical reason] and seek to integrate them, eventhough they transcend it, with its own concepts, as a foreign possession handedover to it . . . It must assume them indeed as something offered from the outsideand not grown in its own soil, and it must seek to compare and connect themwith everything which it has in its power as speculative reason. It must rememberthat they are not its own insights but extensions of its use in some other respect,viz., the practical; that this is not in the least opposed to its interest, which lies inthe restriction of speculative folly.40

The interests of practical reason, where they are ‘‘inseparably bound’’ toit, trump the interests of theoretical reason, but only because the former’sinterests are not ‘‘in the least’’ opposed to the latter’s. They are justdifferent from them, and Kant says, ‘‘It is not a question of which mustyield, for one does not necessarily conflict with the other.’’41 Yet practicalreason’s ability to trump speculation is not as powerful as it might seem.Although he claims that ‘‘if the speculative and the practical werearranged merely side by side (coordinated),’’ a conflict would arise, hisargument for the need to give preference to practical rather than theo-retical needs is based on a worry that, without a specified hierarchy ofinterests, either side might take over:

the first [speculative reason] would close its borders and admit into its domainnothing from the latter [practical reason], while [practical reason] would extendits boundaries over everything and, when its needs required, would seek tocomprehend [speculative reason] within them. Nor could we reverse the orderand expect practical reason to submit to speculative reason.42

The point here seems to be that giving certain interests of practical reasonprimacy is legitimate to the extent that it maintains a reasonable balanceand harmony between theoretical and practical reason, including keepingpractical reason itself under control. Kant’s own account of the primacyof the practical is thus a far more mitigated sort of preference than manycommentators, including both O’Neill and Korsgaard, and even Ameriks,seem to want to attribute to Kant. Moreover, it suggests that Kant is

39 Yirmiyahu Yovel, in Kant and the Philosophy of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1980), pp. 287ff, makes a strong case for the untenability of Kant’s incorporation of the postulatesin his system.

40 Critique of Practical Reason, V: 120ff. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., V: 121.


already groping for the sort of mediating faculty that he would soonsuggest in the Critique of Judgment as a way of coordinating withoutsubordinating either.It is worth looking more closely at what Kant seems to want at this

point in the Critique of Practical Reason, and in particular to note hisconcern that practical reason ‘‘would extend its boundaries over every-thing and, when its needs required, would seek to comprehend[speculative reason] within them.’’ His worries about placing speculationover pure practical reason – moral autonomy – are well known. They dateback to his first awakening, thanks to Rousseau, to the incomparablevalue of humanity, and the concern that a dogmatic preference for thetheoretical could render one blind to that value. Here, however, heexpresses a parallel concern that if practical reason is not suitablyrestrained it will become ideological, bending theory to suit its purposes.This is an important insight that is unfortunately obscured by his call fortheory to borrow the principles of practical reason ‘‘and seek to integratethem . . . as a foreign possession’’ to be compared and connected witheverything that it can, for the purposes of lending support to morality. Tobe sure, this is permitted only if and when the ‘‘borrowed’’ principle isshown to be inseparably bound up with the needs of pure practicalreason, so that no mere ‘‘pathological interest,’’ or (we might say)ideology, is at its root.Kant’s intention at this point in the second Critique is to set the stage

for the postulates of God and immortality, which ‘‘reason holds out to usas the supplement to our impotence to [realize] the highest good.’’ Theproblem with Kant’s explanation of how postulating metaphysicalnotions will provide the rational hope necessary to fulfill our moralobligations has already been examined in chapter 2: How could Kantsuspend the entire critical apparatus for the sake of bringing back theo-logical metaphysics?43 And even if he could get away with that onpractical grounds, does the introduction of supernatural aids really solvethe problem of how we can rationally hope to bring about the highestgood in nature, as the moral law commands that we do?44 Moreover, ifthe primacy of practical reason was introduced as a doctrine in order tomake sense of the arguments for the postulates, and the latter fail, of whatsystematic use is the primacy claim?Again, the third Critique, and Kant’s account of the independence of

aesthetic value, are crucial to the final story. There is indeed a sense in

43 Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History. 44 See chapter 2 in this volume.


which for Kant the practical is primary, but it has to do neither with theclaim that all values are ultimately constructed by us, nor with the needfor a practical procedure that serves as guide for all such construction.Neither does this primacy have to do with discovering the source of allvalue in an inner world transcending nature, nor in a unifying definitivetelos of human reason. What appears to be motivating the primacy claimin the second Critique is the need to link morality in its pure rationalform to the fact of human beings’ finitude and embodiment. Kant waskeenly aware in the second Critique that his moral theory required ofhuman beings a feeling of hope if it was to provide a plausible account ofhow we could possibly be required to implement its demands in thenatural world. But humiliation, God, and immortality were not enough.In The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant, Susan Neiman argues that, for

Kant, the alienation human beings feel as moral beings in the world ofnature is ‘‘so fundamental that it can never be fully overcome.’’ Sheclaims that ‘‘If philosophy involves coming of age [as Kant claims in‘‘What is Enlightenment?’’], it also involves an acceptance of loss of theunreflective sense of unity that children feel toward their world.’’45 I thinkshe is right to recall the depth of Kant’s realization of the pervasivedisharmony and unease between human reason and its embodiment. Atthe same time, however, it is the case that Kant sought some kind ofconnection of the two, and clearly intended his analysis of judgment ofbeauty to help serve that purpose. A naive, unreflective sense of unity hadto be outgrown, as Neiman rightly points out, but in fact Kant found amature version of that unity in the development of a reflective aestheticsense for nature’s objects. That it is also contingent, as we saw in chapter3, on human beings having the access to nature and leisure to reflect uponit does not make it any less important as a remedy for alienation, and as Ihave already suggested, may make the experience of beauty a crucialpart of moral development. At the very least it reintroduces human

45 Susan Neiman, The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994),p. 202. Neiman’s view of the primacy of the practical is that it comes down to a primacy of themoral world in terms of its power and application relative to that of theoretical reason. She equatestheoretical reason with science, and argues that theoretical reason is crucially dependent on thecooperation of the world. Practical reason, by contrast, can achieve its ends alone. She goes on toargue that the objects of practical reason, because they are our own ends, are breathtakingly simpleto realize (pp. 128–129). Of course, if the Highest Good is an end of reason, and we are indeedrequired to try to make it real in the world in the face of an utter lack of reason to think that iseven possible for us, then developing the right internal attitude towards our duty becomes a realproblem for reason. (See chapter 2 for further discussion of Neiman’s account of the highest goodand the postulates.)


imaginative, creative capacities into our navigation between the twoaspects of our human selves.We have seen that several sections of the ‘‘Critique of Aesthetic

Judgment’’ may be read as an account of how reflective aesthetic valuingcan serve the purposes of moral judgment in precisely the sort of way thatKant needed, by embodying values of practical reason. A passage quotedearlier from Section 42 of the ‘‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment’’ is worthlooking at again, because it offers the possibility of an aesthetic reflectiveapproach to the alienation problem that was never really solved by thepostulation of God and immortality. If we were somehow to be able tosense or feel that nature had a place for moral beings – that beings withpurpose belonged there, and that nature itself had a purpose – then wewould have something of the feeling of hope that we need to makefollowing its strict law possible and even natural:

reason also has an interest in the objective reality of the ideas (for which, inmoral feeling, it brings about a direct interest), i.e., an interest that nature shouldat least show a trace or give a hint that it contains some basis or other for us toassume in its products a lawful harmony with that liking of ours which isindependent of all interest (a liking we recognize ‘‘a priori’’ as a law for everyone,thus we cannot base this law on proofs). Hence reason must take an interest inany manifestation in nature of a harmony that resembles the mentioned har-mony, and hence the mind cannot meditate about the beauty of nature withoutat the same time finding its interest aroused.46

But that is something that we can achieve only indirectly through moralideas. That is, in order for the connection of nature and moral interest tooccur, our attention and our feeling must be directly connected withnature itself, apart from any moral interest. It is only disinterested,contemplative, non-practical but direct interest in nature’s forms thatmakes possible the indirect link to morality:

it is not this link [between nature’s beauty and moral ideas] that interests usdirectly, but rather the beauty’s own characteristic of qualifying for such a link,which therefore belongs to it intrinsically.47

Kant’s insight is in a way quite simple: If we want proof that our moralnature is compatible with ourselves as embodied finite creatures – thatrationality and animality belong naturally together, and that we cantherefore hope to achieve our highest moral goals in this world – then theworld must present us with at least a ‘‘hint’’ that it is possible that ourmoral purposes have a place in it. Disinterested contemplation and a

46 Critique of Judgment, V: 300. 47 Ibid., V: 302.


consequent direct interest in nature gives us an independent reason,however tentative, to believe in our capacity to bring morality to theworld. Kant’s solution to the problem of the gulf between the two uses ofreason here amounts to a suspension of the moral for the sake of themoral. Aesthetic values are not fundamental conditions of the moral law,nor the source of all value, but they are the source of an independent andvery special value, without which fulfilling our moral duty would be agrim and desperate undertaking. It is this insight that is buried byoveremphasizing the primacy of the practical in Kant’s philosophy. Suchemphasis amounts to neglecting a fundamental aspect of Kant’shumanism: its focus on ‘‘the nature of the subject as a being of sense,namely, as a human being.’’48

48 Critique of Practical Reason, V: 196. I would like to thank Henry Allison for comments on myreading of Section 42 ‘‘On the Intellectual Interest in the Beautiful,’’ that helped me clarify therelationship of moral to aesthetic value there. For a sustained account of the independence ofaesthetic value from moral value, but the ultimate subordination of this independence to morality,the reader is referred to Guyer’s introduction and the essays collected in Kant and the Experience ofFreedom. Guyer’s book, (Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2000), however, is less centrally concerned with aesthetic value, and indeed, inarguing for a normative conception of freedom as ‘‘our fundamental value’’ Guyer seems to bemoving away from his earlier emphasis on the independence of aesthetic value in its relation tomoral value.


chapter 5

The failure of Kant’s imagination

In a well-known account of the role of transcendental imagination inKant’s philosophy, Martin Heidegger practically accused Kant of intel-lectual cowardice. Heidegger argued that Kant’s refusal in the secondedition of the Critique of Pure Reason to grant that the imagination was afundamental faculty was a result of Kant’s having originally identified thetranscendental imagination with the ‘‘common root’’ of sensibility andunderstanding, and of his subsequently being unwilling to grant suchbasic status to a faculty whose obscure nature frightened him: ‘‘He sawthe unknown,’’ Heidegger says, and ‘‘he had to draw back.’’1

In what has become a classic critique of Heidegger’s Kant interpreta-tion, Dieter Henrich’s ‘‘Die Einheit der Subjektivitat’’ (‘‘On the Unity ofSubjectivity’’)2 takes up his challenge to the integrity of the Kantianenterprise and defends Kant on the grounds that his refusal to explore thecommon root of both sensibility and understanding really has nothing todo with Kant’s attitude toward the imagination, but rather represents hisadoption of the view, already promulgated against Christian Wolff byChristian August Crusius, that subjectivity cannot be traced to a singlebasic faculty or principle. Far from suggesting the need to identify anycommon root of human subjectivity, Henrich argues, Kant denies out-right the possibility of ever knowing such a basic power and is agnosticabout the existence of such a power even apart from the conditions of

1 See Critique of Pure Reason (CPR), trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York, 1929), Introduction,A15/B 29: ‘‘there are two stems of human knowledge, namely, sensibility and understanding, whichperhaps spring from a common, but to us unknown, root.’’ And see also Heidegger, Kant and theProblem of Metaphysics (KPM), trans. James S. Churchill (Bloomington: University of IndianaPress, 1962), pp. 41–42, 173.

2 Dieter Henrich, ‘‘Die Einheit der Subjektivitat,’’ Philosophische Rundschau 3 (1955), pp. 28–69.Trans. Gunter Zoeller as ‘‘On the Unity of Subjectivity,’’ in Dieter Henrich, The Unity of Reason:Essays on Kant’s Philosophy, ed. Richard Velkley (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).The translations in this chapter are Zoeller’s.

95

human knowledge.3 Since Kant ultimately ‘‘renounces’’ a positive answerto the question of what conditions the possibility of human subjectivity,the ‘‘unknown’’ common root that Kant refers to in the introduction tothe Critique of Pure Reason cannot be any known faculty and hencecannot be the imagination.4 The imagination is not suppressed or ‘‘dis-placed’’ in Kant’s philosophy, but is simply not central.Historically, the notion that human subjectivity must be unified on the

basis of its stemming from a common source in that which mediatessensibility and understanding was a theme worked out in Johann GottliebFichte, F.W. J. Schelling, and G.W. F. Hegel and voiced again, Henrichargues, in Heidegger. But for critical philosophy such unity wasunknowable and could be explained regulatively only in terms of somesort of ‘‘intrasubjective’’ purposiveness:5

The unity of subjectivity, in Kant’s final construction of it, is conceived asteleological. Kant feels compelled to look beyond what is immediately given inconsciousness, ‘‘to look beyond the sensible to the supersensible as the pointwhere all our a priori powers are reconciled, since that is the only alternative leftto us for bringing reason into harmony with itself.’’6

But so far as knowledge is concerned, the structural unity of the facultiesis contingent. If this is Kant’s view, then of course no account could beestablished for the primacy of imagination as the original source ofknowledge. The imagination is only one of the faculties of the mind, allof which can only be encountered ‘‘derivatively’’ through experience.7

This, Henrich argues, explains Kant’s turn away from any attempt to‘‘deduce’’ the faculties in the first edition of the Critique to a ‘‘logicalanalysis’’ of the conditions of knowledge in the revised second edition.Not a fear of the unknown source of reason, but rather a recognition of itsunavailability, led Kant to focus on the conditions of the understanding,whose structures – the logical forms of judgment – unlike imagination orsensibility, he was convinced were available for examination. Hence,according to Henrich, Kant became increasingly cautious about any

3 Henrich, ‘‘Die Einheit der Subjektivitat,’’ pp. 32–39.4 If any faculty is to be viewed as most fundamental to the structure of human subjectivity, Henrichargues, it is ‘‘apperception and its categories’’ (p. 44). Henrich does admit that this renunciation ofhope for grounding subjectivity did not come easily to Kant (p. 46).

5 Henrich, ‘‘Die Einheit der Subjektivitat,’’ pp. 44–45. The search for a unifying principle is seen byKant to be a necessary subjective condition of reason, and hence the notion of a fundamental facultyor power is a regulative idea.

6 Ibid., p. 46. The quotation from Kant is from the Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner Pluhar(Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1987) V: 341.

7 Ibid., p. 50.


attempt to explain the exact nature of sensibility or the relationship of theimagination to the understanding. Since the unity of the faculties in anyabsolute sense is unknown to human beings, the mediating role of theimagination must be understood as merely ‘‘the unity of activities that arerequired in addition to the objective principles of knowledge in order torender intelligible the actuality of knowledge.’’8 Viewing the imaginationin this operational sense explains Kant’s move, in the second edition ofthe Critique, to assimilate it to the understanding as one of its functions.Henrich’s argument seems historically correct. Few would argue

against the claim that the idealists’ move to extend knowledge to anaccount of its ultimate origins constituted a decisive break with Kantianphilosophy, even if not all its proponents saw it as such at the time. Yetthe success of Henrich’s ‘‘epistemological’’ approach has had the effect ofpushing interesting aspects of Heidegger’s reading into a corner to gatherdust. In particular, Kant scholars have tended to neglect what Heidegger,on his reading, was able to appreciate – namely, the fact that Kant wasunusually struck by what he took to be the mysterious nature of theimagination and that, even in the realm of cognition (not to mentionhuman action and motivation) Kant did appear suspicious of the ima-gination’s inscrutability.9

Yet a third wrinkle has been added to the fabric of the debate byHartmut Bohme and Gernot Bohme, in their book Das Andere derVernunft. They agree with Henrich that the critical turn in some sensenecessitated Kant’s move away from viewing the imagination as a separatefaculty, but take this shift to be grounds for criticizing the entire Kantianenterprise.10 They argue that, whatever his philosophical reasons, Kant’sunwillingness to grant the imagination any sort of autonomous status wasrooted in psychological misapprehensions of phobic proportions. Andwhile subconscious fears of the imagination and its close association withfeeling and the body were typical of the Enlightenment psyche, they wereby no means ‘‘healthy.’’ After some very illuminating and entertainingtextual analysis, the Bohmes conclude that the critical turn was an

8 Ibid., p. 54.9 See, e.g., CPR, A78/B103: ‘‘Synthesis in general . . . is the mere result of the power of imagination,a blind but indispensable function of the soul, without which we should have no knowledgewhatsoever, but of which we are scarcely ever conscious.’’ And A123: ‘‘That the affinity ofappearances . . . and so experience itself, should only be possible by means of this transcendentalfunction of imagination, is indeed strange, but is nonetheless an obvious consequence of thepreceding argument.’’

10 Hartmut Bohme and Gernot Bohme, Das Andere der Vernunft: Zur Entwicklung vonRationalitatsstrukturen am Beispiel Kants (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996).

The failure of Kant’s imagination 97

anxiety-driven swerve away from philosophical engagement with creativeand enriching aspects of human experience. On a more sinister note, theysuggest that Kant’s philosophy sealed the fate of any such philosophizingin the future:

Although the imagination had always been met with caution . . . even into theseventeenth century it still had its ancestral place among the faculties ofknowledge. It lost this position with Kant – once and for all, one might say, ifone views the philosophy of the Romantics as an intermezzo.11

The Bohmes see the critical turn as symptomatic not simply of Kant’s‘‘angst’’ as a typical eighteenth-century man of reason but of much thatails contemporary ‘‘modern’’ thought generally. In what follows, I wouldlike to make an initial attempt at adjudicating the debate between thosewho, like the Bohmes,12 believe that critical philosophy’s antipathy toimagination and sensibility in general ought to undermine its significanceand those (typically Kant scholars) who view such critiques as misplacedpsychologizing that misses the point of the critical enterprise.13

Henrich argues that the unity of the faculties for Kant can be under-stood only ‘‘teleologically,’’ hence the move to the imagination astranscendental origin is ruled out, and any attempts to rewrite Kant’saccount of subjectivity in terms of the imagination could only be mis-guided. The Bohmes argue that Kant was pathologically averse to givingthe imagination any genuine status next to the understanding and reasonand hence could not find a proper place for it in his account of knowl-edge. Henrich’s account is a methodological explanation of the ‘‘dis-placement’’ of imagination in Kant’s critical philosophy, the Bohmes’ is apsycho-social one. Both may contain elements of truth – and they are byno means mutually exclusive – but, I believe, neither view can be the lastword on the subject. For, as I will argue in what follows, it is not clearthat, in the final analysis, the imagination was entirely displaced in Kant’sphilosophy, nor is it clear that he continued to hold that all functioningof imagination a priori must be subsumed under the understanding.Two considerations support the view that the role of imagination was

not displaced in Kant’s overall theory. First, the role of teleological

11 Ibid., p. 231.12 Robin May Schott’s book, Cognition and Eros: A Critique of the Kantian Paradigm (Boston: Beacon

Press, 1988), presents another statement of this position from a feminist perspective.13 The three-way debate between the Bohmes, Henrichians, and Heideggerians must be waived for

the sake of space here. It is hinted at, however, in the insert to the Bohmes’ chapter on theimagination in Das Andere der Vernunft (see n. 10), ‘‘Heideggers Philosophische Rehabilitierungder Einbildungskraft,’’ pp. 243–245.


judgment came to have significance as a transcendental condition ofhuman judgment for Kant, and his concern with it eventually resulted inthe capstone of critical philosophy with the publication of the Critique ofJudgment. Here, in the final phases of his mature philosophy, the ima-gination plays a pivotal role in Kant’s account of the nature of humanexperience reflectively (teleologically) organized. Second, Kant was notuniformly negative in his view of the imagination, even of what he per-ceived to be its excesses. And at least one of these excesses – viz.enthusiasm – plays an important role in his later social theory.A third consideration is also important in evaluating the extent to

which Kant’s philosophy was tainted by problematic motivations.Scholars have argued that a crucial motivating force behind Kant’s‘‘rejection’’ of metaphysics was his reading of Rousseau and his con-sequent radical revision of the prevailing instrumentalist conception ofreason.14 To the extent that this interpretation of the critical turn rests onKant’s deeply felt conviction that metaphysical speculation led to an‘‘elitist’’ picture of morality, it clearly represents an additional element forconsideration in any complete analysis of the motives underlying thecritical philosophy. I look at each of these considerations in turn andconclude with an assessment of the Bo hmes’ contribution to Kant’sinterpretation in the light of them.

im aginative reflection and taste

The Bo hmes’ claim that the imagination lost its place as one of thefaculties of knowledge in Kant’s philosophy is relatively uncontroversial,if one considers the fate of the imagination in the Critique of Pure Reason.In the second edition of the Critique , Kant defines the imagination as‘‘the faculty of presenting [vorstellen] in intuition an object that is not itselfpresent ’’ (B151). 15 Such an activity may involve the representing of anobject in accordance with laws of association, so that the images involved

14 See Richard Velkley, Freedom and the End of Reason: On the Moral Foundations of Kant’s CriticalPhilosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), and Frederick C. Beiser, ‘‘Kant’sIntellectual Development: 1746–1781,’’ chapter I of The Cambridge Companion to Kant (New York:Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 26–61.

