Kant and the Reorientation of Aesthetics: Finding the World (Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy) 9781138081970, 9781315112695, 1138081973

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Kant and the Reorientation of Aesthetics

This book argues that the philosophical significance of Kant’s aesthetics lies not in its explicit account of beauty but in its implicit account of intentionality. Kant’s account is distinct in that feeling, affect, or mood must be operative within the way the mind receives the world. Moreover, these modes of receptivity fall within the normative domain so that we can hold each other responsible for how we are “struck” by an object or scene. Joseph Tinguely composes a series of investigations into the philosophically rich but regrettably neglected topics at the intersection of Kant’s aesthetics and epistemology, such as how we orient ourselves in the world, whether tonality is a property of the subject or object, and what we hope to accomplish when we quarrel about taste. Taken together, these investigations offer a robust and defensible picture of mind, which not only resolves tensions in a Kantian account of intentionality but also offers a timely intervention into contemporary debates about the “aesthetic” nature of the way the mind is in touch with the world. Kant and the Reorientation of Aesthetics will appeal to scholars and students of Kant, as well as those working at the intersection of aesthetics and philosophy of mind. Joseph J. Tinguely is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Dakota, USA

Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

5 Hume, Reason and Morality A Legacy of Contradiction Sophie Botros 6 Kant’s Theory of the Self Arthur Melnick 7 Aesthetics and Morals in the Philosophy of David Hume Timothy M. Costelloe 8 Hume’s Difficulty Time and Identity in the Treatise Donald L.M. Baxter 9 Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue Chris W. Surprenant 10 The Post-Critical Kant Understanding the Critical Philosophy through the Opus Postumum Bryan Wesley Hall 11 Kant’s Inferentialism The Case Against Hume David Landy 12 Rousseau’s Ethics of Truth A Sublime Science of Simple Souls Jason Neidleman 13 Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment Edited by Elizabeth Robinson and Chris W. Surprenant 14 Kant and the Reorientation of Aesthetics Finding the World Joseph J. Tinguely

Kant and the Reorientation of Aesthetics Finding the World Joseph J. Tinguely

First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of Joseph J. Tinguely to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Tinguely, Joseph J. author. Title: Kant and the reorientation of aesthetics : finding the world / by Joseph J. Tinguely. Description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Routledge studies in eighteenth-century philosophy ; 14 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017027280 | ISBN 9781138081970 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804. | Aesthetics. Classification: LCC B2799.A4 T56 2017 | DDC 111/.85092—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017027280 ISBN: 978-1-138-08197-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-11269-5 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This book would not have been possible without the devotion of Richard and Barbara Peterson, the great-grandparents of my two children, whom they cared for every day for five years while I worked on portions of the manuscript.

Contents

Acknowledgments Citations 1 Aside from Beauty: The Philosophical Significance of Kantian Aesthetics 2 The Productive Imagination: An Aesthetic Touch

ix xi

1 33

3 Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity: The Aesthetics of Intentionality71 4 The Implicit Affection between Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric

97

5 Kantian Quarrels: Hume, Rousseau, and the Making of Aesthetic Discourse

119

6 Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative

157

7 Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World

185

8 Finding the World

213

Bibliography217 Index227

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge permission to reprint materials from the following. Chapter 4: “The Implicit Affection Between Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric.” Philosophy and Rhetoric. 48.1 (2015): 1–25. Chapter 6: “Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative.” British Journal of Aesthetics. 53:2 (2013): 211–235. I thank the editors and anonymous reviewers at both of those journals for their efforts to improve the thought and style of those essays. The entire book and previous versions of portions of the manuscript were also improved by the suggestions of anonymous reviewers. Linda Zerilli, Jay Bernstein, and Alice Crary were supportive of the project and generous with their time.

Citations

The works of Kant are cited according to the volume and page number of the Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, e.g., (5:240) except for the Critique of Pure Reason which is cited according to the pages of the first (A) and second (B) edition, e.g., (A51/B75).

1 Aside from Beauty The Philosophical Significance of Kantian Aesthetics

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. Henry David Thoreau, Walden “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”

Overview of a Problem The Problem This book makes trial of the thesis that the philosophical significance of Kant’s aesthetics lies not in its explicit account of beauty but in its implicit account of intentionality. By intentionality, I mean the basic ways in which the human mind is oriented in the world. The guiding claim of this work, then, is that a defensible and salutary account of intentionality, or empirical cognition more broadly speaking, is made available by the philosophical orientation Kant develops in order to accommodate the aesthetic object. But any viable account of human mindedness must be able to stand on its own terms, and to strain what is already a formidable task through the complex and antiquated architectonic of the Kantian critical system appears to complicate matters needlessly. Waiting on an answer to how one can know an object or scene until one first resolves the matter of why Kant thinks we can find it beautiful seems to explain the obscurum by way of the obscurius. The historical and textual intervention would get one closer to rather than farther from the heart of the matter only if there is at present some general philosophical problem the answer or approach to which is uniquely available in Kant’s aesthetics. One outcome that would justify a turn to Kant would be if a dusty chapter in the history of philosophy harbored the missing answer to a recognizable contemporary problem. Yet another would be if we happened to be affected by a problem that we do not fully recognize, and a historical step back was needed to bring the question properly into view.

2  Aside from Beauty The Affective Turn The last couple of decades have seen a broad shift in the intellectual currents towards all things affective. Within philosophy alone there is no apparent end of examples of the affective turn: the philosophy of mind now takes seriously the questions of whether emotions are rational and how moods can represent states of affairs; phenomenology is concerned to demonstrate the mental reception of an intuitive given prior to an exercise of the conceptual, reflective capacities; philosophy of action and ethics are reconsidering the role of emotions in moral judgments and the place of attitudes in moral perception; continental philosophy has become occupied with the embodied mind as well as the political potential of those affects, like outrage or pride, that can be shared socially. The preliminary project of trying to establish just what is going on—determining whether or not these various developments constitute a decisive shift in thought, spelling out a new sense of the kind of problems that seem to require an answer—appears, at first glance, to be dissipated by the extraordinarily wide range of phenomena that can be taken to fall under the general category of “affect”. As it relates to human experience, the term “affect”, like “feeling” and “sense”, is commonly used to refer to the entire range of ways in which we are passive in respect to the world, and so the terms can be taken to mean anything from the mere receptivity of external sense stimuli all the way to full-fledged emotion. Thus a neurologist and a psychologist both ask a patient suffering from a spinal injury, “What are you feeling?” Not only is it doubtful that there is some specific, common property shared by the physiological and psychological senses of “feel”, it is debatable whether there could be even a vague family resemblance among a suite of intensional attributes that would link together the members said to fall under the wide extensional classes of affects, feelings, or senses. If such terms function merely homonymously or metaphorically, then the category of the affective threatens to obscure more than it reveals, leading us to look for connections that are not really there. A Modern Anxiety The pervasiveness and popularity of all things affective, however, rather than obscuring the forces shaping the intellectual landscape, may counterintuitively bring them into sharper perspective by giving rise to a general worry about where the affective turn might be leading us. Taking on board such a wide range of phenomena—from the brute impact of the physical world acting upon embodied beings; to the passions, emotions, and moods of the individual psyche; all the way to the varieties of common sense that bind a body politic—may well lead one to wonder what room, if any, is left over for the equally broad range of phenomena to which affectivity is supposed to be opposed, namely, the category of active, spontaneous, free agency. If affectivity concerns that which passively happens to us, then

