The Idea of Form: Rethinking Kant’s Aesthetics (Cultural Memory in the Present) - Softcover

Gasche, Rodolphe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804746214 ISBN 13: 9780804746212

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2003

Synopsis

Against the assumption that aesthetic form relates to a harmonious arrangement of parts into a beautiful whole, this book argues that reason is the real theme of the Critique of Judgment as of the two earlier Critiques. Since aesthetic judgment of the beautiful becomes possible only when the mind is confronted with things of nature, for which no determined concepts of understanding are available, aesthetic judgment is involved in an epistemological or, rather, para-epistemological task. The predicate "beautiful" indicates that something has minimal form and is cognizable. This book explores this concept of form, in particular the role of presentation (Darstellung) in what Kant refers to as "mere form," which involves not only the understanding, but also reason as the faculty of ideas. Such a notion of form reveals why the beautiful can be related to the morally good. On the basis of this reinterpreted concept of form, most major concepts and themes of the Critique of Judgment—such as disinterestedness, free play, the sublime, genius, and beautiful arts—are examined by the author and shown in a new light.

About this title

About the Author

Rodolphe Gasché is Eugenio Donato Professor of Comparative Literature at SUNY, Buffalo. His most recent book is Of Minimal Things: Studies on the Notion of Relation (Stanford, 1999).

From the Inside Flap

Against the assumption that aesthetic form relates to a harmonious arrangement of parts into a beautiful whole, this book argues that reason is the real theme of the Critique of Judgment as of the two earlier Critiques. Since aesthetic judgment of the beautiful becomes possible only when the mind is confronted with things of nature, for which no determined concepts of understanding are available, aesthetic judgment is involved in an epistemological or, rather, para-epistemological task.
The predicate “beautiful” indicates that something has minimal form and is cognizable. This book explores this concept of form, in particular the role of presentation (Darstellung) in what Kant refers to as “mere form,” which involves not only the understanding, but also reason as the faculty of ideas. Such a notion of form reveals why the beautiful can be related to the morally good. On the basis of this reinterpreted concept of form, most major concepts and themes of the Critique of Judgment—such as disinterestedness, free play, the sublime, genius, and beautiful arts—are examined by the author and shown in a new light.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

THE IDEA OF FORM

Rethinking Kant's AestheticsBy Rodolphe Gasch

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2003 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-4621-2

Contents

Acknowledgments.......................................ixIntroduction..........................................11. One Principle More.................................132. Transcendentality, in Play.........................423. On Mere Form.......................................604. Presenting the Maximum.............................895. Absolutely Great...................................1196. Interest and Disinterestedness.....................1557. The Arts, in the Nude..............................1798. Hypotyposis........................................202Notes.................................................221Bibliography..........................................247Index.................................................253

Chapter One

One Principle More

Among the abilities of the mind that form the Kantian faculties (Vermgen), the power of judgment (Urteilskraft) is a faculty of a very peculiar kind. In the First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, Kant writes that the power of judgment "is of such a special kind that it produces for itself no knowledge whatsoever, neither theoretical nor practical ... but merely constitutes the union [Verband] of the two other higher cognitive powers, the understanding and the reason." Its "function is simply to join [nur zum Verknpfen dient] the two" higher powers, and thus judgment is "in no wise [an] independent cognitive capacity" but one whose role is merely to "mediate between the two other faculties." From the very start, then, it would seem that, however important its function may be, the power of judgment is marked by a certain self-effacement, a subservience and a lack of independence. Now, insofar as the faculty is one of determining judgment-which holds "the capacity for subsumption of the particular under the universal"-no delineation could be more obvious: "it is merely a power of subsuming under concepts given from elsewhere." But what about judgment in its reflective mode? Indeed, it is this latter kind of judgment that the critical investigation of the power of judgment takes up in the Third Critique. Characteristically, Kant qualifies reflective judgment in telling terms as "merely" reflective judgment. Unlike determining judgment, this judgment has seemingly no cognitive contribution to make, and Kant's qualification would appear to deprive it of any autonomy whatsoever.

A glance at how Kant distinguishes the two kinds of judgment would seem only to confirm reflective judgment's secondary status. In the First Introduction to the Third Critique, we read: "The judgment can be regarded either as a mere capacity for reflecting on a given representation according to a certain principle, to produce a possible concept, or as a capacity for making determinate a basic concept by means of a given empirical representation. In the first case it is the reflective, in the second the determining judgment." The better-known definition of determining and reflective judgment, found in the Second (and final) Introduction, is more formulaic and considerably simplified; it is the version to which Kant resorts in the main body of the Third Critique and echoes in the Logic (1800). It runs as follows:

Judgment in general is the faculty of thinking the particular as contained under the universal. If the universal (the rule, the principle, the law) be given, the judgment which subsumes the particular under it (even if, as transcendental judgment, it furnishes, a priori, the conditions in conformity with which subsumption under that universal is alone possible) is determinant. But if only the particular be given for which the universal has to be found, the judgment is merely reflective.