15 I have purposely avoided the use of ‘‘represent’’ to translate vorstellen. This is to avoid anymisleading literal reading of the English term, which would suggest that whatever the imaginationis presenting in intuition must have been present before (literally, is being ‘‘re-presented’’). TheGerman word vorstellen when read also in literal fashion does not carry the same meaning(but means literally, to ‘‘place in front of’’). See also, Pluhar, translator’s note in Critique ofJudgment, p. 14.


depend on what is, or was, given to the senses. Or, alternatively, thesubject, apart from any particular experience, represents the object ofintuition in accordance with the categories a priori. In the former case,imagination is an effect determined empirically and is thus contingent ina way that renders it opaque to transcendental analysis. In Kant’s words,this empirical manner of representing intuitions is ‘‘reproductive’’ and‘‘contributes nothing to the explanation of the possibility of a prioriknowledge’’ (B152). This sort of imaginative activity, Kant says here, fallswithin the domain of psychology, but not transcendental (i.e., critical)philosophy.In the latter case, where, in the process of intuitively presenting an

object the mind is active, Kant calls the activity ‘‘productive.’’ It is the‘‘first application’’ of the understanding to objects of possible intuition.Here the mind is creative in that it spontaneously presents an object inintuition; that is, the mind presents the object independently of empiricalconditions. Kant holds that the only avenue for this sort of spontaneous‘‘production’’ (synthesis) is via the categories of the understanding. Hencethis sort of imaginative production is seen as ‘‘an action [Wirkung] of theunderstanding on the sensibility’’ (B152), and the ‘‘transcendental act ofimagination’’ is identified with the ‘‘synthetic influence of the under-standing upon inner sense’’ (B154). Since Kant has already declared theunderstanding to be the sole source of all acts of combination (‘‘synth-esis,’’ B130), the condition of all synthetic knowledge a priori can only bethe understanding, one of whose tasks is to be productively imaginative.The imagination simply has no independent status here.For Kant, as already mentioned, all acts of synthesis are acts of the

understanding. Moreover, he claims that all acts of the understanding arejudgments (A69/B94) and labels the understanding the ‘‘faculty ofjudgment’’ (A69/B94), as if to suggest that no other judgment is possibleexcept judgments synthesizing representations in accordance with cate-gories of the understanding. But, strictly speaking, it does not follow thatall acts of judgment are acts of the understanding, or of synthesis. All thatfollows from the claims mentioned (at A69/B94) is that all acts ofsynthesis are judgments. True, Kant’s claim in the second (B) edition ofthe ‘‘Transcendental Deduction’’ is a strong one: ‘‘All possible percep-tions, and therefore everything that can come to empirical consciousness,that is, all appearances of nature, must, so far as their connection isconcerned, be subject to the categories’’ (B164–165). But even this strongclaim does not rule out that human beings have a further capacity fornon-synthetic judgment involving the imagination. Obviously human


beings are capable of analytic judgments but, apart from this, we may alsocontemplate our (already synthesized) experience. We are capable ofmaking judgments about judgments of experience – that is, about alreadycategorized experience. There is no need to suppose that such ‘‘higher-order’’ judgments themselves involve application of the categories justbecause they take synthetic judgments for their material. If such judg-ments are possible, as it were, ‘‘upon’’ synthetic judgments of theunderstanding, it may be that imagination is required by this other sort ofnon-synthetic judgment,16 in which case imagination could not beassimilated to the understanding. If such judgments are taken to be of anyimportance in the analysis of human experience, then there may be aplace, after all, for the imagination as an independent faculty in Kant’sphilosophy.Of course, this is precisely what happens in Kant’s account of reflective

judgment. In the First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, Kantallows that ‘‘judgment is not merely an ability to subsume the particularunder the universal (whose concept is given), but also, the other wayround, an ability to find the universal for the particular,’’17 and he goes onto argue that the principle for performing the latter task cannot comefrom the understanding. The task of finding universals for particulars isthe task of ‘‘reflective judgment’’: ‘‘To reflect (or consider [belegen]) is tohold given presentations [Vorstellungen] up to, and compare them with,either other presentations or one’s cognitive power [itself], in reference toa concept that this [comparison] makes possible’’ (X: 211). Imagination,‘‘the faculty of presenting in intuition an object that is not itself present’’(B151), obviously will have a role to play here insofar as given presenta-tions are to be compared to (but not combined with) ‘‘other presenta-tions’’ not themselves present. What these ‘‘other’’ presentations might bewill be discussed in what follows, but it is clear that, whatever they are,the imagination, as the faculty of ‘‘presenting’’ what is not present, willhave to be involved.Moreover, the ‘‘object’’ of reflective judgment is not an object of

experience but rather a ‘‘purposive arrangement of nature in a system’’(XX: 214), so that this purposiveness is not the result of the application ofa category. In Kant’s words, it has ‘‘no basis . . . in terms of the universallaws of the understanding’’ (XX: 216). Whatever work Kant holds that the

16 On Kant’s definition, analytic judgments require no imagination since their ‘‘objects’’ are alreadythere, as it were, in the concept being analyzed, and, in any case, intuition is not involved.

17 First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment (Ak XX), trans. Werner Pluhar, in Critique ofJudgment, XX: 210.


imagination performs in such judgments, he does not want to say thatreflective imagination is merely a task of the understanding. For thisreason, reflective judgment cannot be constitutive of knowledge. It doesnot determine cognition but deals with appearances in an entirely dif-ferent manner:

So when reflective judgment tries to bring given appearances under empiricalconcepts of determinate natural things, it deals with them technically rather thanschematically. In other words, it does not deal with them mechanically, as itwere, like an instrument, guided by the understanding and the senses; itdeals with them artistically, in terms of a principle that is universal but alsoindeterminate: the principle of a purposive arrangement of nature in a system.(XX: 213–214)

This sort of judging, for Kant, is more holistic than the ‘‘determining’’judgments of the understanding, and at the same time more tentative. Itsprinciple is ‘‘only a necessary presupposition’’ while that of the under-standing is ‘‘law’’ (XX: 215). To borrow Rudolf Makkreel’s terminologyin Imagination and Interpretation in Kant, reflective judgment may becalled interpretive.18 It involves technique and is an ‘‘art,’’ while the syn-thesizing activity of cognitive judgment proceeds ‘‘schematically’’ and isthus more ‘‘mechanical’’ in nature. In light of all this, it is reasonable towonder if the Bohmes’ claim that Kant’s is a philosophy of suppressedimagination is not a bit too hasty. Their point can perhaps be made forthe second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, and even more plausiblymade for the Critique of Practical Reason, for that matter.19 But in writingabout reflection in the third Critique Kant demonstrates a willingness toconsider a far more ‘‘imaginative’’ sort of judgment.The Bohmes are of course aware of this defense and do consider the

importance of the imagination in one kind of reflection – namely, inaesthetic reflective judgments of taste. They argue that although in thesejudgments the imagination is given a more independent role, still, Kantin effect finds in taste a ‘‘safe,’’ segregated arena for the imagination,where the creative work of this faculty is reduced to mere ‘‘play’’:

But it can still be established, that also here, where the independence of theimagination is at least accepted as play, the joy taken in this play occurs preciselywhere it is well mannered, that is, where it conforms to the understanding.Classicism delights in the allegorized and domesticated figures of Greekmythology-figures that once were gripping and overwhelming powers. The

18 Rudolf A. Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: The Hermeneutical Import of theCritique of Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).

19 Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, V: 69.


imagination itself is turned from Eros into Cupid (Putto), into a child that onedelights in because it does of its own accord what one would otherwise ask of it.(Das Andere der Vernunft, pp. 238–239)

With respect to Kant’s theory of taste, the Bohmes’ assessment is apt –and, indeed, they could have said a good deal more. Taste, for Kant,although he hints at a substantive connection with morality, is closelyassociated with culture, and serves (at best) to tame and discipline peopleby cloaking them in the appearance of morality.20 Kant’s account of tasteis heavily invested in eighteenth-century British accounts, and to theextent that he departs from these theories in an attempt to find an a priorigrounding for judgments of taste, he does so by insisting that in thesejudgments the ‘‘harmonious’’ activity of imagination and understanding‘‘belongs to cognition in general’’ (‘‘zu einem Erkenntnis uberhauptgehort’’(V: 219)). Imagination is not absolutely free, but rather is ‘‘freely law-ful,’’21 with the understanding setting its limits: ‘‘And yet to say that theimagination is free and yet lawful of itself, i.e., that it carries autonomy withit, is a contradiction. The understanding alone gives the law’’ (V: 241).At Section 50 in the third Critique, Kant sets up a dichotomy between

genius/spirit/imagination, on the one hand, and discipline/taste/under-standing, on the other. In judgments of taste, although the understandingis not the only operative faculty, it clearly is the defining one:

In order for a work to be beautiful, it is not necessary that it be rich and originalin ideas, but it is necessary that the imagination in its freedom be commensuratewith the lawfulness of the understanding. For if the imagination is left in lawlessfreedom, all its riches produce nothing but nonsense, and it is judgment thatadapts the imagination to the understanding. (V: 319)

Here Kant disassociates imagination from judgment, implicitly definingthe latter as the ability to subject the imaginative faculty to the

20 E.g. see Anthropology (Anthr.) (Ak VII), trans. Mary J. Gregor (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974), 11–12/244: ‘‘Ideal taste has a tendency to promote morality in an external way. Making a man [Mensch]well-mannered as a social being falls short of forming a morally good man, but it still prepares himfor it by the effort he makes, in society, to please others (to make them love or admire him).’’ Andalso V: 210: ‘‘To show taste in our conduct (or in judging other people’s conduct) is very differentfrom expressing our moral way of thinking. For this contains a command and gives rise to a need,whereas moral taste only plays with the objects of liking without committing itself to any ofthem.’’ For a discussion of the parallels between Kant’s views on taste and femininity, see Kneller,‘‘Discipline and Silence: Women and Imagination in Kant’s Theory of Taste,’’ in Aesthetics inFeminist Perspective, eds. Hilde Hein and Carolyn Korsmeyer (Bloomington: University ofIndiana Press, 1993), pp. 179–192.

21 Kant speaks of the ‘‘freie Gesetzmußigkeit der Einbildungskraft’’ (free lawfulness of imagination)(V: 240).


understanding. ‘‘Judgment . . . will sooner permit the imagination’sfreedom and wealth to be impaired than that the understanding beimpaired’’ (V: 320). Thus, Kant argues, fine art requires ‘‘imagination,understanding, spirit, and taste,’’ and it is the fourth condition – namely,taste – that sees to it that the other three elements are so ordered thatimagination never gets the upper hand (V: 320 n. 55). Thus it wouldappear that the Bohmes are correct in saying that ‘‘the freedom of theimagination in art is also only apparent.’’22

imaginative excess and moral progress

To view these aspects of Kant’s theory of taste as a sort of final criticalblow to the imagination would, however, be to overlook the fact that evenif Kant wanted the imagination to be ‘‘tamed’’ by taste, he also seemedwilling to permit the imagination’s enthusiastic overflow in someinstances. Kant’s aesthetic theory involves more than just a theory of taste,as I have already argued.23 And, as we have already seen, in Section 17 ofthe Critique of Judgment, Kant also defends the view, albeit briefly, that ‘‘avery strong imagination’’ (later in the ‘‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment’’he speaks of ‘‘spirit’’ or ‘‘genius’’) may form a partnership of sorts withreason. Kant argues for the possibility of artistic genius exhibiting therational idea of humanity ‘‘as an aesthetic idea fully in concreto (in amodel image)’’ (V: 233), and in the last paragraph of this section Kantargues unequivocally for the possibility of ‘‘the visible expression of moralideas’’ through imagination, in a manner that, while ‘‘taken only fromexperience,’’ nevertheless transforms that experience into a presentation ofsomething new:

These moral ideas must be connected, in the idea of the highest purposiveness,with everything that our reason links with the morally good: goodness of soul, orpurity, fortitude, or serenity, etc.; and in order for this connection to be madevisible, as it were, in bodily expression (as an effect of what is inward), pure ideas

22 Das Andere der Vernunft, p. 329 (see n. 10).23 I am here setting aside Kant’s theory of the sublime, which I have discussed in ‘‘Kant’s Immature

Imagination,’’ inModern Engendering: Critical Feminist Readings in Modern Western Philosophy, ed.Bat Ami Bar-on (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994). Although in it the imagination is allowed to ‘‘runwild,’’ the role assigned to imagination vis-a-vis reason is no less problematic than that assigned toit vis-a-vis the understanding in judgments of taste. In the end it must be ‘‘humiliated’’ by reason,as the Bohmes argue in Das Andere der Vernunft, pp. 215–223 (see n. 10). I have also given a critiquealong feminist lines in ‘‘Kant’s Immature Imagination,’’ in Modern Engendering: Critical FeministReadings in Modern Western Philosophy, ed. Bat Ami Bar-on (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994),pp. 141–153.


of reason must be united with a very strong imagination in someone who seeksso much as to judge, let alone exhibit, it. (V: 235)

Moral considerations and a ‘‘mighty’’ (machtige) imagination are alsointroduced into aesthetic experience in Kant’s discussion of aestheticideas – that is, of intuitive presentations of the imagination that ‘‘promptmuch thought, but to which no determinate thought whatsoever . . . canbe adequate’’ (V: 314). And as we saw earlier, aesthetic ideas are said tocomplement rational ideas since the latter are ‘‘concepts to which nointuition (presentation of the imagination) can be adequate’’ (V: 314).Aesthetic ideas are imaginative ‘‘excesses’’ that

prompt . . . so much thought as can never be comprehended within a deter-minate concept and thereby the presentation aesthetically expands the conceptitself and sets the power of intellectual ideas (i.e., of reason) in motion: it makesreason think more . . . than what can be apprehended and made distinct in thepresentation. (V: 315)

Thus aesthetic ideas can be said to express a rational idea in sensible form.In Makkreel’s formulation, the imagination, through aesthetic ideas,complements reason by striving to complete reason’s ideas in experience.‘‘Thought, which is a function of reason, is here [in the presence of anaesthetic idea] occasioned by an excess of intuitive content that cannot becontained within the concepts of the understanding.’’24 Kant says thatsuch creative imaginative presentations ‘‘make us add to a concept thethoughts of much that is ineffable, but the feeling of which quickens ourcognitive powers and connects language, which otherwise would be mereletters, with spirit’’ (V: 316). That the expression of imaginative ‘‘excess’’might have important implications for human life and creativity is anidea that is new to Kant in the third Critique, where he grants theimagination a ‘‘transformative’’ (umbildende) power. It is certainly anargument for the claim that imagination had not lost its place in Kant’scritical philosophy. We need only recall Kant’s claim at V: 314:

For the imagination ([in its role] as a productive cognitive power) is very mightywhen it creates, as it were, another nature out of the material that actual naturegives it. We use it to entertain ourselves when experience strikes us as overlyroutine. We may even restructure [umbilden] experience; and though in doing sowe continue to follow analogical laws, yet we also follow principles which residehigher up, namely, in reason (and which are just as natural to us as those which

24 Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation, pp. 118, 121.


the understanding follows in apprehending empirical nature) for although it isunder that law [of association] that nature lends us material, yet we can processthat material into something quite different, namely, into something that sur-passes nature. (V: 314)

Here Kant is describing a kind of ‘‘judging’’ – in the case of ideas ofreason, one might call it ‘‘moral daydreaming’’ – in which imaginationconstructs presentations that ‘‘surpass’’ (ubertreffen) without transcend-ing, nature. In commenting on this passage, Makkreel puts it as follows:

Kant’s use of the term ‘‘surpass’’ points to a significant difference in the wayrational and aesthetic ideas may be said to go ‘‘beyond’’ the limits of experience.Rational ideas transcend nature, and aesthetic ideas surpass it by transformingand enriching experience.25

The result of such presentations is that the imagination ‘‘enlivens’’ the ideaof reason by making it present in intuition – that is, imagination is capableof making the rational idea ‘‘feel real.’’ Whenever such presentations areexpressed in concrete form, in a way that communicates itself to others, a‘‘mixed-mode’’ experience of the sort discussed in the ideal of beauty occurs.That is, an experience that permits the subject to feel what in the rational(moral) ideal alone could only be thought takes place.The elevated role of imagination in these cases suggests, if not a unity

of sensibility and reason in the human subject then at least a higher placefor the latter in human moral experience. In the (mixed-mode) aestheticexperiences that Kant allows for beyond taste, rationality and sensibility(via the imagination) are both involved. But, unlike in the judgment oftaste, the imagination is not restrained and ‘‘disciplined.’’ In fact, it isprecisely imaginative excess, in the ‘‘multiplicity of partial presentations’’(V: 316), that meets a need on the side of reason. This profligate pre-sentation prompts in the subject a ‘‘lively interest’’ in reason’s ideas, andas we saw in chapter 4, an interest in their being actualized.For Kant, judgments involving what might be called ‘‘idealistic’’

imagination connect intuitive presentations with a moral idea, giving riseto a concrete, sensible ideal and to a kind of moral liveliness or interestthat does not result from the intellectual idea alone. As we have alreadyseen, such moral ‘‘imaginings’’ might arguably serve as a subjective basisfor a rational hope for moral progress; that is, they may enable beliefin the possibility of realizing moral ideas. In the exhibition of itsobject, imagination makes the realization of that object subjectively

25 Makkreel makes this point in his comment on this passage, ibid., p. 120.


possible – ‘‘imaginable.’’ Perfect human virtue may be an unattainableideal, but ‘‘a very strong imagination’’ can give this intellectual notion aflesh and blood quality that it did not have before, bringing it down toearth, as it were, and enabling human beings to envision actually attainingthat which moral reason requires them to strive for.We saw in chapter 2 that imagination’s capacity to enliven morality is

especially relevant in the case of Kant’s doctrine of the Highest Good –that is, of a moral ‘‘world in which virtue and happiness are commen-surate, or at least in which human beings make every effort to maximizethe correspondence of happiness to virtue.’’26 I argued there that, giventhe difficulties attendant on what has been called the ‘‘theological’’doctrine of the Highest Good in Kant, which requires postulation of theexistence of God to ground such hope, it is worth looking at the accountsof aesthetic moral experiences in Kant’s third Critique as a possiblealternative to this metaphysical leap of faith in the second Critique.27

That is, if, as Kant argues in the third Critique, we have the aestheticreflective capacity to literally ‘‘make sense’’ of rational ideas like theHighest Good, why could not this capacity itself serve to ground our hope(not our certainty) that we ourselves could bring it about? In light ofKant’s very strong claims for the imagination’s creative and enliveningpowers in the third Critique, the question seems reasonable, and yet Kantdoes not go so far, in either the discussion of the ideal of beauty or ofaesthetic ideas, as to suggest that these are necessary ingredients in humanefforts to moral improvement.28

26 Scholars have debated whether or not the notion of the highest good involves, in Harry van derLinden’s words, ‘‘the union of universal virtue and universal happiness’’ or the far more modest‘‘moral society in which human agents attempt to make one another happy, but do not necessarilysucceed’’ (Kantian Ethics and Socialism, Indianapolis: Hackett, (1988, pp. 42ff.). Also see AndrewsReath, ‘‘Two Conceptions of the Highest Good in Kant,’’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 26(4) (1988), pp. 593–619. Van der Linden distinguishes between a teleological conception (the‘‘highest good desirable’’) and a moral conception (the ‘‘highest moral good’’). Reath makes asimilar distinction between a ‘‘theological’’ and a ‘‘secular (or political)’’ conception of the highestgood (pp. 594ff.).

27 The term is Andrews Reath’s (see n. 26). Although I find both their accounts extremely useful insorting out the different strands in Kant’s thought, both Reath and van der Linden are inclined todismiss the ‘‘spiritualized’’ account of the Highest Good in Kant. This, it seems to me, has theunfortunate effect of disconnecting Kant’s notion from the felt response that is part of thehappiness component of the Highest Good. In Kant’s account, the postulate of God’s existence onthe ‘‘theological’’ reading served to do more than ground rational belief in a future paradise. It alsochanneled desire for such a state of affairs into faith in God. The virtue of finding a role for theimagination in grounding efforts to bring about the ‘‘highest good desirable’’ is that it provides athis-worldly channel, and hence a justification, for the desire to do so.

28 Kant does suggest that beauty might serve as a symbol of morality and thus act as a sort of bridgeto the moral from taste, because the beautiful arouses sensations that are ‘‘somehow analogous’’ to


There is a parallel here to Kant’s essay ‘‘An Old Question RaisedAgain: Is the Human Race Constantly Progressing?’’ where Kant raisesmuch the same question for rational hope in human social institutionsand moral progress:

There must be some experience in the human race which, as an event, points tothe disposition and capacity of the human race to be the cause of its own advancetoward the better, and . . . toward the human race as being the author of thisadvance.29

Kant uses the question of moral progress to take the opportunity toexpress his own support for the goals of the French Revolution. Yet the‘‘event’’ that indicates the human capacity for moral progress is notthe Revolution itself, but rather ‘‘the mode of thinking [Denkungsart] ofthe spectators.’’ That is, the event that indicates human ability to be the‘‘author’’ of a moral society is the publicly expressed, non-opportunistic(uneigenutzig) sympathy for those who participate in struggles to endhuman oppression. The glimmer of hope that history holds out to thoseseeking reason to believe in moral progress is the spectators’ ‘‘wishfulparticipation that borders on enthusiasm’’ (VII: 85), an enthusiasm thatKant identifies as a ‘‘passionate participation in the good’’ (VII: 86).Felicitas Munzel’s work on Kant’s notion of moral character and the

‘‘revolution in Denkungsart’’ that precipitates it underscores the centralityof a kind of unconditional ‘‘adoption of resolve’’ to do what is right comewhat may that lies at the heart of the enthusiasm that Kant admireshere.30 On this reading, the spectator’s response could itself be an indi-cation that humanity may possess the means to accomplish moral pro-gress. But what exactly is this mode of thinking that ‘‘borders onenthusiasm’’ and is a ‘‘passionate participation in the good’’?

the feeling present when we make moral judgments (CJ, 230/354). But even apart from thevagueness of his arguments, the point here is that Kant fails to follow up on the much moreintimate relationships between morality and aesthetic experience suggested in the ‘‘ideal’’ and inhis account of aesthetic ideas. For a different reading of the connection between taste and morality,see Paul Guyer, ‘‘Feeling and Freedom: Kant on Aesthetics and Morality,’’ Journal of Aesthetics andArt Criticism 48 (2) (1990), pp. 137–146.

29 The essay, although complete in its own right, was included as the second part of the 1798publication entitled Streit der Fakultaten. The translation here is from Kant on History, ed. LewisWhite Beck (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1986), pp. 137–154. The citation is from VII: 84.

30 See Felicitas Munzel, Kant’s Conception of Moral Character: The ‘‘Critical’’ link of Morality,Anthropology, and Reflective Judgment, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 330.Munzel’s account of the voluntary nature, the positing, as it were, of the moral self in an act ofresolve followed by the development and maintenance of character, is insightful. Emphasizing thisaspect of moral character helps make clear why, for Kant, moral enthusiasts were so valuable: theyare flamboyant, visible examples of the radical choice of the moral. Like fictional characters,however, they could also be dangerous for the same reason (see CPR: A570/B598).


