Striving: Feeling the sublime
Stelios Gadris·
University of Crete, Greece
Abstract
In what follows, I will try to show how the sublime
reveals a fundamental aspect of the subject as a human being: a striving to
comprehend the absolute. Although at first this striving appears to lead to a
futile pursuit – we cannot represent the absolute – we ultimately succeed in
presenting it (as a symbol or in art), thus re-affirming the fundamental role
of intuition for the human being: the need to make our notions, concepts and
ideas tangible. The sublime thus appears to be in close relation to an
aesthetic idea, symbols and art, manifesting a profound kinship between reason
and the imagination.
Key words
Sublime,
feeling, imagination, reason, sensibility, striving, human being.
Introduction
Being human involves being able to appreciate, or
rather feel, beauty. This is something that pertains to human beings alone: “Beauty,” Kant writes in the KU, “is
valid only for human beings, i.e., animal but also rational beings, but not
merely as the latter (e.g., spirits), rather as beings who are at the same time
animal” (KU, 5: 210[1]).
Next to beauty, I would like
to add the feeling of the sublime. The sublime discloses a fundamental aspect
of being human – one that is even more fundamental than beauty: It reveals a
being that strives to transcend its boundaries. This is a being that is neither
animal nor rational (or both animal and rational)
and that strives to attain something that not only evades its grasp but was
perhaps never destined to be grasped in the first place: the absolute. It is,
after all, the absolute that reason presupposes in all its endeavors pertaining
to theoretical knowledge (in the KrV) and to the aesthetic judgment of the
sublime (in the KU).
It is interesting to see what – if anything – this
striving delivers: If what the subject is striving for is to know (reason) or
represent (imagination) the absolute, then this effort proves futile: The
sublime is, after all, a testament to this failure. Nevertheless, the subject
will, in the end, manage to present – rather than represent[2]
– the absolute, producing an aesthetic idea (KU, 5: 314) or a symbol (KU, 5: 351).
I will try to show that, through the sublime, Kant ultimately vindicates
sensibility in the aesthetic (he)autonomy[3]
of the subject. Thus, the sublime not only constitutes a passage from nature to
freedom[4]
but manifests the sensible being’s constant endeavor to render its notions –
concepts and ideas – tangible. It is only through (or in) intuition – either
direct (e.g. constructing concepts) or indirect (presenting concepts through
symbols) –that we are able to comprehend.
I will first investigate the feeling that the human
being’s striving produces, which on my view is the feeling of the sublime. This
feeling reflects reason’s need for and pursuit of – one way or the other – the
absolute. I will then proceed to investigate the intense, almost tragic,
relation between the imagination and reason. In the KpV, the imagination – and
more generally, sensibility – appears to be absolutely subordinate to reason in
reason’s effort to transcend all sensible inclinations that might influence
morality. In the KU, by contrast, there is a shift in the way that reason
relates to the imagination: Reason appears to have softened its voice, letting
the imagination taste its own freedom and leading to what I call the
vindication of sensibility (paraphrasing Kant’s apology for sensibility (APH,
7: 143)). In the final section of the paper, I will try to show what vindicating
sensibility might mean: As hinted above, vindicating sensibility means
acknowledging that the subject must present all its concepts and ideas,
directly or indirectly, in intuition if it is to comprehend them – if it is to
obtain some correlate or other for its thinking. This is what being human –
that is, having a body or sensibility – ultimately amounts to.
Striving
Reason is driven by a propensity of its nature to go
beyond its use in experience, to venture to the outermost bounds of all
cognition by means of mere ideas in a pure use, and to find peace only in the
completion of its circle in a self-subsisting systematic whole. Now is this
striving grounded merely in its speculative interest, or rather uniquely and
solely in its practical interest? (KrV, 3: 518)
In this regard the sublime feeling is only the
irruption of and thought of this deaf desire for limitlessness. (Lyotard, 1994:
p. 55)
There is an interesting parallel between the KrV and
the KU, or rather between reason and the imagination, in the two Critiques: Both reason and the
imagination suffer; they feel a need to overstep their boundaries, and it is
this need that leads them to a futile and illusory venture into metaphysics,
the dark night (WDO, 8: 137), the broad and stormy ocean, the true seat of illusion (KrV, 3: 236). It is this illusion that they will ultimately have
to sacrifice if they are to secure a legitimate use: Reason must give up its
aspirations to know what lies beyond experience, and the imagination must
abandon its own aspirations to represent it. Even though this may be a painful
sacrifice, both will prevail, having to re-orientate their function and field
of enquiry, disclosing thus their true vocation, the supersensible. This
striving, however, is the manifestation of freedom, the freedom to transcend
all boundaries.
