A comment on Dietmar Heidemann’s
account on Kant’s Non-Conceptual Aesthetics: Against an active understanding
Nora Schleich·
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Germany
Abstract
This
paper aims to contribute to an ongoing and controversial debate about non-conceptuality
in Kantian aesthetics. It is a replica on a paper of Dietmar Heidemann in Con-Textos Kantianos N.°
12, to which I do consent, but I’d like to give some additional comments
on a specific issue: I show in this paper that the problem about whether or not
the understanding contributes to aesthetic judgment can be elucidated by means
of a revaluation of the imagination’s capacity of formal representation and the
subsuming activity of the power of reflective judgment. I argue that the
understanding is considered by the power of reflective judgment merely in his
lawfulness in order to find a universal under which the imagination’s particular,
the formal representation of the beautiful shape, can be subsumed.
Key words
Aesthetic experience, power of
reflective judgment, faculty of imagination, Kantian non-conceptualism,
judgment of taste
In this paper I would like to comment on Dietmar Heidemann’s Response to my critics: In defense of Kant’s aesthetic non-conceptualism, which
has been published in CON-TEXTOS KANTIANOS. International Journal of
Philosophy N.° 12, December 2020, pp. 173–190.
More concretely, I
want to put pressure on one of Dietmar Heidemann’s
statements concerning the controversial topic of the influence of the
understanding on the free play of the faculties in judgments of taste.
Defending his interpretation of the non-conceptuality of aesthetic
representation, which I consider thoroughly well-structured and argued, he
points out that making sense of the contribution of the understanding in the
free play “remains problematic for conceptualists and non-conceptualists alike.”
(Heidemann 2020, p. 180). As Kant makes explicit in the very first pages of the
Analytic of the Beautiful, aesthetic pleasure is universal even though no
concept is implied (KU, AA 05: 211–9) – but the understanding is nevertheless
mentioned in relation to the imagination in the free play. How is this to be
understood?
Without wanting to
claim a complete understanding of all the Third Critique’s obscure
passages, I think that I can advocate for a satisfactory solution concerning the
above-mentioned issue. I argue that by emphasising the function of the faculty
of imagination and the power of judgment in order to make sense of the formal
structure of this free play, one can avoid including an active understanding in
aesthetic contemplation. Heidemann advocates for the latter: “For the free play
of imagination and understanding is not chaotic but, in some way, formally
structured (cf. KU, §§ 10–14) which can only be explained through the
understanding being active.” (Heidemann 2020, p. 179). My argument follows
three steps: First, I show that the imagination is the faculty that combines
the shapes of the intuited and is responsible for structuring the
representation. Second, that the aim of the power of reflective judgment is to
look for and find a universal under which the particular representation can be
subsumed. In a third and final step, that the power of judgment, in the
activity of subsumption, establishes a connection to the understanding’s
lawfulness, as the formal universal under which the formal representation can
be – merely formally and in reflection – subsumed. Thus, no activity of the
understanding is needed in causing aesthetic pleasure, merely the
synchronisation in reflection of its formal aspects.
Before proceeding
to my proposal for a solution, a brief outline of the context and theme of the
problem is in order. For the non-conceptualist account, it is crucial to
demonstrate that pure aesthetic judgement, “xy is
beautiful”, is grounded on the famous aesthetic feeling; a feeling that, unlike
mere sensation, comes along with an a priori transcendental structure and a
peculiar subjective universal validity. Thus, the subject of experience “must
believe himself to have grounds for expecting a similar pleasure of everyone”
(KU, AA 05: 211). The important distinction lies in the fact that, in contrast
to judgments of cognition, this universal validity is not an objective one, as it
is not grounded on determinate concepts, but merely subjective: it rests on the
subject’s feeling and state of mind (KU, AA 05: 217). Nevertheless, it entails a
claim for universal validity because what triggers the feeling is a very
special relation among the subject’s cognitive faculties, i.e., the imagination
and the understanding, of which every subject is in possession. In judgments of
cognition, these faculties are in accordance with each other: the intuition and
the corresponding concept are combined to generate objective cognition. In
judgments of taste however, neither a determinable intuition of the perceived object
nor a determining concept is central or at issue at all for establishing that correspondence
(cf. KU, AA 05: 203 and 217).