In this same passage (VII: 85) Kant makes an anthropological pointthat he repeatedly made in his lectures on the subject: ‘‘Genuineenthusiasm always moves only toward what is ideal and, indeed, to whatis purely moral, such as the concept of right.’’ In student notes from hisanthropology lectures taken during the 1770s, we find Kant telling hisstudents that ‘‘an enthusiast is always a noble Fantast, full of life andstrength, and so, in addition, inclined to virtue. Indeed, much that is gooddisappears from the land where they are purged.’’31 In the publishedanthropology lectures, he defines an enthusiast as a visionary or fantastand the latter as a person who ‘‘fails to collate his imaginings with laws ofexperience.’’ In the same place he adds that, when accompanied by‘‘passion’’ (Affect), fanaticism becomes enthusiasm (VII: 202). That is,enthusiasm is the condition of passionate participation in moral ‘‘ima-ginings’’ that fail to ‘‘harmonize with concepts’’ (VII: 48/172) but arerather bound up with rational ideals. In the Reflections on AnthropologyKant identifies two kinds of ‘‘fantasts’’: those of sensibility and those ofreason. The former are people who mistake their own ideas for actualperceptions (XV.1: R #498: as in hallucinations, presumably). They arewahnsinnig: taking what is merely in one’s thoughts to be perceivedthrough the bodily senses. Fantasts of reason are ‘‘visionaries’’ whomistake their own ideas for reality (even if not perceptual; also at R#499;Schwarmer: taking what is sensed ‘‘mentally/spiritually’’ (geistig) for real).Fantasts of both sorts confuse what is in their imagination with the thingsthemselves (R #499). Kant claims that both Plato and Rousseau wereenthusiasts of reason. Arguably then, the spectators of the Revolution,whose sympathetic fervor ‘‘borders’’ on enthusiasm, are experiencingsomething like the ‘‘noble fantast’’ experiences in their ability to imagineand desire a rational ideal. These spectators are a source of hope preciselybecause their own moral way of thinking is embodied in passion andimagined participation in great social ideals. They imbue abstract con-ceptions of justice with a desire and longing that is palpable. The creativeimagination and its play of aesthetic ideas in the third Critique discussion

31 Brauer notes, MS p. 88. Based on the notes taken by a student, Theodor Friederich Brauer, dated1779, taken from transcripts at the Philips-Universitat, Marburg. I would like to thank WernerStark for assistance in the use of these materials and for helpful information about the historicalcontext in which they were written. Although these sources are from student transcriptions ofKant’s lectures and are therefore not the final word on any disputed question in Kantinterpretation, nothing that I rely on here is essentially new to Kant, but rather corroborates viewson enthusiasm expressed elsewhere. I have relied only on passages from Brauer that also appear innotes taken down by other students during that time.


of genius comes to mind: spectators whose own moral character findsexpression in an excess of imaginative participation resemble the artisticgenius who embodies an excess of thought in a single physical expressionof it.Yet Kant was not unequivocal in his praise of moral enthusiasm. In

connection with his comments from the anthropology lectures and thelate comment from the ‘‘An Old Question,’’ it is interesting to note hisposition expressed in the Critique of Practical Reason: Kant argues that the‘‘typic’’ of pure practical judgment guards against ‘‘the mysticism ofpractical reason, which makes into a schema that which should serve onlyas a symbol, i.e., proposes to supply real yet nonsensuous intuitions (of aninvisible kingdom of God) for the application of the moral law and thusplunges into the transcendent’’ (V: 70–71). Nevertheless, he contrasts thismystic plunge with the ‘‘empiricism of practical reason’’ to the benefit ofthe former:

The protest against empiricism of practical reason is much more important andcommendable, because mysticism is compatible with the purity and sublimity ofthe moral law; and as it is not natural to ordinary ways of thinking [Denkungsart]to stretch its imagination to supersensuous intuitions, the danger from this sideis not so general . . . [E]mpiricism [of practical reason] is far more dangerousthan all mystical enthusiasm, which can never be a lasting condition for any greatnumber of persons. (V: 70–71)

Here Kant expresses a thoroughly ambivalent attitude to the imaginationwhen used to present ideas of reason. Whereas he is quite clear thatpractical reason based on empirical principles is degrading because it isgenerally allied with (sensuous) inclination, he is tolerant of imagination‘‘stretched’’ to the supersensuous only because it is less likely to occur.The ‘‘rationalism of practical reason’’ is a safer bet, if one had to choose.Thus, in one brief passage in the heart of his mature moral theory, Kantmanages to both criticize and defend the enthusiast (e.g., Swedenborg)and, at the same time, Kant’s own rationalist forefathers. So far as moraltheory is concerned, passionate rationalist speculation about the good isless dangerous than dwelling on ‘‘empirical interest, with which inclina-tions generally are secretly in league’’ (V: 71). Mystical enthusiasm willonly ever be ‘‘a lasting condition’’ for a small number of persons, andeven then is compatible with the purity and sublimity of the moral lawbecause it involves imaginative transcendence of inclinations and sensi-bility. On balance, and in conjunction with Kant’s other claims about thepositive moral value of enthusiasm, it appears that he always maintaineda certain regard for visionaries that went beyond simply enlightened


tolerance. His rejection of Swedenborg, and of metaphysics, was morenuanced than the Bohmes suggest.32

Kant held that attempts at imaginative transcendence by ordinarypeople are bound to fail, and in the third Critique he argues that this veryfailure of imagination may give rise to an appreciation of reason’ssuperiority to imagination (and sensibility). This appreciation is, ofcourse, the feeling of the sublime: At Section 29, ‘‘On the Modality of aJudgment about the Sublime in Nature,’’ Kant says that

The [sublime] is what genuinely characterizes man’s morality, where reason mustexert its dominance over sensibility, except that in an aesthetic judgment aboutthe sublime we present this dominance as being exerted by the imagination itself,as an instrument of reason. (V: 268–269)

And also:

the [imagination], acting in accordance with principles of the schematism ofjudgment[,] . . . is an instrument of reason and its ideas . . . In this reflection ofthe aesthetic power of judgment [i.e., of imagination], by which it seeks toelevate itself to the point of being adequate to reason . . . we present the objectitself as subjectively purposive, precisely because objectively the imagination,[even] in its greatest expansion, is inadequate to reason. (V: 269)

Here the imagination appears to be grasping the transcendent, only to behumiliated and give way to the higher moral calling of the subject. In akind of moral bait-and-switch, the promise of metaphysical insight is heldout as the goal that imagination attempts to reach (in contemplation ofthe overwhelming might or size of natural objects), only to be replaced bythe feeling of the transcendence of reason.So we find Kant on the one hand admiring and defending the

‘‘enthusiast of reason’’ who takes his imagined moral visions to be realityand also, in his aesthetic theory, propounding a theory of imaginationthat suggests that such visions could have significant moral worth. At thesame time, he conspicuously refrains from making a strong, explicitargument for the need for such an imagination to support moral judg-ment and action. Once again we must ask why.Kant’s hesitancy to embrace a natural consequence of his own views

about the imagination may be traced, I believe, to two quite different

32 For a defense of the view that Kant never fully rejected rationalist metaphysics, see Karl Ameriks,‘‘The Critique of Metaphysics: Kant and Traditional Ontology,’’ in The Cambridge Companion toKant, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 249–279.


motivations, one of which has historical and (if the Bohmes are correct)personal psychological roots in his concerns about the dangers ofimaginative distractions. The other motivation is not so obviouslylamentable. Kant’s aversion to moral elitism led him to reject thenotion of any sort of intuitive access to the rational (moral), even if hedid not totally reject those who claimed to have it. Kant was convincedthat morality itself proscribed taking oneself to be better equipped tograsp moral principles and hence to set oneself up as a moral authorityover others. The very heart of his moral theory requires knowing oneself(honestly evaluating one’s maxims) so as to prevent self-deception frompaving the way to making an exception for oneself morally.33 Whateverelse it is, such self-knowledge ought not to be ‘‘creative.’’ Moreover,imagination, Kant felt, is not given to all in the same measure (althougheveryone has some potential for developing it). Genius is a gift ofnature, ‘‘an innate mental predisposition’’ (V: 308) that belongs toartists whose ideas are ‘‘rich in fancy and yet also in thought’’ (V: 309).Kant was willing to allow that certain enthusiasts (notably Plato andRousseau) were able to combine their gift for fantasy with an equallygreat gift for philosophical thought. But neither they nor any othergenius could claim, just on the basis of their genius, to be more or lessmoral than any other person. The reason for this is that the distin-guishing mark of genius is its inability to be shared – literally com-municated – with others. For this reason, Kant argues that a greatdiscoverer like Newton was not, in his scientific work, exhibiting genius,since Newton could ‘‘show how he took every one of the steps he hadto take in order to get from the first elements of geometry to his greatand profound discoveries . . . to everyone else as well . . . allowing othersto follow.’’ On the other hand a Homer or a Wieland did exhibitgenius precisely because their work, based in their own rich fantasy, wasinexplicable even to themselves, let alone communicable to others. Theycould not lay out rules for others to follow in order to accomplish whatthey themselves accomplished.In chapter 7 I shall argue that, on Kant’s own account of aesthetic

reflection, genius may be seen as more common among human beings

33 See Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1991), VI: 441. Andrews Reath argues convincingly for the centrality of this aspectof Kant’s ethics in ‘‘Two Conceptions,’’ and more recently Jeanine Grenberg has writtenextensively on Kant’s conception of humility and the role it plays in his moral theory (Kant and theEthics of Humility: A Story of Dependence, Corruption and Virtue, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2005).


than his distinction between Newton and Homer suggests. Here thepoint to be made is simply that Kant did present this distinction asunproblematic. In this respect, he is simply reiterating the trend inGerman aesthetics, culminating in Lessing’s work, discussed in chapter 2.That is, Lessing argued for granting the artist greater artistic freedomand less constraint by rules of criticism, on the ground that genius is arule unto itself. And, as we saw in chapter 3, the artistic imagination forKant, as for Lessing, is itself a product of nature. But for that very reasonKant felt it could not be a necessary condition of human moral experi-ence; hence Kant’s suspicion of the claims of metaphysical visionaries.These ‘‘artists of the absolute,’’ as we might call them, could neverprovide rules for others to follow in order to duplicate their ownexperiences. Their fantasies are not universally communicable, in otherwords.34

the imaginative dimension of metaphysicalspeculation

In Enlightenment, Revolution and Romanticism, and his article ‘‘Kant’sIntellectual Development 1746–1781’’ for The Cambridge Companion toKant, Frederick Beiser emphasizes Kant’s ambivalent feelings towardmetaphysics throughout his life and writings. Beiser points to Kant’s ownmetaphor of metaphysics as his (Kant’s) seductive mistress,35 mappingKant’s intellectual development through several stages, including infa-tuation, disillusionment, partial reconciliation, and divorce. He arguesthat Kant’s view of the philosophical enterprise, and consequently of theimportance of metaphysics, had changed in 1765 after his reading ofRousseau. Kant famously claimed that from then on he was to becommitted to practical concerns:

I am myself by inclination a seeker after truth. I feel a consuming thirst forknowledge and a restless desire to advance in it, as well as a satisfaction in everystep I take. There was a time when I thought that this alone could constitute the

34 Neiman points out another problem with visionaries, for Kant, namely their tendency to forcetheir views on others, (The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant, Oxford: Oxford University Press,1994, p. 169).

35 Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Ak II: 367: ‘‘Die Metaphysik, in welche ich das Schicksal habe verliebt zusein, ob ich mich gleich von ihr nur selten einiger Gunstbezeugungen ruehmen kann, leistetzweierlei vorteile.’’


honor of mankind, and I despised the common man who knows nothing.Rousseau set me right. This pretended superiority vanished and I learned torespect humanity. I should consider myself far more useless than the commonlaborer if I did not believe that one consideration alone gives worth to all others,namely, to establish the rights of man. (Remarks on the ‘‘Observations on theBeautiful and Sublime’’ XX: 44)

In Enlightenment, Revolution and Romanticism, Beiser sees the concernexpressed by Kant that his philosophizing be ‘‘useful’’ as a concern sharedgenerally by later Enlighteners in Germany:

The Aufklarung was a practical movement insofar as its purpose was not todiscover the first principles of reason – most Aufklarer believed that this task hadalready been achieved by thinkers such as Leibniz, Wolff, and Kant – but tobring them into daily life. In short, its aim was to surmount the gap betweenreason and life, theory and practice, speculation and action . . .Most thinkers ofthe late eighteenth century saw themselves as Aufklarer, not only older figuressuch as Kant, Herder, and Wieland, but also younger ones such as Schlegel,Holderlin, and Novalis.

This turn to the practical explains, according to Beiser, why Kantcomes to manifest a ‘‘complete skepticism toward metaphysics.’’ It is sodeep, Beiser says, that in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, ‘‘he likens metaphysicsto the dreams of the visionary or spirit-seer’’(‘‘Kant’s IntellectualDevelopment,’’ p. 45) and (in ‘‘The Politics of Kant’s Critical Philo-sophy’’) he also claims that for Kant ‘‘Both metaphysicians and spiritseers live in a private fantasy world and chase after illusory abstrac-tions . . . the aim of [Kant’s] skepticism [about metaphysics] is to exposethe vanity of speculation, so that we direct our efforts toward findingwhat is truly useful for human life’’(Enlightenment, Revolution andRomanticism, p. 28). With this favoring of practical over theoreticalreason, Beiser suggests, the honeymoon with metaphysics is over forKant.I have argued in chapter 4 that in fact Kant did not ‘‘prefer’’ practical

to theoretical reason, but saw the two as intertwined, connected byreflective judgment. Beiser himself maintains, I believe quite correctly,that the supposed ‘‘divorce’’ with speculative theory was never fullycarried out, and that ‘‘the flames of the old love affair burnt to the bitterend’’ of Kant’s life (‘‘Kant’s Intellectual Development,’’ p. 57). Beiserfinds the old flame burning most strongly in Kant’s hypostatization in thesecond Critique of the conditions under which human beings could hopeto bring about a just world – the highest good (Enlightenment, Revolution


and Romanticism, p. 55), that is, in the postulates of metaphysical notionsof God and immortality. As we saw earlier, Beiser argues that this returnto metaphysics constitutes a ‘‘deep betrayal’’ of the radical spirit of hisrepublican politics, and an inconsistency in his philosophy (p. 55).Although Beiser is surely correct to point to Kant’s disillusionment withmetaphysics in 1765, and even before, I believe that, like the Bohmes, heoverstates the situation in labeling Kant’s view of speculative metaphysicsone of ‘‘complete skepticism.’’ While it is true that Kant castigatesmetaphysics for being schwarmerisch, and prone to fanaticism, as we havejust seen, Kant was not himself immune to ‘‘enthusiasm,’’ nor was heashamed to admit that fact. The oft-cited passage from the ‘‘Remarks’’ iscertainly indicative of Kant’s own susceptibility to Schwarmerei, for bothknowledge and morality: he confesses to a ‘‘consuming thirst forknowledge and a restless desire to advance it’’ that only gave way afterreading Rousseau to an even more consuming desire ‘‘to establish therights of man.’’36

As we saw, in certain cases, Kant actually embraced metaphysicalSchwarmerei in the service of morality and eventually even found alimited place for this enthusiasm in the critical system. I want to concludethis chapter by arguing that Kant did intend to return metaphysics to theCritical Philosophy, and that he did so in an interesting and defensible waythat would not require recourse to the postulates. The postulates were, Iwould agree, a failed reintroduction of metaphysical entities that did not,and were not in any case intended to, preserve the autonomy of meta-physical speculation. But skeptical as Kant was about ‘‘enthusiasts,’’ healso believed that the pleasure of disinterested metaphysical speculation –i.e., the pleasure of doing metaphysics not in the service of morals or politics –is a natural and perhaps even necessary mechanism for the advancementof humanity. The arguments of the previous section suggest that there isanother dimension to Kant’s relationship to metaphysics – an aestheticdimension.Kant associates Rousseau with imaginative enthusiasm for moral ideas:

And yet it was Rousseau who awakened him from his dogmatic meta-physical slumbers and caused him to divorce himself from ‘‘elitist’’metaphysical speculation in favor of the practical. There is a certain ironyin this that may have prompted Kant to find a systematic place for the

36 See Velkley, Freedom and the End of Reason, pp. 6–8, 32–43 and Beiser, ‘‘Kant’s IntellectualDevelopment,’’ pp. 43–46, and also Dieter Henrich, ‘‘Kant und Hegel,’’ in Selbstverhaltnisse(Stuttgart: Reclam, 1982), pp. 183–184, on Rousseau’s influence on the ‘‘emotional and imaginativeside’’ of Kant’s thought.


‘‘noble fantast’’ who strives for perfection and ideals that lie at the heart ofthe rationalist metaphysics Kant sought to abandon. In this regard it isworth recalling our earlier discussion (chapter 3) of the third Critique atSection 17 (‘‘On the Ideal of Beauty’’). Kant here describes a kind ofjudging that involves the connecting of intuitive presentations with amoral idea, producing a concrete presentation of what is merely a rationalidea. In chapter 2 I argued that such moral ‘‘imaginings’’ might even serveas a subjective basis of rational hope for moral progress – that is, they mayenable belief in the possibility of realizing moral ideas, supplanting thehypostatisizations of the postulates. In the exhibition of this idea ofrea-son, imagination makes the realization of that idea subjectively possible –‘‘imaginable.’’ Interestingly enough, Kant hints that this will not befound in all people:

in order for this connection to be made visible, as it were, in bodily expression(as an effect of what is inward), pure ideas of reason must be united with a verystrong imagination in someone who seeks so much as to judge, let alone exhibitit (V: 235)

The similarities in this section of the thirdCritique to Kant’s account of the‘‘pathological’’ state of Schwarmerei are clear: the person judging accordingto an ideal of beauty is seeing genuine reality in his/her idea. And yet hereKant is in no way suggesting that taking ideas for reality is deranged. It issimply a way of putting aesthetic judgment to moral use, although pre-sumably only a few will have the requisite powers of imagination to literallyproduce this ideal. In all these cases, Kant’s abandoned metaphysicallongings seem to have found a new home on the borders of his practicalphilosophy; and it is far less alienated than the postulation of the existenceof God and the ‘‘fact’’ of human immortality.In addition to embracing and even incorporating metaphysical long-

ings into his practical philosophy, Kant also finds a way to value meta-physical urges even where they are not directly connected with moralconcerns. The judgment that involves the ideal of beauty involves aninterest of reason, and hence is not itself a purely aesthetic judgment, butwhat I called earlier a kind of ‘‘mixed mode’’ that involves practical aswell as aesthetic elements (V: 236). This distinguishes it from the purejudgments of taste, which are by definition impractical – they involvedisinterested pleasure. As we saw in chapter 3, however, Kant believes thatwe can become interested in the objects of aesthetic reflective judgment‘‘after the judgment has been made as a pure aesthetic one’’ (V: 296). Kantallows two possibilities: one ‘‘empirical’’ and the other ‘‘intellectual.’’ In


chapter 4 I argued that the intellectual interest in the beautiful is aninterest in the embodiment of the idea of a world that is fitted to ourmoral needs, and here again Kant’s repressed desire for metaphysicsemerges: Since reason has an interest, as Kant puts it, in the ‘‘objectivereality’’ of its moral ideas it cannot be a matter of complete indifferenceto us, when contemplating the beautiful, that nature here ‘‘shows a trace orgives a hint that it contains some basis or other for us to assume’’ anorderliness that may be conducive to, or at least not out of sync with, ourmoral desires. As we saw, Kant is suggesting that in the process of makingan aesthetic reflective judgment about the beauty of an object we may cometo care for the nature of which it is but a part, and wemay come to value thewhole of the natural world for its own sake. As moral beings we are chargedwith the task of bringing moral order into the natural world – a demand onhuman nature that hardly seems possible. Thus we are intellectuallyinterested in finding evidence that nature outside us, in what appears to bethe rational orderliness and purposiveness of her beauty, may be suited tothe nature ‘‘within.’’ But nevertheless, for Kant this desire/interest/pleasurein the orderliness of nature manifested in beauty is not itself a moralinterest. It is intellectual, a kind of Platonic love, as it were. Contemplationof the beautiful may give rise to a ‘‘love’’ or admiration for nature in itself,apart from any connection to our moral nature.But what is this pleasure in the ‘‘hint’’ of transcendent rational order

but a sort of metaphysical enthusiasm, suitably distanced by aestheticreflection? The person who comes to love the whole of nature based ondisinterested contemplation of nature’s formal properties bears a closeresemblance to the ‘‘noble fantast’’ – to Plato’s philosopher gazing out ofthe cave, or Rousseau surveying the state of nature, or even Kant himself,awed by the starry heavens above. Taking an intellectual interest in thebeautiful is a deeply ‘‘metaphysical’’ feeling.That the desire for metaphysical speculation is inevitable and una-

voidable is, of course, a recurring theme in the first Critique. Reason seeksthe unconditioned by its very nature. The danger is believing that onehas found it. Tough-minded resistance and staying close to home (stayingclose to the rocky shores of the phenomenal and avoiding the open seaof the noumenal) are the only ways to avoid the lures of the imaginationand the threat of fanaticism. But I hope to have shown that Kant’sattitude toward fanaticism is not uniformly negative. Chapter 1 alreadyintroduced the idea that, for Kant, the mental powers are capableof imaginative development and growth – of progress, we might say. It isworth quoting in full the passage mentioned there in passing. In a


footnote in the First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment (SectionXIII, ‘‘On the Aesthetic of the Power of Judging, Comment’’ (in refer-ence to finding a definition of a feeling of pleasure that is tied to sources apriori)) Kant makes the following surprising admission:

In fact man can desire something most fervently and persistently even thoughhe is convinced that he cannot achieve it, or that it is perhaps even[something] absolutely impossible . . . and it is indeed an important article formorality to warn us emphatically against such empty and fanciful desires,which are often nourished by novels and sometimes also by mysticalpresentations, similar to novels, of superhuman perfections and fanaticalbliss. But some empty desires and longings . . . do have their effect on themind . . . It is indeed a not unimportant problem for anthropology toinvestigate why it is that nature has given us the predisposition to suchfruitless expenditure of our forces as [we see in] empty wishes and longings(which certainly play a large role in human life). It seems to me that here, as inall else, nature has made wise provisions. For if we had to assure ourselves thatwe can in fact produce the object, before the presentation of it coulddetermine us to apply our forces, our forces would presumably remain largelyunused. For usually we do not come to know what forces we have except bytrying them out. So nature has provided for the connection between thedetermination of our forces and the presentation of the object [to be there]even before we know what ability we have, and it is often precisely this effort,which to that very mind seemed at first an empty wish, that produces thatability in the first place. Now wisdom is obligated to set limits to that instinct,but wisdom will never succeed in eradicating it, or [rather] it will never evendemand its eradication.

A ‘‘predisposition’’ to ‘‘empty wishes and longings’’ that appears to be a‘‘fruitless expenditure of our forces’’ could in fact be an enablingmechanism – part of nature’s plan for advancing human capacitiesunbeknownst to them. Something akin to the historical progress enabledby nature via unsocial sociability is at work on the microlevel in indivi-duals, with the imagination goading reason into a development thatrational critique would itself only stymie. Here too nature’s mechanism, akind of ‘‘unrational rationality’’ perhaps, is something Kant not onlytolerates but to a certain extent applauds. Consider the following passagefrom the ‘‘Critique of Teleological Judgment,’’ in which Kant illustrateswhat he calls ‘‘intellectual purposiveness’’ and describes the way in whichit can naturally lead to ‘‘Schwarmerei’’:

It is a true joy to see how eagerly the ancient geometers investigated theseproperties of such lines, not letting themselves be disconcerted if asked by


narrow minds of what use such knowledge might be . . .While these geometerswere thus unwittingly working for posterity, they took delight in a purposivenesswhich, though it belonged to the nature of things, could still be exhibitedcompletely ‘‘a priori’’ in its necessity. Plato, himself a master of this science, wasovercome by enthusiasm [Begeisterung] [when he saw] that the original characterof things is such that it can be discovered without any experience whatever, andthat the mind is able to derive the harmony of beings from their supersensibleprinciple . . . It was this enthusiasm that lifted Plato above empirical concepts toideas that he thought could be explained only by an intellectual community[between ourselves and] the origin of all beings . . . Surely it is pardonable if, asthe result of a misunderstanding this admiration gradually increased to the pointof fanaticism [Schwarmerei].

