A New Look at Kant’s Genius: a Proposal of a
Multi-componential Account
Iris Vidmar Jovanović*
University of Rijeka, Croatia
Abstract
As numerous scholars pointed out, Kant’s account of
genius suffers from internal inconsistency, primarily due to the contradictory
way in which Kant talks about the relation between imagination and taste in
artistic production. What remains unclear is whether taste and genius work in
concord in order to produce beautiful art, or whether one or the other takes
charge. In this paper I look at this challenge, and I offer an interpretation
of how Kant conceives of genius. I argue that the gift of genius is
multi-componential, including the capacity to maximize imagination’s
productivity as well as the capacity to develop taste to the point where one
can extract the rules for art production, internalize them and implement them
in one’s own original and exemplary artistic production. By analyzing specific
claims Kant makes in relation to beautiful art, primarily his account of poetry,
I extrapolate further aspects of artistic genius, which relate to his capacity
to create artworks imbued with moral and cognitive significance, and which
enable the awakening of genius in other artists.
Key words
Kant,
genius, beautiful art, imagination, aesthetic ideas, taste
1. Challenging Aspects of Kant’s Genius
Kant defines beautiful arts as “necessarily (…) arts of genius” (§46).[1] In
doing so, he wants to separate art from other domains of human actions,
primarily science and crafts, and he wants to keep a close bond between art and
nature without reducing art to instinctive effects. Most importantly, he wants
to show that creation of beautiful art is not a matter of mechanical
production, while also maintaining that art has to be made in compliance with
some rules, though not to the point where these rules are consciously followed
and implemented by the artist. His solution is to claim that nature endows
certain of its ‘favorites’ with a natural talent, a gift of genius, which he
defines as “the inborn predisposition of the mind (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art” (§46). On his view, one cannot learn how to be an
artist, will it, or in any other way induce a talent for artistic creation.
Unless one is given the gift of genius, one cannot create beautiful art.
Given such a relevance of genius, it is confusing that throughout the
few paragraphs dedicated to fine art in the third Critique (§§43-54) Kant develops two mutually incompatible accounts
of it. According to the 5:310 account, “genius can only provide rich material for products of art; its
elaboration and form require a talent
that has been academically trained, in order to make a use of it that can stand
up to the power of judgment”. On this account, genius, as productive capacity,
is capable of providing the material for the work, but its elaboration, i.e.
the skill needed to formally arrange this material and present it in an actual
product, is a matter of hard work, practice and training that remains outside
of a domain of genius and falls under the jurisdiction of taste. However, on
the 5:317 account, “genius really consists in … finding ideas for a given
concept on the one hand and on the other hitting
upon the expression for these” (§49, 5:317, my emphasis). On this conception,
genius incorporates the capacity to come up with the material, as well as to
create formally appropriate works of art, and it does so without being taught
or instructed on how to achieve this.
The crucial difference in the two accounts of genius arises from the
confused and contradictory way in which Kant talks about the role of taste in
artistic creation.[2] If
taste is external to genius, as stated in 5:310, then it is unclear how genius
can give the rule to art, given that “to be rich and original in ideas is not
as necessary for the sake of beauty” as it is conformity to the power of
judgment, i.e. to taste (5:319). But if taste is internal to genius, as stated
in 5:317, it is unclear how to understand Kant’s repeated claims regarding the
need to practice and develop one’s taste, given that one cannot influence on
the gift itself but is born with it. More importantly, if taste is internal to
genius, how should we understand Kant’s claim that taste is “the discipline (or
corrective) of genius” and that genius “must be sacrificed” if there is a
conflict between taste and genius in the product of beautiful art (§50)? This
ambiguity raises a challenge: which of the two conceptions is the one that Kant
wants to present as his account? More to the point, the challenge is to
explicate what precisely the gift of genius is.
In what follows, I approach this challenge by analyzing both conceptions
of genius. I argue that, given Kant’s overall theory of art, we should prefer
the 5:317 account, and I give an interpretation of it that is less vulnerable
to Kant’s explicit rejection of it in §50. My main point is that the gift of
genius is a multi-componential one, including a capacity to develop
imagination’s productivity to the point at which it becomes creative and
produces aesthetic ideas, and the capacity to develop taste to the point where
it enables one to create original and exemplary works of art. Furthermore, such
works are endowed with cognitive and moral value and contain the capacity to
awaken the talent of other gifted artists. On this view, art has an important
cultural and educational value, and the artist (endowed with genius), as the
one who is solely capable of creating art, has extremely important role in
humanity’s overall development.
2. The 5:310 Account
Kant develops his account of genius against two paradigms dominant in
his days: the one which saw an artist as entirely ‘possessed’ by nature,
oblivious to his own powers; and the one according to which an artist is the
‘possessor’ of his talent, capable of taking charge of his own artistic
impulses.[3] The
midway that Kant ends up developing sees artist as ‘possessed’ in the sense
that he is given the talent (rather than being capable of developing or
learning it), but also as the ‘possessor’, in the sense that he becomes a
master of this talent and takes charge in the process of creation. The
challenge for us is to understand, given Kant’s ambiguous and contradictory
writing, how these two aspects interact in artistic creation. Clarifying that
will help us understand what the gift of genius consists of.
According to Kant’s first elaboration, “Genius can only provide rich material for products of art; its
elaboration and form require a talent
that has been academically trained…” (5:310, original emphasis). In subsequent
parts, Kant elaborates on ‘academically trained talent’ and ultimately relates
it to the capacity to make judgments regarding the work grounded in taste.[4] The
emerging picture of a genius is one in which genius and taste come apart:
genius is only capable of providing rich material for artistic creation, and
the actual arrangement of that material is designated to taste, which is
outside of genius’ control and thus external to him.