Kant stresses more
than once that no concept can be involved in the judgment of the beautiful, i.e.,
that no conceptual content of the representation can be the determinable ground
for it.[1]
But still, the representation is formally structured, which allows for the
pleasing correspondence between imagination and understanding. Heidemann claims
that this “can only be explained through the understanding being active” (Heidemann
2020, p. 179) and that this activity of the understanding is the synthesis “of
what is given in intuition and since synthesis is possible only according to
rules, i.e., categories, categories must be somehow operative in aesthetic
cognition, too, although, as Kant says, ‘without a concept of the object’ (KU,
AA 05: 217).” (Heidemann 2020, p. 179).
I think that
involving the understanding as an actively contributing faculty is problematic with
respect to Kant’s account of aesthetic experience. We should not forget the
well-known claim about the “free and indeterminately purposive entertainment of
the mental powers with what we call beautiful, where the understanding is in
the service of the imagination and not vice versa.” (KU, AA 05: 212). I claim
that two important points must be considered here in order to elucidate the
free play as a mental state which does not contain an active contribution of
the understanding: a) the role of the imagination while forming the
representation of the beautiful shape (Gestalt) and b) the estimating
and subsuming procedure of the faculty of reflective judgment.
a) On the aesthetic function of imagination
A very trivial but no less necessary reflection is
fundamental: It is the imagination that provides the representation of the
beautiful shape. It does so in a different way than for representing an object
meant to be determined, i.e., objectively. Representing aesthetically is, as we
know, based on a merely formal representation of the shape of anything intuited
(KU, AA 05: 240–1), since the aesthetic pleasure of a beautiful representation
comes along without interest in any determinable or actual property of an
object. Therefore, the faculty responsible for representing, the imagination,
needs to be able to refrain or abstract from whatever material quality of the
perception there is, in order to represent merely formally:[2]
Only the spatio-temporal composition and no relation
to anything objective guarantees a pure judgment, and in this case a judgment of
taste.[3]
This way of representing entails further that the power of judgment cannot find
a determining concept under which the representation can be subsumed; which, as
we know, is the case for aesthetic and reflective judgment (cf. KU, AA 05: 179–181
and 231).
How does the
imagination represent merely formally, without the guidance of the
understanding?[4] First,
it is of course highly difficult to offer a concrete reading of the
imagination’s function in Kant’s work. But we find evidence that the faculty
can be seen as a fundamental faculty, a basic power, that is not reducible to
any other faculty like sensibility or understanding. Heidemann in Kants Vermögensmetapyhysik
(cf. Heidemann 2017, p. 61–2) argues for such a reading as well. In the
A-Deduction of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant lists the imagination
as a source of cognition next to sense and apperception (KrV, A 115), each of which are “elements or foundations a
priori that make this empirical use itself possible” (KrV,
A 115). He continues:
We
therefore have a pure imagination, as a fundamental faculty of the human soul,
that grounds all cognition a priori. By its means we bring into combination
the manifold of intuition on the one side and the condition of the necessary
unity of apperception on the other. Both extremes, namely sensibility and
understanding, must necessarily be connected by means of this transcendental
function of the imagination, since otherwise the former would to be sure yield
appearances but no objects of an empirical cognition, hence there would be no
experience. (KrV, A 124)
The claim that the imagination is a “necessary
ingredient of perception” (KrV, A 121, note) reads
the same way, because it isn’t sensibility that can give the manifold of
experience in an intuitable form, the essential function here fore is synthesis,
which is, as Kant states, “in general […] the mere effect of the imagination,
of a blind though indispensable function of the soul, without which we would
have no cognition at all, but of which we are seldom even conscious.” (KrV, A 78/B 103). These passages allow us to understand the
imagination as an a priori, irreducible fundamental faculty, which mediates
between sensibility and understanding and is not dependent on either of them. The
Metaphysik Pölitz and On the Use of
Teleological Principles in Philosophy both offer passages as well that
strongly support this reading (cf. V-Met-L1/Pölitz, AA 18: 262 and ÜGTP, AA 08:
180f., note). In the chapter on schematism, which Kant did not alter while
revising the first edition, the faculty of imagination is even able to produce
a “third thing” (KrV, A 138/B 177) a schema, thanks
to which the accordance between sensibility and understanding is made possible (KrV, A 140/B 179). The independence of imagination does not
entail that it is in its function not oriented towards understanding’s
lawfulness. It synthesises in a spatio-temporal structure
towards a potential unification of the manifold: It adds partial
representations one after the other to result in a completed and for the
subject intuitable shape of what has been perceived. The representation of this
shape is only possible thanks to its temporally-sequenced structure.