Kant seems to have finally settled on the view that the desire for meta-physics is useful, and may be embraced by Enlightenment, even ifmetaphysics – the Absolute itself – is off limits. At the same time, thisdesire is not an interest in morals, politics, or utility (Kant also mentions‘‘the properties of numbers, with which the mind plays in music’’ in thispassage). It is, in other words, a disinterested desire for knowledge for itsown sake that leads us to discover apparent purposiveness which in turn‘‘expands the mind’’ and Kant says, ‘‘makes us suspect . . . that there issomething else above and beyond those presentations of sense, somethingwhich, although we do not know it, might hold the ultimate basis for thatharmony [between the form of sensible intuition and our power ofconcepts].’’In both these passages Kant again is advocating, or at least ‘‘apol-

ogizing’’ for, a kind of intellectual disinterested pleasure, that is a com-plete absorption, ‘‘love,’’ or ‘‘delight’’ taken in the nature of the objectstudied, and a lack of concern for the usefulness, gratification, or evengoodness the object might bring. Even where that pleasure leads tofanaticism, Kant is willing to be tolerant. It is difficult not to seesomething autobiographical in these passages, some latent reference to theself-avowed infatuation with metaphysics in the remarks of 1765. Cer-tainly it does not represent a return to his former love, if that meantembracing the existence of objects that transcend experience. Although heflirts with it in the postulates of God and immortality in the secondCritique, what Kant does in the third Critique is far more subtle. Whatreturns here is not the substance of metaphysical speculation but therecognition and repositioning of a legitimate desire for it.Thus Kant’s imagination did not fail, but rather returned as a real force

in the final chapters of the Critical opus. In this respect the Bohmes’


critique is too strong. And, to the extent that Kant did not develop histheory further, the motivation is not entirely bad: Intuitive access to themoral may indeed be creative and important, but it is not unproblematic.Imagination may accompany all sorts of ‘‘undesirable’’ characteristics, justas may understanding. Enormously creative persons may also be perfectlyself-centered, and genius can be evil. Certainly Kant was correct, for thesereasons, to hold that the way in which imagination functioned in con-junction with other capacities was central to deciding its value.It is in answering the question of just how Kant characterizes the

possible ‘‘conjunctions’’ of the imagination and other faculties that theBohmes’ critique cannot be ignored. They are right to point out thatKant never seemed entirely comfortable with the notion of an ‘‘equal’’relation between imagination and reason, even though in his criticalaesthetic theory he had worked out an account of imaginative creativitycompatible with such a relation. The question arises yet again: Why didKant not push the notion of the ideal of beauty, or of aesthetic ideas,further? Why did he not find a more pronounced place for the imagi-nation in the moral? The role enthusiasm plays in Kant’s social theory, asa glimmer of hope in the human quest for moral progress, is a way ofdoing precisely this, but Kant himself never seems fully convinced.37 It istherefore quite possible that part of the answer lies in the Bohmes’hypothesis. In laying out the motivation for Kant’s theoretical develop-ment, we should not dismiss the possibility that, for subconscious reasonsthat are all too transparent two centuries later, Kant simply may not havebeen able to bring himself to unequivocally grant the imagination a statusequal to that of the ‘‘law-governed’’ branches of human experience. Itwas, after all, a faculty associated on the transcendental level with ‘‘law-lessness’’ and, on the empirical level, with the contaminating influences ofthe body, its feelings, and desires. There may well be a sense in whichHeidegger was after all right about one thing: It was not the failure ofKant’s imagination that prevented his finally embracing the ‘‘lower’’faculty, but rather a failure of nerve.In sum, Kant was tempted by, and therefore perhaps extremely cautious

about, enthusiastic, imaginative excess – it was ‘‘not to be wholly esteemed,since passion as such deserves censure’’ (VII: 86) and was one of

37 The Bohmes’ claim that Romanticism is an ‘‘intermezzo’’ is thus not entirely accurate. See ‘‘The‘Earliest System-Programme of German Idealism’ (Berne, 1796): an Ethics,’’ trans. H. S. Harris, inHegel’s Development: Toward the Sunlight 1770–1801 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 510–513.On pp. 249ff., Harris also discusses the fragment’s origin, proposing his own view that it wasauthored by Hegel.


‘‘two rocks’’ between which critical philosophy must navigate (in the firstCritique (B128)). Such caution was not shared by Kant’s ‘‘enthusiastic’’followers. The ‘‘System-Programme’’ fragment (attributed by variousscholars to either Hegel or Holderlin or Schelling, or to all three, or tosome combination thereof) is a good example of an attempt to carry out inpractice some of Kant’s views on the modeling of the ideal in art: ‘‘I amnow convinced,’’ says its author(s), ‘‘that the highest act of Reason, the onethrough which it encompasses all Ideas, is an aesthetic act.’’38 Although itsauthorship is uncertain, seen in light of Kant’s views on the power ofimagination, the early Romantic period for which this fragment is a kind ofmanifesto is easily seen as an extension of Kant’s aesthetic theory.

38 In Friedrich Holderlin: Essays and Letters on Theory, trans. and ed. Thomas Pfau (Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press, 1988), pp. 154–156.


chapter 6

Imaginative reflections of the self inNovalis and Holderlin

The early ( Jena) period of German Romanticism is closely identified withearly German Idealism, and with the philosophy of Johann GottliebFichte. The reason for this is obvious enough. Fichte began lecturing atthe university in Jena in the spring (Summer semester) of 1794, and workpreliminary to his major work, the Wissenschaftslehre, appeared in thatsame year.1 His arrival at Jena was anticipated with great excitement, andamong the Jena cohort of scholars and students who were inspired by hisforceful presence were some whose names were to become inseparablybound up with German Romanticism. The Schlegels, Schelling, Tiek,Novalis, and also Holderlin2 all were part of the Jena milieu in whichFichte’s work was avidly studied and discussed.Fichte’s philosophy was of course very much influenced by Kant’s

Critical philosophy (he was hired at the University at Jena as a ‘‘Kantian’’

1 Uber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre, and the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, Parts Iand II, were published in September 1794. Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre hadalready been completed and was published in May 1794. Cf. Daniel Breazeale, trans. and ed., Fichte:Early Philosophical Writings (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 47–49 for a list ofFichte’s publications and lectures during the Jena period.

2 The question of whether to consider Holderlin a ‘‘Romantic’’ is somewhat difficult to answer. Onthe one hand, he is typically classified in German literature schoolbook texts as part of the late‘‘Klassik,’’ and many scholars would resist labeling him a Romantic. Cf., for example, ManfredFrank: ‘‘Holderlin . . . gehort aber nach der gewohnlichen Meinung nicht in den Rahmen derFruhromantik; und ich will ihn auch nicht durch einen hermeneutischen coup de force zu einemgeistigen Mitbewohner der Jenaer Wohngemeinschaft machen, der er nicht war.’’ In Einfuhrung indie Fruhromantische Asthetik: Vorlesungen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989), p. 249. On the other hand,he is characterized by Ricarda Huch in Die Romantik: Blutezeit, Ausbreitung und Verfall (Hamburg:Rowholt, 1985 [1951]) as a Romantic by disposition (pp. 484ff.). In Die Romantische Schule (Berlin:Gaertner, 1870), Rudolf Haym sees the germ of Romantic philosophy in Holderlin’s ideas, andargues that he belongs for this reason in a history of Romanticism (p. 305) although Holderlin iscalled ‘‘eine Seitenlinie der Romantik’’ (an offshoot of the Romantic), in contrast to Novalis’‘‘Hauptlinie’’ (p. 324).

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to replace Reinhold3), and by Fichte’s concern that a stronger defense ofthe possibility of practical reason was needed than Kant himself gave.4

The need for such a move is suggested by Kant himself in the thirdCritique, where he speaks of a ‘‘gulf’’ separating nature and freedom, andthe need for a ‘‘principle of purposiveness’’ if a causality of freedom is tobe seen as effective in the natural realm.5 As we have seen, this principlefor Kant is never more than regulative, however, and the question of acommon principle uniting theoretical and practical reason in a singlesystem necessarily remains open for Kant. But for Fichte, a defense offreedom required more. The discovery of a unitary account of subjectivity –that is, an account founded upon a single ‘‘constitutive’’ principle –appeared necessary so that practical reason might be firmly situatedwithin the constitution of an overarching system.6

To the extent that Ho lderlin’s and Novalis’ projects are taken to besearches for an account of how human desire and feeling may be unitedwith reflection and reason – that is, to the extent that they are instances ofwhat Dieter Henrich calls ‘‘ Vereinigungsphilosophie’’ 7 – it is plausible tosee both authors as part of a post-Kantian attempt to ‘‘repair’’ difficultiesraised by Kant’s view that subjectivity is irreducibly dual-natured – thatis, part nature and part freedom. It may also be plausible to claim forthese writers a decisive influence on the course of German idealism. 8

Certainly in the case of both Ho lderlin and Novalis, the ‘‘reunification’’of nature and self was an important theme. And yet, this longing for aunification of self and nature ought not to be confused with the project ofgiving a unified systematic account of the self based on a single basicprinciple of consciousness. The latter was Fichte’s project, and one towhich, I will argue, neither Novalis nor Ho lderlin were committed.

3 Dieter Henrich points out that even though Kant was still teaching at Ko nigsberg, by 1792 it wasthe University at Jena that was the center of ‘‘Kantian’’ philosophy (Konstellationen: Probleme undDebatten am Ursprung der idealistischen Philosophie (1789–1795) (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991), p. 229.

4 Cf. Frederick Neuhouser, Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1990 ), chapter 1.

5 Critique of Judgment, V: 175–176.6 That is, Fichte was not content with either a mere regulative principle, or an alleged ‘‘fact’’ of theconsciousness of the moral law. Fichte’s concern was also rooted in his discontent with Kant’sdoctrine of the ‘‘fact of reason’’ in the second Critique. See Neuhouser, Fichte’s Theory, pp. 21–29.

7 Cf. Dieter Henrich, ‘‘Hegel und Holderlin,’’ in Hegel im Kontext (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,1987), pp. 12ff. ‘‘Vereinigungsphilosophie’’ is the term Henrich uses to refer to the strand of thoughtexemplified in modern times by neoplatonism – for instance, by Shaftesbury in England, and byHemsterhuis and Herder in Germany.

8 As Henrich does with Holderlin, ‘‘Hegel und Holderlin,’’ pp. 21–22, in Konstellationen, and mostfully in Der Grund im Beweßtsein: Holderlins Denken in Jena (1794–95) (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta,1992).

Imaginative reflections in Novalis and Holderlin 123

If this were not the case – that is, if it were assumed that Holderlin andNovalis are at one with Fichte in attempting a unified account of theself – then the fact that they do not do so can only be seen as a philo-sophical failure. Moreover, identifying these writers’ goals with Fichte’sobscures the very close affinity between Kant’s later writings on moralityand aesthetics and an important strand of Romanticism. In what follows,I shall argue that both Novalis and Holderlin developed conceptions ofthe self that were in fact far more in the spirit of Kant than of Fichte, andthat their criticisms of Fichte ought to be read as a sort of poetic Kantianresponse to Fichte’s revisionism.9 Both Novalis and Holderlin, I shallargue, adopted positions that are best seen as espousing an essentiallyKantian agnosticism about the ability of the human self to know theultimate ground of its own unity.10

In the ‘‘Doctrine of Virtue’’ Kant claims that ‘‘Only the descent into thehell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness’’11: ‘‘Erforsche, ergrundedich selbst! ’’ (‘‘Explore, fathom yourself!’’). The self-knowledge that Kant isspeaking of here is self-cognition (Selbsterkenntnis), but in this context it isnot, or not simply, a theoretical knowledge of the self that Kant is pre-scribing. It is rather the sort of knowledge that would answer the questions:‘‘What am I, by nature?’’ and ‘‘What do I really want?’’ ‘‘What is really

9 Charles Larmore, in ‘‘Holderlin and Novalis,’’ also points out that both of these poet–philosophers were critical of Fichte’s account of self-knowledge and its original ground in anintellectual intuition, but stops short of labeling this a Kantian insight. He sees the influence ofNiethammer at work on both philosophers, especially in their view of philosophical method as anunending task. This may be true, but it is also a very Kantian notion of philosophy, as I haveargued in chapter 1. Larmore sees Kant’s main contribution to early Romanticism to be via hismoral theory and the ideal of freedom, by contrast with Schiller’s aesthetic theory and the ideal ofunity. Kant’s ultimately rigorist rejection of the role of feeling (‘‘Holderlin and Novalis,’’ p. 143)sets up the tension that early Romantics addressed and attempted to ease. He does not considerKant’s theory of aesthetic reflective imagination, which this book argues constitutes an importantconceptual connection between Kant and the early Romantics (in The Cambridge Companion toGerman Idealism, ed. Karl Ameriks, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 141–160).Richard Eldridge, in The Persistence of Romanticism: Essays in Philosophy and Literature(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), does see a conceptual continuity betweenKant’s insistence on both the fact of human freedom and our inability to know it, and theRomantic enactment of this ‘‘impossible aspiration to freedom’’ (p. 19). In ‘‘The Kantian MoralCriticism of Literature,’’ he explicates Kant’s views of genius and moral hope by reference toliterature in ways that are fully compatible with early Romantic accounts of bridging the gapbetween freedom and nature.

10 As we saw in chapter 5, the classic discussion of this problem in Kant, worked out againstHeidegger’s reading, is to be found in Dieter Henrich, ‘‘The Unity of Subjectivity,’’ first publishedin Philosophische Rundschau 3 (1955), pp. 28–69 as ‘‘Uber die Einheit der Subjektivitat’’ and trans.G. Zoller in Henrich, The Unity of Reason, ed. R. Velkley (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1994), pp. 17–54.

11 Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1991), VI: 441.


motivating me?’’ These are the questions that for Kant are fundamental tothe task of becoming moral and, hence, fully human. Answering them isthe project that all human beings are obliged to set for themselves. In thissame passage, Kant says that all human wisdom (Weisheit) ultimatelyconsists in the agreement of wants and desires with the human being’s finalpurpose, and the path to this final end requires descent into the murkydepths of human nature and motivation. Human wisdom for Kantinvolves both theoretical (including empirical) and practical knowledge:knowledge of what we are, and knowledge of what we should be.12 Fichte’srevision of the Kantian project of ‘‘fathoming’’ the self was an importantdriving force behind Holderlin’s and Novalis’ philosophical conceptions ofthe self. It is, therefore, important to sketch Fichte’s account of self-knowledge before going on to assess the link between the project as Kantconceived it, and the Romantic response to Fichte.

fichte ’ s project

Although Kant showed concern in the third Critique for bridging the gapbetween theoretical and practical reason in his own philosophy, he neverrescinded the separate accounts of these two sides of reason given in thefirst two Critiques. His call for self-knowledge in the ‘‘Doctrine of Virtue’’is intended as a call for individuals to come to know themselves for thepurposes of a practical reason whose necessary systematic connection totheoretical reason has not been demonstrated. But Fichte, setting about toredeem the Kantian project for morality, was determined to give a unitaryaccount of the underlying structure of all consciousness. Thus, what wasfor Kant a call to ‘‘know thyself’’ for the purposes of practical reasoninvolved, for Fichte, giving an account of the very structure of all self-consciousness. An important motivation for Fichte’s account wasprompted by criticism of the view attributed to Kant by Reinhold that allconsciousness is representational.13On this view, self-consciousness is to beunderstood as a representing of ourselves to ourselves, and it therefore

12 The distinction has a contemporary counterpart in Ernst Tugendhat’s distinction betweenSelbstbewußtsein and Selbstbestimmung. Cf. his Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination, trans.Paul Stern (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), pp. 18–38.

13 Cf. Neuhouser Fichte’s Theory, pp.70ff. Neuhouser characterizes the difficulty as an infinite regress ofknowing subjects. Also see Dieter Henrich ‘‘Fichte’s Original Insight’’ (in Contemporary GermanPhilosophy, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982, pp. 15–53), where it is arguedthat ‘‘reflection theory’’ was seen by Fichte to be untenable because it led to circularity and wasquestion-begging. Fichte responded to the charges directed against Reinhold’s version of Kant’s theoryby G.E. Schulze in Aenesidemus, in a review published in 1794 (in Breazeale, Fichte, pp. 59–77).


comes to be seen on the model of a subject examining an object, in this caseitself. But this, so the criticism went, appears to involve a vicious regress ofsubjects. That is, the representational account assumes that self-awarenessrequires that I viewmyself not only as the object of my examination but alsoas subject, as examiner. And the question arises: ‘‘What is the nature of thisexamining subject?’’ At this point, the subject conducting the examinationbecomes the object of examination and so on ad infinitum. It follows,according to the criticism, that if we model self-awareness on our awarenessof tables and chairs and other objects in our world, an account of our ownsubjectivity is literally always just beyond reach.Whether Kant himself held such a view, and whether a representational

account must lead to vicious infinite regress may be questioned. What isimportant, however, is that Fichte took these problems seriously. Hisresponse was to maintain, first of all, that self-consciousness is not amatter of representing the self to the self – it is not a case of consciousnessof an object. Rather, the ‘‘I’’ of self-consciousness, what I discover when Iexamine my own consciousness, is an activity that is at the same time anaccomplishment, eine Tathandlung. This ‘‘fact-act’’14 of immediate, non-representational self-awareness, this intellectual intuition, is what Fichtecalls ‘‘self-positing.’’ The subject capable of representational knowledge isnot itself a representation but rather just is, in Fichte’s words ‘‘that actwhich does not and cannot appear among the empirical states of ourconsciousness, but rather lies at the basis of all consciousness and alonemakes it possible.’’15 The task of philosophy is to ‘‘reflect on what onemight at first sight take it to be, and to abstract from everything that doesnot really belong to it.’’16

The result of this process of reflection and abstraction is an account ofself-consciousness outlined by Fichte in three ‘‘principles.’’ First, the selfposits itself absolutely, and this positing is its existence.17 For Fichte, theactivity of self-positing does not produce an effect that is distinct from itsactivity.18 Rather the self is to be understood as essentially identical with

14 This is Neuhouser’s rendering of Tathandlung, Fichte’s Theory, p. 106.15 Science of Knowledge, ed. and trans. by Peter Heath and John Lachs (New York: Meredith, 1970),

p. 93.16 Heath and Lachs, Science of Knowledge, ibid.17 Heath and Lachs, Science of Knowledge, p. 98: The word ‘‘I’’ is to be understood as ‘‘the self as

absolute subject. That whose being or essence consists simply in the fact that it posits itself asexisting . . . As it posits itself, so it is; and as it is, so it posits itself.’’

18 ‘‘It is at once agent and the product of action; the active, and what the activity brings about; actionand deed are one and the same, and hence the ‘I am’ expresses an Act (Tathandlung)’’ (Heath andLachs, Science of Knowledge, p. 97).


this activity. Second ‘‘opposition in general is posited absolutely by theself.’’19 This means that the self, in addition to positing itself posits ‘‘thenot-self ’’ that is opposed to itself.20 Third, ‘‘Both self and not-selfare posited as divisible.’’ Both self and not-self are posited as partialnegations of each other, they are thus limited by each other, but notannihilated. These principles exhaust what can be accomplished by phi-losophical investigation of the self, Fichte says. The outcome of theinvestigation, in Fichte’s words, is that ‘‘In the self I oppose a divisiblenot-self to the divisible self.’’21 The first moment expresses an immediateconsciousness of the self, an intellectual intuition, a self-positing. Thesecond and third occur as two aspects of one act: the act of division (or‘‘limitation’’) ‘‘occurs immediately, within and alongside the act ofopposition, both are one and the same, and are distinguished only inreflection.’’22 For Fichte,

The self is to be equated with, and yet opposed to, itself. It is all one con-sciousness, but a consciousness that involves an absolute self, on one hand anddivisible limited self on the other.23

This, in very rough outline, is how the theory of self-consciousness stoodwith Fichte in Jena in 1795. Fichte’s own later revisions need not concernus here. Holderlin attended Fichte’s lectures in the last months of 1794,and resumed attendance in the following January, during which time he‘‘engaged in a thorough and critical study of his [Fichte’s] philosophy.’’24

During this time Holderlin was hard at work on his novel Hyperion, andalso produced his only philosophical work, four essay-fragments includ-ing one implicitly critical of Fichte’s conception of absolute being,‘‘Urteil und Sein.’’25 At the same time (early in 1795) that Holderlin waswriting this piece, Novalis was preparing his Fichte-Studien, a large col-lection of observations and commentary that is, in the words of ManfredFrank, ‘‘the most important philosophical contribution of earlyRomanticism.’’26

19 Heath and Lachs, Science of Knowledge, p. 103.20 Cf. Heath and Lachs, Science of Knowledge, p. 104.21 Heath and Lachs, Science of Knowledge, p. 110.22 Heath and Lachs, Science of Knowledge, p. 108.23 Heath and Lachs, Science of Knowledge, p. 109.24 David Constantine, Holderlin (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), p. 48.25 See Henrich, Konstellationen, pp. 59–63, for a discussion of the dating of this important fragment

(‘‘Judgment and Being’’), and for an argument that it dates from Holderlin’s Jena period (1794–5).26 Manfred Frank, Einfuhrung in der Fruhromantische Asthetik: Vorlesungen (Frankfurt am Main:

Suhrkamp, 1989), p. 248.


Central to both Holderlin’s and Novalis’ reception of Fichte wasdissatisfaction with Fichte’s claim that self-consciousness must beunderstood as originating in an act of self-positing, and that the subjectthat is created and maintained by this act is not knowable reflectively via arepresentation, but is rather identified as an immediate consciousness, an‘‘intellectual intuition.’’ In other words, both took issue with Fichte’s‘‘First, Absolutely Unconditioned Principle.’’ As Manfred Frank pointsout, both Holderlin and Novalis found the notion of absolute self-positing inadequate to the task of explaining a genuine unity ofsubjectivity, since the very notion of the ‘‘self-positing itself’’ would seemto involve a further reflexive act. That is, in Frank’s terms ‘‘immediacyand self-reference are incompatible notions.’’27 An account of theimmediately present self cannot be a self-referential account. This dis-agreement led, in the works of Novalis and Holderlin, to doubts aboutthe possibility of a unified account of subjectivity, and to challenges toFichte’s attempt at such an account. I want now to examine each of thesechallenges in turn.