On this account, the gift of genius consists in its capacity to come up
with ‘rich material’ and to induce an artist to begin with his creation. I will
refer to this process as genius’ capacity to generate an artistic vision, which
manifests itself in a spontaneous and indeterminate awareness of the artist
that there is something in his mind that he wants to express, which he did not
initiate consciously and voluntarily. Coming up with this vision is beyond the
reach of an artist, which is why he cannot explain where his ideas come from or
will them or call upon them by his own volition. However, once he becomes aware
of it, he forms an intention to express it – after all, as Kant states, “art
always has a determinate intention of producing something” (5:306). My
suggestion is that this intention develops as a consequence of artistic vision.
The intention however is not an intention to produce something determinate, as
that would be a mechanical kind of creation, one that is in accordance with a
determinate concept, whose product would not count as beautiful art.[5]
Rather, on this reading, genius is the talent for coming up with ‘rich
material’, that, as artistic vision formed spontaneously and involuntarily in
the mind of an artist, induces him to initiate the process of artistic creation
whereby this vision gets expressed in a concrete work of art.
Once such intention is produced and the artistic creation is initiated,
an artist becomes more and more in control of what he is doing, since he needs
to find the best form to the product
of beautiful art. I emphasize the need to find
the best form, as it implies that this particular aspect of artistic production
is under voluntary control of an artist, unlike the generation of artistic
vision. Kant therefore describes artistic process as “production through freedom,
i.e. through a capacity for choice that grounds its actions in reason” (§43). I
suggest that ‘a capacity for choice’ relates to the actual process of creation,
within which an artist has to make a series of judgments regarding his work,
ranging from the techniques he wants to use to concrete details of his work
such as motives, their formal arrangement, composition etc. All these choices
are ultimately related to the exercise of taste, which is why Kant sees taste
as another necessary component of artistic creation, though a component which
has to be practiced and academically trained. Such training takes place against
examples (models) of the older generations: works of art are exemplars from
which young artists learn and against which they develop their own talent. As
Kant explains, one can only develop one’s talent if one has been touched by a
work of another genius; when ideas embedded in a work arouses his own spirit.[6] On
the 5:310 account, once one’s talent has been aroused, he has to engage in laborious
and time-consuming process of practice, so that he can develop this talent. In
this process, one develops a taste so that it becomes “the discipline (or
corrective) of genius” by “introducing clarity and order into abundance of
thoughts” (5:319).
Given all the hard work that an artist needs to put into his creation
after the vision has been developed, he is not passive in the process of art
creation. Kant ultimately claims that artistic creation is “not a matter of
inspiration or a free swing of the mental powers, but a slow and painstaking
improvement” (5:312). In other words, spontaneously developed artistic vision
over which an artist has no control induces him to express it and at this
point, as the creation of a work begins, artist takes charge over his mastery:
he becomes an active maker. That is the core of artistic creation – yet, as
Kant himself laments, “how this is possible is hard to explain” (5:309). Before
we tackle this ‘hardship’, let us take a deeper look at what Kant means by ‘rich
material’. This is relevant, in that on both conceptions of genius its capacity
to provide this material is undisputed.
3. Genius’ Rich Material: Aesthetic Ideas and Aesthetic Attributes
The backbone to Kant’s critical project in epistemology, ethics and aesthetics
is the supposition that the same cognitive faculties function in everyone in
roughly the same way. However, when it comes to artists, they are somehow
different: as nature’s favorites, they can come up with beautiful works of art,
which is something that cannot be accomplished sans the gift of nature. So what
is it that differentiates an artist from the rest of us? How is he different?
One obvious candidate here is imagination: given the relevance of
imagination in experience of beauty generally, it seems that those who are
solely capable of creating beautiful art will be different with respect to
their imagination. And given the relevance of aesthetic ideas (hereafter AIs)
in Kant’s account, it is just as plausible to try to account for the artistic
creation by linking imagination, in its productive capacity, to the generation
of AIs.[7]
However, explicating the nature of artistic creation via an artist’s capacity
to generate AIs is not precise enough. Given the textual evidence in 5:314,
where the notion of AIs is first introduced, it is not obvious that Kant
relates AIs exclusively to the
imagination of an artist. Throughout 5:314 he gives a rather detailed account
of productive imagination in all of us
when he states that imagination is powerful in creating another nature, “out of
the material which the real one gives it”. As he claims, “we entertain ourselves” in this way “when experience seems too
mundane to us”, and we do so “in
accordance with principles that lie higher in reason” (my emphasis). Thus, we
can all transform the material that nature gives us “into something entirely
different”. Kant further states that “such representations of imagination” are
called “ideas”. Whether or not here he means ideas generally or aesthetic ideas
is unclear, but given his overall terminology, and the relevance of AIs for art
(which I discuss below), I take him here to be referring to AIs. Thus, I am
skeptical over the claim that only an artist can generate AIs.[8]
There is another reason, a practical one, for us to suppose that
everyone, not only artists, can generate AIs. Recall that on Kant’s view, the
cognitive capacities operate roughly the same in all of us, which explains why
we can share judgments and understand one another.[9] This presupposition does not
exclude differences among the individuals, but if generation of AIs were solely the capacity of an artist, it
would be unclear how the rest of us can engage with his creations –
particularly, if, as I discuss below, art is a manner of communication whereby
artist’s ideas get communicated to the audience. Thus, what differentiates an
artist from the rest of the community is not his capacity to generate AIs but,
rather, the particular manner in which he does so. To anticipate my account of
genius, what is distinctive about an artist’s generation and expression of AI
is the precise form that AIs obtain when expressed by an artist and the impact
these ideas have once they are expressed in a work of art and experienced by
other artists and the audience. Before
I elaborate on each of this in particular, let us look more closely at AIs.
Kant first relates AIs to what he calls spirit. The notion of spirit is
introduced in §43 where Kant refers to it as that which “alone animates” the
work. Here he criticizes those who think that creation of art is a mere play
free of all compulsion: sans this compulsory element, the spirit “would have no
body and would entirely evaporate” (5:304). In §49 Kant reintroduces the notion
of spirit, in the context within which he sets up to explain ‘faculties of the
mind that constitute genius’. Though he first talks about spirit being in the
work of art (“A story is accurate and well organized, but without spirit”), he
later defines it as “the animating principle in the mind”, thus shifting the
perspective from the work to the mind (though without explicating whose mind he
is referring to). The animation itself is described as something that
“purposively sets the mental powers into motion, i.e. into a play that is
self-maintaining and even strengthens the powers to that end”. In order to
achieve this animation, Kant explains, the animating principle uses a ‘certain
kind of material’. He defines this principle as “nothing other than the faculty
for the presentation of AI”, adding immediately that by an AI he means “that
representation of imagination that occasions much thinking though without it
being possible for any determinate thoughts, i.e., concept, to be adequate to
it” (5:314).