Compared to determining (or determinant) judgment, which receives its law from the concepts that are given to it elsewhere and which accordingly subsumes the particular, the power of judgment called merely reflective has nothing definite to offer to the cognitive faculties, and thus appears to be an even less autonomous judgment. It is nothing more than a reflecting power, and seems to be doubly deprived of autonomy, in that it is not an independent cognitive capacity and even lacks the power of determining judgments to yield knowledge under the guidance of the understanding. Such "merely reflective" judgments, which include aesthetic and teleological judgments, would thus border on the insignificant. In consequence of such a reading, teleological judgment has more often than not received short shrift or been regarded as complete nonsense, and aesthetic judgment has been viewed by many of Kant's commentators as a contemplative, self-sufficient, or aestheticist approach to a domain characterized as disinterested, disengaged, nonserious, inconsequential, and merely playful-that is, the domain of art.

Unlike theoretical and practical reason, the power of judgment is not an independent cognitive power. As we have seen, its sole function consists rather in linking these independent powers. The special task incumbent upon reflective judgment is thoroughly distinct from determining judgment, in that it is not involved in cognition or in practical matters. But is it possible that, paradoxically, this task might require reflective judgment to manifest an autonomy not foreseeable on the basis of reflection's determining and cognitive achievements? In other words, could it be that the power of judgment is capable of joining the two other powers only on condition that it can muster a freedom of its own? Before looking into precisely what reflective judgment amounts to and achieves, or inquiring into the "merely" reflective quality of reflective judgment, let me first establish, as succinctly as possible, what Kant understands by determining judgments. Such a clarification is warranted because these judgments must be either cognitive or moral: in other words, they must be judgments that either contribute to our knowledge of the world and its objects or determine action according to the moral law. In either case, determining judgments are distinguished by an unmistakable priority and significance. In what follows, I will focus on determining judgment in the cognitive sense. Although these judgments perform the valuable function of making the world known to us, we must still investigate what they tell us about it. This amounts to asking what theoretical cognition in fact amounts to for Kant. According to the lapidary definition in the Third Critique, in determining judgments, empirical representations (or particulars) are subsumed under the general concepts of nature, that is, the categories of the understanding. Consequently, such understanding is "only" categorial, that is, concerns exclusively the constituting conformity of the laws of objectivity in general with the objects of experience. Indeed, the categories are only the necessary conditions of experience and, as a result, are constitutive only of objects of experience in general. In other words, determining cognition amounts to "nothing more" than the cognition of nature in general. It follows that in determining judgments, and in the cognition they bring about, much remains undetermined. This is evident throughout the Third Critique even though, in the section of the Critique of Pure Reason entitled "Analytics of the Principles," Kant sought to bridge the gap between the conditions of experience in general and cognition of objects in experience by inquiring into the conditions of the possibility of objects such as those encountered in empirical experience. In the Second Introduction to the Third Critique, Kant writes:

We find in the grounds of the possibility of an experience in the very first place something necessary, viz. the universal laws without which nature in general (as an object of sense) cannot be thought; and these rest upon the categories, applied to the formal conditions of all intuition possible for us, so far as it is also given a priori. Now under these laws the judgment is determinant, for it has nothing to do but to subsume under given laws.... But now the objects of empirical cognition are determined in many other ways than by that formal time condition, or, at least as far as we can judge a priori, are determinable. Hence specifically different natures can be causes in an infinite variety of ways, as well as in virtue of what they have in common as belonging to nature in general; and each of these modes must (in accordance with the concept of a cause in general) have its rule, which is a law and therefore brings necessity with it, although we do not at all comprehend this necessity, in virtue of the constitution and the limitations of our cognitive faculties. (19)

In the transcendental doctrine of the faculty of determining judgment, Kant has shown what kind of use (Gebrauch, Anwendung) must be made of the conditions of experience in general in order for the cognition of empirical objects to be possible. Nevertheless, in the case of certain objects of experience or empirical representations, determining-that is to say, cognitive-judgments are at a loss. They cannot muster a determined concept under which to subsume the things in question. In other words, cognition as understood by Kant comes to a halt before certain particulars, and before the manifold of particulars (i.e., empirical laws, or heterogeneous forms of nature). From the perspective of the transcendental laws of the understanding that make experience and cognition of nature in general possible, such particulars and their laws are contingent. Yet, as Kant stresses, if the contingent or particular does not have its own rules and lacks lawful unity, then the thoroughgoing connection of the whole of experience, a connection required a priori by our reason, is not possible. Now, determining-that is to say, cognitive-judgment is reduced to accounting for empirical representations, in the name of the transcendental concepts constitutive of nature in general. But it is not competent to deal with the particulars given in intuition, and thus reflective judgment, whether aesthetic or teleological, is needed. The task of such judgment consists in nothing less than "discovering" concepts and rules that the particular obeys. In short, the task of reflective judgment, as distinct from the task of determining judgment, is to render intelligible what is particular and contingent by showing it to have a unity that is thinkable by us, although it does not rest on the objective rules that are, of course, the prerogative of determining judgment. Considering the nature of what triggers it (to say nothing of the principle that serves as its guideline), the merely reflective judgment is thus anything but idle or empty play. Further, as should already be evident, the task that it faces is no small or insignificant one, and hence Kant's characterization of reflective judgment as "merely" reflective must in no way intimate his belittling of it.