Novalis

In May 1795, Novalis spent an evening in Jena with Fichte and Holderlin at thehouse of Friedrich Niethammer, publisher of the influential PhilosophischesJournal. Niethammer noted in his diary that they talked much about religion andrevelation and concluded that philosophy faced many unanswered questions.28

This meeting apparently convinced Novalis of the need to come to termswith Fichte’s philosophy, a conviction which resulted in over 500manuscript pages of notes, his Fichte-Studien, begun during the fall of1795 and finished the following summer. But although these studiescertainly do represent a kind of homage to the dynamic professor, theyalso contain a strong critique of a central aspect of Fichte’s work.Novalis’ problem with Fichte’s account of self-consciousness depends

on the view that, in his words, ‘‘The I must posit itself as representing[darstellend].’’29 That is, in a very important sense, for Novalis, self-consciousness must be representational. Insofar as self-consciousness is areflection on consciousness, it involves thought, and thought can onlygrasp an object. But Fichte’s ‘‘I’’ is supposed to be non-representing, anoriginal fact-act that can only be described as immediate consciousness, or

27 Frank, Einfuhrung, p. 250. 28 John Neubauer, Novalis (Boston: Twayne, 1980), p. 22.29 Fichte-Studien, in Novalis Schriften, ed. Paul Kluckhohn and Richard Samuel (Stuttgart: Verlag W.

Kohlhammer, 1969), II: 282, # 633: ‘‘Das Ich muß sich, als darstellend setzen.’’


‘‘intellectual intuition.’’ In his discussion of Novalis, Frank argues thatthe very term ‘‘intellectual intuition’’ suggests that, whatever else it maybe, this way of characterizing ‘‘absolute’’ unity cannot truly be absolute,because it involves two distinct components, one intuitive and the otherintellectual or conceptual. So for Novalis, intellectual intuition is viewedrather as a reflection that is directed toward an intuition, or what forNovalis is the same, a feeling.30 Because it is only an attempt to reach anintuition (feeling) in thought, the best it can accomplish is still only areflection of this intuition (feeling). But this is not identical to the feelingitself.With Fichte’s complex account of a unitary self-consciousness that

contains a divided self in mind, Novalis speaks of ‘‘the famous strugglewithin the I.’’31 It is found already in the (allegedly) ‘‘absolute Urhan-dlung’’ of self-positing, which is, Novalis argues, nothing more than anecessary deception of a mediated I that is attempting to be absolute –that is, unmediated – and thus comes into conflict with itself. Hence,what Fichte takes to be an immediate act of self-positing is in fact amediated act. Manfred Frank takes Novalis’ metaphor of the ‘‘mirror ofreflection’’ (Fichte Studies,#11) and his talk of reversal (#36) to heart andexplains the theory as an account of the mind’s attempt to grasp itselfthrough an act of mirroring :

‘‘Reflection’’ indeed, means mirroring, and all mirror images are laterallyreversed. If I hold an object in front of a mirror, right is reflected to me as leftand left as right. Also the light rays that approach the glass appear to move intothe distance and head off in the other direction. Should it be any different withthe reflection with which we recognize our self-consciousness? Novalis asks.

This is an interesting counter to the interpretation of Romanticism madecanonical by Meyer H. Abrams in The Mirror and the Lamp, wherein it isargued that the Romantic conception of the mind is that of a lamp thatshines upon and transforms its object.32 In The Romantic Legacy, CharlesLarmore balks at this reading of Romanticism for reasons similar to thoseI outlined in chapter 1 for Novalis’ definition of romanticizing. In Lar-more’s view, the role played by the mind – or, more specifically, by theimagination – is both reflective and transformative on the Romantic view.

30 Frank, Einfuhrung, p. 253. 31 Fichte-Studien, II: 127, #32.32 The Mirror and the Lamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953). See also Abrams’ Natural

Supernaturalism Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: W.W. Norton,1973), esp. chapter 7.2, ‘‘Freshness of Sensation,’’ where he points to Novalis’ notion of whatAbrams calls ‘‘an unlocalized irradiation of consciousness and an incandescent item of senseperception’’ (p. 387).


In his words, it has a ‘‘dual, creative-responsive function’’ that operates‘‘at one and the same time.’’33 Although his argument is intended to holdfor Romanticism generally, it is especially true of Novalis who, as weshould recall, defined ‘‘romanticizing’’ as a two-pronged movement fromthe ordinary to the extraordinary (corresponding to Larmore’s ‘‘creative’’function) and at the same time from the extraordinary and mysterious tothe ordinary (Larmore’s ‘‘responsive’’ function).Since the latter move is rarely attributed to Romanticism, Frank’s

account of the mind as ‘‘mirroring’’ ourselves in Novalis is particularlyinsightful. For Novalis, he argues, we ‘‘see’’ self-intuition (‘‘Selbstgefuhl ’’)reflected in the mirror of thought and conclude that we have reached it.But, in fact, we are fooled: We have only the ‘‘mirror image’’ of self-intuition, not that intuition itself. Like any mirroring, self-reflectionpresents us with an illusion of ourselves that, Novalis says, requires asecond act of reflection if we are not to be misled into thinking we haveattained objective knowledge of what is essentially non-objective. Thissecond reflective act ‘‘corrects’’ the illusion of the first act that we had ofourselves, and shows us, not the self, but our ignorance of it. Novalis’romantic–philosophic conception of the self holds that we are incapableof grasping the absolute ground of the self. Since Novalis believes that‘‘striving after the thought of a ground is the ground of philosophy’’ and‘‘all philosophizing must end in an absolute ground,’’34 this would seemto spell the end of all philosophizing, and for Novalis, in one sense this istrue: ‘‘The borders of feeling are the borders of philosophy.’’But in another sense, he argues, philosophy may recognize its own

absolute when it recognizes that no absolute ground is given. Even in theface of giving up the search for the absolute – or rather, precisely becauseof giving it up – the ‘‘drive to philosophize’’ can never be satisfied, andthere arises an ‘‘unending free activity.’’ This ‘‘unending free activity inus,’’ Novalis says, is ‘‘the only possible absolute that can be given us.’’35

Thus philosophy can only ever provide a negative account of the self: Thedrive to unify feeling and thought is the only unifying characteristic of theself.36 But since this negative characteristic is indeed one aspect of ournature, it is at least not a falsified account of the human self. Wherephilosophy must stop, however, poetry may begin.There is no definitive answer to whether or not Novalis believed that

poetry could do what philosophy could not – that is, unveil the absolute,

33 Charles Larmore, The Romantic Legacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 21, 31.34 Fichte-Studien, II: 269, #566. 35 Ibid. 36 Cf. Fichte-Studien, II: 126–127, #32.


and portray its very essence.37 It seems unlikely that he intended toaccomplish so much in his own work. Rather, Novalis’ poetic achieve-ment is his ability to portray artistically what he believed followed fromhis views on the essentially negative nature of self-consciousness. That is,his literary work is not an ‘‘unveiling’’ of the absolute, but rather anattempt to do ‘‘poetic philosophy’’38 – to understand the self and itsworld not in abstractions but by romanticizing them. ‘‘Romanticizing’’and ‘‘Romantic philosophy,’’ on Novalis’ definition, is the ‘‘operation’’ ofportraying the unexpected, of ‘‘interrupting’’ ordinary life by ‘‘potentia-lizing’’ the objects of the world, showing them not for what they are butfor what they are not – what they are only potentially. On this approach,the ordinary is always seen in the light of the ‘‘unending’’ and, by thesame token, the unknown, mysterious, and unending, are portrayed asordinary.39 Such a world is a ‘‘Verkehrung,’’ an inversion, but it is also asetting right, just as the second reflection of self-consciousness sets rightthe illusion of self-recognition.‘‘Die Welt muß romantisirt werden,’’ ‘‘The world must be romanti-

cized,’’ says Novalis.40 Romanticizing, because it portrays what is merelypotential, and hence in effect portrays what it is not, is an illusion orinversion that sets right the original illusion of being at home in theworld.Heinrich von Ofterdingen, with its simple straightforward narrative style

used to depict a free-floating, kaleidoscopic set of illusion, dream, andsymbols, is a perfect example of Novalis’ doctrine of corrective inversion.Perhaps because it is quite literally a model of Novalis’ idea of romanticphilosophizing, and hence of theory in practice, the secondary literatureon this novel is voluminous.41 Here I will simply suggest how Heinrich,the protagonist of this piece, can be said to ‘‘figure’’ Novalis’ conceptionof the self. Heinrich is no ordinary protagonist, in spite of the fact that heis indeed the central figure of the novel. Heinrich’s ‘‘development’’ isalmost entirely an internal, subjective one, and he is passive to the pointof near absence in many of the chapters. Much, if not most, of the actionof the novel does not involve him – or, perhaps it is better to say, itinvolves him only as the blank screen on which the fables, allegories, andmagical images that constitute the bulk of the work are played out.

37 Cf. Herbert Uerlings, Friedrich von Hardenberg, genannt Novalis: Werk und Forschung (Stuttgart:Metzler, 1991), p. 118.

38 Ibid. 39 Cf. Frank, Einfuhrung, pp. 272ff., and Fichte-Studien, II: 545, #105.40 Fichte-Studien, ibid. 41 See Uerlings, Friedrich von Hardenberg, pp. 389ff.


Indeed, Heinrich has practically no ‘‘psychological profile’’ – he israther a world unto himself in which dream, fantasy, and reality blur – or,better, in which it makes no difference which is which. Heinrich is avessel whose only anchor, if it can even be called that, is his own passivesubjectivity. But if Novalis’ Heinrich is a romanticized, unanchored, andeven alienated self-consciousness compared to the full-blooded andmany-faceted character one comes to expect in novels, still Heinrich’s is a‘‘pleasantly’’ alienated self-consciousness.42 It includes occasionalmoments of ecstatic feeling that occur most often in dreams, or in love,when the self (not always Heinrich) recognizes something ‘‘unending’’ initself. These moments, for Novalis, are the result of a reinversion of ourinverted sense of self and as such they are moments (‘‘Augenblick’’ ) ofinsight into the absolute. The self, in these felicitous moments of‘‘renunciation of the Absolute,’’ when it recognizes its own inability toattain transcendence through reflection, produces in itself

the unending free activity . . . the only possible absolute that can be given to us,and which we find only through our inability to attain and to recognize anAbsolute.43

This pleasurable negative experience of the absolute bears little resem-blance to Fichte’s original Tathandlung. It does, however very closelyresemble the Kantian sublime:

For what is sublime in the proper meaning of the term, cannot be contained inany sensible form but concerns only ideas of reason, which though they cannot beexhibited (dargestellt) adequately, are aroused and call to mind this very inadequacy,which can be exhibited in sensibility.44

A little further on, Kant emphasizes that the sublime is an experience ofwhat is absolutely great in us. Our inability to represent to ourselves theabsolutely great outside us is the condition of this recognition:

Yet this inadequacy is the arousal in us of the feeling that we have within us asupersensible power, and what is absolutely great is not an object of sense, but isthe use that judgment makes naturally of a certain object so as to [arouse] this(feeling).45

One might say that Novalis’ Ofterdingen is full of just these sorts of‘‘negative’’ epiphanies – momentarily transcendent experiences thatamount to ‘‘sublimations’’ of the self.

42 III: 685–688: ‘‘Die Kunst, auf eine angenehme Weise zu befremden, einen Gegenstand fremd zumachen und doch bekannt und anziehend, das ist die romantische Poetik.’’

43 Fichte-Studien, II: 269, #566. 44 Critique of Judgment, p. 245 (emphasis added).45 Critique of Judgment, V: 250.


holderlin

At the time of their meeting at Niethammer’s home, Holderlin was onthe verge of departure from Jena, had already attended Fichte’s lectures inthe Winter semester, and had almost certainly already developed hisinfluential critique of the latter in the fragment ‘‘Judgment and Being.’’Holderlin came to his study of Fichte immersed in questions of aestheticsfrom his recent engagement with Kant’s third Critique and Plato’sPhaedrus, and Schiller’s ‘‘Uber Anmuth und Wurde.’’46 In one of thephilosophical fragments dating from this time, he is concerned to accountfor the unity of ‘‘necessity and freedom, the restricted and the unrest-ricted, the sensuous and the sacred’’ in the faculty of desire.47 Here hespeaks longingly of a ‘‘morality of instinct’’ that resembles a kind ofintellectual intuition, an attunement of imagination and desire thatnaturally conforms to the moral law, uncoerced. But, he also admits, such‘‘attunement would then be merely contingent, a matter of fortune.’’ Thelonged-for unity, though possible contingently, is for that very reasonunfit for systemic development. At least at this period in his philosophicaldevelopment, Holderlin seems at once driven by what Henrich called‘‘Vereinigungsphilosophie’’ and at the same time by skeptical doubts aboutits possibility.Doubts about the possibility of a systematic account of a ‘‘morality of

instinct’’ underlie Holderlin’s disagreement with Fichte. But these doubtsmust be seen in light of his explication of ‘‘Being’’ in the fragmentaryessay ‘‘Judgment and Being’’:

Being – expresses the connection between subject and object. Where subject andobject are united altogether and not only in part, that is, united in such a mannerthat no separation can be performed without violating the essence of what is tobe separated, there and nowhere else can be spoken of Being proper, as is the casewith intellectual intuition.48

From this, it follows that Fichte’s account of intellectual intuition mustbe incorrect, because it refers not to a primordial, essentially indivisibleconsciousness of Being, but only to a self-positing activity that involves anact of opposition and reunification through a concept of limitation ordivisibility.49 The unity of Fichte’s is thus, for Holderlin, a derivativeunity: an identity, but not an absolute unity.

46 Cf. Friedrich Holderlin, Essays and Letters on Theory, trans. Thomas Pfau (Albany: State Universityof New York Press, 1988), p. 11, and Haym, Die Romantische Schule, pp. 301–302.

47 ‘‘On the Law of Freedom,’’ in Holderlin, Essays, pp. 33–34.48 Holderlin, Essays, p. 37. 49 Cf. Heath and Lachs, Science of Knowledge, p. 110.


The fact that Fichte did not intend to suggest this sort of ‘‘primordialcoherence’’50 is of less importance here than is the fact that Holderlin feltthat such primordial coherence was necessary to ground the conception ofa unified self, and that without it the self was, quite literally, lost. Givensuch constraints on what can count as an integrated self,51 it is no surprisethat for Holderlin it is not clear that the self can ever come to know itself.To the extent that self-knowledge is possible, it must involve that which‘‘antedates any structure of synthesis, identity and consciousness.’’52 Thatmeans, for Holderlin, that self-knowledge must be aesthetic. Influencedby his reading of Kant’s theory of beauty, and by his friendships withSchiller and Schelling, Holderlin developed a ‘‘doctrine of beauty’’ thatmade the aesthetic the unifying principle of human experience. Beauty,for Holderlin, is the ideal – the visible model of perfected humanity. Inthe Hyperion he speaks of ‘‘beings of beauty, or what is the same thing,human beings.’’53 Beauty bespeaks the divinity in the human being: ‘‘Thehuman being is a god as soon as he is human. And once he is a god, he isbeautiful.’’54 For Holderlin, the experience of the beautiful is the onlyintegrating experience for the self at odds with itself.This doctrine does not set Holderlin apart from Schiller or Schelling.

What is distinctive to Holderlin is his emphasis on the attainment of thebeautiful being only a contingent matter, depending as it does on natureand the degree of sensitivity of the individual:

Beauty forsakes the life of men, flees upward into Spirit; the Ideal becomes whatNature was . . . By this, by the Ideal, this rejuvenated divinity, the few recognizeone another and are one.’’55

Unity of subjectivity is not granted everyone, by any means. The ‘‘few’’ ofwhom Holderlin speaks here, of course, are artists – they are the mostdeeply sensitive of souls. ‘‘The first child of divine beauty is art.’’56 Andthough in Hyperion the hope is expressed that these few great souls willinaugurate a ‘‘second age,’’ this utopian enthusiasm is edged throughout

50 Holderlin, Essays, pp. 20ff.51 This aspect of Holderlin’s thought, Henrich points out, probably owes much to his ‘‘projection of

Spinoza onto the Science of Knowledge’’ (Konstellationen, p. 74).52 Holderlin, Essays, p. 26.53 Friedrich Holderlin, Hyperion or the Hermit in Greece, trans. W. R. Trask (New York: Ungar,

1965), p. 90.54 Hyperion, p. 91. 55 Hyperion, p. 76.56 Hyperion, p. 91.


with a sense of disillusionment. In a remarkable chapter early in thenovel, Hyperion writes to Bellarmin, ‘‘What is man?’’:

How does it happen that the world contains such a thing, which ferments like achaos or moulders like a rotten tree, and never grows to ripeness? . . . To theplants he says: I, too, was once like you! And to the pure stars: I shall become likeyou in another world! – meanwhile he falls to pieces and keeps practicing his artson himself, as if, once it had come apart, he could put a living thing togetheragain like a piece of masonry . . . yet what he does will always be artifice.57

Even the artistic self – or, rather, especially the artistic self, who has ‘‘feastedat the table of the gods’’ and felt ‘‘full, pure beauty’’ must face the ines-capable fact of its own fragmented condition. The poet is bound to bedisillusioned, Hyperion tells his friends, because, having known the feelingof the beautiful, that which is thought is revealed to be disharmonious, fullof contradiction and imperfection. Beauty is never thought.58

Holderlin did not see beauty as a consolation, nor, like Novalis, assomething to be attained in moments of poetic exaltation; a gift that,when received lends a feeling of coherence to the self, redeeming it inmoments of poetic magic: ‘‘Overall [the poet] must accustom himself notto try to attain within individual moments the totality that he strives forand to bear the momentarily incomplete.’’59 For Holderlin, unlikeNovalis, the poetic can never be a purely pleasant alienation because itrests on feeling, and feeling is suffering as well as pleasure. Indeed, in thenovel, the experience of suffering seems to be assigned to Hyperion, if notas a duty, then as a matter of necessity for his romantic spirit. In thesecond part of the novel, Hyperion asks his correspondent: ‘‘Why do Irecount my grief to you, renew it . . . ?’’60

The entire novel is a narrative of alternating suffering and rejoicing, anattempt to portray the depths and heights that human feeling can attain.Feeling, Holderlin says, is the poet’s ‘‘bridle and spur.’’61 Thus it istempting to conclude that feeling is what redeems the self, for Holderlin,and that even if the aesthetic is not always a consolation to the divided selfit may still, in a more heroic sense, save it. But this, too, would fail tocapture Holderlin’s stance. Although elevated, intense feeling may givethe artistic spirit glimpses of absolute Being, it is ultimately unable tounify the individual self, and in this very important sense cannot be

57 Hyperion, p. 57. 58 Cf. Hyperion, p. 93.59 ‘‘Reflection,’’ in Holderlin, Essays, p. 46 60 Hyperion, p. 114.61 ‘‘Reflection,’’ in Holderlin, Essays, p. 45.


redemptive. In his sketch ‘‘The Ground for ‘Empedocles,’ ’’ he says of hishero’s fate:

In order to organize life, he had to strive seizing it with his being at its innermost;with his spirit he had to try to master the human element, all tendencies anddrives, their soul, the inconceivable, the unconscious, the involuntary in them;precisely in so far as his will, his consciousness, his spirit, transcended the ordinaryand human boundaries of knowledge and effectiveness, it had to lose itself andbecome objective . . . the objective resounded the more purely and deeply withinhim the more open his soul lay, precisely because the spiritually active man hadgiven himself away, and this in the particular as well as in the universal.62

The experience of unified consciousness, in those rare moments when itoccurs, for Holderlin is also tragic because it forces the individual to theuniversal, and hence beyond what the individual can ever be. To para-phrase Cassirer, the vessel through which the self announces itself must,because it is singular and limited, itself be broken.63 Unified conscious-ness is also the death of the individual. If Holderlin’s project is the questfor such unity, then its success would appear to be the death of the self.One feels this in the protagonist Hyperion, who in the course of theentire novel never becomes a fully fledged character. He is a heroicstruggling ‘‘figure’’ but never an integrated personality. The onlyredemption may lie, for Holderlin, in the poetic process itself. Here atleast, the artist may create, in Eric L. Santner’s words, ‘‘the possibilities ofnew modes of discoursing and being, new modes of fortifying the self forits dialog with the other.’’64

conclusion

Almost as if he had Holderlin and Novalis in mind (in fact, he was oftenthinking of Klopstock), Kant proclaimed time and again the dangers ofthe novel, the Roman. Too much of this sort of reading, he warns, loosensone’s grip on reality, and leads to fantasizing, which is closely related toenthusiasm and even madness. As we have already seen, Kant advocated aguarded attitude towards ‘‘empty and fanciful desires, which are oftennourished by novels and sometimes also by mystical presentations, similar

62 ‘‘The Ground for ‘Empedocles,’ ’’ in Thomas Pfau, Friedrich Holderlin: Essays and Letters onTheory (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), p. 60.

63 Cf. Ernst Cassirer, ‘‘Holderlin und der deutsche Idealismus,’’ in Holderlin: Beitrage zu seinemVerstandnis in unserm Jahrhundert, Alfred Kelletat, ed. (Tubingen: Mohr, 1961), p. 115.