This explanation helps us understand what Kant means by spirited works:
these are works that move us and incite us to engage in ‘much thinking’, though
without providing us with any ‘determinate thoughts’, i.e. concepts under which
to subsume these thoughts. The contemplative process initiated by the experience
of a work is an ongoing process of reflection “that no language fully attains
or can make intelligible.” This is in accordance with his definition of fine
art as art whose satisfaction is one of reflection: the satisfaction that
artistic experience provides is related to the cognitive processes that we
engage in as a result of how spirited work affects us. Spirited works are works
which manage to move us reflectively because of the manner in which they incite
us to contemplation. Later we will see why Kant claims that the outcome of such
reflections are ‘kinds of cognition’.
“One readily sees”, Kant further claims, “that [an AI] is the
counterpart (pendant) of an idea of reason, which is, conversely, a concept to
which no intuition (representation of the imagination) can be adequate”.
(5:314). While it is easy to read this as Kant shifting from describing the
impact of AI (‘occasion much thinking’) to accounting for what they are
(‘counterpart of an idea of reason’), there is another way to read this statement.
First, Kant here emphasizes the operative similarity between aesthetic ideas
and rational ideas. He brings AIs in connection to intellectual ideas not because of their ‘content’
(what they stand for or represent) or manner of presentation, but because of
the similarity in how they ‘animate the mind’, i.e. how they induce and
organize the reflective processes. Like rational ideas, which, as heuristic
principles, guide our understanding and determine our empirical cognition, so
too operate aesthetic ideas: they organize our thought processes in experiences
of beauty.[10] In
doing so, they, like, ideas generally, tend to go beyond the given nature and
to seek for a sort of unity (we will see Kant’s precise wording in 5:314
below).
Second, the claim that AIs are counterpart to rational ideas gives us a
way in which to envision them: unlike rational ideas, which lack
representational properties, aesthetic ideas are imbued with them. That is why
Kant explains that AI consists of a bunch of representations that cannot be
subsumed under one definite concept, or captured via linguistic expression. The
freedom of imagination, its productive power, is evident in its capacity to
generate ‘manifold of representations’ and to thus animate the powers of mind,
sans providing a ‘nameable’ concept for these representations. In subsequent
paragraphs, Kant refers to these representations as aesthetic attributes and
describes that aspect of how AIs manifest themselves by using the phrase
‘wealth of thought’. First however he exemplifies his claims by stating
that
The poet ventures
to make sensible rational ideas of invisible beings, the kingdom of the
blessed, the kingdom of hell, eternity, creation, etc., as well as to make that
of which there are examples in experience, e.g. death, envy, and all sorts of
vices, as well as love, fame, etc., sensible beyond the limits of experience,
with a completeness that goes beyond anything of which there is an example in
nature, by means of an imagination that emulates the precedent of reason in
attaining to a maximum;… (5:314).
This description of what a poet presents (‘makes sensible’) via his
poems is, I suggest, the most elaborate account of AIs, in terms of their representational content. Representational
content of AIs reveals two relevant features of them: first, as I explain in
more details in the sixth section, they relate to the particular subject/theme
nexus that is expressed in a work of art, i.e. to what artworks are about.[11]
Second, notice that the examples Kant adduces here are parallel to all of the
constituents of human cognitive faculties. Rational ideas are embedded in
reason, and provide normative and practical directions on how our understanding
is to pursue its empirical investigations. Categories of understanding are necessary
elements in empirical cognition and ‘all sorts of vices’ are at the centre of
our moral life. Thus, the examples of AIs enlisted here show us that we cannot
think of AIs as linked solely to moral or solely to rational ideas; they are
inclusive of all that we have at our disposal for cognitively and morally
making our way around the world.[12] More importantly, they are parallel to those
concerns that humans have in virtue of being humans, with particular set of
cognitive faculties: rational ideas organize our manner of thinking about
ourselves and our world, and categories of understanding dictate our conceptual
repertoire which we apply to the empirical world, as we go about in our
everyday experience. This reinforces my practical reason for doubting the claim
that only an artist can express AIs: if that were so, the audience could not
understand artworks or recognize what it is that they are about, because they
could not recognize the thematic concerns put forward by the work, and would
lack the cognitive capacities to relate to them.
Kant’s analysis of AIs in this part gives us reasons to conclude that a
difference between productive functioning of human imagination generally and of
an artist’s imagination is one of a degree, not of a kind. Notice how Kant
states that the poet makes AIs sensible ‘beyond the limits of experience, with
a completeness that goes beyond anything
of which there is an example in nature, by means of an imagination that
emulates the precedent of reason in attaining to a maximum’. The artist, it
seems, presents ideas and concepts (namely, rational ideas and categories of
understanding) in a very particular manner: by making these ideas so rich, that
they go beyond the experience. Artistic presentation of AIs, in other words, is
different than that of a non-gifted individual because it is only in the
artistic presentation that they are presented with such richness.
Kant gives us another reason to claim that the distinction between
artist’s imagination and that of ordinary man is one of a degree, not of a
kind. After explaining what a poet ‘ventures to make sensible’, Kant states:
“it is really the art of poetry in which the faculty of AIs can reveal itself
in its full measure. This faculty, however, considered by itself alone, is
really only a talent (of the imagination).” (5:314). The claim that ‘in the art
of poetry the faculty reveals itself in
its full measure’ suggests that productivity of imagination is gradational,
and reaches its maximum in poetry. This implies that people differ with respect
to how productive their imagination can be, with the artists, and particularly
poets, being those whose imagination has the greatest capacity for
productivity. In other words, the gift of nature, the genius, consists in
enabling the imagination to reach maximum in its productivity. Thus, what
separates an artist from the rest of us is the degree to which his imagination
is productive: unlike those lacking the talent, artist’s imagination reaches
‘its full measure’. Only a genius can make certain things ‘sensible beyond the
limits of experience’ and with a ‘completeness that goes beyond anything
experienced’.