Aside from Beauty  3 where in this new landscape do we find that which we actively do and take responsibility for? When the expansion of the affective is seen as coming at the expense of some notion of ourselves as active, autonomous agents, the continuing success of passive explanation puts increasing pressure on our modern conception of ourselves as autonomous, rational beings—not mere victims of circumstance but reflective beings with the capacity to inhabit a free and distanced orientation towards that which affects us, that is, as beings capable of assuming some notion of responsibility for how things turn out for ourselves. For some advocates of the affective turn, overcoming a quaint, modernist notion of ourselves as liberal, autonomous, and rational agents (and much of the moralistic finger wagging that goes along with it) just is the conclusion of contemporary research; for others it is the premise. But in either case, one may wonder, what about such a position is supposedly new or urgent? Counter-enlightenment critiques of the notions of subjectivity and rationality that underlie the modern, liberal conceptions of agency are as old as the Enlightenment ideals themselves, whether it be the materialist rejection of a causally independent self or the proto-Romantic emphasis on the priority of passion and sentiment over reason. The sign of our times cannot be that there is suddenly now on the horizon a new problem about the status of the autonomous and responsible agent; but there would be a discernible shift in the intellectual currents if an old problem now carries a new burden of proof. The shift, in that case, would concern not a new set of problems but rather a change in the sense of whose problem it is to solve. Given the increasingly established role of affectivity in our physical, mental, and social lives, an explanation now appears to be owed by those who continue to cling to some residual notion of autonomy, an apparent relic of our intellectual past which has diminishingly little explanatory use. And that demand for proof will be felt as a burden to the extent that one believes something important and essential to our understanding of what it means to have a human mind would be lost by relinquishing any notion of ourselves as active and responsible agents. Within the heady mix of factors which together generate a feeling of burden, we can at least identify a simple enlightenment optimism that beings like us harbor the potential to create the kind of world in which we would want to live in addition to an uneasy awareness of how the popularity of a wider philosophical view may be driven (or co-opted) by a comforting moral absolution. It is not hard to suspect just another form of ideological hand-washing lurking behind the extension of certain truths about affectivity (a correct account of how some of the world actually is) into an entire metaphysical view (a debatable account of the only possible way the world could be). After all, what sense is there in examining the extent to which one participates in systems of oppression and victimization in a world in which the only metaphysical possibility is that humans can only be victims? Under such a metaphysical regime, any critique of the reigning cultural norms and

4  Aside from Beauty all critical examination of one’s own conscience amount to so many versions of blaming the victim—an intellectual gaffe for which one would feel obliged to apologize were it not the case that accepting responsibility for the mistake would not absolve but double the crime. Sense Perception This somewhat dramatic rendering of the cultural anxieties concerning the fate of responsibility in a practical sphere increasingly explicable in terms of happenings rather than doings—specifically, the worry that we do not have a good answer to the question of why we should think of ourselves as doers at all—is meant to stand in for a broader constellation of philosophical considerations which arise from the attempt to accommodate what seems right about the “affective turn” without simply relinquishing a notion of ourselves as active, autonomous, and so accountable agents. But it is an open question just how far the moral test case can be extended to other domains of our intellectual landscape. There is, after all, at least one branch of the affective to which the worry about the displacement of the autonomous and normative sphere is thought not to apply simply because a moment of voluntary deliberation never appears to have been there in the first place: sense perception concerns the basic ways in which our bodily sense organs are exposed to and struck by causal episodes in the physical world. And how the sense apparatus happens to be affected by external stimuli, it may well be thought, is not “up to me” to begin with; so, one would think, the appearing of objects in the ambient environment is not something I do but rather something that happens to me. Of course there are things I do with the deliverances of sense perception—I might shut my eyes, turn my head, look away; I might make better or worse inferences about the appearances or draw conclusions rightly or wrongly—but the mere presence of the sense perception itself is not my own doing. It may even be the criterion for being in touch with a world at all that one stands liable to a tribunal of experience not of one’s own making. Not only is it the case that sense appearances themselves certainly appear to have a brute or primitively passive character, it seems to follow that they would have to be such in order to be sense appearances at all as opposed to imaginings, flights of fancy, delusions, and the like. Though intuitive and appealing, the view that perception occurs in the domain of pure passivity has never gone unchallenged in the history of philosophy. In fact, the philosophical deck may already be stacked against the purely passive view of perception by the very terms of the dispute. A sense in which an object passively “given” to the mind must also be actively “taken” up is already implicit in both the Latinate “perception” (from capare, a grasping or taking) and the Germanic “Wahrnehmung” (literally, to “take” something to be “true”). In the literal sense of “perception”, how one is passively struck by the world is not separated from the ways in which one

Aside from Beauty  5 actively “takes it in”, and so there is no bright line between what one does and what happens to one. In that event it is not necessary to rehearse any particular iteration of the critique of sense objects as simply “given” passively in order to see that if even mere perception itself is not a mere happening but also a doing, then sensibility is something which may be done well or poorly. Thus the nature of sense perception raises a hard challenge to the presumption that it is simply obvious that the distinction between affectivity (what happens) and normativity (what should happen) must go all the way down. So a broadly shared shift in thought would, then, be discernible if the realms of passivity and affectivity once considered to be coextensive with agency and normativity are now thought to exclude them. At the very least, there are grounds to wonder whether the worries about the displacement of agency and normativity in the moral test case do, in fact, generalize across other branches of affectivity. The literal sense of perceptual terms may, however, be leading us astray. After all, there is an air of paradox in saying that one can be properly or improperly struck by sense impressions, as though being impressed upon by sense data is tantamount to being impressed by an artistic display or a charitable deed. It is one thing to say, for example, that one is failing to appreciate how the various features of a painting “hang together” and represent a bold move in a cultural history, but it is another thing altogether to accuse someone of being irresponsible regarding how the object simply appears in the first place. It sounds like a category mistake to fault someone for how a particular object happens to look to him or her at first glance—a perceptual version of blaming the victim. The question of whether perception can be both passive (affective) and active (normative) is thus not a new issue within philosophy since it has always appeared in some form as a problem needing to be solved. What would be distinctive about our present intellectual landscape, however, is if, in the face of the so-called affective turn, the sense of whose problem it is to solve has shifted to those who wish to defend the normative element within affectivity. Quietism But, if there is no reason in principle why the normative and affective could not overlap, it should be an open question where the burden of proof ought to lie. One may simply reject the feeling of any particular explanatory burden since it amounts to no more than the fallacy of “arguing from ignorance” to suggest that the lack of a positive, constructive theory for the coextensibility of activity and passivity constitutes a reasonable proof that there is not, or could not be, any such overlap. Someone of the persuasion that bad questions cannot be answered rightly would have cause to opt quietly out of the constructive building of a theory for why we can be responsible for what happens to us. Such a one might even find some solace in comparing this philosophical dispute to an enraged and irrational brawl

6  Aside from Beauty in the face of which the best one can do is walk away. And yet the cost of opting out of this debate, if there is in force a wider cultural anxiety that exacerbates the prevailing norms, is not that the dispute will go on interminably. The risk, rather, is that the dispute will in fact be settled—and settled in the wrong way. In that event, taking recourse to philosophical quietism can appear as futile as the attempt to demonstrate that wrong life can be lived rightly. How one comes down on the issue of whether progress internal to philosophy can hang on wider social and historical conditions will determine whether or not one throws in one’s lot with philosophy in the positive and public sense, that is, an attempt to identify and address the pressing concerns of one’s day. Aesthetics Philosophy would deserve a seat at the larger cultural discussion table if contemporary questions were underpinned by a pervasive philosophical disbelief that how one is situated in the world could in any way be “up to me”. But it may appear the height of philosophical foolishness to occupy philosophy’s seat at the public table with concerns as apparently subjective and sentimental as aesthetics as opposed to, say, the analytical clarity of epistemology or hard-nosed rigor of metaphysics. It is something worse than Pollyannaish to suggest that intellectual and cultural crises will simply dissolve in the face of beauty, as though the chronic problems of social injustice will be made right with just one more gallery exhibition. Such embarrassments leap to mind, however, only if aesthetics as a philosophical category has been relegated merely to questions of beauty and art. But, as Kant himself pointed out at the head of the “Transcendental Aesthetic” in the Critique of Pure Reason, the term “aesthetic” has two related but distinct meanings: it refers both to particular matters of taste and to sensibility in general. The term derives from “aisthanesthai” meaning simply “to perceive”. And so while the term “aesthetic” can be restricted to a certain subset of perceptible objects, namely putatively beautiful ones, it can also connote a wider interest in perception or sensibility itself. Aesthetics, in the wider and literal sense, concerns the perceiving of perceptions in much of the same way that what we today call “phenomenology” addresses the appearing of the appearances. Kantian “Aesthetics” and the Double-Register If aesthetics in the double-register deserves a seat at the wider cultural table, a good case can be made that the seat should be occupied by Kant, the author not only of the “Transcendental Aesthetic” of the Critique of Pure Reason but also the “Analytic of Beauty” in the Critique of Judgment. While the former (so-called “first Critique”) attempts to outline the transcendental aesthetic conditions for the appearance of any possible object—that is, what