As we read in the KrV:
For
whatever might be the highest degree of perfection at which humanity must stop,
and however great a gulf must remain between the idea and its execution, no one
can or should try to determine this, just because it is freedom that can go
beyond every proposed boundary. (KrV, 3: 248)
What is thus revealed is an
asymmetry between an idea of reason and our nature; we always fail to obtain
knowledge or to represent or realize this idea of reason: There is an
unbridgeable gap that we strive to close. It is in this striving that
reason produces its very own principle – the idea of the absolute – and certain
feelings: respect, but more importantly the sublime.[5] Before
enquiring into the kinship between respect and the sublime – and subsequently,
morality and aesthetics – however, I would like to sketch an analogy between
reason’s fate and the fate of the imagination.[6]
There is a
peculiar fate that both reason and the imagination share: Both aspire to obtain
more than what is possible; both venture into illusion, striving to obtain
knowledge or to represent the absolute; both fail and, ultimately, sacrifice
their aspirations, delimiting their use, before securing a legitimate claim
over their territory, a territory revealed by their striving (to transcend
their boundaries). Reason grounds its transcendental principle in its striving
to ascend to even higher principles, and the imagination experiences how this
striving feels – in the sublime.[7]
In the opening to the Preface to the first edition of
the KrV (1781), we find a rather perplexed reason entangled in the incomplete
and impossible task of transcending experience and the sensible to secure
knowledge of god, immortality, and freedom:
Human reason
has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with
questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as
problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer,
since they transcend every capacity of human reason. (KrV, 3:007)
Even though
this is an impossible task (impossible because reason can never acquire
knowledge of its ideas), it is one that reason necessarily sets for itself – it
is its peculiar fate. Moreover, it is its right:
Reason has the right to presuppose the supersensible (or rather, supersensible
ideas) as its correlate or field of enquiry:
But now there enters the right of reason’s need, as a subjective ground for
presupposing and assuming something which reason may not presume to know
through objective grounds, and consequently for orienting itself in
thinking, solely through reason’s own need, in that immeasurable space of the
supersensible, which for us is filled with dark night. (WDO, 8: 137. Also: KrV,
3: 021)
Reason thus finds itself in the pursuit of something
impossible, striving to acquire knowledge of its ideas. But if its ideas are to
have a purpose or a legitimate use, reason will have to sacrifice its
aspirations to objective knowledge of god, the immortality of the soul, and
freedom and must acknowledge these ideas as nothing more than subjective
principles – although they are necessary, indeed a priori necessary, not only
for theoretical cognition (grounding the necessary idea of a system of
cognitions and knowledge as regulative principles)[8]
but, more centrally, for its practical use (grounding morality). It is thus by
sacrificing its aspirations to theoretical knowledge that reason can make an
absolute claim to its power over nature and ground morality:
Thus, I had
to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith; and the dogmatism of
metaphysics, i.e., the prejudice that without criticism reason can make
progress in metaphysics, is the true source of all unbelief conflicting with
morality, which unbelief is always very dogmatic. (KrV, 3: 019)
Before reason can secure the legitimate use of its
ideas – most notably the idea of a free causality that Kant introduces in the
third antinomy of pure reason in the KrV, the touchstone of morality – it must
find its way through illusion – a necessary and unavoidable illusion, as
necessary and unavoidable as its struggle to transcend experience. This
illusion consists in hypostasizing the absolute in its various forms – an
absolute subject, an absolute totality (the world) and an absolutely necessary
being. In other words, reason strives to obtain knowledge of its ideas as if
they were objects of experience – which they are not.[9]
Reason must dispense with its own illusions – namely,
transcendental illusion – if it is to obtain self-knowledge, delimit its use,
and acknowledge that its ideas are not objects of possible experience but
subjective principles – principles that have a legitimate use in theoretical
cognition as regulative principles and, more importantly, as indispensable to
its practical use.
The imagination faces a similar fate: Under the voice
of reason (KU, 5: 254), the mind seeks to represent the absolute (totality),[10]
and the imagination, striving to transcend its limits, ventures to do so as
well. Although the imagination will fail, it is nevertheless this striving that
will lead it beyond representation, allowing our mind to grasp – and feel – an
idea that transcends experience:
But now the mind hears in itself the voice of reason,
which requires totality for all given magnitudes, even for those that can never
be entirely apprehended although they are (in the sensible representation)
judged as
entirely given, hence comprehension in one intuition, and it
demands a presentation for all members of a progressively increasing
numerical series, and does not exempt from this requirement even the infinite
(space and past time), but rather makes it unavoidable for us to think of it
(in the judgment of common reason) as given entirely (in its
totality). (KU, 5: 254)
The feeling of the sublime pertains to our state of mind and does not depend on the object;
nevertheless, we attribute the concept of the sublime to nature and its
objects. In doing so, there arises an illusion, that of sublime nature:
Thus, the feeling of the sublime in nature is respect
for our own vocation, which we show to an object in nature through a certain
subreption (substitution of a respect for the object instead of for the idea of
humanity in our subject), which as it were makes intuitable the superiority of
the rational vocation of our cognitive faculty over the greatest faculty of
sensibility. (KU, 5: 257)[11]
It seems almost inevitable that we should hypostasize
what is nothing more than a subjective perspective. But isn’t this what
critical philosophy must do? Guide us – time and again – through illusion?