Having thus exemplified what the poet does, Kant refers to the
imagination as creative, and explains
that creative imagination “sets the faculty of intellectual ideas (reason) into
motion, that is, at the instigation of a representation it gives more to think
about than can be grasped and made distinct in it” (5:315). Here we see another
aspect of the genius’ talent, as the maximum of imagination’s productivity, its
creative moment, is evident in how it moves reason into contemplative mode:
those who lack geniality cannot ‘set the faculty of intellectual ideas into
motion’, i.e. they cannot induce a wealth of thoughts via their way of
presenting AIs. This is why those who lack the talent cannot generate works
endowed with spirit.
In 5:315 Kant offers a further explanation of imagination’s creativity,
in explaining how precisely it represents its ideas: in the form of what he
calls aesthetic attributes (hereafter AAs). As he states, AAs are “forms which
do not constitute the presentation of a given concept itself, but, as
supplementary representations of the imagination, express only the implications
connected with it and its affinity with others” (5:315). In this sense, AAs are
contrasted to logical attributes, which are contained by the concept itself and
adhere to the logical rules. The first example Kant gives is that of “Jupiter’s
eagle with the lightning in its claws” which stands as an attribute of the
‘powerful king of heaven’, and of a peacock, which stands for “the splendid
queen of heaven”. Neither the Jupiter’s eagle nor the peacock “represent what
lies in our concepts of the sublimity and majesty of creation”, explains Kant,
but “something else”. This ‘something else’ is as far as Kant goes in
explaining AAs, but such an ambiguity is to be expected, given that AIs express
something unnamable, something beyond the limits of experience. Therefore, Kant
shifts to explaining their modus operandi, which should also be read as a
description of the process of the animation of the cognitive powers in the
audience. On my interpretation, this particular impact that artistic portrayal
of AIs has on the audience is yet another relevant aspect of the genius: those
without the gift cannot thus influence the spectators.
As Kant says, what AAs represent “gives the imagination cause to spread
itself over a multitude of related representations, which let one think more
than one can express in a concept determined by words; and they yield an
aesthetic idea, which serves that idea of reason instead of logical
presentation” (5:315).[13] To
illustrate the process in which attributes yield an idea, Kant again relies on
examples from poetry. He cites “the great king” who represents the “rational
idea of cosmopolitan disposition at the end of life” via the image of a sun
which “has completed its daily course” but nevertheless “still spread[s] a
gentle light across the heaven”. As Kant explains, a description of a sun’s
gentle ray representing “good deeds” we should leave behind as we die is the
outcome of imagination’s recollection of everything agreeable in a beautiful
summer day. He thus illustrates artistic creation as a process in which
imagination manages to combine and arrange various motives from experience
(i.e. from the given) and transfer them into something lying beyond the
experience. Arguably, those lacking the talent cannot do so; they either do not
chose the proper motives or they fail to transform them ‘into something new’,
thus failing to inspire the pleasure of reflection in the audience. This is why unspirited works of art seem
dull, trivial and familiar: the motives chosen and the manner in which they are
presented do not invite the audience to reflect on what the work presents.
Kant’s account of AAs and their giving rise to AIs sheds further light
on genius and artistic creation. On my reading, genius’ rich material relates
to its capacity to generate AAs, which, combined in certain way, animate the
mind and give rise to AIs. On this account (5:310 – 5:316), the talent consists
in genius’ capacity to come up with the proper kinds of AAs, but their actual
arrangement does not fall under genius’ control – it is only in 5:317 that Kant
in fact unites genius and taste, only to open himself to further contradictions
down the line. Thus, the 5:310 account sees genius as only providing powerful
material for the creation of art and it excludes taste from the domain of
genius. And while the way in which the genius provides this material, and the
kind of material that it provides, is helpful in explaining the difference
between artists and the rest of us, the account is problematic for several
reasons.
First, if genius is explicated only in terms of the rich material, it is
not clear how it provides the rule to art. The rule relates to how something is
to be done, rather than to the expressive or representational features that the
product has. So on this account, genius cannot provide the rule to art. A
further problem for this account is the fact that Kant himself diminishes the
relevance of genius’ rich material, i.e. AIs, when he asserts that “works which
are rich in material are inspired, but not beautiful” (§50); only those works
which are in line with the taste are beautiful. This is inconsistent with his
overall view of “beauty as expression of AIs” (§51), not to mention with his
claim that art is only possible if one possesses the genius. Therefore, the
5:310 account does not fit well within Kant’s theory. Let us then move to the
5:317 account.
4. The 5:317 Account
Having exemplified AAs and their yielding of AI, in the second part of
the §49 Kant recapitulates his claims regarding genius. However, the account he
offers here is a significant expansion of genius’ talent in comparison to the
one he developed throughout 5:310 – 5:316. In 5:317 Kant states that genius
“really consists in the happy relation, which no science can teach and no
diligence learn, of finding ideas for a given concept on the one hand and on
the other hitting upon the expression
for these”. It is at this point, notice, that Kant explicitly states that
genius consists in finding ideas and
in ‘hitting upon the expression’ of these ideas. Thus, genius and taste come
united, and this union does not depend upon academic training: in line with his
previous statement about art being the product of genius, Kant now argues that
‘no science can teach and no diligence learn’ a genius how to create his works.