Aside from Beauty  7 is required in the most general sense for any object to be perceived as an object at all—the latter (“third Critique”) turns to the conditions in which actual, empirical objects appear in their individual sense particularity. Thus the Kantian phenomenology made possible in the first Critique does not become actual until the investigation into beauty in the third Critique. It is, after all, neither objects as such nor certain general kinds of objects, such as roses or paintings, that are beautiful (it is not inconceivable that one could remark to a florist, “Not that one, please. That particular rose does not look so good.”); rather in order to determine beauty each individual instance must be considered in and of itself (“Yes, thank you. That one looks much better.”). Because it is individual objects as particulars that are beautiful, not objects as such or of general kinds, it is no coincidence that aesthetics is the occasion by which Kant works carefully through the appearance of concrete, empirical objects. And so it is not the “Transcendental Aesthetic” but the “Analytic of Beauty” whereby Kant comes to consider how the actual objects of perception display the rich and full spread of sense features which makes each individual the particular object it appears to be. In short, Kant’s “aesthetics” of beauty and art represents a sustained investigation into the “aesthetics” of sense perception. Kant and the Appearing of Appearances There is no obvious reason, however, to say that aesthetics is the only possible domain that could have concern for concrete individuals in their rich sense particularity. And yet for Kant aesthetics is phenomenology in its purest form because beauty concerns appearances as mere appearances, that is, without any regard to what else the mind may do with such perceptions. A judgment of beauty does not, so to speak, move away from the sense perception in thought but stays with it in its immediate appearing. That is, a judgment of beauty does not concern inferences one could make about the perception or comparisons between this object and others as do judgments of knowledge; and a judgment of beauty does not consider whether one should act upon the object in a determination of will or desire. Rather than proceeding to think about or act upon the object, a judgment of beauty tarries along with the perception in its mere appearance in a manner of pure and simple observing that Kant calls a “bloßen Betrachtung”: “if the question is whether something is beautiful, what we want to know is . . . how we judge it in our mere examination [bloßen Betrachtung] of it (intuition or reflection)” (5:204, translation modified). (Although, as will be much to the point of unpacking what goes in to such a “mere examination” in what follows, an aesthetic judgment does move beyond one’s own private responses or initial reactions to consider how the object could appear to others so that the “immediate appearing” may change in the process of the “examination” or judgment.) Like the English word “examination”, the German term “Betrachtung” is ambiguous, as Kant himself indicates. In one sense it is tied to “intuition”

8  Aside from Beauty or perception and thus carries an observational sense of beholding, looking, or gazing upon. Thus the aesthetic view concerns “die bloße Vorstellung des Gegenstandes” (5:205), the mere look or “the bare presentation of the object” in sense perception. And yet, that such a “bloßen Betrachtung” does not amount to the pure passivity of a “blank stare” is indicated by the other sense of “Betrachtung” which connotes an active sense of “reflection” or a kind of contemplative mulling and prodding scrutiny: “We can easily see that, in order for me to say that an object is beautiful . . . what matters is what I do with this presentation within myself . . . [was ich aus dieser Vorstellung in mir selbst mache]” (5:205). It takes the double-register of the terms “aesthetic” and “Betrachtung” for Kant to convey the sense in which the aesthetic object cuts across the active-passive distinction. The simple appearance of a beautiful object is at once a passive perceiving and an active making, doing, creating, or rendering. Philosophical Aestheticism Kant, however, is hardly unique among phenomenologists in insisting that perception is both something one does and something that happens to one. And he is by no means alone in using aesthetics as the occasion to work through the delicate and dialectical equipoise between passivity and activity in sense perception. A central claim of a philosophical method sometimes called “Philosophical Aestheticism” is that aesthetic perception is not a subset or special case of regular, generic sense perception; rather the relationship between aesthetic and common sense perception runs the other way around. That is to say, mundane sense perception is itself a derivative mode of aesthetic perception in the sense that normal, everyday empirical awareness is a form of an activity that is most fully and explicitly actualized in aesthetic experience. In that case, an investigation into the conditions of art and beauty serves as an exploration into the ground conditions by which we are aware of objects as such. That an investigation of beauty goes hand in hand with an examination of intentionality would come as a surprise only if one were under the impression that aesthetic experiences do not occur until we put down one set of (hard-nosed, sober, cognitive) mental equipment and take up another (touchy-feely, sentimental) mode of interaction. To doubt whether our engagement with aesthetic objects is discontinuous with our interactions with the rest of the world is not to say that cognitive and aesthetic experiences are one and the same; but it does consider the difference to be one of degree, not of kind. In aesthetic experience, the thought is, the operations of sense engagement are doing what they are otherwise normally doing in any empirical interaction with the sense environment, but in the aesthetic case the senses are engaged in a particularly heightened state of that activity—the senses are keen and alive, and the subject is alert, attuned, and self-aware in a way that is neither required nor sustainable in our typical modes of interaction with the world.

Aside from Beauty  9 But if aesthetic perception is not an alternative to but a heightened form of sensibility, then it follows that aesthetics is not just one topic among many to which philosophy can turn its attention. The boldest ambition of Philosophical Aestheticism is not simply to put aesthetics on par with other areas of philosophy taken to be serious-minded, such as language, epistemology, metaphysics, and mind. The assertion, rather, is that aesthetics represents a privileged method for bringing into view the very grounds of the mindworld relation itself. That aesthetics makes the bold claim to “first philosophy” is to say that questions of beauty and art are not mere occasions for exploring intentionality—one possible perspective among ­others—but they are uniquely capable of establishing the grounds of knowledge itself. The epistemic privilege is warranted by the way aesthetic experience makes explicit the background conditions at work but only implicit in our normal modes of sense coping and interaction, including practical deliberations and cognitive judgments. It follows that tracing the dynamic by which an aesthetic object comes into view is to articulate the logic tacitly operative in any mode of sense perception. Fine art, in particular, is well suited for exhibiting the otherwise abstract logical shape of sense perception because of the way the various relations between artist, art object, and audience enact the dialectical relation between activity and passivity in relation to sense objects. That is to say, the active and passive elements of perception are mediated by the sense object in the normal course of affairs in the same way that the creative artist relates to a receptive audience through a work of art. In other words, the art object is the sense object à clef. Art as Experience Aesthetic Reception, Audience: Activity in Passivity Taking art as the concrete externalization of the abstract and internal logic of sense experience, the role of the audience comes to embody the fundamentally receptive and thus passive nature of sense perception. If there were no receptive “taking in” of an object or event not already part of one’s stock of experience, art would not, so to speak, happen. For the art experience to be possible, there must literally be an “audience” (a word that is a cognate of “aisthanesthai”) that takes a receptive and thus passive stance towards the artwork. A dilettante may read about an artistic genre, making a study of its style and technique, but until one places oneself in the presence of the actual artwork, there is no distinctively aesthetic experience. When it comes to art, the perceptual element is ineliminable. What the art experience, however, adds to the otherwise tautologous position that sense perception must be receptive, a taking in of something outside of oneself, is that receptivity cannot be merely passive, something which simply happens in virtue of being exposed to sense stimuli. Merely being in the presence of an art object does not, by itself, yield an aesthetic

10  Aside from Beauty experience. The great many of us who have been distracted at a movie or tired during a concert have experienced on some basic level the failure to “take in” a performance not because it was unavailable in the sense environment but because we lacked the inclination or ability to “take it up” in the right way. A performance occurring right in front of one’s eyes can go by without one’s noticing in much the same way that a novice hunter may overlook her quarry camouflaged in the brush if she has not yet learned what to look for, where to direct her gaze, how to attend and scrutinize, and how to make salient the relevant features of the environment by discriminating them from a lush but distracting background. While a sense object may be afforded by the sense environment, it takes the discriminating activity of a subject to get purchase upon it. In a like manner the art audience must know how to bring the aesthetic object into view. Without knowing how to engage a work of art—for instance, recognizing a common melodic theme against a change in the harmonic mode—an audience can witness a performance but, so to speak, “miss the point”. Thus the role of the audience in aesthetic experience illustrates the sense in which perception, while certainly passive and receptive, is itself a kind of activity. Where art is a proxy for sense experience in general, we find activity at the heart of passivity. Aesthetic Creation, Artist: Passivity in Activity Just as the audience embodies a moment of activity within passivity, the artist exhibits an element of passivity within activity. Creative production is, of course, inherently active. In a world without spontaneous and creative doings, there may be natural beauty but there would be no art. And yet the productive act itself requires more than pure mental spontaneity insofar as creation must make a move away from archetypal thought and become instantiated in a concrete and external reality outside of the realm of the artist’s ideas. Without a moment of passivity or external sense materiality there would be no logical distinction between creative inspiration and artistic realization. But, unfortunately for many an aspiring artist, standing between inspiration and accomplishment is a realm of cold, hard reality. In order to become an artwork, an idea must be embodied in a medium which exists outside of the artist’s ideas and which imposes hard constraints on the flights of fancy. Even in a medium such as language which is as far removed from gross physicality as one may hope to get, not only are the poetic arts constrained by the rules of grammar and syntax but they can never float free from the sonority of the words as they are vocalized by the mouth or the shape of the words as they appear on the page. Linguistic expression divested of any consideration of rhythm and meter may amount to bad philosophy, but it would not even qualify as bad poetry. Artistic creation requires the artist to take account of material conditions and thus forces the creator, in his or her creative activity, to stand by and perceive the work as it appears to the passive audience. Consider the heroic