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that we conceive of everything – primarily –
as an object (of possible experience), something tangible. We must learn to
dispel the illusion and rise above the tangible, and what the sublime reveals,
in our present investigation, is our
vocation, the supersensible – this time, however, not as an idea of reason, as
is the case in the KrV, but as a feeling.
To be sure: Our vocation is to become rational and to
transcend the sensible. We may as well be on our way towards morality – and
this is indeed the case regarding aesthetic judgment. Nevertheless, on closer
scrutiny, we discover that the idea of reason that is at play within the
sublime is, principally, the idea of humanity – not the theoretical idea of
science or system, nor morality. While we have already encountered in the
beautiful the idea of a sensus communis,
that is, the idea of a common sense we share with all other human beings,
through which we come to think with and against others within a community (KU,
5: 293), it is in the sublime that the idea
of humanity is finally disclosed, grounding an idea that is unique to the
reflective power of judgment. The idea of humanity thus appears to offer a
genuine passage from nature to freedom, a passage that nevertheless lays claims
to its own (he)autonomy. And this passage involves the human being.
The being is not yet a rational agent; nor is it
(just) the subject of knowledge. It is rather a perspective, that of a corporeal
being. It is not just the embodied subject (obviously, this is the case); it is
furthermore a subject that grasps the possibility of an a priori idea, that of
humanity, and what pertains most intimately to it: feeling. The KU is an
enquiry into the possibility of an a priori feeling, after all, and to feel is
to have a body:
[Moreover] it
cannot be denied that all representations in us, whether they are objectively
merely sensible or else entirely intellectual, can nevertheless subjectively be
associated with gratification or pain, however unnoticeable either might be
(because they all affect the feeling of life, and none of them, insofar as it
is a modification of the subject, can be indifferent), or even that, as
Epicurus maintained, gratification and pain
are always
ultimately corporeal, whether they originate from the imagination or
even from representations of the understanding: because life without the
feeling of the corporeal organ is merely consciousness of one’s existence, but
not a feeling of well- or ill-being, i.e., the promotion or inhibition of the
powers of life; because the mind for itself is entirely life (the principle of
life itself), and hindrances or promotions must be sought outside it, though in
the human being himself, hence in combination with his body. (KU, 5: 278)
Kant in the above passage juxtaposes the mere
consciousness of one’s existence with feeling of the corporeal organ; both
however will ultimately have to refer to the human being as an entirety, that
is, mind and body. The KU is thus an enquiry of the subject as a corporeal
being – at least the aesthetic judgment.
Feeling
sublime
I am not interested in reconstructing a Kantian theory
of emotions or feelings; what I want to underline is the possibility of an a
priori feeling that pertains to a corporeal being that strives to rise above
its nature. I am referring to pleasure and displeasure and, in particular, to
the sublime, which captures both aspects of the faculty of pleasure. Striving
reveals a fundamental need or lack (displeasure) regarding both reason and the
imagination, a need that is ultimately remedied (pleasure).
Is this need a rational
feeling, as Alix Cohen (2018) maintains?[12]
More profoundly, can it justify the
positive or regulative use of ideas, as she claims?
Considering the above, that is, the fact that feeling
pertains to a corporeal being, these questions ultimately appear misplaced: I
would rather ask, “Can reason produce a feeling?” Clearly it can, but until the
KU we didn’t know – and nor did Kant, for that matter – that an a priori
feeling was even possible (with the exception of respect – a point to which I
will have to return).
But then what does striving feel like?
I want to claim that this need or pursuit is reflected
in the sublime; it is in the feeling of the sublime that Kant reveals how
reason effects a feeling on sensibility – the imagination – that is not the
moral feeling but one that pertains to a corporeal being. It is through the
sublime that we feel we are lacking
something[13] –
feel a need; it is through the sublime that we feel the pain because of this need, and at the same
time we soothe this pain the moment we grasp (think) that we are capable of
transcending the sensible, thus revealing our supersensible vocation, revealing
an idea of reason (we should add that we soothe the pain or comfort ourselves
through art and an aesthetic idea – but this is a claim I cannot venture to
explore here).
It is not just or primarily the imagination that tries
to fulfil reason’s demand – the imagination is, after all, nothing but reason’s
instrument; it is the entire mind that hears the voice of reason, and what this
voice compels it to do is to comprehend the absolute in one intuition – via the
imagination. We are facing the sensuous, or rather the aesthetic aspect of the
antinomy of reason, and it is sublime (KU, 5: 254).[14]
Reason compels the imagination to respond to its
pursuit, leading the latter towards a striving of its own, pushing it beyond
the sensible. If the logical use of reason – in which reason continuously
ascends, with syllogism as its vehicle, to more general principles until it
grasps the idea of a totality – can find an analog it is here, in the movement
of the imagination, which is also the mind’s movement.
But what does a sublime feeling signify?