While this account nicely incorporates Kant’s crucial claims regarding
genius (genius is an inborn predisposition of the mind which gives the rule to
art) by making activities of taste part of the gift itself, the account is
inconsistent with Kant’s repeated claims regarding the condition of academic
training, which, as explained above, enables one to develop one’s taste and to
create art by making a series of judgments regarding one’s creation. Such
inconsistency leaves us with a problem: how are we to accommodate the academic
training requirement with the gifted artist who generates his art out of his
own nature, yet without making conscious judgments in the process? Furthermore,
how are we to accommodate this account with Kant’s statements in §50, where he
explicitly dismisses the relevance of genius and gives supremacy to taste in
artistic creation, calling it “the discipline (or corrective) of genius”?[14]
In order to answer this, we first need to look more closely at 5:317
account, particularly at the notion of expression that Kant here emphasizes.
Expression itself is relevant for Kant because it is connected to his account
of communication. On his view, communication, as expression of one’s judgments
and sentiments, is central to our humanity and has an important role in development
of community. As he sees it, art itself is a form of expression: notice that
his ‘division of beautiful arts (presented in §51) is built upon the analogy
with forms of expression.[15]
Furthermore, in discussing the form of a work of art – which, recall, falls
under the prominence of taste – Kant states that it is a means by which
beautiful representation “is universally communicated” (§48). On this view, the
form of a work of art matters not only because it is a sole object of aesthetic
judgment but because it enables an artist to communicate his ideas. For this
reason, Kant often describes the experience of art as one in which an artist communicates his ideas. This aspect is
emphasized in 5:317, when Kant explains that the happy relation of
understanding and imagination is secured when the union between the ideas and
their expression is such that, through it,
the subjective
disposition of the mind that is thereby produced, as an accompaniment of a
concept, can be communicated to others. The latter talent is really that which
is called spirit, for to express what is unnamable in the mental state in the
case of certain representation and to make it universally communicable … that
requires a faculty for apprehending the rapidly passing play of the imagination
and unifying it into a concept … which can be communicated without the
constraint of rules. (5:317)
These several lines hold a key to Kant’s explanation of the ‘hardship’
involved in artistic creation, understood as a form of communication. ‘The
subjective disposition of the mind’, I argue, is the artistic vision produced
once that imagination’s creative endeavors result in generating a bunch of AAs,
thus invoking a specific image standing for an AI. That is why Kant refers to
AAs as ‘an accompaniment of a concept’ – recall that attributes are forms which
do not constitute the presentation of a given concept that understanding
demands, but are nevertheless related to it because the imagination provides
them to the understanding, in order to give rise to the thought about the
concepts which, due to their indeterminacy, cannot be verbalized. Here it is
explicated that the aim of the artist – what he referred to previously as the
intention to produce something – is to communicate his particular way of
conceptualizing specific AIs. Although the artist doesn’t know why or how such
particular ‘wealth of thought’ is generated by his imagination, as Kant now
explains, his talent, the spirit, relates to his capacity to ‘apprehend’ such a
play of thought, to unify it into a concept and to communicate it to others,
without adhering to some pre-existing rules. Notice that Kant here refers to
the ‘talent’ which enables one to communicate the ‘subjective disposition of
the mind’ as an ‘accompaniment of a concept’, i.e. as an idea of reason or
category of the understanding. Since the communication is related to the form
of ‘subjective disposition’, Kant here states that taste, which enables such
communication, is itself a talent, namely nature’s gift of genius. On this
account, the gift of genius includes a capacity to organize the material, i.e.
‘the unnamable’ so that it can be communicated. As I will now show, it is with
respect to that communication that the 5:317 account allows itself to include
the academic training requirement, and to properly balance imagination and
taste in a product of art.
First however, a word regarding the spirit. Namely, it may be
questionable why artistic creation in its entirety cannot be explained by this
quote alone, i.e. by relating geniality to the spirit itself.[16]
This proposal is particularly plausible when we look at the entire explanation
given here by Kant, who clearly understand spirit, at least in 5:317, as a
talent which incorporates expressing
what is unnameable
in the mental state and communicating it further, i.e. as faculty for
apprehending the rapidly passing play of the imagination and unifying it into a
concept (which for that very reason is
original and at the same time discloses a new rule, which could not have been
deduced from any antecedent principles or examples), which can be
communicated without the constraint of rules. (5:317, my emphasis)
My reasons for focusing on the relation between genius and taste, to the
exclusion of spirit, relate to the fact that spirit, even in this most
elaborate explanation as presented here, does not tell us much about the actual
process of art-creation, only about the process I referred to as the generation
of artistic vision. In other words, description of spirit does not say much
about the very faculties that Kant sees as relevant for art-creation in
addition to the creative imagination, most notably taste and understanding.
Furthermore, the description of spirit presented here eliminates the condition
of academic training, relating artistic creation almost entirely to the
operation of a spirit.[17]
Yet, this is not in line with Kant’s overall view of art – recall that Kant
explicitly rejects such art as beautiful, calling it inspired. Kant repeatedly
warns against freedom of spirit as described here; in §43 he argues that
without “something compulsory” the spirit “would evaporate”, and in §47, he
ridicules those who only rely on spirit (rather than on training) by referring
to them as those who are ‘parading around on a horse without staggers”.
Academic training relates to one’s capacity to extrapolate and adduce the rules
for art, and it is not clear that the spirit in 5:317 does that. Rather, it
seems that the spirit can generate the rules ‘out of the blue’ without deducing
them from any antecedent principles or examples. But Kant has already
demonstrated that “the rule must be abstracted from the deed, i.e. from the
product, against which [an artist] may test [his] own talent, letting it serve
[…] as model not for copying but for imitation” (§47. 5:309) – this capacity,
after all, is part of the hardship of artistic creation he sets out to explain!
Most importantly however, if 5:317 account of spirit was sufficient to explain
the genius, it would remain unclear why Kant insists on the role of taste in
§50. In other words, even if genius can be equated with spirit, we still need
to provide an explanation for the role of taste in artistic production. Thus,
it is more plausible to understand spirit in 5:317 as related to the
imagination’s creative capacity, which as we know, can generate new rules when
it comes to concepts, such which ‘could
not have been deduced from any antecedent principles or examples’ because they
are not logical. These rules relate to the imagination’s productivity, to the kind
of material it generates in order to represent a given concept, not to the form
eventually given to the work of art once that an artist takes charge over his
creation and begins expressing his vision.