Aside from Beauty  11 image of Beethoven on the brink of deafness desperately sawing the legs off of a piano so that the notes he pounded on the keyboard would resonate through the wooden floor to his ear pressed firmly against the ground. Beethoven’s slow descent into deafness would not be dramatic if it were possible to create what one cannot perceive. But ideas must become externalized in order to become real, and we relate to external objects passively through sense perception. Where works of art are concerned, passivity is a condition for creative activity just as activity is a condition for the passivity of the audience. In aesthetic experience the relation between activity and passivity emerges as one of calibration, not separation. Aesthetics and Affectivity as “Feeling” Aesthetics is a privileged method of philosophy if the logic that describes how art is possible makes explicit the background conditions implicit in sense experience as such. In that event aesthetic experience as described by Kant harbors one further clue to our basic intentional relation with the world in general. Just as the “Transcendental Aesthetic” of the first Critique made a distinction between “aesthetics” as it relates to sensibility in general and as it relates to taste in particular, the “First Introduction” to the third Critique points to a further ambiguity suggested by the term “aesthetic”: the term aesthetic means that the form of sensibility ([i.e.], how the subject is affected) attaches necessarily to the presentation . . . . That is why it is possible to have a transcendental aesthetic, as a science pertaining to the cognitive power. However, for a long time now it has become customary to call a way of presenting aesthetic, i.e., sensible, in a different meaning of the term as well, where this means that the presentation is referred, not to the cognitive power, but to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure. Now it is true that (in line with this meaning of the term aesthetic) we are in the habit of calling this feeling too a sense (a modification of our state), since we have no other term for it . . . [H]ence the expression, aesthetic way of presenting, always retains an inevitable ambiguity, if sometimes we mean by it a way of presenting that arouses the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, but sometimes a way of presenting that concerns merely the cognitive power insofar as we find in it sensible intuition that allows us to cognize objects . . . as appearances. (20:222) Thus the term “aesthetic” connotes not just two but three related but different meanings: not only can it convey sensibility in general or objects of taste in particular, but it also concerns the realm of “feelings” (Gefühle). While Kant himself is specifically concerned with the “feeling of pleasure

12  Aside from Beauty and displeasure”, the affects in a much more general sense have long been a central topic within aesthetics. Art and beauty are often thought to have some special tie with the pathē or emotions, loosely speaking, whether it be to express, provoke, or purge them. But the use of the word “aesthetic” to refer both to such subjective feelings and to the objects of art associated with them would be equivocal unless there were an integral relation between the perception of aesthetic objects and the affective states of the perceiving subject. And although the multiple uses of the term may very well lead one to believe that there is an internal and necessary relation between the three senses of “aesthetic”—sensibility, affectivity, art, and beauty—it requires something more than wordplay to make the case that such a belief is justified. Entailment The reasons why one may think that the three senses of “aesthetic” are related logically and not merely homonymously can be illustrated by way of a rather loose but short argument. If perception is, in some sense, an activity, the doing of an active subject, there is good reason to think that it, like any human doing, can be done in various ways. Like the novice hunter or the distracted audience member, one can attend to and take in one and the same scene from a variety of intentional stances or modes of perception. Consider the different dispositions of bird watchers and hunters who survey the same object in remarkably distinct ways, attending to it differently and seeing of it different things. But the modes of perception are not only contingent, they are also defeasible if it is possible to move from one intentional stance to another, for example, seeing the bird in the brush first as a prey and then as an object of beauty, or vice versa. The defeasibility of sense perception leads to the question of how one comes to inhabit a particular intentional stance or be moved to another. One answer ties together “aesthetics” as sense perception and “aesthetics” as feeling by embedding the modes of perceiving a sense object within the affective moods of a perceiving subject. “Mood” in this sense indicates one’s basic disposition or orientation towards the world as a whole in which the sense object appears as a part. For example, within the mood, or frame of mind, of a hunter, one is not disposed to attend to the sight of a game bird in the pure and simple beholding of a “bloßen Betrachtung”, whereas an aesthetic attitude does take on a free and distanced orientation towards the sense object, reflecting on it from one point of view and then another, until one finds the best way to “bring it into view” as a mere appearance. The point for the time being is simply to suggest that the various senses of “aesthetic” would not be equivocal if it is the case that one’s perceptual modes track along with one’s affective moods and that this connection becomes most explicit in experiences of beauty and art.

Aside from Beauty  13 Precedence Anyone who wants to argue that the three senses of “aesthetic” not only could but, in fact, do relate in this integrated fashion is entering a rather crowded field. There is a long line of thought running from contemporary psychological research on the relation between emotional states and the nature of perceptual attention extending back at least as far as ancient Greek rhetoric which attempted to instill the craft of appealing to the pathē in order to bring an audience to see a given subject in the right light. More recent forerunners of contemporary Philosophical Aestheticism can be found in philosophical cultures as different as Heidegger’s account of moods and states of mind in Being and Time, Nelson Goodman’s contention that there are “Ways of Worldmaking”, and John Dewey’s exploration of “Art as Experience”. The modern precedent for using aesthetics as a means for understanding our basic orientations to the world ranges even farther back into Romanticism and its philosophical predecessors in German Idealism. In fact, the intersection of perception, affectivity, and art is so congested that one may wonder what effect, besides slowing traffic to a standstill, could come from trucking in the language of Kant’s massive and unwieldy critical philosophy which carries in tow so much technical jargon and apparently outdated, unnecessary metaphysical commitments. What would justify such a massive allowance? What does Kant bring to the discussion about aesthetics that is not already available in a more accessible form? Normativity What Kant brings to the fore, not otherwise prominent in other versions of Philosophical Aestheticism is, in a word, normativity—that is, the insistence that aesthetic experience is something for which one can be held accountable. The “Analytic of Aesthetic Judgment” in the third Critique is replete with normative language: the correct aesthetic judgment of others is not only something one may “desire” (verlangen, e.g., 5:278) or “request” (ansinnen, e.g., 5:293), it is moreover something one may “expect” (erwarten, e.g., 5:265; zumuten, e.g., 5:214), and even “demand” (fordern, e.g., 5:265). One particularly emphatic passage exclaims the element of criticism or censuring (schelten) implicit in any aesthetic experience, That is why [one making a judgment of taste] says: The thing is beautiful, and does not count on other people to agree with his judgment of liking on the ground that he has repeatedly found them agreeing with him; rather, he demands [fordern] that they agree. He reproaches [tadeln] them if they judged differently, and denies that they have taste, which he nevertheless demands [verlangen] of them, as something they ought [sollen] to have. (5:212–213)

14  Aside from Beauty The distinctive contribution of Kantian aesthetics, then, is to bring the language of normativity to bear on questions of beauty and art. Of course, establishing the right to place normative demands upon the aesthetic judgments of others is no simple matter, and it requires the concerted effort of the formidable and controversial “Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments” to wage such an argument. But the basic motivation behind such a claim is easy enough to identify: if the perception of art and beauty involves an activity, and thus it is something which one in some sense does, then it falls within the domain of that which can be done well or poorly and for which one can be held accountable. Although firmly grounding an aesthetics of taste in the normative sphere is novel, it is the further ties of “aesthetics” to sense perception and affectivity that makes Kant’s aesthetics radical. By explicitly placing the aesthetics of taste in the sphere of normativity, Kant implicates both phenomenology (the mere look of the object) and pathology (the feeling of the subject) within the arena of that which can be done well or poorly and for which one can be praised or blamed. The distinctive claim of Kantian aesthetics, then, is that one can be wrong not only about how an object appears but also about how one feels. Demands Upon the Look of the Object It amounts to a striking reversal both of common sense and of the philosophical tradition to say that one can be blamed for how an object happens to look in the mere incidence of sense perception. Of course, one may happily concede, I could be wrong about how I judge a sense object, drawing illicit inferences and implications about the sense appearance. I may be mistaken, for example, in concluding that a stick partially submerged in water is bent, but what does it even mean to say that I could be wrong in reporting that, at first glance, the stick happened to look bent? At the level of how I happen passively to be struck by the world, there does not yet appear to be any opening for error which could make sense of the claim that I can be wrong about how things “seem to me”. In that case implicating “aesthetics” in the sense of mere perception in the same logical space as normative praise and blame would be a simple category mistake. RECEPTIVITY