The feeling of the sublime has a twofold structure: We
first feel displeasure or pain – when the imagination fails to comprehend[15]
the absolute in a single intuition; but in failing to do so, we are able to
grasp, secondly, a presupposition that evades all intuition, the absolute, thus
producing pleasure, albeit indirectly: Our mind is overwhelmed with the feeling
of its supersensible vocation:
[The feeling of the sublime] is a pleasure that arises
only indirectly, being generated, namely, by the feeling of a momentary
inhibition of the
vital powers and the immediately following and all the more powerful outpouring
of them; hence as an emotion it seems to be not play but something serious in
the activity of the imagination. Hence it is also incompatible with charms,
and, since the mind is not merely attracted by the object, but is also always
reciprocally repelled by it, the satisfaction in the sublime does not so much
contain positive
pleasure as it does admiration or respect, i.e., it deserves to be called
negative pleasure. (KU, 5: 245)
The above description and the twofold structure of the
sublime brings to mind the feeling of respect.
There is a structural analogy between respect and the
sublime in that both are described first and primarily as negative feelings
that nevertheless produce, albeit indirectly, a positive feeling or pleasure
(KpV, 5: 73). In both respect and feeling we find pleasure in the intellectual
or supersensible: in an idea of reason. But what is the nature of this affinity?
Does respect have priority, such that the sublime is, ultimately, subsumed
under morality and respect? Isn’t it Kant who, after all, related the two? The sublime
aligns itself with the practical ideas of reason (KU, 5: 265), preparing us to esteem something (etwas), to respect it (hochzuschätzen) (KU, 5: 267) – even nature. But the
sublime is akin to enthusiasm rather than respect (KU, 5: 272); respect may be
sublime, but sublime is not identical to respect.
Be
that as it may, the sublime in the KU constitutes a genuine aesthetic passage
from nature to freedom that is neither theoretical nor practical. This passage from theory to practical reason
presupposes sensibility or human nature; we must address the human being as a
whole,[16]
not just one of its faculties, as the possibility of this passage. This means
that there is no one faculty that constitutes a common ground of the subject;
if there is one, we might want to point to the faculty of reflective judgment
not as a common ground but as the possibility of the critique itself in that it
is through transcendental reflection that we assign given representations to
their appropriate faculties (aa04: 173). We cannot follow Rogozinski, who,
following Heidegger, acknowledges the imagination as the possibility of the a
priori unity of the faculties (Rogozinski, 1993: pp. 134-5).[17]
If we are to recognize the subject as (he)autonomous, we need to address it as
a whole. We need to address our finitude, and this involves primarily
addressing the corporeal being – a being that intuits and for which intuition
constitutes the possibility of supplementing not only the categories of the
understanding with objectivity but, in addition, the ideas of reason with
intuitions, without running the risk of mysticism or superstition (KU, 5: 275).[18]
A glimpse at the starry heavens
In fact,
when we have completely filled our dispositions with such observations and with
what has been brought out previously, then the sight of a starry heaven on a
clear night gives a kind of pleasure which only noble souls experience. In the
universal stillness of nature and the tranquility of the mind, the immortal
soul’s hidden capacity to know speaks an unnamable language and provides
inchoate ideas which are certainly felt but are incapable of being described.
If among thinking creatures of this planet there are malicious beings who,
regardless of all incitements which such a great subject can offer, are
nevertheless in the condition of being stuck firmly in the service of vanity,
how unfortunate this sphere is that it could produce such miserable creatures!
But, on the other hand, how lucky this sphere is that a way lies open, under
conditions which are the worthiest of all to accept, to reach a blissful
happiness and nobility, something infinitely far above the advantages which the
most beneficial of all nature’s arrangements in all planetary bodies can
attain! (NTH, 1: 367-8)
It is not just the moral law that produces the feeling
of the sublime (via respect) on Kant’s view; it is the sight of the starry
heavens as well.
We read in the KpV:
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing
admiration and reverence, the more often and more steadily one reflects on
them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not
need to search for them and merely conjecture them as though they were veiled
in obscurity or in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I see them before
me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence. The
first begins from the place I occupy in the external world of sense and extends
the connection in which I stand into an unbounded magnitude with worlds upon
worlds and systems of systems, and moreover into the unbounded times of their
periodic motion, their beginning and their duration. The first view of a
countless multitude of worlds annihilates, as it were, my importance as an animal
creature, which
after it has been for a short time provided with vital force (one knows not
how) must give back to the planet (a mere speck in the universe) the matter
from which it came.
(KpV, 5: 162)
There is something majestic in the sight of the starry
heavens in the above passage: The unbounded
magnitude of worlds and systems; at the same time however, the image of the
starry heavens reveals the insignificance of my animal nature – it annihilates
me; the representation thus of the starry heavens functions primarily on a
level akin to morality rather than aesthetics.
The same image returns in the KU, but this time Kant’s
voice has changed; the sublime feeling is there, but now what emerges is a
different understanding of the intuition of the heavens – an aesthetic one:
Thus, if someone calls the sight of the starry heavens
sublime,
he must not ground such a judging of it on concepts of worlds inhabited by
rational beings, taking the bright points with which we see the space above us
to be filled as their suns, about which they move in their purposively
appointed orbits, but must take it, as we see it, merely as a broad,
all-embracing vault; and it must be merely under this representation that we
posit the sublimity that a pure aesthetic judgment attributes to this object.