64 Eric L. Santner, Introduction to Friedrich Holderlin: Hyperion and Selected Poems (New York:Continuum, 1990), pp. xxxv–xxxvi. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer at Cambridge UniversityPress for suggesting this way of interpreting Holderlin’s project in a less dismal light.


to novels, or superhuman perfections and fanatical bliss.’’65 But then,almost as if he knew there would be no holding back the Romantic questfor a unified consciousness, he added the claim already examined inchapter 5 – namely, that it is important ‘‘to investigate why it is thatnature has given us the predisposition to such fruitless expenditure of ourforces as [we see in] empty wishes and longings (which certainly play alarge role in human life).’’ His hypothesis was that if we had to be surethat attaining an object was within our power before we let ourselvesdesire it, many powers we in fact have would remain unused. Thus,nature wisely provides us with desires that call forth great effort ‘‘evenbefore we know what ability we have, and it is often precisely this effort,which to that very mind seems at first an empty wish, that producesthat ability in the first place.’’ It is wise to be on guard, but equallywise to recognize that nature’s provisions should be respected, Kantconcludes.It is natural to conclude from this that ‘‘wisdom’’ will desire what

Novalis would later call the ‘‘drive to be an ‘I.’ ’’66 Since Kant believed, aswe saw at the outset, that wisdom also requires that we fathom ourselves,it is a very good thing for him that we also have the drive to do so. Theworks of both Holderlin and Novalis embody this tendency to strive forwhat is not, to overstep, ‘‘in a fruitless expenditure of forces,’’ the boundsof what may be reasonably desired. Hence, for this very reason theirRomantic contributions appear to be a step along the Kantian path toself-knowledge, and a natural and important continuation of the Kantianproject.These poet-philosophers may be seen as following the injunction to

fathom the self, to determine what the self is not, but could be, in orderto further the Kantian project of determining what the self should be. Butas Kant was acutely aware, this drive to self-knowledge has its costs.Holderlin’s and Novalis’ Romanticism holds out the promise of dis-covering new forms of consciousness, and hence of ‘‘refiguring’’ the self,but where it is not suitably tempered by a sense of its own limitations itrisks the erasure of the very ‘‘self’’ it attempts to fathom. Novalis’ insis-tence on the momentary nature of imaginative epiphanies, and on thecorresponding recognition of the ordinary, was one approach to theproblem that vexed Kant. In the case of Holderlin, the solution was to be

65 Critique of Judgment, p. 420. 66 Fichte-Studien, II: 126–127, #32.


found in art, in his case in the process of poetry. It was a solution thatdepended on artistic genius, and as his own final tragedy suggests, wasonly partially successful. In the concluding chapter 7 we shall examine thedegree to which Novalis’ and Kant’s views on imaginative genius con-verge and finally gesture towards a new understanding of philosophy itselfin early German Romanticism.


chapter 7

Novalis’ Kantianism and Kant’s Romanticism

Doch das Paradies is verriegelt und der Cherub hinter uns; wirmussen die Reise um die Welt machen, und sehen, ob es vielleichtvon hinten irgendwo wieder offen ist.(Kleist, ‘‘Uber das Marionetten Theater’’ (On the Marionette Theater))(Paradise is barred and the cherub behind us; we must travel around theworld, and see if maybe somewhere it is open again from the back.)1

Kleist summed up the mix of awe and profound disappointment thatmany intellectuals in the 1780s and 1790s must have felt in the wake ofKant’s philosophy. For although in it human cognitive activity takes onnew constitutive powers that define the boundaries of the real, the cost ofshifting this constitutive power to human subjectivity was high: loss ofaccess to a world beyond appearances. In spite of Kant’s claim to havemade ‘‘room for faith,’’ knowledge of the world of things ‘‘in themselves’’was barred, so it seemed, once and for all. In his fictional essay ‘‘On theMarionette Theater,’’ Kleist frames the philosophical problem ofknowledge as a problem within the context of performance art. Hisnarrator interviews a renowned dancer who aims to move with absolutegrace across the floor, freely and without alienation, but recognizes thatthe impossibility of achieving his goal is rooted in self-consciousness. Thegreat dancer tells Kleist’s narrator that the artist should look to themarionette as a model of unselfconscious expression of absolute, una-lienated movement.The dancer’s remarks are, of course, a metaphor for human striving

after that which is beyond the pale of possible human experience: absoluteknowledge and perfect self-expression. Kleist’s essay captures the problemthat seemed almost without exception to plague philosophers in theimmediate wake of Kant’s relativization of knowledge to the humancapacity for it. Kleist is not typically classified as a Romantic, but his call

1 Heinrich von Kleist: Werke in einem Band (Munich: Karl Hanser Verlag, 1966), pp. 802–807.

139

for a ‘‘back-door’’ strategy is characteristic of much of Early GermanRomanticism, and describes the major project of this movement’s mostfascinating figure, Friedrich von Hardenberg, known as Novalis. Kant’sphilosophy was a fact of life for Novalis and the philosophers and poets ofthe famous Jena circle. Indeed, the ‘‘Copernican’’ paradigm in philosophywas so well entrenched that in his encyclopedic ‘‘Allgemeine Brouillon’’Novalis could speak of the Copernican turn as established fact:

Here Kant played the role of Copernicus and explained the empirical I alongwith its outer world as a planet, and placed the moral law or the moral I at thecenter of the system – and Fichte has become the Newton – the secondCopernicus – the inventor of the laws of the system of the inner world (III: 335).2

Novalis was as convinced as was Kant that the latter’s new philosophy ofthe subject had dissolved past errors in philosophy once and for all. Alongwith most of the intellectuals of his circle, Novalis abandoned thevaulting structures of Leibnizian and Wolffian rationalism for shelter inthe Kantian alternative account of what the human mind can know. Kanthimself recognized that human beings would forever be tempted to striveafter the absolute, or ‘‘unconditioned,’’ but in the end his tendency was tobe rather sanguine about the fact that everyday cognition, science, andeven ethics, would have to do without final metaphysical answers. At thesame time, as we saw in chapter 5, this great purveyor of rationalisthumanism betrayed a fondness, even sympathy for metaphysical fanta-sizing that has been almost wholly ignored by commentators on hiswork.3 In the last section of this chapter I shall return to Kant to examinethe place that metaphysical speculation retains in his system, and toconclude the argument of this book for the continuity between his systemand early German Romanticism.It has become a cliche that German idealism with its pyrotechnical

metaphysics jettisoned Kantian limits on knowledge. Early GermanRomanticism is typically cast in this same unflattering role, with theadditional offense of ‘‘irrationalism and mysticism’’ added to theindictment. In fact, however, many if not all of the early GermanRomantics associated with the Jena circle renounced metaphysical

2 All references to Novalis’ works are to Novalis Schriften: Die Werke Friedrich von Hardenbergs eds.Paul Kluckhohn and Richard Samuel (Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1965). The second andthird volumes, ed. Richard Samuel together with Hans-Joachim Mahl and Gerhard Schulz, containNovalis’ philosophical writings, published in 1981 and 1983, respectively.

3 Kant was not always comfortable with this attitude; throughout his life he was fascinated byapparently ‘‘supernatural’’ phenomena. See Hartmut Bohme and Gernot Bohme’s Das Andere derVernunft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996), and chapter 5 of this book.


knowledge claims and speculative thinking in harsher terms than didKant himself.4 No one better exemplifies this strict adherence to theCopernican turn than does Novalis, whose philosophical efforts culmi-nate in the elevation of aesthetics and the practice of art as the embo-diment of human freedom. I will begin, then, with a look at thesurprisingly modest metaphysical underpinnings of this great Romanticpoet and philosopher. In so doing I hope to exonerate Novalis, and byextension the early German Romantic circle, of charges of metaphysicalexcess and irrationalism. In the second part of the chapter I look at theconsequences of Novalis’ views for an account of the nature of ordinarycognition.

novalis ’ kantianism

As we saw in chapter 6, in 1795–96 Novalis undertook a serious study ofFichte’s Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre) after having met Fichte,along with Holderlin, in the home of a mutual friend in Jena. The set ofnotes on Fichte which comprised the bulk of the large handwrittenmanuscript produced by Novalis has been called ‘‘the most significantphilosophical work of early Romanticism.’’5 In it, Novalis comes to gripswith the early philosophy of this thinker who had claimed ascendancy toKant’s throne in German philosophy. There is no doubt that Fichte’sphilosophy was of great importance to Novalis, yet what emerges in theFichte Studies is not a student’s reworking of the master’s ideas, but rathera persistent criticism of the fundamental assumption of Fichte’s majorwork. Whereas Fichte had argued that the inner world of the self may beaccessed initially via an intellectual intuition of self-activity, in his FichteStudies Novalis repeatedly insists that no immediate knowledge of theself, as it is in itself, is possible. Chapter 6 discussed Novalis’ metaphor ofmirroring as an account of human self-knowledge, but he also argues thatself-observation is a kind of ‘‘eavesdropping on the self’’ in order to learnabout it. By ‘‘learning,’’ he says,

4 In this book I deal only with Novalis and his circle of early German Romantics. The laterRomantics, especially those associated with Heidelberg, but even including Schlegel and Tieck intheir later period are not under discussion here.

5 Manfred Frank, in Einfuhrung in die Fruhromantische Asthetik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,1989), p. 248. Novalis’ work, which included the so-called ‘‘Fichte Studies’’ and ‘‘Kant Studies’’comprised about 500 pages of handwritten notes that were left unpublished until 1901, when ErnstHeilborn brought out a substantial selection of the notes. The entire set, however, remainedunpublished and was lost to scholarship for thirty years between 1930 and 1960, when it resurfacedat an auction in New York.

Novalis’ Kantianism and Kant’s Romanticism 141

we mean absolutely nothing but intuiting an object and impressing it along withits characteristics upon ourselves. It [the self] would thus become an object again.No, philosophy cannot be self-observation, because it would not then be whatwe are after [i.e., it would not be immediately known as subject: JK]. It isperhaps self-feeling. What then is feeling? . . . It can only be observed inreflection – the spirit of feeling is then gone. The producer can be inferred fromthe product in accordance with the schema of reflection.(II: 113–114, #15)

Novalis goes on to argue that since feeling cannot represent itself, andreflection can only represent feeling in thought, our intuition of our Self isnever of a thing as it is ‘‘in itself.’’ It is necessarily always mediated or‘‘inferred,’’ a synthetic product of feeling and reflection (II: 114, #16).Novalis may have honored Fichte with the title of the ‘‘second Coperni-cus,’’ but this did not prevent his rejecting the Fichtean central assumptionof the inner world of the self, namely that the ‘‘absolute’’ self can be known.Not only does Novalis reject claims of access to the ‘‘absolute I,’’ his‘‘positive’’ account of the self resembles Kant’s notion of the noumenal, orthing in itself, as a limiting notion. As von Molnar points out, Novalistypically refers to the concept of the ‘‘I’’ as a regulative one:6

I – has, perhaps, like all ideas of reason merely regulative, classificatory use –Nothing at all in relation to reality. (II: 258, #502)

Referring to Fichte’s notion of a Tathandlung, the originary intuitive actof positing of the self, Novalis says,

Every state, every fact-act [Tathandlung] presupposes an other . . . all quest for aFirst [genus] is nonsense – it is a regulative idea. (II: 254, #472)

Novalis’ reaction to Fichte places limitations on the power and reach ofthe intellect that are essentially Kantian in spirit. Especially as a student ofthe natural sciences, Novalis was critical of metaphysical speculation, andas we saw in chapter 1, he insisted that although a ‘‘tendency to seek theuniversal’’ [Universaltendenz] is essential to the scholar,

One must never, like a phantast, seek the undetermined – a child of fantasy – anideal. One proceeds from determinate task to determinate task. An unknownlover of course has a magical charm. Striving for the unknown, the un-determined, is extremely dangerous and disadvantageous. Revelation must notbe forced. (III: 601, #291)

Given these strong views on the unknowability of the self as it is in itself,it is not surprising that Novalis’ intense study of Fichte led him back

6 Geza von Molnar argues for this point in Novalis’ ‘‘Fichte Studies’’: The Foundations of His Aesthetics(The Hague: Mouton, 1970), pp. 41–42.


again to a study of Kant. The very short collection of notes and com-mentary now collected under the title the ‘‘Kant Studien’’ (1797) wasfound together with a group of notes on the Dutch philosopher Hem-sterhuis (1721–90).7 Probably his renewed interest in Kant’s views on thenatural sciences was piqued by Hemsterhuis’ frequent reference to theMetaphysical Foundations of the Natural Sciences in Hemsterhuis’‘‘Metaphysics of Nature,’’ but given his abrupt turn away from Fichteanidealism it is likely that he turned to Kant’s works to support hisdeveloping views on the limits of philosophizing about metaphysicalmatters.8

However, a set of very brief notes in this collection suggests that itcould also have been another Kantian text, and a far more obscure one,that may have provided Novalis with impetus for the further develop-ment of his philosophy as well as his artistic enterprise. Amidst the noteson Kant’s philosophy were also found notes on Kant’s reply to SamuelThomas Sommerring, a well-known medical doctor and physiologistfrom Frankfurt. Sommerring’s book ‘‘Uber das Organ der Seele’’ raisedthe question of the ‘‘seat of the soul [der Sitz der Seele],’’ or the location ofthe mind in the body. The book was published with a short appendixwritten by Kant and sent to Sommerring specifically for the book:9

If I am supposed to make the place of my soul, that is, of my absolute self,intuitable somewhere in space, then I must perceive myself through that verysame [spatial intuition] through which I also perceive the matter right aroundme . . . Now the soul can only perceive via inner sense, but the body (whetherinternal or outer) can only perceive through outer sense; hence it can determineabsolutely no place for itself, because in order to do this it would make itself theobject of its own outer intuition and would have to transpose [versetzen] itselfoutside itself – which is a contradiction. So the desired solution of the problemof the seat of the soul which is demanded of metaphysics leads into an impossibledimension . . . ; and one can, with Terence, call to those who would undertakeit: ‘‘You wouldn’t succeed any more than if you were to try to be rationallyinsane’’ [‘‘Nihilo plus agas, quam si des opera ut cum ratione insanias’’]. (Kant, letterto Sommerring, 1796)

7 See Hans-Joachim Mahl’s introduction to the Kant and Eschenmeyer Studies, Novalis Schriften II:334. According to Mahl, based on the handwriting and the type and format of the paper, thesenotes and commentary were probably written during or immediately following his work onHemsterhuis, and within a year after finishing the Fichte Studies in 1796.

8 Mahl, p. 332. The fact that his focus of study seems to have been primarily the Preface andIntroduction to the first Critique as well as the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science alsosupports this view.

9 See the letter to Sommerring dated August 10, 1795, Kants gesammelte Schriften, Prussian Academyedition, XII.3: 30–35.


To Sommerring’s question, Kant replies that the spatial location [der Ort]of the soul, where ‘‘soul’’ is understood as ‘‘my absolute self’’ would haveto be perceived in the same way we perceive matter around us, namelythrough outer sense (this includes our physical ‘‘insides’’ as well). But theabsolute self can perceive itself only through inner sense, non-spatially,and therefore cannot determine a spatial place for itself. For the soul tomake itself the object of its own outer intuition would mean that it wouldhave to set [versetzen] its non-spatial being ‘‘outside’’ itself in space – andthat is a contradiction, Kant says. The demand that metaphysics solve theproblem of the seat of consciousness leads it into incoherence, Kantcontinues, and he admonishes would-be metaphysical speculators with aquotation from Terence, the context of which involves advice to aspurned lover to give up on the idea of winning the heartless object of hisdesire through reasoning.The question of the ‘‘seat’’ of consciousness raised by Sommerring, as

well as an apparent dissatisfaction with Kant’s deflationary response,might well be explained by Novalis’ strong emphasis on the importanceof feeling as a central aspect of self-knowledge. Although Novalis makesno independent comment in his notes on the Sommerring passage, laterin his notes on the first Critique the question of the ‘‘seat’’ of con-sciousness is addressed obliquely:

The concept of sense. According to Kant, pure mathematics and pure naturalscience refer to the form of outer sensibility – What science refers to the form ofinner sensibility? Is there yet extra-sensible knowledge? Is there still another wayopen for getting outside oneself and to get to others, or to be affected by them?(II: 46)

This getting ‘‘outside ourselves’’ is in all probability a reference to Kant’sclaim in the reply to Sommerring, that the self cannot without contradictionbe said to set itself outside itself. Later, in his well-known work Pollen[Blutenstaub], Novalis picks up this thought in the following fragment:

The seat of the soul is there, where the inner world and the outer world touch[sich beruhren]. Where they permeate – it is in every point of the permeating.(Novalis, II: 418, #20)

The ‘‘inner world’’ is the world that Fichte tries to elucidate by recourseto intellectual intuition of an original act of self-consciousness, anaccount that, as we saw, Novalis rejected on Kantian grounds.10 At the

10 Although Novalis appeared to believe that some sort of phenomenology, a science of inner sense, ispossible. As we saw, he also took Fichte to be the ‘‘Newton’’ of this science. See AllgemeineBrouillon, Novalis Schriften, III: 335 (#460).


same time, Novalis is unhappy with Kant’s refusal to countenance anypossibility for ‘‘externalizing’’ the inner world of the self. What Novalisseems to suggest here is a third option involving the redefining of self-consciousness as the interface between the inner world of self-feeling andthe outer world of objective self-consciousness. This redefinition, hesuggests, might also involve a way of reaching others and in turn beingaffected by them.Novalis’ insistence on the centrality of feeling to self-consciousness and

hence to philosophy in general was very likely due in part to the influenceof Hemsterhuis’ philosophy. The latter’s emphasis on desire, feeling, andthe importance of poesy in understanding the sciences must haveappealed greatly to the poet.11 A strong commitment to the importance offeeling to knowledge certainly helps explain the following exasperatedcomment in the midst of Novalis’ Kant Studies:

The whole Kantian method – the whole Kantian way of philosophizing is one-sided. And it could with some justice be called Scholasticism. (II: 392 #50)12

In another fragmentary note just prior to his pondering the possibility ofanother way of getting ‘‘outside ourselves,’’ Novalis suggests that thepractice of philosophy itself, and practical reason, must move into a new,aesthetic dimension:

Philosophizing is just scientizing [wissenschaften], thinking through thought,knowing knowledge – treating the sciences scientifically and poetically. Should thepractical and the poetic be one – and the latter simply signifies absolute practicemade specific? (II: 390, #45)

Now, whatever it would mean to find another way, an extra-sensibleknowledge, for Novalis, cannot involve abandoning the real world orembracing some noumenal thing in itself as known:

Everything absolute must be ostracized from the world. In the world one mustlive with the world.13

11 Cf. Mahl’s introduction, II: 314ff.12 The reference to Kant’s scholasticism also appears in Kant’s ‘‘Open letter on Fichte’s

Wissenschaftslehre,’’ where Kant quotes from Fichte’s earlier correspondence with him. Kant hadwritten to Fichte that he (Fichte) would do better to devote his energies to applying the teachingsof the Critique of Pure Reason rather than attempting to rewrite them. Fichte’s reply ‘‘politely’’assures Kant that he will not ‘‘make light of scholasticism.’’ See Arnulf Zweig, Kant: PhilosophicalCorrespondence – 1759–99 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967) (XII: 370–371).

13 This is taken from the ‘‘Fragmentblatt’’ found along with the Kant notes (Schriften, II: 395, #55).It follows a remarkable passage in which Novalis suggests, presumably in opposition to Fichte’snotion of an originary self-postulation or Tathandlung, that ‘‘the true philosophical act issuicide . . . only this act corresponds to all the conditions and characteristics of the transcendentalact’’ – i.e., we can’t bring ourselves into being, but we can take ourselves out.


Beneath all Novalis’ comments and criticisms of Kant, his underlyingmetaphysical assumption remains Kantian: the unknowability of thething-in-itself is no longer up for debate. In fact, he makes the rathercondescending claim that Kant’s belaboring of the issue can appear tooobvious, ‘‘superfluous and wearisome’’ to thinkers of Novalis’ generation,unless they keep in mind the historical context within which Kantworked.14 Kant’s anti-speculation doctrine had become ‘‘scholasticism’’for Novalis and his cohort. So when Novalis speaks of discovering anextra-sensible knowledge, he is by no means taking issue with Kant’scircumscription of cognitive experience. For Novalis, finding a way to get‘‘outside’’ ourselves is not a matter of conflating the spheres of the cog-nitive and moral self that Kant had so carefully separated.15 The pathoutside the self is an altogether different approach, and is alreadybecoming apparent to the young philosopher–poet as he finishes theFichte Studies and works on Kant and Hemsterhuis. It is the path of theartist, and requires making concrete and tangible in art that inner worldbased on immediate self-feeling that is impossible to capture purelyreflectively. Novalis’ ‘‘other way’’ of locating the seat of consciousness inthe world is through its embodiment in art.I suggest that what Novalis finds lacking in Kant is not metaphysical,

but imaginative commitment. As we saw in chapter 5, Kant was deeplyambivalent about the role of imagination and of attempts to realize idealsthrough it. The transposition of the self that Novalis seeks and fails tofind in Kant’s one-sided approach is, for Novalis, an imaginative trans-formation. Novalis’ impatience with Kant appears to stem from his viewthat Kant fails to see the possibility of poeticizing the world – or, as hewould soon come to say – of ‘‘romanticizing’’ it, as discussed in chapter 1:

The world must be romanticized. In this way one rediscovers the originalmeaning. Romanticizing is nothing but a qualitative raising to a higher power[Potenzirung]. The lower self becomes identified with a better self. Just as weourselves are such a qualitative exponential series. This operation is still quiteunknown. Insofar as I give the commonplace a higher meaning, the ordinary amysterious countenance, the known the dignity of the unknown, the finite anappearance of infinity, I romanticize it. The operation is precisely the oppositefor the higher, unknown, mystical and infinite – these are logarithmized by this

14 ‘‘Kant-Studien,’’ II: 392, #49.15 See Fichte Studies #649: ‘‘we are also in a sphere outside time’’ – Novalis retains Kant’s view that

to be human means to be able to ‘‘transport’’ oneself into a realm of intellect.


connection – they become common expressions. Romantic philosophy. Linguaromana. Alternating elevation and lowering.16

This activity was, for Novalis, something Kant failed to theorize in his‘‘one-sided’’ attempt to explain human knowledge in terms of ‘‘purereason.’’ Novalis did not reject Kant’s most profound insights, but rathercomplemented and tried to complete the Critical turn through his notionof romanticizing. In this sense, Novalis saw himself as opposing Kant,who could certainly come off as an old Scholastic in the mind of atwenty-four-year-old poet, by wanting to give free rein to the imaginationas a vehicle for externalizing and hence realizing what could only be felt.Imagination, Novalis believed, would produce poetry that would be lit-erally the embodiment and external vehicle for taking the self where itneeded to be – outside itself and into the world. Therein lay Novalis’philosophical solution to Kleist’s Kant-induced dilemma: The key to theback door to paradise would be aesthetic.I have argued that Novalis’ position in no way betrays Kant’s

‘‘Copernican’’ revolution and does not embrace a metaphysical noume-nal. Novalis is not an idealist in this sense. But the view that art is asupersession of philosophy appears to lend credence to another commoncriticism of Romanticism – namely, that it embraces irrationalism andmysticism. Yet this, too, is an unfair characterization of Novalis’ ownviews. To see why, it is important to begin with Novalis’ characterizationof the nature of philosophy itself.Given Novalis’ views on the regulative nature of the ‘‘I’’ and his

renunciation of an ‘‘absolute’’ in any but a negative sense, one mightexpect him to read Kant’s letter to Sommerring with approval. However,as we just saw, the ‘‘seat of the soul’’ discussion appears to have senthim in another direction, one that marks a departure from Kant’s viewson self-knowledge. Novalis’ philosophical account of self-knowledgedepends crucially on the view that our ‘‘inner’’ sense of ourself – self-feeling – is absolute and immediate, but that our knowledge of it, beingreflective, is never absolute and immediate. For Novalis, the intellectualintuition that Fichte postulated as the basis of knowledge is replaced bywhat could be called ‘‘reflected self-feeling.’’ Novalis argues that thinkingabout our self-feeling does not give us direct access to this immediate self-experience, but it does gesture in the right direction, reminding us of it inan image: ‘‘Consciousness is an image of being within being’’ (II: 106,#2).As Manfred Frank puts it, for Novalis, reflected self-feeling becomes