The position that one could be struck well or poorly is, admittedly, not a common way of putting things. But it would not sound totally absurd provided that one allows an active element of “taking” within “perception”. If, in other words, to attend to any given object or scene is not simply to exercise awareness in the presence of an object but to “take it up” in any number of different ways, then sense experience is occasioned not simply by being impressed upon by sense properties but also by activating any one of

Aside from Beauty  15 the various ways in which those properties may come into view, an activity which determines how the features of a sense object “hang together” in a meaningful order. To place a demand upon the perceptual experience of another need not be to contest that certain properties are available to be perceived but is rather to make a claim upon how they should be received: of the manifold of data given to sense, which are salient and which recede, what is theme and what variation? The normative appeal in such cases is to modulate or reorient the basic modes by which one stands disposed to receive particular sense objects available within the world. Such an emphasis on the nature of reception broadens the conceptual horizons of “taking in” the world beyond a narrow focus on the problems of perception. Compare, for instance, the different semantic implications of the notions of “perceive” and “receive” (the distinction occurs in Kant as one between Empfindlichkeit and Empfänglichkeit). Both are essentially passive, a “taking in” of something outside of oneself, but they indicate different aspects of passivity. Perception is not unlike the experience of watching television on an old set whose dial is stuck on one channel. The viewer is obviously not responsible for the content of whatever program happens to be broadcast. Reception, however, is another matter. Adjusting the antenna to improve the quality of the signal received is something that one must actively do, and so it is the kind of thing one can make an appeal to another to undertake. To bring into sharper focus the extent to which reception belongs within the domain of normativity, consider, for example, the position of the “wide receiver” in American football whose job is to catch a passed ball. Catching a ball is a fundamentally passive act; unlike the quarterback who throws the ball, the receiver does not actively determine where the ball will be at any given moment. Where the ball happens to come down is not “up to” the receiver. And yet actually catching the ball is different than being struck from behind by an errant throw insofar as it requires the participation of the receiver to position himself ahead of time in order to haul in the pass in the right way. Thus unlike merely perceiving a thrown ball, receiving it is less controversially something for which one can be cheered for doing well or booed for doing poorly. But it is what one does well or poorly that makes the position of receiver so precarious. A pass can be thrown so far out of the receiver’s reach that no amount of physical prowess would have enabled him to make the catch—and yet the failure to catch the ball in such a case can be the receiver’s fault if, for instance, he turned the wrong way at a key moment, ran the wrong route, or otherwise failed to position himself properly to catch the pass. The mistake was not one of physical ineptitude but of failing to dispose oneself properly, to position oneself appropriately to see the ball coming and to make the reception. Catching a ball is of course a physical event in the physical world, but it is one that is normatively governed. Moreover, the relevant norms of reception are not limited to an active, physical skill but also concern the passive

16  Aside from Beauty capacity to dispose oneself properly, to put oneself in the appropriate position so as to allow something to happen to one. Thus, while perceptual sensing and receptive sensibilities are both inherently passive, reception is active and normative in ways in which perception and sensation are not obviously so. As many unhappy wide receivers know all too well, one can be blamed for failing to receive an object in the right way. While a receiver may not like getting booed for missing a catch, he does at least understand what the jeering crowd means to say. Just as he accepts the cheers when he makes a good catch, the receiver does not reject out of hand the possibility that he could be blamed for botching an inherently passive reception. AESTHETIC PERCEPTION

Thus, despite our philosophical convictions to the contrary, everyday experience does offer many examples in which passivity and normativity go hand in hand. But the aesthetic sphere makes it clear in a way that the athletic context does not that perception itself is not isolatable from reception, and thus it too falls within the domain of the normative. That is, the attempt to use the athletic example to extend the normativity of reception all the way to mere sense perception is open to an apparent objection since one may concede that reception of the actively participating athlete is normative but still point to a separable moment of purely passive perception in the mere spectatorship of the fans, who are obviously not responsible for how things happen to be going down on the field. (It would be laughable if the receiver would place blame for his team’s loss on the crowd for not watching the game “in the right way”). Aesthetic experience, however, raises a challenge to the conclusion that such a moment of mere spectatorship operates independently of the normatively governed activity of disposing oneself towards the object or scene. In the aesthetic case it becomes clear that the normative element within passivity runs all the way down. (And, if the aesthetic case holds, it can help explain in what sense the spectators can be blamed for not watching a game “in the right way”—for example, misconstruing a receiver’s slow start as laziness rather than as a daring attempt to draw a defender off balance, a clever strategy a competent quarterback should be expected to recognize and make adjustments for before sending the ball sailing beyond the receiver’s reach.) Aesthetic experience offers a special case of sense perception because, for example, with visual art there is literally nothing else to do but to look at the art object. The perceptual moment is not in service to some further activity since the whole point of the looking is nothing other than the seeing. By contrast, an athlete may not be excused for standing aside passively as the ball sailed overhead by explaining that he was enthralled by the beautiful arc and spiral of the throw. In the aesthetic sphere, however, perception is not a means to an end but the end itself. Because viewing art is not about doing something with the object in action or drawing inferences about it in

Aside from Beauty  17 thought, the occasions for activity external to the perception recede against the pure beholding or witnessing of the “bloßen Betrachtung”. In that case, aesthetic experience is as passive as a subject can be without losing touch with the world. So if it turns out that the purest and most passive instance of sense perception operates in a normative space, then what goes for aesthetic experience in particular carries over to sense experience in general. The example of the distracted audience member has already illustrated where, in fact, there is an opening for activity, and hence normativity, at the heart of passivity. The appearance of a beautiful object, we have seen, does not just happen all on its own without the contribution or interaction of the viewer. One can have an aesthetic object in view and yet the features which make it beautiful can be missed, neglected, overlooked, mishandled, refused, and so on. In other words, having an aesthetic object available to view does not guarantee that a subject will avail herself of the object. Thus distractibility illustrates that particular perceptual acts occur within general receptive states; what one perceives occurs within frames of mind which condition how one receives. What aesthetic experience reveals is that there is no moment of pure perceiving outside of some mode of receptivity; no perception of pure content isolated from the general forms of reception; no pure or generic look of things outside of the ways one looks at things. Even an “empty staring” in a state of utter boredom, lethargy, or indifference does not reveal the perceptual field in a pure, unadulterated state, but is one possible form the scene can take. In aesthetic experience it becomes explicit that receptivity is not merely attendant upon perception but is internal to it, and sense perception thereby belongs among the conditions of passivity for which we are, in some sense, responsible and for which we can be held accountable. AESTHETIC ECONOMY

Aesthetics, then, is the occasion by which passivity is brought into the same mental economy as normativity. That is to say, aesthetic experience provides an opportunity to become aware of how the moment of receptivity by which the mind “takes in” external sense stimuli in an act of perception occurs within the same logical space by which we appropriate any object of the external world. There are contexts, such as the sphere of property ownership, in which we have little trouble recognizing that there are right and wrong ways to receive something, better or worse ways to “take in” or “appropriate” objects which initially stand over and against the subject as something foreign and external. Philosophy of law has long been concerned to spell out the principles by which external objects existing in common come to be legitimately appropriated as my property, as belonging to me. It is not, then, an entirely alien notion that getting purchase on some feature of the environment falls within a juridical sphere. Making a claim upon some bit of the world is something for which I stand accountable, for