(KU, 5: 270)
We should
add: One must not ground the sight of the starry heavens in any concept
whatsoever, even reason’s practical ideas. We have shifted – or rather Kant has
shifted – our attention from morality to aesthetics and from practical reason
to reason per se as the source of the idea of the absolute; more importantly,
Kant has shifted our attention to the feeling that this striving towards the
absolute produces.[19]
We need no longer experience our place within the heavens as insignificant; we
just feel the sublime. We cannot intuit or construct the world as a totality in
our intuition – this is impossible; nevertheless, we can estimate it
aesthetically.[20] We
might say: We feel reason’s ascent towards the absolute; we feel the antinomy
and resolve it, aesthetically.[21]
Reason has,
finally, embraced the imagination – and subsequently the human being. This
wasn’t always the case: Reason was previously described as being hard on
sensibility, exercising its undisputed dominion over it.
In the KpV, reason appears to exercise a rather raw
violence upon the sensible, humiliating it:
Humiliation
on the sensible side – is an elevation of the moral – that is, practical –
esteem for the law itself on the intellectual side. (KpV, 5: 79)
Kant here refers to inclinations, arrogance and vain
self-love (KpV, 5: 86), rejecting them as grounds for determining the will,
that is, morality or practical reason. Still, the human being is something that
must be humiliated, struck down, if we are to become moral beings. It seems
that this being is nothing but a self-loving arrogant being that needs to be
humiliated not only to overcome its inclinations but also to find its proper
place in the world – its triviality.
We saw above that even the sight of the heavens is
destined to diminish the animal being:
The first view of a countless multitude of worlds
annihilates, as it were, my importance as an animal creature, which after it has been for
a short time provided with vital force (one knows not how) must give back to
the planet (a mere speck in the universe) the matter from which it came. (KU, 5: 162)
But that is exactly what I am: I am, above all else,
an animal, or rather a corporeal being.
One might object that in the KpV Kant must be resolute
if he is to ensure that what determines our will is nothing but the moral law;
in the KU, by contrast, Kant describes the interaction of the faculties as
being either playful or serious. Nevertheless, the sublime feeling of the
starry heavens need not annihilate us. We need no longer be humiliated. Indeed,
in the KU Kant no longer speaks of humiliation; rather, he speaks of sacrifice. [22]
Practical reason restricts or humiliates every natural
inclination, ultimately humiliating the human being (KpV, 5: 74), exhibiting
the horrific face of reason’s dominion over the sensible. In the KU, by
contrast, reason, through the imagination, chooses a different path. To be
sure, the violence is still here, but this time it is an ambiguous violence –
even the imagination does violence to time, or our inner sense (KU, 5: 259).
This resembles a drama, an ordeal, or some sort of sublime experience where we
learn that we need to sacrifice the unrestrained freedom of our imagination if
we are to disclose and – more importantly – to respond to our vocation. We feel
sadness or pain, suffering a loss. It is a loss that the imagination does not
suffer alone, though; we feel our inability to comprehend totality or the
infinite, and although we are elevated, reconfirming reason’s supremacy over
sensibility, reason has nevertheless changed, having already suffered its own
loss: its pretension to obtain theoretical knowledge of the absolute (KU, 5: 219).
Either way, the true target was probably a different
one all along: It was not the human being per se but rather its inclination
towards self-love (but this will not become clear before the KU). We read in
the KpV:
All the inclinations together (which can be brought
into a tolerable system and the satisfaction of which is then called one’s own
happiness) constitute regard for oneself (solipsismus).
This is either the self-regard of love for oneself, a predominant benevolence
toward oneself (Philautia),
or that of satisfaction with oneself, (arrogantia). The former is called, in particular,
self-love; the
latter, self-conceit. Pure practical reason merely infringes upon self-love,
inasmuch as it only restricts it, as natural and active in us even prior to the
moral law, to the condition of agreement with this law, and then it is called rational
self-love. But it strikes down self-conceit altogether. (KpV, 5: 73)
This is the
same demand that an aesthetic judgment of beauty makes, and the sublime
reinforces, against our sensible interest or our interest in general – let us
keep in mind that the sublime is not just without purpose, like beauty; it is
even counter-purposive:
The beautiful prepares us to love
something, even nature, without interest; the sublime, to esteem it, even
contrary to our (sensible) interest. (KU, 5: 265ff)
If a judgment of taste is to demand apriority,
necessity and universality, then it must rise above egoism, aesthetic egoism,
and become pluralistic,[23]
acquiring a universal voice (KU, 5: 278).[24]
Nevertheless, the encounter between reason and
imagination remains problematic when it comes to aesthetic judgment: The
imagination proves unable to comprehend its object after all. This is perhaps
not unexpected since reason is at work operating as a presupposition of the
imagination and guiding the latter with its ideas, which not only do not
correspond to any possible intuitions or experience but must remain without any
– if we are to avoid mysticism or fanaticism. This means that the imagination
cannot represent an idea of reason. Still, Kant speaks of – a rather odd –
negative presentation:
There need be no anxiety that the feeling
of the sublime will lose anything through such an abstract presentation, which
becomes entirely negative in regard to the sensible; for the imagination,
although it certainly finds nothing beyond the sensible to which it can attach
itself, nevertheless feels itself to be unbounded precisely because of this
elimination of the limits of sensibility; and that separation is thus a
presentation of the infinite, which for that very reason can never be anything
other than a merely negative presentation, which nevertheless expands the soul. (KU, 5: 274)
We may thus be unable to represent the absolute we can, however, present it in a negative
fashion; this sounds rather vague!