In its more formulaic version, Kant's definition of both kinds of judgment states that determining judgment subsumes the particular under given universals, whereas reflective judgment seeks a universal for a given particular. Accordingly, the reader could be led to assume that one is just the symmetrical inversion of the other. From what we have seen so far, such an assumption would be quite misleading, since the judgments perform thoroughly distinct tasks. But something else needs to be set straight at this juncture: namely, that the opposition between the two forms of the power of judgment is predicated not on the distinction between determination and reflection but on the distinction between judgment in its determining mode and judgment in its merely reflective mode. Indeed, determining judgments are reflective as well, in the sense that they implicate reflection. If Kant does not give particular prominence to the operation of reflection in determining judgments, it is simply because reflection here follows the laws of the understanding. The following passage about determining judgments from the First Introduction will certainly help to sustain this point:

In regard to the universal concepts of nature, under which a concept pertaining to experience but without particular empirical specification is initially possible, reflection already has its guide in the concept of nature in general, i.e., in the understanding, and the judgment requires no special principles of reflection, but schematizes these concepts a priori and applies these schemata, without which no experiential judgment would be possible, to each empirical synthesis. In this case judgment, in its reflection, is also determining, and the transcendental schematism of judgment provides it with a rule under which given empirical intuitions are to be subsumed.

With unmistakable clarity, Kant thus establishes the presence of reflection in the determining, that is, theoretical or cognitive, judgment. Needless to say, the presence of reflection within determining judgments does not make them reflective judgments. By definition, determining judgments are never "merely" reflective. In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant explained: "Reflection (reflexio) does not concern itself with objects themselves with a view to deriving concepts from them directly, but is that state of mind in which we first set ourselves to discover the subjective conditions under which [alone] we are able to arrive at concepts." Consequently, when Kant holds that to reflect, or to deliberate (berlegen), "is to compare and combine given representations either with other representations or with one's cognitive powers, with respect to a concept which is thereby made possible," the first type of comparison refers to the kind of reflection required in determining judgments (and which, indeed, is reflection in its logical mode), whereas the second type of comparison describes reflection in aesthetic reflective judgments. In all instances, judgments include a reflection upon the possible objective relation of the concepts in question, but in determining judgments concerning a manifold of representations, these concepts are a priori given to reflection. Reflection thus effaces itself before the pilot that the concept of nature in general represents. However, as Olivier Chdin has argued, it is most likely as an "analogy to the `reflection' worked out in the First Critique that Kant develops the notion of an aesthetical reflective judgment"; even so, the analogy is only partial, because the reflection that characterizes aesthetic reflective judgment is endowed with features, and manifests an independence, not to be found in its theoretical employment. Unlike determining judgments, in which reflection submits to the given concepts of nature, reflective judgments, properly speaking, are judgments in which reflection is no longer involved in operations of determination. What sets them apart from determining judgments is not that they are reflective but that they are, as Kant repeatedly emphasizes, merely reflective judgments.

In order to elicit the exact nature and specific task of reflective judgments-"also called the critical faculty [Beurteilungsvermgen] (facultas dijudicandi)" -it is thus necessary to explore the merely reflective quality of these judgments. Only under this condition does their difference from determining judgments (which also rely on reflection) come to light. The adverb "merely" (bloss) is not to be taken in a depreciatory sense. Just as "the poet merely promises an entertaining play with ideas, and yet it has the same effect upon the understanding as if he had only intended to carry on its business" (165), so the merely reflective judgment may seem a simple or even idle play with reflection but is in fact involved in a serious game of cognition in the broad sense. Rather than diminishing the status of this kind of judgment, the qualification "merely" serves to delimit a mode of reflecting comparison with respect to possible concepts, in the face of representations for which the understanding has no determined concepts to offer. Kant's commentators have attributed little importance to this restrictive "merely"; nor have they registered the extensive use that Kant makes of it and other restrictive adverbs such as lediglich, nur, and allein throughout the Critique of Judgment (though his use of "merely" in the context of teleological judgment is more rare). When I bring these restrictive qualifiers into relief in the discussion below, my purpose will not be to draw up a complete inventory of occurrences of these terms in Kant's texts (if a complete inventory would even be feasible; the Third Critique is so replete with such terms as to produce curious and even amusing textual effects here and there). Rather, since the extensive presence of these restrictive terms cannot be accidental, it seems crucial to figure out what reasoning imposes this device and governs its various uses, and even more important to assess whether the device tells us something specifically about reflective judgment itself. Does merely merely serve to indicate that reflective judgment is never determining? Were this the case, Kant could certainly have proceeded more economically. Rather, I believe that his abundant use of these restrictive terms betrays the difficulty of the task faced by Kant in this last critical work-the difficulty of isolating, with the required purity, the realm to be delimited. It could thus well be that rather than occurring incidentally in Kant's text, merely is used for systematic reasons, and that its status is that of a philosophical concept comparable, say, to that of the pure.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE IDEA OF FORMby Rodolphe Gasch Copyright © 2003 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804746214
• ISBN 13: 9780804746212
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272