Of course, the revised
deduction of the First Critique makes the interpretative situation
difficult. There, we face the imagination as a faculty working for the
understanding, as its synthesis is merely an effect of the understanding’s
spontaneity on sensible intuition (KrV, B 152). The
following consideration may facilitate the case though: If it is kept in mind
that Kant was in the B-Deduction primarily concerned to defend his account on
how cognition is possible, i.e., how the categories, as expressions of
spontaneous thought, apperception, are able to be applied to sensual
perception, the interpretative context is shifted. What we read in the revised
Deduction is how objective cognition can be possible, i.e., objective unity in
the manifold, but not the possibility of representations as such, including
those representations that are not able to be determined by means of concepts.
Still, what we
need now to make sense of is the function of the imagination: representing by
means of synthesis. I argue, and here I follow the non-conceptualist approach,
that the mere combination of partial representations (Teilvorstellungen)
of the manifold in intuition brings about a representation, which is as it
is a representation without being sufficient for cognition (KrV, B 103f.). The imagination grounds the intuitability of
objects, as it represents what has been perceived in an intuition in a way that
it meets the requirements of formal intuition, i.e., space and time (KrV, A 78). This ability to do so describes the central
function of the imagination: synthesis. To keep things brief: We need to
differentiate between the synthesis speciosa, as Kant calls the
synthesis of the imagination representing in space and time, and the synthesis
intellectualis, which, in the B-deduction, is the
synthesis of the understanding operating without any meddling of the
imagination.[5] The
latter counts as “unity of the action” (KrV, B 153)
which enables cognition: thinking an objective unity in the manifold by means
of the categories. And the synthesis of the imagination that shall provide an
intuition suitable for cognition has to be oriented on that objectifying ground
(cf. Birrer 2017, p. 191). It is this synthesis that
is at stake in the context of objective cognition: “Yet to bring this synthesis
[the synthesis of the imagination] to concepts is a function that
pertains to the understanding, and by means of which it first provides
cognition in the proper sense” (KrV, A 78/B 103).
Nonetheless, it is
possible to advocate for a reading of the imagination’s synthesising function
that is not guided by the intellectual synthesis: Birrer
talks in this sense about an ‘autonomous and non-intellectual synthesising
capacity’ (Birrer 2017, pp. 191–2 and cf. KrV, A 124), Olk calls it the ‘prereflective synthesis’ (Olk
2016, 100f.), which may or may not be in accordance with the categories and
which is definitely not executed by means of categorial determination. Hanna
describes that function of the imagination as “sub-rational or lower-level
spontaneous” (Hanna 2005, p. 249) but also as „essentially spontaneous,
goal oriented, and vital – in a word creative“ with „its own specialized
representational faculty and cognitive function“ (Hanna 2001, pp. 39–40).
What interests me here
the most is that in the act of combining the imagination connects parts in the
representation in a temporally successive way: It combines one part after the
other and thereby represents something that is intuitable by us, as we need the
spatio-temporal form to intuit at all. Its function
is therefore fundamental for anything that can be represented as an intuition (cf.
KrV, A 124 and 99f.) – and by this function it lays the
ground for, if this were the case, the condition of determination, as
determination of an intuition requires the possibility for applying formal
time-conditions, categories, on what has been sensibly intuited (cf. KrV, A 139–40/B 179). If now the materialistic elements of
what has been perceived are not considered in this connecting activity, all that
remains is combining mere shapes in a successive manner: creating a form.
The formal
structure of the representation is thus guaranteed by the synthesis of the
imagination and grounds the required “lawlikeness”[6]
of the aesthetic kind of representation mentioned by Kant in the Third Critique
(KU, AA 05: 287). Aesthetic representation is no occasion for irregularity; it
allows for a universally communicable, pure judgment of taste if and only if
the way of representing meets certain conditions, namely a free and purposive
play between imagination and understanding (KU, AA 05: 218). Now, what happens
in the case of aesthetic representation is that the process of combination
interrupts and switches contexts. The synthesising of the forms in a temporal
sequence is what is needed per se to bring about anything representable. But then,
the imagination abstains from rendering the perceived content of the object determinable,
it schematises without a concept, as Kant describes (KU, AA 05: 287): in its
reflective freedom, it continues to bundle merely the shapes and creates thus
another kind of representation. As we know from the Third Critique, imagination
can ‘transform experience’ in some special cases:
The
imagination (as a productive cognitive faculty) is, namely, very powerful in
creating, as it were, another nature, out of the material which the real one
gives it. We entertain ourselves with it when experience seems too mundane […];
in this we feel our freedom from the law of association (which applies to the
empirical use of that faculty), in accordance with which material can certainly
be lent to us by nature, but the latter can be transformed by us into something
entirely different, namely into that which steps beyond nature. (KU, AA 05: 314)
The imagination here is not productive (schöpferisch) because it relies on what has been
perceived – but it is able to bundle it in a different way: it thus creates, by
means of this free and extraordinary combination of representational parts, a
new representation: a representation that exceeds what could objectively be
determined (see also Anth, AA 07: 224) which does not
rely on any guidance by or orientation towards understanding.