Vindicating
sensibility
Perhaps there is
no more sublime passage in the Jewish Book of the Law than the commandment:
Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image, nor any likeness either of
that which is in heaven, or on the earth, or yet under the earth, etc. (KU, 5: 274)
After experiencing such a devastating failure, unable
to comprehend in one intuition totality or the infinite – the absolute – the
imagination appears to finally be at peace, free, unbounded in reason’s
embrace;[25] the
price it had to pay was to renounce representation (Kant speaks of a “negative
presentation,” something that is empty).
To safeguard the absolute and retain its non-intuitive
character, we must appeal to a negative presentation (if we are to avoid
enthusiasm and mysticism); yet, as I hope to show, one way or another we will
ultimately need to present the absolute in intuition – not as an image or a
representation, but as a symbol; negative in that it does not correspond to
anything; still, a presentation in that it is the product of the imagination.
Contrasting an image or a representation with the
(transcendental) workings of the imagination is not new to Kant; we saw in the
KrV that a schema – the product of transcendental imagination – is something
like a monogram of pure a priori
imagination. It is not an image, but rather the rule of synthesis of the
imagination:
We can say
only this much: the image is a product of the empirical faculty of productive
imagination, the schema of sensible concepts (such as figures in space) is a
product and as it were a monogram of pure a priori imagination, through which
and in accordance with which the images first become possible, but which must
be connected with the concept, to which they are in themselves never fully
congruent, always only by means of the schema that they designate. The schema
of a pure concept of the understanding, on the contrary, is something that can
never be brought to an image at all, but is rather only the pure synthesis, in
accord with a rule of unity according to concepts in general, which the
category expresses, and is a transcendental product of the imagination. (KrV 3:
136)
“Monogram” is also the word that Kant uses to describe
how the imagination operates within the rather ambiguous notion of a “sensible
ideal” in the Transcendental Dialectic of the KrV:
That is how
it is with the ideal of reason, which always rests on determinate concepts and
must serve as a rule and an original image, whether for following or for
judging. It is entirely otherwise with the creatures of imagination, of which
no one can give an explanation or an intelligible concept; they are, as it
were, monograms, individual traits, though not determined through any
assignable rule, constituting more a wavering sketch, as it were, which
mediates between various appearances, than a determinate image, such as what
painters and physiognomists say they have in their heads, and is supposed to be
an incommunicable silhouette of their products or even of their critical
judgments. These images can, though only improperly, be called ideals of
sensibility because they are supposed to be the unattainable model for possible
empirical intuitions, and yet at the same time they are not supposed to provide
any rule capable of being explained or tested. (KrV, 3: 384-5)
A sensible ideal is obviously related to reason –
being an ideal – but, at the same time, it is a creature of the imagination.
Being a creature of the imagination, the sensible ideal is discredited as
incommunicable, unattainable as a model, incapable of providing rules for
explaining or putting to the test. Strictly speaking it is not an ideal, and if
it bears the name ideal it does so improperly. The sensible ideal is
sharply contrasted to the idea and ideal of reason, where the idea gives a rule (completeness) and the
ideal provides the archetype or original image (ibid.) of a thing in individuo (ibid.). This is to be
expected:
To try to
realize the ideal in an example, i.e., in appearance, such as that of the sage
in a novel, is not feasible, and even has about it something nonsensical and
not very edifying, since the natural limits which constantly impair the
completeness in the idea render impossible every illusion in such an attempt, and
thereby render even what is good in the idea suspect by making it similar to a
mere fiction […] (ibid.)
One could venture to ask what an archetype or an
original image looks like, but Kant
never elaborates on the notion of an original image.
It appears that in the KrV the imagination has nothing
whatsoever to do with the representation (even more, the presentation) of an
idea or an ideal of reason; even the slightest effort to render an idea
tangible (i.e. an appearance) is deemed illusory. What is striking, however, is
that the features that render the sensible idea a fiction or a creature of the
imagination reappear in the KU under a different light. Artistic expression is
no longer incommunicable; nor is the absence of an explanation or, more
importantly, a determinate rule a problem (Zammito, 1992: p. 285).[26]
This is exactly what an aesthetic judgment refers to: It does not determine
anything or set an objective universal rule, but it is nonetheless a priori and
necessary, and, more importantly, it is no longer a fiction.
