Kant

1724-1804

Career

• Köningsberg in East-Prussia

• Professor at the University

• Lutheran rationalist

• The categorical imperative

• One of the most influential philosopher of modern times

Writings

• Critique of Pure Reason– Theory of Knowledge (epistemology)

• Critique of Practical Reason– Ethics

• Critique of Judgement– Aesthetics

Hume’s influence

• Woke Kant up from his docmatic sleep

• Dogmatic: Does not investigate its own premisses

• Reason must consider its own nature, conditions, limits, possibilities

Conditions of experience

• Hume: Causality derived from experience

• Kant: Causality a condition of experience– Transcendental (beyond experience)– Logically prior to experience– Makes experience possible (condition of

possibility)

Two key concepts

• The world of phenomena– Things as we perceive them– Possible to know them

• The world of the thing in itself– Things independent of our perception– Can never know anything about that

Kant’s system

• Sensibility (Sinnlichkeit)

• Understanding (Verstand)

• Reason (Vernunft)

Sensibility

• Two forms of sensibility (anschauungsformen) – Time– Space

• All our sensation in these forms

• These forms make it possible for us to sense things: conditions of sensibility

Understanding

• Twelve categories of the understanding– Thing– Cause– Etc.

• Directed towards the forms of sensibility

• Organise the impressions

Organisation of experience

• Sensations organised as objects in space and time

• Sensations unified within a single consciousness (as the experience of a self)

• Sensastions organised around concepts such as thing, cause etc.

• All experience of things is causal

Reason

• Three Ideas– God– The World– The Soul

Ideas of Reason

• Not given in experience

• Not objects of sensation

• Should not be thought of in the forms of sensibility

Regulative, not constitutive

• Think what is beyond experience– The world as a whole– The soul as a self – God as the creator of the world

• Organise the world

Faculty of judgement

• Connects different faculties of the soul

• Mediates between the general and the particular– Imagination and understanding– Understanding and reason

Kant on judgements of taste

• Subjective

• Disinterested

• Universal

Subjective

• Only valid for one consciousness (“me”)• Logical judgement: This is a rose

– Object subsumed under a concept

• Aesthetic judgement: The rose is beautiful– Image that appeals to the feelings of the observer

– The judgement is singular (directed to one particular thing)

– Demands the presence of the observer and the thing

Disinterested

• Because of the nature of the feeling they are based on

• The feeling does not relat to any desire or selfish motives

• Not related to the interests of the observer

Pleasure

• Of the convenient – selfishness

• Of the good – interests

• Of the beautiful – pure pleasure– Disinterested– Related to something common to everyone

Universal

• No private interests influence the pleasure

• The pleasure is related to something that everyone has (not personal but common to humanity)

• Therefore the aesthetic judgement is universal although it is subjective

Common

• The faculty of knowledge is common

• Not a separate faculty of taste

• But: Free play of understanding and imagination

Aesthetic values

• Independent– Not moral– Not political

• Not derived from other values– Moral– Practical– Scientific

Consequences of this

• Aesthetics as a special field (art and nature)

• Knowledge and science not included

• Ethics and politics not included

Genius

• Innate disposition of the mind that nature uses to regulate art

• Capacity to create something that it is not possible to determine by a rule

Qualities of genius

• Ability to create

• Originality

• Contrary of imitation

• Not possible to teach it or learn it

But ...

• Only gives the materials for works of art

• Training and know how are needed to make the work

• The works are models (criteria and paradigmas)

Taste and genius

• Genius is creative– Invents aesthetic ideas

• Making of the work needs taste– Gives the appropriate form to the idea