The preceding
aspects had to be considered in order to make sense of the imagination being
able to represent aesthetically, independently of any determining or
objectifying endeavours. The imagination can thusly be considered “in its freedom” (KU, AA 05: 287), whereas, of course, it
needs to be held in mind that this kind of freedom is merely reflective and not
to be confused with freedom in the practical sense.[7]
It has been shown that the imagination’s synthesising function allows for the
representation’s formal structure. This is, and I will emphasise this in the
following, the necessary condition for the fulfilment of reflective judgment’s aim
for indeterminate subsumption, for the concept of purposeless purposiveness
and, of course, for the pleasure in the beautiful and the judgment of taste.
This reading will make explicit why no understanding needs to be actively
present or contributing to aesthetic representation or judgment. It is
nevertheless certain that understanding needs to come somehow ‘into play’ in subsumption,
as aesthetic feeling rests on the a priori condition of imagination and
understanding being in free accordance, just ‘as if’ it is the case for
cognition in general (cf. KU, AA 05: 190). This is what guarantees each: the
purposiveness in aesthetics and the universal communicability, same as the
claim for universal validity.
b) Reflective Power of Judgment and Formality
Aesthetic pleasure only arises when the power of reflective
judgment is successful in finding a particular for subsumption, i.e., when
judgment manages to establish an accordance between the particular and the
universal – in reflection. As Kant makes explicit from the beginning on, the
latter as a concrete concept is missing in aesthetic representation. Therefore,
reflective power of judgment must strive for finding a universal under which
the particular could be subsumed and thus, to bring imagination and
understanding into accordance. The particular that imagination represents in
beautiful contemplation is but a shape and nothing concretely determinable. Now
Kant states that in case of the beautiful, it is the
subsumption
not of intuitions under concepts, but of the faculty of
intuitions or presentations (i.e., of the imagination) under the faculty
of concepts (i.e., the understanding), insofar as the former in its freedom is
in harmony with the latter in its lawfulness. (KU, AA 05: 287)
The condition of that subsumption is, as the power of
judgment’s a priori principle of purposiveness tells, that an accordance
must be found in order to make something cognitively tangible, purposive, and
meaningful for the subject. Subsumption requires “the condition that the
understanding in general advance from intuition to concept” (KU, AA 05:
287, my emphasis). Kant’s statement that “freedom of the imagination consists
precisely in the fact that it schematizes without a concept” (KU, AA 05: 287),
points out that it is by means of this merely formal schematisation that the
representation receives its formal structure. The formal structure of the
representation, i.e., the imagination representing merely formally, allows it
to meet the conditions that are set for cognition in general: the mere
possibility of temporal determination. The representation must be given in a temporal
structure (successively bundled) to be intuitable. Even though, as is the case in
aesthetics, no determination will concretely follow, it is this kind of
representation (Vorstellungsart) that
reflective judgment holds to be what fits the universal (cf. KU, AA 05: 271).
And vice versa, even though there is no determining universal available under
which the peculiar representation could be subsumed, reflective judgment
relates the formal representation with the formal part of the understanding:
its lawfulness.
To make my primary
claim explicit – that active understanding does not contribute to aesthetic experience
(including contemplation and judgment) – I’d like to point explicitly to
the function of reflective judgment and free play. In its aim to subsume the
particular under the general, judgment needs to establish a relation that
respects the principle of purposiveness. This principle is transcendental and
subjectively formal: it is assumed by the power of judgment for its own use, and
is given by the reflective power of judgment itself as its own law (cf. KU,
AA 05: 183 and 180). As the necessary regulative principle for subsumption, it says
that
what is contingent for human insight in the particular (empirical) laws of
nature nevertheless contains a lawful unity, not fathomable by us but still
thinkable, in the combination of its manifold into one experience possible in
itself. (KU, AA 05: 183–4)
As the faculty itself is giving the principle for
itself heautonomously (KU, AA 05: 185–6), neither understanding nor reason can
be read as actively commanding it. The indeterminacy and subjectivity of aesthetics
remain thoroughly preserved.