Not only does the ideal of beauty become the sensible manifestation of an idea (Angelica
Nuzzo, 2006: p. 300), i.e. beauty as the symbol of morality (KU, 5: 351), but,
in addition, there emerges the notion of an aesthetic idea (KU, 5: 232) as the standard or criterion by which we judge an object aesthetically, supplementing
theoretical reason with an aesthetic standard or criterion (something like an
archetype to which we measure all other images). The sublime does set such an
aesthetic standard, and reason has at last found the aesthetic counterpart to
its ideas.[27]
Following Martha Helfer (1996), we could say that, as
the presentation of the rule of the imagination’s synthesis, the negative
presentation manifests our striving to present the idea of reason (Helfer, 1996:
p. 45).[28]
We will soon find out, however, that we are able to present an idea – our
striving – not only negatively but also positively: through an aesthetic idea
(and consequently, art).
Kant not only welcomes an aesthetic idea but endows it
with a force that is equal to that of an idea of reason:
An aesthetic idea cannot
become a cognition, because it is an intuition (of the
imagination) for which a concept can never be found adequate. An idea
of reason can never become a cognition, because it contains a
concept
(of the supersensible) for which no suitable intuition can ever be given.
Now I believe that one could call the aesthetic idea
an inexponible representation of the imagination, the idea
of reason, however, an indemonstrable concept of
reason. Of both it is presupposed that they are not entirely groundless, but
rather (in accordance with the above explanation of an idea in general) are
generated in accordance with certain principles of the cognitive faculty to
which they belong (the former according to subjective principles, the latter to
objective ones). (KU, 5: 342)
An aesthetic idea – this creature of the imagination –
resembles a sensible ideal in that it cannot be determined by any concepts, but
this time it can be explained – referring to the reflective power of judgment.
It has apriority, necessity and universality; that is, it is communicable and
sets an (ideal) rule, albeit only paradigmatically. In the KU, the aesthetic
idea no longer mediates between various images but rather appears to mediate
between various concepts, expanding thought to what is an inexhaustible
concept, thus resembling the indefinite character of reason’s ideas:
[…] by an
aesthetic idea, however, I mean that representation of the imagination that
occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate
thought, i.e., concept, to be adequate to it, which, consequently, no
language fully attains or can make intelligible. – One readily sees that it 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. (KU, 5: 314)
An aesthetic idea eludes language, even
comprehensibility – but it is no longer akin to an incommunicable silhouette, like the sensible idea. It is rather
what moves thought, enlarging it:
Now if we add to a concept a representation of the
imagination that belongs to its presentation, but which by itself stimulates so
much thinking that it can never be grasped in a determinate concept, hence
which aesthetically enlarges the concept itself in an unbounded way, then in
this case the imagination is creative, and 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 (although
it does, to be sure, belong to the concept of the object). (KU, 5: 315)
The key to
understanding the above is to appreciate the significance of exhibition (Darstellung) in the KU.
We already
know from the KrV that to exhibit (darstellen)
an object is to construct it a priori in intuition. This is the case with
mathematics: We construct or exhibit a priori in intuition the concept of a
triangle, for example (see KrV, 3: 032 / 3: 468), and this is possible because
space is an a priori intuition. Far from being an image or a representation,
e.g. a picture or an image of a specific triangle, exhibiting (a triangle) is
an act or a process by which the imagination mediates between intuition and
understanding to present a concept in concreto; it is, moreover, a rule of
synthesis, construing the triangle as a singular presentation of the concept
“triangle”:
The schema of the triangle can never exist anywhere
except in thought, and signifies a rule of the synthesis of the imagination
with regard to pure shapes in space. (KrV, 3: 136)[29]
The
mediating role of the imagination between intuition and understanding and its
affinity with the power of judgment does not become clear, though, until the
KU.
Here, Kant
uses the general concept of “hypotyposis” to subsume both schema and symbol
under it; the schematism and symbolization are two of the most prominent
features of imagination:
All hypotyposis (presentation, subjecto
sub adspectum), as making something sensible, is of one of two kinds:
either schematic, where to a concept grasped by the understanding the
corresponding intuition is given a priori; or symbolic, where to a
concept which only reason can think, and to which no sensible intuition can be
adequate, an intuition is attributed with which the power of judgment proceeds
in a way merely analogous to that which it observes in schematization, i.e., it
is merely the rule of this procedure, not of the intuition itself, and thus merely
the form of the reflection, not the content, which corresponds to the concept.
(KU, 5: 315)
“Hypotyposis,”
as a general feature of the power of judgment and the imagination, captures an
important feature of transcendental philosophy: a need to make something
sensible or tangible and, consequently, the importance of sensibility. Although
Kant refers to the power of judgment – it is the power of judgment that
subsumes, determines and reflects, after all – it is nonetheless obvious that
it is the imagination that is at work when producing schema and, by analogy,
symbols.[30]
What emerges
thus far is a constellation of interrelated family concepts: an aesthetic idea,
a symbol, and the sublime.[31]
Their affinity lies, on the one hand, in that they presuppose reason and its a
priori principle of the absolute or totality: All manifest the striving (the
sublime) and, ultimately, the achievement of the imagination in presenting an
idea of reason (aesthetic ideas and symbols present the absolute, albeit
indirectly). On the other hand, they presuppose the imagination in its
productive power.[32]
The sublime is the feeling produced by the imagination’s failure to represent
totality and the subsequent revelation of its freedom; both aesthetic ideas and
symbols are manifestations or presentations of the imagination’s freedom in
that it produces a presentation that mobilizes thinking, expanding it to an
inexhaustible multitude of concepts (KU, 5: 314 / KU, 5: 352) and thus
resembling an idea of reason.