5. Genius and Communication through Art
Remember that for Kant, the talent for art “cannot be communicated”
verbally, and it cannot be instructed. Rather, the skill for art, the talent,
is “apportioned to each immediately from the hand of nature” and to make it
operative, one “needs nothing more than an example” (5:309). As Kant explains,
“the ideas of the artist arouse similar ideas in his apprentice if nature has
equipped him with similar proportion of mental powers. The models of beautiful
art are thus the only means for transmitting these to posterity…” (5:309). By
‘ideas of the artist’ Kant must mean AIs as captured and expressed in a work of
art. This means that a work of art
has the capacity to inspire the talent of another gifted artist, rather than
any verbal instruction that an artist could produce. The genius thus “gives
rise to a school” (5:318), i.e. establishes a particular artistic practice, a
manner of creation which becomes a role model to other artists. As Kant sees
it, at the bottom of such practice is a “methodological instruction in accordance
with rules, insofar as it has been possible to extract them from those products
of spirit and their individuality” (5:318).
I take this to imply that genius includes the capacity to extract the
rules for art from original and exemplary works and, through artist’s nature,
modify them into something new, original and exemplary in its own right, that
he incorporates into his creations. It is important to emphasize originality
and exemplarity, since, for Kant, these are important features of genius’ creations:
what he brings into existence is original, since he produces it from his own
nature. However, since there is “original nonsense” which cannot count as
beautiful art (5:308), Kant is quick to add another condition that a work of
genius must satisfy: it must be exemplary, meaning that others must recognize
it as worthy of artistic attention, and that it must inspire others to use it
as a model against which to develop taste. This is the crucial aspect of
artistic creation, because, recall, it is through the genius that nature gives
the rule to art. Extracting such rules in
the process of developing one’s talent, and in light of that talent, is,
again, something that only one with the genius can do – or so I claim. Thus, a
solution to the ‘hardship’, as defined above, is to recognize that the gift of
genius includes the talent to extract the rules of art from exemplars and to
incorporate them into one’s capacity to give form to what is otherwise
inexpressible, sans copying others. In Kant’s words, the rule must be
abstracted from the deed, i.e. from the product, against which [an artist] may
test [his] own talent, letting it serve […] as model not for copying but for
imitation” (§47). Because the artist himself doesn’t know where his capacity to
do so comes from, he cannot explicate it, but in light of his talent, he can
act upon it. Awakening the talent awakens the capacity to extract the rules,
internalize them and turn them into something original and exemplary, channeled
through individual nature of each genius, which thus finds expression in his
work. Under this interpretation, it is easy to see why Kant insists that “the
gift of nature must give the rule to art” (5:309) even though an artist cannot
explain where such rule comes from.
The implication of my interpretation of 5:317 is that taste (in
artistically relevant sense) becomes an inherent aspect of genius and works
with it, rather than being external to it. While everyone can imitate works of
genius and thus try to extract rules for art, only those with the talent can do
this successfully. In other words, taste can only develop in artistically
relevant manner if one is given the gift of nature and if one engages in
practice and improvement, having been touched by the relevant exemplars. Just
as imagination’s productivity comes in degrees and reaches its maximum in those
with genius, so too does the capacity to develop taste in artistically relevant
manner.
My interpretation implies that we should not read the 5:317 account to
mean that the genius ‘hits the expression’ out of blue – recall that artistic
creation is not a matter of “free swing” of mental powers. That would surely be
too naïve and greatly oversimplified, and would dismiss Kant’s repeated
insistence on training and on the relevance of exemplars, not to mention what
he calls “preparation and foundation for beautiful art” (5:305).[18]
What I am suggesting is that part of what genius includes is a capacity to
develop taste via training, so that the products of such creation are works of
beautiful art. In other words, while everyone can practice and train, only
nature’s favorites can eventually reach the excellence needed for creation of
art. In that sense, the natural gift is the necessary and sufficient condition
for art-creation, one that ‘no science can teach and no diligence learn’. Thus,
the 5:317 account is not in tension with the academic training requirement, nor
with the claim that one cannot learn how to be an artist.
Under the interpretation I offer here, on which genius includes the
capacity to develop taste in artistically relevant manner, the inconsistency
between 5:317 and §50 can also be mitigated. Kant’s claim that taste acts as
“corrective” of genius does not necessarily imply that taste overpowers
imagination, rendering it entirely irrelevant. Rather, it is the responsibility
of taste to arrange ideas in manner which makes them “tenable, capable of an
enduring and universal approval” (5:319). As I argue, taste can only do this,
provided one has the talent, i.e. one is a genius. Only then will one develop a
capacity to organize ideas so that one creates beautiful art rather than
original nonsense, mechanical art or art which lacks spirit. Sans that
capacity, one’s work might be ‘rich and original in ideas’ and thus inspired, but,
as Kant sees it, such work will not animate the mind. If ideas are presented in
a random, haphazard, formless way, they fail to provide the pleasure of
reflection because they fail to accompany representations as kinds of
cognition. In other words, works which are rich in ideas but lack formal
arrangement are not works in which ideas are rendered sensible. Such works are
examples of miscommunication between an artist and his audience. This is why I
argued above that genius is evident not in generation of AIs but in particular
manner in which they are expressed, and in the impact these ideas have once
they are expressed. We already saw that one such impact relates to their
capacity to generate talent in gifted artists; in the next part we will see the
impact of genius’ work on the audience.