18  Aside from Beauty which I can be credited or blamed, and which I owe to others to undertake in the right way. What the aesthetic context adds to the otherwise familiar ways in which receptivity and normativity overlap is that the logic of appropriation extends to perception. In the aesthetic case, the sense environment can afford an object that the mind can fail to get purchase upon or otherwise bring into view in the right way. Because there is some sense in which one is responsible for how she “takes in” the world, with perception as with property, one stands to others in relation of credit and debt concerning the claims she makes upon objects in the world. What each holds the other responsible for in aesthetic experience is the mode of receptivity within which the object appears, the general mental economy or frame of mind which orients how the object happens to look, as it were, to me. If one were to declare, “That object doesn’t look beautiful to me,” it is not nonsensical to reply, “Then you are not looking at it in the right way; you are not seeing it as it is supposed to look.” That response is at least no more illogical in the aesthetic case than if it were used in a legal case against a defendant who claims, “I did take the car, but it didn’t appear to me that anybody owned it; it didn’t look like anyone else’s property to me.” To see an object but not see it as property, that is, not to take account of properties it has, is to have failed to see it in the right way. Aesthetic experience is thus the occasion in which sense perception is explicitly brought into the normative sphere. As counter-intuitive as it may initially sound, Kant is on solid footing to implicate the language of normativity and accountability in the aesthetic domain. Because perceptual episodes occur within receptive states, there is no category error in saying that there is a right and a wrong way to look at things and thus a right and a wrong way for things to look. Demands upon the Feelings of the Subject The emphatic insistence that taste is normative is the distinctive contribution of Kantian aesthetics, and this position is radical on a second front. If the various senses of “aesthetic”—taste, perception, and feeling—are different aspects of one and the same capacity, then it would follow that censuring the taste of another not only places demands upon the way the object should look phenomenologically but also upon how the subject should feel pathologically. And the normativity of subjective feeling is not only a claim Kant’s position would imply; it is a claim that he himself actively considers: Whenever we make a judgment declaring something to be beautiful, we permit no one to hold a different opinion, even though we base our judgment only on our feeling . . . hence we regard this underlying feeling as a common rather than a private feeling . . . . That we actually do presuppose this indeterminate standard [Norm] of a common sense is

Aside from Beauty  19 proved by the fact that we presume to make judgments of taste. But is there in fact such a common sense . . .? In other words, is taste an original and natural ability, or is taste . . . with its requirement for universal assent . . . only a demand of reason to produce such agreement in the way we sense? In the latter case the ought, i.e., the objective necessity that everyone’s feeling flow along with the particular feeling of each person, would signify only that there is the possibility of reaching such agreement; and the judgment of taste would only offer an example of the application of this principle. (5:239–240) While Kant holds out some reservation about whether it is, in fact, possible to “demand . . . that everyone’s feeling flow along with the particular feeling of each person”, he is clear that placing an “ought” upon the subjective feelings of another is semantically contained within the very idea of making judgments of taste at all. The notion of taste and the normativity of feeling sink or swim together. But there is reason to think that anchoring taste in the normativity of feeling does, after all, sink Kantian aesthetics. It seems more than counterintuitive, somehow crossing over the line into an invasion of privacy, to issue commands not only upon how someone should behave externally but also upon how one should feel internally. My mother once responded to my complaints about her fried eggplant by exclaiming, “You’ll eat it, and you’ll like it!” While my sister was sent to her room for not eating it, I nervously nibbled at the food, waiting to be scolded for not liking it. FROM RELIGION TO ETHICS

To place demands upon someone else’s feelings or frame of mind, his or her interior state, is not a common philosophical position. In The Critique of Practical Reason (the “second Critique”), Kant for his own part expresses doubts about such claims: “it is not within the power of any human being to love someone merely on command [auf Befehl] . . . a rule cannot command us to have a disposition [Gesinnung]” (5:83). Such excessive demands to have a certain disposition and to love someone on command are, however, not uncommon within religion—a fact which Kant is well aware, responding as he is in this passage to the injunction to “Love God above all, and your neighbor as yourself”, which is said by Jesus to be the “greatest” and the “first” of all commandments. But placing demands upon one’s affective, interior state is not a uniquely Christian invention. Among the Ten Commandments that Moses delivers to the Israelites, for example, there are orders both to fear and to love God. Concerning one’s neighbor, moreover, it is not enough simply not to commit adultery—there is a separate commandment not even to covet such a thing. It is not just the exterior action but the interior desire itself that is expressly forbidden.

20  Aside from Beauty In a later work, The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant comes to consider whether a command placed upon one’s inner disposition is an additional and excessive demand, beyond the duty to right action, or whether it is an internal and essential element within any moral action itself. The question concerns whether one can ultimately succeed in acting on the right principles if one is not in such a frame of mind so as to recognize such principles in the first place. In a section whose title begins, “Ästhetische Vorbegriffe der Empfänglichkeit des Gemüths” (which could be rendered “the affective preconditions of the mind’s receptivity”), Kant writes: There are certain moral endowments such that anyone lacking them could have no duty to acquire them.—They are moral feeling, conscience, love of one’s neighbor, and respect for oneself (self-esteem). There is no obligation to have these because they lie at the basis of morality, as subjective conditions of receptiveness [subjective Bedingungen der Empfänglichkeit] to the concept of duty, not as objective conditions of morality. All of them are natural predispositions of the mind (praedispositio) for being affected by the concept of duty [Gemüthsanlagen . . . afficirt zu werden], antecedent predispositions on the side of feeling [ästhetisch und vorhergehende]. To have these predispositions cannot be considered a duty; rather, every human has them, and it is by them that he can be put under obligation. (6:399) In this passage, Kant lays out the relationship between affectivity and normativity in the moral sphere. It is not that certain feelings are a subset of the normative demands to which moral beings are liable. The relation of dependency runs in the other direction. It is only to the extent that a moral subject inhabits certain “subjective conditions of receptiveness”, conditions which are said to be both “felt and prior” to our recognition of moral duty, that one can stand liable to the demands of duty. In other words, certain subjective predispositions, a susceptibility to be affected in certain ways, is not an additional duty but is, so to speak, a transcendental condition for the possibility of having any duty at all. Thus, Kant remarks (paraphrasing a dramatic claim of Rousseau’s “Savoyard Vicar”), if anyone were “completely lacking in receptivity to [moral feeling] . . . he would be morally dead [bei völliger Unempfänglichkeit für diese Empfindung wäre er sittlich todt]”. (6:400) It is clear in the moral sphere that in order to experience the relevant Empfindung one must inhabit a particular Empfänglichkeit or receptive state of mind. While it follows logically (downstream, as a consequence) from the concept of “duty” that one must proceed to act upon it, it also follows (upstream, as a condition) that the external performance first requires one to accept internally an action as a duty. And, Kant’s thought is, to see an event or scenario as a moral phenomenon in the first instance is an exercise in receptivity; it requires the right state of mind; it requires one

Aside from Beauty  21 to be affected in the right sort of way. Thus Kant famously asserts that the subjective feeling of respect is what it means to acknowledge the objective principle of morality, and so too the other way around (4:401 n.; 5:75–76). Feeling respect for the law is logically indistinguishable from recognizing its moral authority. Given the dependency of obligation on affectivity, it should come as no surprise that immediately after delivering the Ten Commandments Moses issues a bold proclamation: Hear, O Israel . . . Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy, Chapter 6: 4–9, New International Version) Kant’s moral psychology, Christian ethics, and Mosaic law belong together in one line of thought, the common core of which makes intelligible why one would place demands not only upon the external actions but also on the internal feelings of another. Insofar as the appearance of moral phenomena, including the recognition of duty, is made possible by a susceptibility to be affected in a certain kind of way, then to make an explicit claim upon an object or an action is to place an implicit demand upon a subjective, mental state. Thus the ethical command concerning what one should do in the particular instance cannot be logically separated from the aesthetic demand about how one should feel in general, how one ought to stand open to receive and be affected by the moral world. FROM ETHICS TO AESTHETICS

To the extent that the intrinsic relation between pathology and phenomenology is particularly salient in the moral sphere, the pretension that aesthetics is a unique or privileged occasion for reconstructing the relationship between mind and world appears to be deflated. It is ethics, not aesthetics, which presents unmysterious examples of the ways in which perceptual acts take place within receptive states. For example, one may believe in all sincerity that cruelty is a moral wrong, but if she is not disposed to recognize the various forms cruelty can actually take in the real world—teasing in one context which becomes humiliation in another; a policy which harbors an implicit bias or perpetuates an unrealistic notion of individual ­responsibility— she might never actually see cruelty as a feature of her environment. Thus the moral sphere offers a clear case of the overlap between affectivity and normativity because the blame in such cases does not fall upon one’s