Although
reason’s ideas cannot be directly presented, or represented, they welcome an
indirect presentation as aesthetic ideas or symbols. One way or another, we
presuppose a tangible presentation or image that can comprehend – directly or
indirectly – every given concept or idea, and it is the imagination that,
having suffered the sacrifice of its representing power, recovers as the
creative or productive power par excellence. It is in the face of the
imagination that sensibility and, ultimately, the human being are finally
vindicated.
Thus,
imagination emerges as a self-active (KU,
5: 240), productive, and creative power that seems to possess a freedom in its
own right, one that allows it to finally step beyond nature, creating another
one:
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 to us; we transform the latter, no doubt always in
accordance with analogous laws, but also in accordance with principles that lie
higher in reason (and which are every bit as natural to us as those in
accordance with which the understanding apprehends empirical nature); 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, 5: 314)[33]
Although
what the imagination initially feels is a
deprivation of its freedom – in the aesthetic judgment of the sublime (KU,
5: 269) – it ultimately responds to its sacrifice and feels a sublime pleasure:
It is here that the spirit’s or mind’s (Gemüt)
free activity is manifested:
Aesthetic purposiveness is the lawfulness of the power
of judgment in its freedom. The satisfaction in the object depends on the relation in
which we would place the imagination: namely, that it entertains the mind by
itself in free activity. (KU, 5: 271)
Conclusion
In this paper, I have tried to show how the KU sets in
motion the mind or spirit (Geist); I
have claimed that the spirit mobilizes itself while striving to overstep all
boundaries in its effort to comprehend the absolute; it is in this striving –
experienced as feeling in the sublime – that we disclose our vocation and, at
the same, the idea of humanity; we can thus speak of a striving human being but
also of a being that must strive to become human. Both efforts converge in
taste, and the sublime is the feeling that reflects this pursuit – the
asymmetry between idea and nature and our effort to attain the idea over and
above our nature.
The human being of the KU is no longer a suffering
being like that in the KpV; it is not a being that must not only rise above its
sensibility but also struggle against it in its effort to become the rational
agent of morality, free from its inclinations. No, the human being of the KU is
one that embraces its sensibility – vindicates it (through the imagination). It
is a being that needs to intuit concepts and ideas to be able to comprehend
them – and ultimately, itself. More importantly, it is a being that is in
constant movement.
On the one hand, the epistemological or transcendental
subject of knowledge – despite being spontaneous – synthesizes according to
rules of the understanding; the conditions of the possibility of experience and
its objects secure knowledge of the world – a rather static or stable image of
the world. On the other hand, the practical subject of morality – despite being
free – must conform to the moral law (if it is to act rationally). Both
subjects, the theoretical and the practical, result in a certain
solidification; the aesthetic subject, by contrast – if I may call it that –
seems rather unsolidified, liquefied, seems to be in motion, to embrace
paradoxical notions such as purposiveness without purpose or something that
repels and yet attracts at the same time (the sublime).
Beauty animates the spirit’s powers (KU, 5: 222 / 5: 239);
it is the sublime, however, that sets the spirit in an almost frantic motion
(KU, 5: 247). It vibrates it; it repels and at the same time attracts it: It
allows it to feel the abyss. In the imagination’s effort to comprehend the
absolute it discovers its own freedom, and although reason prohibits us from
representing the absolute, the imagination ultimately succeeds in presenting –
rather than representing – it. Art or an aesthetic idea sets the spirit in
motion and lets it feel pleasure in its freedom (EEKU, 20: 238 / KU, 5: 247 /
KU, 5: 328-9).
Reason in the KrV experienced a similar dizziness in
its effort to conceive of a comprehensive notion of all knowledge and concepts
(the idea of totality), ascending to higher and higher principles until it
grasped (in its own movement of the syllogism), its appropriate principle – the
idea. But it is in the KU that we feel this ascent: It is not reason but rather
the imagination that sets out to transcend every boundary in its effort to
represent the idea of reason. Its failure (producing a negative feeling) is at
the same time its achievement: The imagination feels its limitlessness and,
ultimately, its freedom (producing at the same time a positive feeling) – and this
feeling is the sublime. What is more, its failure and its negative feeling is,
at the same time, a positive one since we do not only grasp our supersensible
vocation but we ultimately succeed in presenting (as an aesthetic idea) the
idea of totality, securing, this way, pleasure.
Reflecting thus on the feeling of the sublime we
reclaim the human being as a whole, both rational and animal, that is,
corporeal; a being that strives to obtain the absolute and finally succeeds,
albeit only aesthetically.[34]
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