6. Genius’s Art and the Satisfaction of Reflection
Kant defines successful artistic communication as one in which an artist
manages to express his ideas (i.e. to formally arrange his work) so that this
expression, embedded in a work, is “adequate to the thought and yet not
detrimental to the freedom in the play of mental powers” (5:313). The latter
condition is a condition of beauty generally: beauty is only possible in the
course of a free play of mental powers, when imagination is liberated from the
strict rules of reason. The implication here is that a work of art has to
mobilize mental powers into free harmony. But what is meant by the first
condition, that a work be “adequate to the thought”? From the perspective of an
artist, this implies that he successfully ‘apprehended the rapidly passing play
of the imagination’, and has ‘unified it into a concept’. From the perspective
of the audience, I suggest, the claim that successful works of art are
‘adequate to the thought’ should be brought in connection with Kant’s overall
claim that beautiful art has a “reflective power” of judgment as its standard
and that its pleasure is one of reflection. In other words, beautiful art is
adequate to the thought, rather than to the senses, when it incites the
audience to reflect on what it expresses, i.e. on the concept that the artist
communicated via his work. However, this only happens when a work has a proper
form, since, recall, a beautiful representation of an object is “really only
the form of the presentation of a concept by means of which the latter is
universally communicated” (5:312). Unless the work has this form, it will fail
to be ‘adequate to the thought’, i.e. it will fail to animate the mental powers
and provide pleasure of reflection. This is why Kant sees taste as “clipping
the wings” of imagination’s productivity.
Just how strong this demand is for Kant is most evident in §52, where
Kant argues that “in all beautiful art, what is essential consists in the form…
where the pleasure … disposes the spirit
to ideas” (5:326, my emphasis). Here Kant adds that “if the beautiful arts
are not combined … with moral ideas… they serve only for diversion” leaving the
mind “dissatisfied” with itself and making one feel “useless and dissatisfied”
(5:326). I take this to imply that the
form of a work of art is not, as generally interpreted by the formalists,
relevant per se, but for the future purpose it serves, namely, ‘disposing the
spirit to ideas’ and ‘animating the mind’. This is relevant because in the
absence of the proper formal arrangement, the ideas themselves will lack the
power to bring forward a pleasure of reflection. For this reason, less
successful works of art are considered trivial or dull: they do not animate the
mind and do not invoke AIs in the audience. We tend to pass such judgments on
such works not because they deal with subject/theme nexus that is not
considered reflection-worthy, but because they do so in a manner which does not
move us or invite us to grapple with its complexity: to put it in Kantian
terms, such works do not provide pleasure of reflection.
In addition, the way Kant characterizes the role of form in successful
works of art in §52 helps us settle the longstanding controversy regarding
Kant’s apparent embracement of formalism, at the expense of art’s cognitive or
moral relevance.[19]
Traditionally, Kant was interpreted as a formalist, namely as someone who
attaches the value of art to its form. This isn’t surprising, given how often
Kant stresses the centrality of form in judgments of beauty. However, what §52
helps us see is that, in art, form is relevant because of the way in which it
animates the mind, i.e. because of the way in which art touches us cognitively.[20] The
precise nature of such cognitive impact is described in §53, where Kant details
the impact of poetry – that art form, recall, where the productivity of
imagination riches its maximum. Kant states that poetry “owes its origin almost
entirely to the genius” and in the least to examples, and he goes on to provide
a rather extensive account of how poetry affects the mind. As he says, poetry
“expands the mind” and it
strengthens the
mind by letting it feel its capacity to consider and judge of nature, as
appearance, freely, self-actively, and independently of determination by
nature, in accordance with points of view that nature does not present by
itself in experience either for sense or for the understanding, and thus to use
it for the sake of and as it were as the schema of the supersensible (5:326).
What Kant establishes here is a direct link between poetry and
metaphysics. Kant states that in experience of poetry, our minds are induced to
consider those ideas which are usually hidden from our direct experience,
although, as rational ideas, they structure that experience and make it
possible. He thus reinforces his claims, regarding the creativity of
imagination, according to which it transforms the given nature “in accordance
with principles that lie higher in reason” (5:315).
Uniting poetry and metaphysics in this manner should not surprise us,
given Kant’s repeated descriptions of the impact of AAs in cognitivist’s terms.[21]
Notice also that the examples he provides of what a poet makes sensible in his
poetry (i.e. what I previously referred to as representational aspect of AIs)
corresponds to what, in philosophical theories on the value of art, is
discussed as subject/theme nexus of a work: that aspect of our experience of
the world that an artwork is about. In great works of art such subject/themes
nexuses are of “relatively deep significance to human life” (John 2016, p.
295). As Lamarque and Oslen state in discussing the value of literature,
literature (and art generally) deals with humanly
important topics, those which matter for our human experience, such as
identity, determinism, faith, love, etc. (Lamarque and Oslen 1994, p. 265).
These are precisely the examples that Kant uses in elaboration on poetic
enterprise. What poets aim to present in their work is identical to the issues that
our minds are constituted to pursue, and to the questions we necessarily pose,
given the concepts in our understanding. This implies that art is in alliance
with our cognitive pursuits, i.e. that it is a powerful and resourceful
instrument for conducting such pursuits.
This statement finds a double support in Kant’s account of fine art,
when we join AIs’ representational content (i.e. their relation to rational and
moral ideas and categories of understanding) and their modus operandi (the way
they animate the mind and inspire much thinking). First, what the poet
represents in his work corresponds to those ‘humanly important topics’ that are
at the backbone of our cultural, social life and individual experience within
which we search for meaning and value. It is a natural predisposition of our
minds to ponder about these topics, as the categories of understanding organize
our experience into a unified whole according to the dictates of reason.
Furthermore, the way in which spirited works move us – by animating the
cognitive powers according to the principles which lie higher up in reason and
by thus expanding the concepts – explains art’s capacity to intellectually
touch us, and to leave us with a sense of having gained new, profound awareness
of whatever it is that art brings to view via its thematic concerns. That is
why Kant defines beautiful art as one which provides the pleasure of reflection
and accompanies representations as kinds of cognition.
There is however another important aspect of artistic creation that can
be extracted from Kant’s §53. Having provided us with a link between poetry and
metaphysics, Kant claims that poetry “plays with the illusion which it produces
at will, yet without thereby being deceitful; for it itself declares its occupation
to be mere play, which can nevertheless be purposively employed by the
understanding for its own business” (5:327). Notice that Kant here explicitly
grounds the epistemic reliability of poetry; precisely that of its features
that Plato so famously denied, when he argued that poetry is thrice removed
from the truth, deceptive, and composed by inspired poets who only pose as
knowledgeable ones. On Kant’s view, it is quite the opposite: while it might
seem that poetry is no more than a mere play, it is in fact serious and helpful
to the understanding, whose task is, recall, empirical cognition. Thus, poetry
is linked to our metaphysical endeavors initiated by reason, it serves
understanding in its empirical pursuits, it invites moral ideas, and it does so
in an epistemically reliable manner. That is what the gift of genius enables at
its best.