16 2: 545, #105.


the ‘‘orientation towards, or better, the longing for, the absolute.’’17 In theFichte Studies, this longing is taken by Novalis to be the very heart ofphilosophy, or rather philosophizing – the ‘‘unique kind of thinking’’that is the activity of doing philosophy. We should recall Novalis’ ownaccount of the activity of philosophizing:

What do I do when I philosophize? I reflect upon a ground. The ground ofphilosophizing is thus a striving after the thought of a ground . . . All philoso-phizing must therefore end in an absolute ground. Now if this were not given, ifthis concept contained an impossibility – then the drive to philosophize wouldbe an unending activity . . . Unending free activity in us arises through the freerenunciation of the absolute – the only possible absolute that can be given us andthat we can only find through our inability to attain and know an absolute. Thisabsolute that is given to us can only be known negatively, insofar as we act andfind that what we seek cannot be attained through action. ( II: 269, #566)

Novalis’ view of the activity of philosophy is that it involves a consciousrecognition that it ‘‘absolutely’’ cannot attain its goal. But he also suggeststhat human consciousness cannot ultimately live with this paradoxicalsituation. Towards the very end of the Fichte Studies he calls for a freecreative response to the limitations philosophy recognizes in reason:

Objects must not do violence to us – They must not hem us in, not determine[bestimmen] beyond the borders . . . We must seek to create an inner world that isan actual pendant to the outer world – that insofar as it is in direct opposition to[the outer world] at every point, constantly increases our freedom . . . Alldeterminations proceed outward from us – we create a world out of our-selves . . . The more we determine, the more we lay out what is in us – the freer –more substantial – we become – we set aside, as it were, more and more thatwhich is inessential and approach the thoroughly pure, simple essence of our I.Our creative power gets as much free play as it has world under it. But since ournature, or the fullness of our being, is unending, we can never reach this goal intime – But since we are also in a sphere outside time, we must reach it there inevery moment, or better, if we want, in this sphere we are able to be pure simplesubstance. Here is morality and peace of mind, because an endless striving afterwhat hovers ever out of reach before us seems unbearable. (II: 287–288, #647)

These musings recall Kant’s view that the human being has a highervocation, a ‘‘standpoint’’ in an intellectual realm where it is possible atany time to transport oneself.18 But whereas Kant says that we can onlythink ourselves into this world, or at best postulate the time and power tocreate it, Novalis argues that the power of imagination can create a

17 Cf. Frank, Einfuhrung, p. 253.18 E.g. in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, IV: 452ff.


‘‘sphere outside time.’’ Moreover, he claims that it is in this imaginativeworld that we first ‘‘approach the . . . pure simple essence of our ‘I’.’’ Thepassage is cryptic, leaving the reader to speculate further on the nature ofthis world. But Novalis’ notes seem to suggest a kind of moral opposi-tional consciousness – a utopian vision – a world of what ought to be asopposed to what is. It is ‘‘unreal’’ and unattainable, but we neverthelesscan dwell in it because we are its imaginative architects. It is a sphere to beaccessed ‘‘in every moment’’ precisely because it is ‘‘outside’’ time andplace, in our imagination.Two points need to be made about this matter of ‘‘world-making’’ in

Novalis. First, it is not a mystical or transcendent account. Novalis isquite clear that the ‘‘inner’’ imaginative world is a ‘‘pendant’’ to the outer.It is oppositional and for that very reason dependent upon the world ofobjects, as any part depends on its counterpart. There is thus nothingineffable about it. In Pollen, he writes:

It is the most arbitrary prejudice that it is denied to human beings to be able tobe outside themselves, to have consciousness beyond the senses. Humans may atany moment be supersensible beings. Without this ability they could not becitizens of the world, they would be animals. Of course the composure and self-discovery in this state is very difficult since it is so perpetually, so necessarily,bound up in the alternation of our other states. The more we are able to becomeconscious of this state, the livelier, more powerful and enjoyable is the convictionthat arises from it; the belief in genuine spiritual revelation. (II : 421, #22)

Novalis goes on to describe this ‘‘appearance’’ as a kind of emergentexperience rooted in ordinary life, the ‘‘incandescence’’ referred to byAbrams in his account of ‘‘moments’’ in Romanticism:19 Novalis claims:

It is not a sight, a sound or feeling; it is all three together, more than all three: asensation of immediate certainty, an insight into my truest, most characteristiclife . . . the appearance [Erscheinung] strikes us particularly at the sight of manyhuman forms and faces, especially in a glimpse of some eyes, some demeanors,some movements, or at the hearing of certain words, the reading of certainpassages, certain perspectives on life, the world and fate. Very many coincidences,many events in nature, especially times of the year and day, deliver suchexperiences to us. Certain voices are particularly well-suited to producing suchrevelations. Most of them [revelations] are momentary, a few last awhile, a very fewendure. (II: 421, #22)

19 Meyer H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature(New York: W.W. Norton, 1973).


Novalis then says that different people will have different experiences of‘‘revelation,’’ depending on their propensities towards sensibility orunderstanding, and he also allows that this ability to ‘‘get outside oneself’’is capable of becoming pathological when a person’s senses and under-standing are out of balance. Romanticism’s detractors may or may notagree that this is a case of being ‘‘outside’’ oneself, but it is what Novalismeans by the phrase, and it is a far cry from an irrationalist mystic’sdescription of consciousness.This leads to a second observation about Novalis’ doctrine of imagi-

native world-making: It is an account of at least one important aspect ofordinary human cognition. Very typically his work, along with that ofother romantics, is characterized as obsessed by the notion of individualgenius. Novalis speaks as if he is characterizing ordinary human con-sciousness, the objection might proceed, but if self-discovery of what hecalled the ‘‘pure, simple I’’ depends so heavily on imagination, and anartistic one at that, can this account be true for ordinary people? Or is it adescription of the elite domain of artistic consciousness?There is no doubt that in this section of the Fichte Studies Novalis was

working out the rudiments of a theory of artistic process for himself. Butin this connection it is important to keep in mind his subsequent viewson artistic genius and talent, since they are far more liberal than is gen-erally attributed to Romanticism. In his Mixed Remarks, for instance, headvances the view that genius is a universal human faculty. He argues thatgenius is the ability to treat imagined objects as real and that it should bedistinguished from the talent for presentation and precise observationthat is necessary for the development of genius. He then quite explicitlystates:

Without geniality, none of us would exist at all. Genius is necessary for every-thing. What is usually meant by genius however, is the genius of genius.20

This is unequivocal. For Novalis, as for Fichte and Kant as well, ima-gination is a universal, necessary condition of human cognitive experi-ence. It is precisely the naturalness of the capacity that he finds significantfor self-knowledge. Revelation itself is natural, and ‘‘must not be forced.’’It is this capacity for momentary, everyday transcendence (as in reverie)that defines the human: a being to be found ‘‘there, where the innerworld and the outer world touch.’’

20 II: 420, #22.


kant ’s romanticism

In seeking to connect Kant’s aesthetic theory with Romanticism, I havemostly been swimming against the current in Kant scholarship. However,there is one aspect of Kant’s philosophy that most scholars would agree isa precursor of Romanticism, and that is his notion of genius. It is alsoseen as something of a side issue for Kant, given the way it is positionedafter his extensive account of taste in the ‘‘Critique of Aesthetic Judg-ment.’’21 I want to end this chapter by looking more closely at the way inwhich this is and is not true. I shall do so by juxtaposing Kant’s notion ofthe creative process with Novalis’ views.Kant is rather notorious for the view, discussed in chapter 3, that

artistic products are secondarily or derivatively beautiful, since all artobjects are produced with a concept of the final product in mind.22 That,by definition for Kant, was what it means to create art, and artisticcreativity, by extension it would seem, must be understood as onlyderivatively creative since the artist has a purpose or concept in mind. Inaesthetic experience of beauty in nature, however, we do not look for aspecific purpose or rule according to which the object was constructed.There is no purpose in nature, at least none that we can ever know. So wesimply ‘‘play’’ in our minds with the sights or sounds nature presents,letting them take us fleetingly from one thought to the next, neverstopping to ‘‘finish’’ the job by labeling what we are seeing or hearing.The point is not to categorize, or apply rules, but rather to enjoy thesustained feeling of our mental powers in ‘‘playful’’ harmony with eachother. Or, as Kant also says, it is to experience the pleasurable ‘‘quick-ening’’ or ‘‘enlivening’’ of our cognitive forces (Section 9). On the otherhand, art, which by definition is purposive, can only imitate nature in thisrespect. It can at best ‘‘come off’’ as if it were purposeless and ‘‘artless.’’Still, superimposed, as it were, on Kant’s aesthetics is a remarkable

account of artistic genius and ‘‘originality’’ that became enormouslyinfluential for the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century theory of

21 See Henry Allison’s discussion of the role of Kant’s account of genius in the third Critique. Lookedat closely, he argues, Kant’s conception really amounts to two conceptions: one ‘‘thick’’ notion thatis a special talent that no rule can capture, but that instead gives the rule to nature and that is ableto actually produce beautiful objects of art. The other is a ‘‘thin’’ conception of genius that ‘‘seemsto be limited merely to an imaginative capacity and therefore does not itself involve understanding,judgment or taste.’’ This distinction, appears to be the very same that Novalis uses when he speaksof the ‘‘genius of genius.’’ In Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2001), chapter 12, ‘‘Fine Art and Genius,’’ p. 301. Allison’s analysis suggests thatKant’s conception of genius is completely distinct from that of taste only in the ‘‘thin’’ case.

22 Critique of Judgment, Section 46 (V: 307–308).


art. As we saw in chapter 1, this account bears the mark of earlier Germanaesthetic theory, in particular Lessing’s account of the role of imaginativefreedom in artistic genius. This account identifies creative genius as aphenomenon of nature, thus rendering the activity and product of geniusas ‘‘original’’ as the beauty in natural objects. In Section 49, ‘‘On thePowers of the Mind that Constitute Genius,’’ Kant distinguishes betweentastefulness on the one hand and spirit on the other. Tastefulness involvesorder and agreeableness but does not, by itself, move us. On the otherhand, spirit ‘‘in an aesthetic sense, is the animating principle in themind’’(V: 313). Kant identifies genius with ‘‘spirit’’ or the power to ani-mate or enliven the soul. Genius is, in his words, the power to ‘‘impart to[the mental powers] a purposive momentum, i.e., to impart to the mentalpowers a play which . . . sustains itself on its own and even strengthensthem for such play’’ (V: 313). Genius animates the mind of the listener bydrawing on and communicating what Kant calls ‘‘aesthetic ideas’’:‘‘presentations of the imagination which prompt much thought’’ but thatcannot be conceptually represented (i.e., they do not follow rules).There is no rule for the creation and communication of aesthetic ideas.

The animating power of genius cannot be learned by following formulae,Kant says. At best it can be imitated, just as a (non-genius) artist imitatesthe spontaneous productions of nature. Artistic genius proceeds ‘‘natu-rally’’ – without ‘‘distinctly known rules that determine the procedure’’although it has in mind some idea of the purpose of the work of art andalso some idea of the way that is to be manifested in a sensory medium.(V: 310, 318). Training is of course necessary, but it is not sufficient forgenius. ‘‘Genius is the innate mental predisposition (ingenium) throughwhich nature gives the rule to art,’’ but this rule is ‘‘indeterminate’’:

Genius is a [natural endowment] for producing something for which nodeterminate rule can be given, not a predisposition consisting of a skill forsomething that can be learned by following some rule or other; hence theforemost property of genius must be originality. (V: 307–308)

This notion of genius, what Allison in Kant’s Theory of Taste calls Kant’s‘‘thin’’ notion of genius, is imaginative freedom or simply creativethought.23 Creativity for Kant is not rule-governed, and in the Anthropology,

23 Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste. Brigitte Sassen in ‘‘Artistic Genius and the Question of Creativity’’in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Paul Guyer (New York: Rowman & Littlefield,2003), argues that the free play of the imagination is not creativity properly so called: ‘‘For thecreative process centers on how those ideas can be brought to presence.’’ Sassen, like Allison, isidentifying Kant’s conception of genius with a ‘‘thick’’ sense that Novalis would call the ‘‘genius ofgenius.’’


his description of genius sounds very much like the descriptions of primaryprocess regression used by contemporary cognitive scientists.24 There Kantdiscusses the natural process of artistic creation as a kind of immediate,non-conceptual awareness of ideas that we have without being conscious ofthem. He has, that is to say, a notion of unconscious ideation, thatresembles closely contemporary discussions of primary process. In his lec-tures to his Anthropology class, which he taught for over twenty years at theUniversity in Konigsberg, Kant always included a session on what he called‘‘obscure representations’’ – ideas that we have unconsciously. To illustratethis phenomenon to his students, he chose the example of an organistplaying a free fantasia.Before looking at Kant’s own comment, it will be useful to make a few

preliminary historical remarks. The free fantasia was an art form thatgained great popularity in Kant’s time and one of the few musical formsthat Kant mentions anywhere. Kant, like every educated man and womanof his time, was well aware of the phenomenon of the free fantasia, whichwas at the height of its popularity during the period of Kant’s maturescholarship in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Kant was notparticularly well versed in the fine arts, and knew little about musictheory, and so the fact that he refers to the fantasia at all speaks to theubiquity and importance of the genre to the general educated public ofeighteenth-century Germany. The free fantasia, according to PeterSchleuning’s The Fantasia, is a peculiarly eighteenth-century phenom-enon, and moreover, ‘‘a purely German phenomenon for the entireperiod of its existence – until about 1800.’’25 It finds its prototype inJ. S. Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, which combined elements ofseventeenth-century genres (such as the prelude, toccata, and capriccio)that had themselves inherited the compositional freedoms of the fantasiaof an earlier period. Johann Mattheson (a Hamburg music scholar)defined it further, when he argued that music in the ‘‘fantastic style’’

24 The creative process has received a great deal of attention recently from cognitive psychologists,and one view, espoused by Colin Martindale among others, argues that artistic originality can beunderstood in terms of the artist’s ability to ‘‘regress’’ to ‘‘primary process cognition,’’ or whatMartindale prefers to call ‘‘primordial’’ cognition. That is, on this account the creative artisttemporarily abandons conceptual cognition which is ‘‘abstract, rational and reality-oriented’’ toregress to cognition that is ‘‘concrete, irrational, and autistic’’ – to ‘‘the thought of dreams andreveries.’’ Martindale says that ‘‘Primordial cognition is free-associative. It thus increases the novelcombinations of mental elements, which form the raw material for a work of art. This raw materialmust then be put into final form in a rational or conceptual state of mind.’’ (‘‘How Can weMeasure a Society’s Creativity?,’’ in Dimensions of Creativity, ed. Margaret A. Boden, Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 163–164.)

25 The Fantasia I: 16th to 18th Centuries, trans. A. C. Howie (Cologne: Arno Volk Verlag, 1971), p. 17.


(Stylus Phantasticus) should have ‘‘no theme and subject to be worked . . .there is nothing so opposed to it as order and restraint’’ (p. 15). One of theseproblematic restraints was the juxtaposition of the fantasia with the fugue asa sort of ‘‘corrective’’ to the fantasia’s anarchic character. Another constraintthat was to be overthrown was the imposition of a unity of feeling, ofa single emotive theme, throughout a movement. By mid-centuryC. P. E. Bach had refined Mattheson’s principle of freedom for the fantasiato include the freedom from thematic emotional constraints; the task of themusician was ‘‘to excite and to calm many affections in close succession’’and ‘‘to effect the sudden unexpected change from one affection to theother’’ so as ‘‘to master the emotions of the audience’’ (p. 16).Given the development of the fantasia towards ever greater freedom

from formal constraints, it thus stands to reason, as Schleuning pointsout, that ‘‘the extempore performance was the essential medium of the freefantasia’’ (p. 17). If the free fantasia is defined as improvisational, notatingthese pieces would of necessity alter the very nature of the piece:

It is to be observed from an examination of the formal structure of the freefantasia that a free, random, erratic and ‘‘capricious’’ structure such as wouldhave been the case in the improvised, hour-long fantasias could not have beeneffected to the same extent in the pieces which were written down. On thecontrary, the necessity to reach a conclusion after a relatively short time com-pelled the composer to sacrifice a part of the pleasant and continual dreamlikecharacter of the fantasia . . . for the sake of some kind of symmetry, so that theending could have a meaningful effect. (p. 20)

There are strong similarities between Kant’s account of genius and whatis demanded of the performer of the free fantasia by Mattheson andC. P. E. Bach. Like Kant’s genius, the performer proceeds ‘‘naturally’’ andthrough inspiration without ‘‘distinctly known rules that determine theprocedure’’ moving easily and artlessly from one musical idea orexpression to the next without end goal or purpose. Just as nature exhibitspurposive purposelessness, so too does the performer of the fantasia. Atthe keyboard she is a kind of natural phenomenon. For Kant, the pro-blem of the composed fantasia might be understood, then, as the problemof how to retain the ‘‘hand of nature’’ (V: 309) in the writing down of thefree fantasia, since the free fantasia, with its utter freedom of expressionand lack of predictable outcome – indeed with its lack of outcome at all –would be rather more like a natural phenomenon than it is like a ‘‘work’’of art. As we have already seen, Kant has a ‘‘natural’’ account of whatartistic genius involves. One way to deal with the musician who sits down


to play the fantasia might be to regard her, too, as a natural phenomenon,and Kant does say something very much along these lines:

In man (and so in beasts too) there is an immense field of sensuous intuitionsand sensations we are not conscious of, though we can conclude with certaintythat we have them . . . If a musician plays a fantasia on the organ with ten fingersand both feet, while talking with someone nearby, in a matter of seconds a hostof ideas is awakened in his soul; and in selecting each of them he must make aparticular judgment about its appropriateness, since a single stroke of the fingerout of keeping with the harmony would at once be perceived as discord. Andyet the whole turns out so well that a musician, when he improvises freely,would often like to transcribe some of his happy improvisations, which hemight otherwise never hope to bring off so well, no matter how hard he tried.[Kant: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Section 1, Bk. 1, ‘‘On therepresentations that we have without being conscious of them’’]

Kant’s point was that this example illustrates that there is a ‘‘wide field’’of representations in the mind of the musician (and in all of us, for thatmatter), that although very much part of cognition, are nevertheless notclearly and distinctly present to consciousness. What is special in the caseof the musician is that she has the requisite technical skills to express theseideas behaviorally, as it were, in her impromptu but nevertheless non-random harmonic choices. That these choices are the product ofunconscious processes is shown by the fact that the musician could onlycome up with these combinations by somehow being able to shortcut theconscious, deliberative process of rule-governed composition. In fact,Kant suggests, the more diligently and attentively (i.e. self-consciously)she tried to reproduce these afterwards on paper (‘‘with real diligence andattention (‘‘mit allem Fleiß,’’)), the less likely she would be to capture thefree fantasy. And yet at the same time, he characterizes this process as oneinvolving discriminations: every stroke of the keyboard or pedal involvesjudgments about its appropriateness, Kant says, and one bad choicewould produce discord.26

Though he knew little about music theory, Kant is obviously intriguedby the cognitive state that underlies the free fantasia. Interestingly, hedoes not seem particularly bothered by the fact that the ‘‘happy

26 Kant’s characterization of the cognitive state of the musician playing the free fantasia and thesubsequent attempt to recapture it in notation is an early version of the dilemma or paradox thatSchleuning describes. (The musician while improvising is working with musical ideas that, whilenot random or arbitrary, are also neither predictable nor purposive. A composition, on the otherhand, must have some coherent structure (at least a beginning, middle, and end) and in this sense,a purpose. To stay true to the essence of the original this structure must be put together in a waythat is neither predictable nor reproducible.)


improvisations’’ are by his definition not really works of art. He is moreconcerned to characterize the nature of the process by which an artisticvirtuoso creates beautiful music. The organist who improvises is a kind ofphenomenon of nature, and the improvised piece is thus itself more of anatural than an artificial object whose aesthetic value can be explainedalong the lines of natural beauty: it results from the interplay of musicalforms and the free play of the imaginations of the listeners for whom theimprovisor plays. And so far as the musician is concerned, a naturalisticaccount of her role is also available. Just as a beautiful natural object canbe explained scientifically, the causal story of the organist’s inner state canbe told by reference to a kind of ‘‘regression’’ or dreamlike access to ideasthat are not immediately present to consciousness.This causal story as Kant tells it, is the story of ‘‘fantasy,’’ the term

Kant prefers to use instead of imagination when referring to ‘‘imagesproduced involuntarily’’ or what he has called ‘‘unconscious ideas’’:

Before an artist can present a physical form (tangibly, as it were), he must havealready made it in his imagination; and this form is then called invention. If it isproduced involuntarily (as in dreaming) it is called fantasy and lies outside theartist’s proper realm; but if it is governed by choice it is called composition,fabrication. (VII: 174ff.)