22  Aside from Beauty beliefs or principles but upon her lack of sensitivity, alertness, or attunement. The notion that we are somehow responsible for what we happen to see, how we happen to feel, and how we are affected by the world is not mysterious if we are answerable for our fundamental orientations towards the world in general in which particular objects and events appear as parts. And so one has cause to think it is the everyday moral occasions of reward and punishment, not the rare instances of beauty and art, in which claims upon our basic orientations come to the fore. The normative “ought” of aesthetics, however, is relieved of a higherorder burden to which the moral and religious domains are inseparably bound. Moral and religious commandments are weighed down, as it were, by an excess of normativity in the sense that they do not simply make (firstorder) normative demands, but each also issues a (second-order) normative claim about itself. That is, moral and religious norms go above and beyond articulating what one will see as right from within such a frame of mind; they also make a claim that such a normative framework is itself right. In other words, moral commandments do not say what you ought to do if you want to be moral; they also carry within themselves the higherorder demand that you ought to be moral. Alternatively, the divine order to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac issues a similar demand: not what to do if one wants to bind oneself to a transcendent power, but it is the order itself to be so bound. Thus moral and religious norms have an indefeasible or categorical quality; one should not put them down or “opt out” of them. That is why there is no non-moral answer to the skeptical question “Why be moral?” since morally speaking one ought to be moral. From the moral point of view, the question is unintelligible since there is not, or should not be, any non-moral territory upon which the question could be raised. Morality and religion are jealous ideals—each says, have no other idols before me. Aesthetics is not like that. There is no aesthetic prohibition against not being aesthetic in the way there are moral injunctions against not being moral. After being enthralled by the specter of eternity in a grain of sand, I may come down from a heightened state of awareness and carry on sweeping the porch; but after recognizing a neighbor as an end in herself and thus worthy of dignity and respect, morally speaking, I should not drop that view and proceed to treat her as a mere means to my ends. Unlike the double-normativity of the moral and religious spheres, there is no higherorder aesthetic demand that one ought to remain in an aesthetic frame of mind. Aesthetics makes no claim to a universal or exclusive status or to be in the service of one. Other than missing out on beauty, there is no other penalty for not being aesthetic; thus beauty permits its own neglect because there is no wider purpose that is failing to be served. It is not without reason then that aesthetic experience has always and fairly been characterized as pointless, superfluous, useless, and without a purpose. But those very qualities which are often invoked as its fatal flaws are, as if through an unexpected peripeteia, the same attributes which make

Aside from Beauty  23 aesthetics so particularly well-suited as a means for understanding our fundamental orientations to the world. It is precisely because our intentional stances in the aesthetic sphere are utterly contingent and thoroughly defeasible that we can take them up and put them down in a way that in the moral sphere we ought not. It is, therefore, out of aesthetic experience that the contingent and defeasible nature of our affective orientations are allowed to come into full view. And so while aesthetics is not a unique domain in the sense that it is the only realm of experience in which normativity, perception, and affectivity overlap, it has a methodological privilege insofar as it presents a special occasion for bringing out the dialectical relations between mind, mood, and world.

Overview of a Response Summary and Outline The goal of the preceding introduction has been to illustrate a general problem concerning the relation between affectivity and intentionality that the philosophical orientation of Kantian aesthetics allows to come into view. The goal of the subsequent chapters is to show how Kantian aesthetics also harbors many of the intellectual resources and conceptual innovations needed to provide a satisfying response to that problem. Chapter 2, “The Productive Imagination: An Aesthetic Touch”, examines why the details of Kant’s account of aesthetic experience in the third Critique are necessary for filling out the account of empirical cognition and intentionality initiated in the first Critique. The key connection between aesthetic judgment and empirical cognition is the spontaneous exercise of the “productive imagination” which Kant claims is “a necessary ingredient of perception itself”. The main effort of this chapter is to present the productive imagination as it functions in aesthetic judgment as the most refined model of the necessary role of imagination in empirical judgment. The interrogation of aesthetic experience becomes an examination of intentionality à clef because the imagination is involved not just in the matter, but also the manner or form, of sense perception. Chapter 3, “Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity: Kant and the Aesthetics of Intentionality”, places Kant’s notion of “tone” as the keystone of a robust model of “intentionality”. The connections between “tone” and “intentionality” are both etymological and logical. Any theory of intentionality is incomplete without taking stock of a distinctively tonal form of a sense percept that provides intuitional structure above and beyond ­spatio-temporal shape. The method of this chapter is indicative of the book’s wider philosophical strategy, that is, to address a general philosophical issue (intentionality and its relation to affectivity) by way of a close reading of a specific and often overlooked concept in Kant’s aesthetics (in this case, tone). What is overlooked in this particular instance is that Kant’s expressivist

24  Aside from Beauty theory of art entails a substantive but neglected picture of language as such which consists of “word, gesture, and tone”. The tripartite structure of language appears to introduce into the familiar Kantian distinction between intuitions and concepts a third, “tonal” element. The proximate goal of this chapter is to show why the introduction of a third element variously associated with “tone”, “modulation”, and “affect” is consistent with Kant’s stated model of judgment; but the wider implication is that Kant’s aesthetics harbors a defensible model of intentionality built upon an affectively robust capacity for receptivity. Chapter 4, “The Implicit Affection between Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric”, departs from recent scholarship on Kant and rhetoric, which yields an inclusive theory of the relation between affectivity and cognitive judgment. That position, however, runs counter to a traditional philosophical opposition between sensibility and rationality. A way to overcome this opposition becomes available when three significant areas of Kantian judgment and Aristotelian rhetoric are seen to overlap. First, each allows that our communicative capacities operate within the way a perceptual object or scene appears in the first place. Secondly, each significantly broadens such communicative capacities so as to include the entire conceptual form of one’s disposition or orientation to the world as a whole. Thirdly, each links those broad mental dispositions to specifically affective states of mind. Taken together, the areas of overlap between Kantian aesthetic judgment and Aristotelian rhetoric adumbrate an integrated picture of the affective sensibilities and cognitive capacities largely missing from the contemporary landscape. Chapter 5, “Kantian Quarrels: Hume, Rousseau, and the Making of Aesthetic Discourse”, uncovers the significance of Kant’s notion of “quarrelling” by way of reconstructing a quarrel between Hume and Rousseau that Kant would have seen play out in a pair of posthumously published texts, Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Religion and Rousseau’s Essay on the Origins of Languages. Each text stakes a claim against the other concerning the role of affective sensibility in the ways we perceptually sense and cognitively make sense of the world. Kant’s attempt to reconcile the two positions can be traced by following the development of a distinctive form of speech act called “streiten”. Again, carefully tracking an apparently minor technical issue at the margins of Kant’s aesthetics guides one to the center of a much wider set of philosophical issues. Properly reconstructed, a Kantian notion of “streiten” or “quarrelling” serves to model a form of discourse that places normative demands upon the affective states of others. Chapter 6, “Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative”, logically reconstructs the meaning of the phrase “aesthetic judgment”. A first section articulates four logically different positions Kant has been argued to hold concerning the nature and meaning of “aesthetic judgment”. A second section then endorses the alternative that has been almost entirely neglected: that is, aesthetic judgment should be understood to be both “internalist”

Aside from Beauty  25 in that the pleasure of taste is a constitutive element of the judgment itself (rather than its external effect or prior referent) and “objective” insofar as the pleasure of taste not only reflects the mental state of the judging subject but discriminates features or properties of the object judged. This “internal objectivism” is ultimately put forward as a compelling meta-aesthetic position in its own right with interesting parallels to recent trends in aesthetic theory, but the immediate goal is to demonstrate that one way to get clear about how such judgments are possible and to become comfortable with their significance is to see how this position arises and is resisted in the Critique of Judgment and, accordingly, in the contemporary scholarship on Kantian aesthetics. Chapter 7, “Kant, Orientation, and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World”, offers a critical and reconstructive reading of Kant’s “Orientation” essay of 1786 for the wider philosophical purpose of arguing that the ability to orient oneself in the world requires knowledge claims about sense objects which cannot be made without an irreducible aesthetic or “felt” discrimination. The proper conclusion one should draw from Kant’s argument is that orientation is a member of a class of judgment which is (i) aesthetic insofar as it draws on an ineliminable affective and thus subjective state but is (ii) cognitive in the sense that it gets purchase on and discloses features of the objective world. The payoff of a careful reading of a relatively minor essay in the history of philosophy is that it yields the intellectual resources to pose a satisfying answer to the wider contemporary problem concerning whether a feeling can constitute an experience in which the structure of the world is revealed. An answer comes into view when Kant leads us to consider how an affective state can enable a particular sense object to function as a symbol for the layout of the world as a whole. Presentation and Progression The chapters of this book are written as essays such that each can be read without prior knowledge of the others. While this manner of presentation leads to some inevitable overlap between chapters, the advantage is that each topic can be considered on its own or in an alternative order to the sequence in which they are presented here. There is, nevertheless, a logical progression in the way they are ordered. Chapter 2 on the “productive imagination” argues for the interdependence of spontaneity and receptivity at the most simple and abstract level, namely, the barest notion of the intentional object as an intuition bounded in space and time. Chapter 3 remains with the object of sense taken as a single, isolated percept but develops or deepens its form beyond mere spatial and temporal contiguity. Ambiguous figures illustrate how tonal form provides additional structuring to the intentional object such that one can make a perceptual distinction between two coextensive objects. Chapter 4 then links this expanded notion of the form of the object to the form of the subject. Aristotle’s notion of diathesis,