7. Concluding Remarks
Tracing Kant’s clues as to what a genius can do either from his explicit
statements about genius or from his writings on fine art, I argued that as a
gift of nature, genius, includes the following components:
(i) a capacity to develop imagination’s productivity to its ‘full
measure’ (5:314), which enables it to become creative and to summon AAs (5:315)
so as to give substance to otherwise ineffable AIs (5:315), that is, rational
and moral ideas and concepts derived from experience (5:314),
(ii) a capacity to extrapolate rules of art from another genius’ product
(5:309, 5:312), and thus develop one's taste to the point where it establishes
new ways of creation and thus gives the rule to art by creating original and
exemplary works of art (5:308, 5:312).
I argued that, given Kant’s claim regarding the shared cognitive
faculties, all humans have the capacity for productive imagination and for development
of taste, but that only those who are nature’s favorites and have been given
the gift of genius, can in fact develop these capacities to the point where
they can create beautiful art. In other words, while people generally can
express AIs in some form, only an artist endowed with genius can give such
expression, i.e. form, to these ideas, so that his work
(iii) inspires the pleasure of reflection (5:305) by animating the
cognitive powers of the mind (5:313), thus enabling cognitive engagements with
the world in epistemically reliable manner (5:327)
(iv) invites moral ideas (5:326)
(v) touches other artists by awakening their genius, thus giving rise to
schools (5:318).
On the interpretation I am offering, genius incorporates (i) – (v) of
the capacities listed above. It is a gift that ‘keeps giving’ in the course of
a time; it does not enable one to produce one’s products ‘out of the blue’,
without any preparation, hard work, practice and conscious deliberation. As
inborn predisposition of the mind, the gift of genius enables one to constantly
grow and develop as one keeps creating art. To put it bluntly, the gift of
nature does not imply that one automatically produces beautiful art. Rather, it
is a potential to develop cognitive functions to the point when one is capable
of creating beautiful art, provided one dedicates oneself to that. As with
other talents, without training, hard work, trial and errors and constant
investment of time and energy, that talent too will fade and become
unproductive.
As I argued, the apparent contradiction in the two accounts of genius
disappears once we recognize that part of the gift includes the capacity to
master taste so that it enables one to create beautiful art which can inspire
other artists while also delivering cognitive and moral benefits to the
audience. Such interpretation is responsive to the fact that taste, as a
capacity to judge, is shared by everyone and thus is not unique to the genius,
but it also respects the fact that not everyone’s taste is equal, and that not
everyone can create beautiful art. Such interpretation is also sensitive to the
fact that genius doesn’t know where the rule of art comes from, even though he
can give the rule to art via his artistic products. In the process of artistic creation,
genius acts upon the artistic vision developed in his mind, as he searches for
the best form in which to express such vision. As the vision is generated, so
too is artist’s intention to express it. Once he becomes aware of such
subjective disposition of his mind, he takes charge over what he is doing, and
makes the choices he feels fit to express his ideas, i.e., he makes judgments
of taste. And although he cannot explain why some particular choice (of color,
of motives, shapes, rhyme etc) is a good one, he can sense it as good, as
‘hitting’ the expression’. As his taste develops, he becomes better and better
at it, which is evident in his works. Kant’s sensibility to such improvement is
evident in his example of the young poet: though originally he doesn’t see why
others dislike his poems, as he develops his talent via practice and masters
his taste, his creations become better.
Given that my interest here is narrowly defined to genius, I did not
consider the wider context of the third Critique,
such as Kant’s overall concerns for beauty and exploration of reflective
judgment. Although not all of my claims regarding the genius are explicitly
supported by what Kant says in the third Critique,
my account fits coherently not only with Kant’s overall view of art, but with
our artistic and critical practices as well. According to my interpretation,
geniality comes in degrees, as does an artist’s capacity to create truly
successful works of art. Kant’s awareness of such ‘degrees of success’ that
different works exhibit is evident in his hierarchical ordering of art, as well
as in his use of the phrase “beautiful art in its full perfection” (5:305). An
obvious implication of this phrase is that the expression of beauty can be less
than fully perfect. We recognize such degrees when, to give but few example, we
recognize a development of an artist’s excellence throughout his lifetime, from
one work to another, or when we recognize that certain artists are by far more
accomplished and original than some others.
Throughout the third Critique,
Kant keeps going back and forth between uniting and disuniting taste and
genius. While such inconsistency is perplexing, perhaps we should not dismiss
it as a slip of pen of a philosopher hurling towards completion of his work,
but should rather look at it as indicative of our artistic practices.
Recognizing that genius includes the capacity to maximally develop one’s taste
as well s one’s productive imagination is consistent with variations in
artworks related to form and content. We can recognize works of art where an
artist experiments with the form more so than with the subject/theme nexus, but
we also appreciate the value of introducing certain themes into otherwise
stable formats. Kant was sensitive to that fact, even though he gave slight
preference to the mastery of form. On the whole however, just like in our
artistic practices so in the third Critique,
we value the most, as does Kant, those artists who can introduce exemplary
novelties along both of these axes.
As nature’s favorite, genius stands out in Kant’s overall view of
humanity. The analysis of poetry reveals manners in which beautiful art
provides pleasure of reflection, and it explains why Kant claims that beautiful
art accompanies representations as kinds of cognition. Due to the inherent link
between subject/theme nexus of art and the inborn predispositions of our minds
to ask certain question and wonder about specific concepts, art is, on Kant’s
view, revealed as a natural tool which enables us to probe such questions in a
pleasing way. This is what grounds its cultural and educational value. Genius,
as the one who is solely predetermined, by nature, to create such products, is
thus of great relevance for humanity’s development and progress.[22]
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