The ‘‘proper realm’’ of the artist for Kant is by definition a realm ofpurpose and technique for implementing and realizing it in a medium.The free fantasia is not of course a mere dream, but it is a case of whatKant sees as fantasizing nonetheless, because it involves loss of control –or, as he puts it, it involves the imagination ‘‘playing with us.’’ He says,‘‘we like to play with our imagination and often do; but imagination (inits role of fantasy) plays with us just as often.’’ The difference between thefantasia performer and the daydreamer for Kant is the fact that theorganist has developed great technical skills to such a level that they canbe accessed kinesthetically, i.e. nearly unconsciously. There is then a sensein which the improvising musician is not a ‘‘conscious’’ artist. Rather, sheis an artist who has consciously chosen a dream-like state in order to lether imagination ‘‘play’’ with her decisions about what musical ideas toexpress. The result is a natural, not a ‘‘composed,’’ object.Something along these lines holds for philosophical creativity, for

Kant, as well. Kant has more to say about the free play of the imaginationwith natural objects like fire and babbling brooks, and it seems to me thereverie he describes on these occasions is precisely the reverie thatC. P. E. Bach hoped to induce in himself and his listeners in the


performance of the free fantasia. Here is a an excerpt from Kant’sAnthropology, where he speaks of the free play of imagination with ‘‘thechanging, moving forms’’ of flickering flames or a babbling brook;imagination plays with ‘‘a host of ideas of a quite different kind (thanthose of sight) [or of hearing]’’ and ‘‘becomes lost in reverie’’:

Even music can fulfill this function, provided we do not listen to it as con-noisseurs; it can put a poet or a philosopher into a frame of mind such that hecan snatch and even master thought relevant to his business or his fancy, whichhe would not have caught so luckily had he sat down alone in his room [andtried to come up with them]. (V: 173–174)

Thought is facilitated and ‘‘animated’’ by the focus of our attention on asingle strand of sensation to the exclusion of other sensations, because theimagination is then conserved for the purpose of the ‘‘strenuous andpersistent activity . . . of providing material for its intellectual ideas.’’ (Inother words, it is conserved for the production of aesthetic ideas.) Theimaginative power is able to focus on its work by fixating: zeroing in onone set of sensations that occupy, even transfix, our outward perception.Kant’s account helps make sense of how artistic creativity works, at its

best: By eschewing predictability, it renders the artist (and the audiences,even the connoisseur) an amateur again, a ‘‘natural’’ as it were. Theelement of surprise and unruliness will pleasantly disorient the savant sothat he or she can see or hear it with ‘‘fresh’’ eyes and ears, as it were, andrestore the kind of originality that the amateur enjoys. Like the play of theflames in fire, works like the free fantasia level the aesthetic playing fieldof their audience.Before turning to Novalis, I want to go back to something Kant says

about the imagination in the Critique of Judgment discussion of thepowers of the mind that constitute genius that fits hand in glove with hisdiscussion of unconscious ideation in the Anthropology:

the imagination ([in its role] as a productive cognitive power) is very mightywhen it creates, as it were, another nature out of the material that actual naturegives it. We use it to entertain ourselves when experience strikes us as overlyroutine. We may even restructure [umbilden] experience; and though in doing sowe continue to follow analogical laws, yet we also follow principles which residehigher up, namely, in reason (and which are just as natural to us as those whichthe understanding follows in apprehending empirical nature). In this process wefeel our freedom from the law of association (which attaches to the empirical useof the imagination); for although it is under that law that nature lends usmaterial yet we can process that material into something quite different, namely,into something that surpasses nature. (V: 314)


Let us return to Novalis, keeping in mind some of the points just madeabout Kant’s view of the creative process. First, Kant’s theory of creativityinvolves a central reference to non-rational, or sub-rational processing.This is not altogether clear in the third Critique, but when read inconjunction with the passage from his Anthropology on unconsciousideation and the free fantasia, it seems obvious that this is what he has inmind when he speaks of the creative power of imagination to createanother nature out of the one that is actually given, doing so to relieveboredom ‘‘when experience strikes us as overly routine.’’ Second,although it occurs within the context of his characterization of genius, inthis particular passage he refers to everyone’s power of imagination ‘‘whenexperience strikes us as overly routine.’’ This suggests that he is thinkingof ordinary daydreaming or reverie, wherein it is possible for ‘‘us’’(humans, presumably) to creatively ‘‘process’’ the materials of nature intosomething ‘‘that surpasses nature’’ and thereby feel our freedom from the‘‘empirical use of the imagination.’’ In other words, Kant intimates herethat genius is a capacity common to all, the ability to produce aestheticideas – ‘‘inner intuitions to which no concept can be completely ade-quate.’’ But he then goes on, somewhat confusingly, to say that genius isthe special capacity to find ideas that prompt so much thought that theyexpand a concept ‘‘in an unlimited way’’ (V: 315).27 Kant leaves unclearthe relationship between ordinary consciousness and the creative processof genius, perhaps because, for him the two are not so easily separated inthe first place.And, finally, we should notice that in this section (V: 314) Kant makes

the rather surprising claim that in ‘‘productive’’ imaginative reflection, weare capable of surpassing nature. For Kant, to surpass (ubertreffen) nature,of course, suggests entering the realm of the supersensible, or the moral,not in any metaphysical sense, but in the sense of entering a realm of whatought to be as opposed to what is. I have already argued that this littleparagraph gestures towards a view that Kant himself didn’t adopt, butperhaps should have. It opens the possibility that morality is directlylinked to aesthetic reflection insofar as moral law requires us to projectthe possibility of creating the highest good – happiness commensurate

27 And then in concluding he says:

Hence genius actually consists in the happy relation . . . allowing us, first, to discover ideas for a givenconcept, and second, to hit upon a way of expressing these ideas that enables us to communicate toothers . . . the mental attunement that those ideas produce. (V: 317)

suggesting that it is the ability to communicate that makes for genius, since originality alone canamount to ‘‘original nonsense.’’


with virtue on earth. Kant didn’t follow through to say that aestheticcreativity is needed for just this sort of projection, but Novalis, along withother early Romantics, did.In a sense, Novalis’ entire philosophical and poetic project is intended

to both embody and explain the creative process. Given his view that‘‘Without geniality, none of us would exist at all. Genius is necessary foreverything,’’ it is no wonder. Genius for Novalis, as we saw, is ‘‘the abilityto treat imagined objects as real,’’ and thought of in this way, his claimthat it is ‘‘necessary for everything’’ is not all that exaggerated. Does Kantalso subscribe to this notion of ‘‘ordinary’’ genius? I think in his dis-cussion of the primordial cognition that is involved in improvisational art –that is, in art that is closest to nature and therefore genuinely original – hecame close to expounding the ubiquity of genius. But he placed restric-tions on the notion in the third Critique account that reserves the term‘‘genius’’ to refer only to the ability to successfully communicate pri-mordial or ‘‘unconscious’’ ideas. In other words, although he came veryclose to an understanding of creativity as a necessary part of humancognitive functioning, he ended up discussing only what Novalis calls the‘‘genius of genius.’’ It is not entirely clear why. Perhaps he believed thatthe extraordinary power of imagination of the ‘‘genius of genius’’ was somuch further developed than the ordinary person’s that they becomequalitatively different – belonging to a class by themselves. Or perhaps hewas afraid to defend the virtues of daydreaming.Novalis had no such worries. He recognizes the ordinariness of genius,

or the genius of the ordinary, we might say. Revelations, he said, arenatural, and ‘‘cannot be forced.’’28 Surely there is truth in this position: Itis this capacity for momentary, everyday transcendence – the ability todaydream – that develops our powers. Our propensity for ordinary, if notalways productive, creativity is what allows us to transpose ourselvesoutside ourselves, and meet each other, as Novalis says, ‘‘there, where theinner world and the outer world touch.’’

conclusion

Kant, like Novalis, firmly believed that longing and striving for theabsolute, the unconditioned, was an essential characteristic of human

28 ‘‘One must never, like a phantast, seek the undetermined – a child of fantasy – an ideal. Oneproceeds from determinate task to determinate task. An unknown lover of course has a magicalcharm. Striving for the unknown, the undetermined, is extremely dangerous and disadvantageous.Revelations cannot be forced’’ (3: 601, #291, Observations on the Physical).


reason that neither could nor should be entirely suppressed. Both alsoagreed that no knowledge of the absolute could ever be attained, and thatclaims to have done so were necessarily in error. The difference betweenKant and Novalis was thus not a difference over the value of unattainablerational ideals or the need to avoid transcendent delusions. Throughoutthis book I have argued that Kant and Novalis were closer philosophicallythan is canonically assumed. And assuming Novalis to be a centralspokesman for the early German Romantics, Kant is in many ways closerto this movement than to the Idealism with which he is so often asso-ciated. But the two are certainly not identical. What really separates Kantfrom Novalis and the early German Romantic movement, I believe, is hisrelatively sanguine acceptance of the limitations of human reason andhence of philosophy. Novalis took this resignation to be a kind of‘‘scholasticism’’ – a ‘‘one-sided’’ approach that assigned philosophy to thedomain of reason alone. Novalis’ innovation, and that of his cohort inJena, was to redefine philosophy itself as an ‘‘unending, free activity’’ thatat its limits becomes an aesthetic, creative endeavor, driven by anexpanded power of imagination first described by Kant in the thirdCritique.


Bibliography

References to Kant’s work in this book (except references to the Critique of PureReason, which following long practice are to the pagination of the originalGerman editions) are to Kants Gesammelte Schriften edited by the KoniglichePreußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, the ‘‘Academie edition,’’ by volumeand page number. English translations of most of these exist in a standard formatin the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. The Akademie pagi-nation is provided in all of these.

Except where otherwise noted, references to Novalis’ works are to NovalisSchriften: Die Werke Friedrich von Hardenbergs, eds. Paul Kluckhohn andRichard Samuel (Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1965). References are tovolume, page, and, when applicable, to paragraph number of that edition. Thesecond and third volumes, edited by Richard Samuel together with Hans-Joachim Mahl and Gerhard Schulz, contain Novalis’ philosophical writings,published in 1981 and 1983, respectively. English editions now available include theNotes for a Romantic Encyclopaedia: The Universal Brouillon, trans. David Wood(Albany: SUNY Press, 2007); Novalis: Fichte Studies, ed. Jane Kneller (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2003);Novalis: Philosophical Writings, trans. MargaretMahoney Stoljar (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997).

kant works cited (followed by akademieedition number)

Kritik der praktischen Vernunft/Critique of Practical Reason (V) (also ‘‘SecondCritique’’); Kritik der reinen Vernunft/Critique of Pure Reason (also ‘‘First Cri-tique’’) (A & B editions); Kritik der Urteilskraft/Critique of Judgment (V) (also‘‘Third Critique’’); Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht/Anthropology from aPragmatic Point of View (VII); Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklarung?/AnAnswer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (XIII); Bemerkungen zu denBeobachtungen uber das Gefuhl des Schonen und Erhabenen/Remarks on the Obser-vations on the Beautiful and Sublime (XX); Briefwechsel/Correspondence (XII);Erste Einleitung in der Kritik der Urteilskraft/First Introduction to the Critique ofJudgment (XX); Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten/Groundwork of theMetaphysics of Morals (also Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals) (IV);

161

Handschriftlicher Nachlass/Reflections (Anthropology) (XV); Streit der Fakultaten/Conflict of the Faculties (VII); Traume eines Geistersehers, erlautert durch Traumeder Metaphysik/Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Illustrated by the Dreams of Metaphysics(II); Vorlesungen uber Anthropologie/Lectures on Anthropology (XXV).

other books and articles

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Beck, Lewis W., Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1996.

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Index

Abrams, M.H. 129, 149absolute, the (the unconditional) 140, 148tendency to seek 119�42, 159see also self-knowledge

aesthetic ideas 16, 44, 53, 104, 105�7, 108,109, 120, 152

aesthetic reflection see reflectionaestheticsGerman 1�3, 113, 152German Enlightenment 1, 1�6, 18, 38�45Kant’s see Kant’s aesthetic theoryand rationalism in (Germany) 1, 2�3, 40,

41, 42rules for 40�1, 152�3, 155, 157

alienation 83, 84�6, 87�9, 89�94, 116, 139Allison, Henry 3, 8, 61, 94, 151, 152Ameriks, Karl 7, 13, 19, 73, 75, 81�4, 87, 90,

111Arendt, Hannah 8art 44, 53, 56, 134, 151and nature 56, 67�9, 151, 154, 156as superseding philosophy (Novalis)

autonomy, rational 74, 77, 80, 85Auxter, Thomas 8

Bach, C. P. E. 154, 156Bach, Johann Sebastian 156Baier, Kurt 70Bauemler, Alfred 1, 2, 7Baumgarten, Alexander G. 2, 14, 38�40beauty, the beautiful 15, 17�19, 35, 39, 44‘‘doctrine of’’ see Holderlinideal of 16, 70�1, 107, 108, 116, 120judgments of 15

see judgments of tastenatural (of nature) 64as symbol of morality 53, 107

Beck, Lewis White 21, 38�58, 47, 51, 57Behler, Ernst 19, 22, 24Beiser, Frederick 7, 31, 47, 56, 113�15, 120Bernstein, Jay 7

Bodmer and Breitinger 1, 14, 40Bohme, Gernot and Hartmut 16, 97�104, 98,

115, 120Bowie, Andrew 5, 7, 22, 28Brandt, Reinhard 8Burke, Edmond 66

Cassirer, Ernst 136common sense/sensus communis 44

common aesthetic sense/sensus communisaestheticus 44

communicability, universal 44, 53, 60community 10, 19, 35consciousness

primary process accounts 153�8see also unconscious ideas/ideation 125,128

self-consciousness 125�38, 145see also self-knowledge

unconscious ideas/ideation 153�8contemplation see reflectioncreativity 19, 92

see also imaginationCrusius, Christian August 95

Darstellung 4daydreaming 156, 158, 159disinterest/disinterested pleasure 4, 15, 24, 45,

58�9, 60�71, 93�4, 116in metaphysical speculation 115, 119

Earliest System-Programme of German Idealism120, 121

Eldridge, Richard 87�8, 124elitism (moral, philosophical) 87, 112,

115embodiment 70�1, 92, 117end(s), see purposeenlightenment, German 1, 18, 21, 38, 114enthusiasm/enthusiast 13, 16, 55, 99, 108�13,

136, 119�42

168

Fantast see enthusiasmfantasy 156, 157

see also imaginationfeelings 50, 53, 61, 80, 83, 86, 129

in art 41, 135�6for beautiful nature 65, 66�7for belonging in nature/nature’spurposiveness 93

as central to self-knowledge (Novalis) 144,145�6

faculty of 76in Holderlin 135�6and imagination 44, 53as an intuition 129metaphysical 117moral 63�4, 65, 66�7, 83in Novalis, defined 142universal communicability of 76, 88

feminist critiques of Kant 12Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 13�17, 20, 33, 35, 96,

122�8, 140, 141, 145, 150Frank, Manfred 7, 122, 127�8, 129�30Frederick the Great 56, 57free fantasia 17, 153�7freedom

of imagination see imaginationmoral/practical 45, 123

Fricke, Christel 8Frierson, Patrick 8

genius 13�17, 53Kant’s view of 13, 69, 104, 109, 112�13, 124,151, 154

Lessing’s view of 41�2, 152Novalis’ view of 150see also Novalis

Ginsborg, Hannah 8Gottsched, J. C. 1, 18Grenberg, Jeanine 112Guyer, Paul 7, 67, 89, 94, 108

Hardenberg, Friedrich von 13see also Novalis

Haym, Rudolf 122Hegel, G.W. F. 96, 120, 121Heidegger, Martin 16, 95�7, 120, 124Helfer, Martha 4Hemsterhuis, Frans 123, 143, 145Henrich, Dieter 2, 3, 7, 81, 95�8, 115, 123, 124,

125, 127, 133, 134Herder, Johann Gottfried 114highest good/summum bonum 9, 38, 64, 66�7,

89, 107, 114

reason’s command to bring about 46�59, 64,89, 117

supreme good (distinguished from highestgood) 46

Holderlin 7, 16�17, 114, 121, 122�38, 141doctrine of beauty 134Hyperion 127, 134

Homer 112hope, rational 9, 14, 46, 92, 106�8, 116, 120, 124feeling of 92, 93

Huch, Ricarda 122

Idealism, German 19, 33�6, 97, 122, 143Kant as idealist 33�6

imagination, Kant’s theory of 1�6, 14association with feeling and embodiment 97,

120as common root of sensibility and

understanding 95�8creative 19, 52, 92, 105, 109, 120, 151�60as dangerous 13, 112, 120distinguished from fantasy (involuntary

invention) 156free play of imagination and understanding 2,

29, 44, 58�9freedom of (imaginative freedom) 35, 37,

38�59, 103as inscrutable 13, 25, 29, 97, 149as mediating faculty 4, 15�16, 29, 92and metaphysics 13, 31�2productive 53, 100, 158reproductive 99role in cognition 2, 3, 99�100, 105, 150, 151schema/schemata/schematism 53�5as subordinate 13, 16, 95as transformative/reforming power/visionary

13, 14�15, 57, 104, 105�7, 129, 148�9improvisation 154interest 15, 116of aesthetic reflective judgments (judgments of

taste, judgments of beauty) 44, 60�71, 63direct 61, 63, 64�5, 68, 71, 75�93doctrine of 60�2empirical 62�3, 116indirect 61, 93intellectual 62, 63�5, 116moral 60, 61, 63�4,in nature 64, 76�93of universal communicability 60

intuition 6as feeling (Novalis) 129, 147inner, outer perception (nonspatial, spatial)

143, 147

Index 169

intuition (cont.)original/intellectual 6, 26, 112, 126, 127,

128�30, 133, 141, 144, 147moral 120

Jacobi 55Jena Circle see romanticismjudgments of taste see taste

Kantanthropology 8as Copernicus 140andmetaphysics 31�2,47, 50, 82,99, 113�19, 140‘‘theodicy of reason’’ 32

Kant’s aesthetic theory 1�4, 7, 17�19and environmentalism 67�9influence on romanticismsee romanticism and metaphysics 16as ‘‘missing link’’ in German eighteenth-

century theory 38Kant’s romanticism 23�6see also romanticism

Kleist, Heinrich von 139�40, 147Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb 136Korsgaard, Christine 77, 90Kuhn, Manfred 57

Lacou-Labarthe, Philippe and Nancy, Jean-Luc5, 6, 35�6

Larmore, Charles 4, 124, 129Laursen, John Christian 57Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 39, 114, 140Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 14, 18, 38, 40�2, 58,

113, 152see also genius

Longueness, Beatrice 3Louden, Robert B. 8, 21love 66for nature 66�7, 117pathological 66, 69practical 66, 69reflective 66, 69, 71, 117

Mahl, Hans-Joachim 143Makkreel, Rudolf 11, 24, 39, 44, 102, 105�6Martindale, Colin 153Mattheson, Johannes 153Mendelssohn, Moses 55metaphysicssee Kant and metaphysicssee Novalis and metaphysics

Millan-Zaibert, Elizabeth 32Munzel, Felicitas 11, 29, 49�50, 65, 108mysticism of practical reason 108�10see also enthusiasm

natureand freedom 123see also nature and reason

and reason, unity of 83, 84�6, 88�9,123

see also alienationNeiman, Susan 15�16, 47�8, 57, 92, 113Newton, Sir Isaac 112Niethammer, Friedrich 124, 128, 133Novalis 7, 13�14, 16�17, 20, 58�9, 114,

122�38, 140�60critique of Kant 145, 146�9, 160Fichte Studies 127, 128�31, 141, 148genius 16�17, 150, 151, 152, 159Heinrich von Ofterdingen 131�2Kant Studies 143logarythmizing 22, 24�6and metaphysics 142�3, 146philosophy (distinguished from

philosophizing) 27philosophizing 27potentializing (Potenzierung) 131, 146romanticizing 14, 21, 22�3, 146suicide 145n

novel, the (der Roman) 31, 136�7

O’Neill, Onora 12, 73�7, 76�93, 90

philosophydistinguished from philosophizing (Novalis)

27for Fichte 126for Novalis 130�1, 145, 148philosophical creativity (Kant) 148as ‘‘poetic’’ 131, 140�1, 145systematic 27

Plato 109, 117, 119, 133pleasure 24, 29, 80�1, 88

see also disinterest, interestPluhar, Werner 28postulates of practical reason 9, 10, 15, 35,

46�52, 82, 89�90, 91, 115, 116, 119practical reason 25, 72�94

command to implement highest goodsee highest good/summum bonum

metaphysical 15methodological 15, 73, 75primacy of 12, 15�16, 33, 35, 72�94

progress, moral and social 9, 10, 32, 38, 42, 48,57, 106�8, 116, 120

imagination 117�19purpose/purposiveness

final 78�80, 84, 125principle of 79�80, 81, 86, 123, 155

Index170

purposiveness of nature 117purposiveness without purpose 154

Rationalism 110, 116, 140see also aesthetics

Rawls, John 72, 73reason

fact of 25, 123practical see practical reasonproblem of reason 32, 45�6unity of see unity of reason

Reath, Andrews 107reflection, reflective judgment 11, 23, 81, 101�2

aesthetic; aesthetic reflective judgment 15�16,33, 43�4, 86, 107, 116�17

as mirroring (Novalis) 129�30as source of value 78see principle of purposivenesstechnic/technique 102

regulative principle(s) 6, 23, 34, 123, 142, 147Reinhold, Karl 13, 123, 125Riley, Patrick 8romanticism, German 1, 98, 121, 122, 140

as irrationalist 1, 14, 16�19, 20, 23, 140, 147,150

Jena Circle (early German romanticism) 13,20, 58�9, 122, 140�1, 160

Kant’s influence on 4�7, 16�19, 20�36late romanticism (Heidelberg School) 141as naturalizing 22�3, 25romantic conception of mind 129Romanticizing 14, 22�3, 129�30, 131see also Novalis

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 14, 32�6, 109 117influence on Kant 32�3, 56, 99, 113�14, 115‘‘Rousseauistic’’ revolution 87�8, 91

revolution 56�7French Revolution 57, 108�10‘‘Rousseaustic’’ see Rousseau

Santner, Eric 136Sassen, Brigitte 152Schelling, F.W. J. 20, 96, 121, 134schema/schemata/schematism see imaginationSchiller, Friedrich 7, 13, 14, 38, 58�9,

128�34Schlegel, Friedrich 7, 20, 24, 114Schleuning, Peter 153, 155Schmidt, James 12, 20, 38, 55Schott, Robin May 12, 98Schulze, G. E. 125Schwarmerei see enthusiasmself-deception 112self-knowledge 124

absolute self (knowledge) 127, 129, 130, 141,143

in Fichte 125�7self-positing (Tathandlung, ‘‘fact-act’’) 126,

142, 144, 145see also Fichte; intellectualintuition

three principles of 126�7in Holderlin 134in Kant 124�5, 142in Novalis 128�34, 141, 142, 144the seat (location) of the soul (Sitz der Seele)

143�5, 147self as regulative concept 142

see also consciousnessSeyhan, Azade 7Shaftesbury, Earl of (Anthony Ashley Cooper) 1,

123Silber, John R. 51sociability 62Sommerring, Samuel Thomas 143�4Spinoza, Benedict de 134spirit see geniusStark, Werner 8, 109sublime, the 17, 24, 111, 132supersensible, the 14, 28�30, 96, 149, 158Swedenborg, Emanuel 110�11

taste 2, 60, 103�4, 106as discipline 103distinguished from genius (spirit) 152pure judgments of taste 15, 60, 116

autonomy 11teleology/teleological judgment 8, 10, 98see also purpose

Tugendhat, Ernst 125

unconscious ideas/ideation 25unity of reason 15, 33, 76, 86see also unity of the subject

unity of the subject/subjectivity 5, 14, 35�6,38�58, 63, 95, 96�119, 123, 124�38,130

contingency of 96, 133distinguished from unity of self and nature 123regress of subjects 126‘‘weakening of the subject’’ 6Vereinigungsphilosophie 123, 133

unsocial sociability 9, 118

van der Linden, Harry 107Velkley, Richard 15�16, 32�6, 47, 57, 84�7, 115von Molnar, Geza 142

Index 171

Wieland, Christoph Martin 112, 114Wilson, Holly 8Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 41Wolff, Christian 2, 39, 95, 114, 140�59Wood, Allen 8, 32, 35, 46, 52, 57

Wood, David 7

Yovel, Yirmiyahu 8, 47, 51�2, 55, 90

Zammito, John 7, 8

Index172

kant and the power of imagination -...

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