To fulfil its aim,
the power of judgment therefore needs to find ‘an agreement of nature with our
faculty of cognition’, and presupposes this agreement a priori, “in
behalf of its [the power of judgment’s] reflection on nature in accordance
with empirical laws” (KU, AA 05: 185, my emphasis). This is its endeavour to find
purposiveness, i.e., to search for a universal enabling the accordance with
nature (the particular that needs to be subsumed).[8]
It is thus by means of the power of judgment that the
understanding comes into play: In order to reach an agreement between the
particular and the universal, it establishes a purposive relation between the
imagination (in its freedom as merely formally representing) and the understanding’s
lawfulness: “For that apprehension of forms in the imagination can never take
place without the reflecting power of judgment, even if unintentionally, at
least comparing them to its faculty for relating intuitions to concepts.” (KU,
AA 05: 190).
A passage in the Anthropology
highlights that the formal aspect is central for aesthetic judgment: It
relates the formally representing imagination (in its freedom) to the form
of understanding, i.e., its lawfulness (thus not with concrete laws for determination):
The
judging of an object through taste is a judgment about the harmony or discord
of freedom, in the play of the power of imagination and the lawfulness of
understanding, and therefore it is a matter only of judging the form
aesthetically (the compatibility of the sense representations), not the generation
of products, in which the form is perceived. (Anth,
AA 07: 241)
It is important to emphasize that this relation is
merely formal, not for the sake of determining the object of experience. What makes
the agreement between the faculties possible is grounded on the way the
imagination is representing: it combines the shape (no material
properties of the perception) in a temporal sequence, i.e., successively
(connecting in time remains formal). This is what lays the ground for a
possible accordance with the lawfulness of the understanding, which is the
transcendental formal time-condition through the application of the pure
concepts, the categories (KrV, A 138–9/B 177–8). This
accordance is the subjective transcendental condition for judgments in
general, only that in taste it is reflective and aesthetic (related to the
subject’s state of mind and feeling) and in cognition, it is objective. The
reflective judgment is grounded on this formal relation between the cognitive
capacities. As it is not determined nor following actual determining rules, it
is considered free: a free play between imagination and understanding.
In this reply I have
tried to show that it is the power of judgment which initiates the relation to
the understanding, i.e., that it does not involve the understanding actively
taking part, but that judgment merely reflects upon the understanding’s formal
aspect as the possible universal under which the forms of the imagination could
be subsumed. As such, it establishes an ‘as if’ relation: a purposive accordance
between the formally representing imagination and the lawfulness of the understanding
in its lawfulness that triggers aesthetic pleasure. It does not matter if it is
but a formal and subjective purposive accordance; we find – unexpectedly – a
way to relate nature and intelligibility in representation, to subsume the
forms of the manifold under the formal aspects of unification, and this is what
causes pleasure. Additionally, these considerations favour of a revaluation of
the function of the imagination: through its ability for aesthetic
representation (i.e., synthesising mere forms, abstracting from determinable
content and acting independently of external determination), it lays the ground
for the subsequent moments: a) it gives a special kind of particular that can
only be related in reflection to a merely formal universal, and b) as it
represents in its freedom, there cannot be any determination that meddles in
this activity. This would contaminate the indeterminacy of pure aesthetic
judgment since no free play, no unexpected accordance between the faculties of
cognition could take place and thus, no aesthetic pleasure would arise. For the
aim of the present argument, it was thus central to prove
1) that the synthesising of the imagination happens to
shift in the case of aesthetic representation,
2) that it is the power of reflective judgment which
searches for a universal in order to subsume the particular and that it finds
this universal in the formal aspect of the understanding,
3) that in creating a relation among imagination and
understanding, it reaches its aim of a purposive estimation of the
representation. This shows that no active contribution of the understanding is
needed to judge aesthetically.
As the aim of the Critique
of the Power of Judgment was to make explicit the possibility and the
conditions of “the transition from the domain of the concept of nature to that
of the concept of freedom” (KU, AA 05: 196), I hope that the considerations about
reflective judgment and the formally representing imagination in this paper can
contribute to understanding the possibility of such a transition by means of a
relation established in reflection. Additionally, I think that the reading of
the understanding as only passively made present by reflective judgment in
aesthetic cognition is a favourable argument for the non-conceptualist account
of Kant’s aesthetics.
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