26  Aside from Beauty or “disposition”, works across both registers. The tonal modalities of the object are linked in rhetoric to the various affective moods of attunement of the subject such that changes in one track along with changes in the other. However, the specific nature of the relation between subjective mood (attunement) and objective mode (tone) is left open until the following essays. Chapter 5 uses a quarrel between Hume and Rousseau to unpack the logical structure of a distinctively aesthetic mode of discourse called “quarreling” by Kant. A “quarrel” is a discursive act in which persuasion about an objective state of affairs is tied to the ability to place demands upon the affective state of a subject. The question of normativity thereby comes front and center for the first time, and a reconstruction of the logic of quarreling serves as an occasion to delineate the relation between affectivity, intentionality, and normativity. The question of whether such an affectively rich picture of mindedness can be attributed to Kant, however, is not taken up directly until the following chapter. While the notion of quarreling in Chapter 5 indicates a mutual dependence between affective sensibility and intentional awareness, Chapter 6 provides a logical analysis of the notion of “aesthetic judgment” to show that such a position is not only logically possible but is also philosophically preferable to the alternatives. And, finally, whereas Chapter 6 shows the possibility that an aesthetic feeling could be internal to judgment, Chapter 7 argues for the plausibility of such a position by trying to demystify the notion that our affective dispositions are part and parcel of the way the world becomes present to the mind. By carefully articulating the logical structure by which a particular object of orientation comes to serve as the aesthetic symbol of the world as a whole, we come to appreciate the affective quality of our cognitive judgments about the world in general. The conclusion of Chapter 7, then, is in many ways the culminating claim of the book as a whole: our feelings, considered as orientational, are the forms of commitment by which we expose ourselves to the world’s being the way it is. Methodology The argument and methodology of this book departs in several ways from normal philosophical practice, where “normal” refers to what it is typically assumed one is (or ought to be) doing when presenting a work which claims to be philosophy. The first difference concerns the way in which the essays intend to make logical progress through an argument. Rather than stating at the outset a precise definition of the phenomenon of “orientation” as a whole, some feature of which is analyzed in each chapter, the immediate aim of each of the essays is rather to interrogate some particular part of Kant’s aesthetics with the wider goal of “reorienting” the conversation about intentionality and affectivity such that the mind-world relation will come to be seen as missing some notion of mood. Thus the primary effort of the argument is to bring into view a problem, to which the notion of “orientation” could then appear as a response. While the final chapter does

Aside from Beauty  27 submit a positive, constructive theory of affective orientation, the agenda of the book as a whole is not to insist that such a theory is complete or conclusive but rather that some such notion is needed but missing. And the attempt to imagine or to create the impression of absence runs in the opposite direction of normal scientific discovery and artistic production. The various steps in the argument are accordingly presented not as final conclusions but as “essays”, that is, literally a “trial” both in the sense of an attempt (trying, endeavoring, undertaking) and in the sense of an examination (interrogating, assaying), the positive result of which would be the beginning, not the end, of the investigation. The extent to which one will find a concerted attempt to create a problem a “normal” and worthwhile philosophical endeavor depends on whether one believes that more progress is made in philosophy by offering the wrong answer to the right problem than the right answer to the wrong problem. A second way in which the following essays are not “normal” concerns the sense in which they are historical in nature. The relationship between history and philosophy is not one-dimensional. On the one hand, history can be understood to be a subject matter for philosophy—if one is making a claim about history or events, texts, and figures in the past; but, on the other hand, history can also be a manner (or method) of doing philosophy—if one is making a claim that some feature of the world or condition of the human mind comes into view through history. Although history is normally supposed to be a matter for philosophical research, there are several reasons to consider it primarily as a manner of inquiry. It is in part, I think, the assumption that “history of philosophy” refers principally to the matter rather than the manner of investigation which accounts for its relatively marginal status in an intellectual environment in which philosophy itself is thought to be a subject matter (i.e., what one thinks about) rather than a manner of thought (i.e., how one thinks). That is not to say there is no good reason for philosophy to present itself as a subject ­matter—one whose circumscribable disciplinary boundaries afford it a more or less definable set of problems, the answers to which lend the discipline both a recognizable task and a status of authority. In other words, as a subject ­matter organized around a discernible set of problems, philosophy can operate and develop in all of the normal ways the other branches of science do. That is, as a subject matter philosophy can understand itself to be in the business of solving problems and consider its history to be the track record of better or worse answers to those problems. In the normal course of affairs, then, the history of philosophy serves as an “expedient” to a legitimate intellectual enterprise (rather than having the status of mere record keeper) insofar as it contributes answers to those questions that the mere analysis of concepts or phenomena does not readily yield on its own, as Kant suggests: Despite the great wealth of our languages, the thinker often finds himself at a loss for the expression which exactly fits his concept, and for want of which he is unable to be really intelligible to others or even

28  Aside from Beauty to himself. To coin new words is to advance a claim to legislation in language that seldom succeeds; and before we have recourse to this desperate expedient it is advisable to look about in a dead and learned language, to see whether the concept and its appropriate expression are not already there provided. (A312/B368–369) When philosophy and its history are taken as a subject matter, historians participate in normal philosophical activity by using names as shorthand for (and shortcuts to) a cache of arguments. Within business as usual, then, the job description of the historian of philosophy is clear: reconstruct and evaluate a stock of arguments as better or worse answers to a definable set of problems. To take philosophy and its history as a subject matter yields productive results but rests on assumptions that are brought into question by a philosophical and historical manner of thought. When history is not only a topic for philosophy but also a way in which topics come into being and into view, then philosophy is seen to develop and decline not just with changes to the answers to a set of problems but with changes to the problems themselves. In that case philosophy’s history is marked by changes to the sense of which questions seem to require a philosophical response. Philosophy considered as a manner, then, yields an essentially historical view of the matter of philosophy: the measure of philosophical import shifts from the validity of the answers to the compellingness of the questions, the meaning and significance of which changes over time. When philosophy and its history are taken as a manner of inquiry, the task of the history of philosophy is to evaluate the significance of a body of questions as they emerge, modulate, and recede in the textual record. However, to measure philosophical progress against improvements in the questions rather than the answers raises the additionally fraught problem of how one defines the meaning and significance of a question. One normal response is to index the meaning of a question to the original intention of the author who raised it. On such a broadly contextualist view, what is the meaning of a question for us as readers is decided by determining what was the meaning of the question for the author. And it is not, in fact, obvious that tying the present meaning of a text to the original intention of the author is an instance of the genetic fallacy: concerning the question to which a text is written as a response, why should the author not be authoritative? The contextualist view of philosophy’s history is intelligible, but it is not simplistic because it rests on the truth of intentionalism concerning the meaning of human activity in general. Broadly speaking, an intentionalist view locates the meaning of human action in the intentions and self-understanding of the actors. And, of course, posing and responding to questions are human activities, and philosophical texts are the end results and the artifacts of some of those actions. To measure, then, the meaning of a text

Aside from Beauty  29 against the intentions of its author is a productive method of interpretation, but it is not philosophically innocent. The following essays prescind from the normal practice of the history of philosophy not by disputing its intentionalist assumptions but rather by simply noting that such a position would make for a rather counter-productive starting point for a project which aims to explore the passive and receptive nature of aesthetic experience, exemplified by the audience or spectator’s point of view. Concerning the meaning of human actions, this work positions itself towards the history of philosophy as a spectator does towards actions on a stage. And in the theater, at least, it is debatable who is better positioned to appreciate the meaning and significance of an action: is it the actors themselves in the midst of their acting, or is it rather the spectators in the audience who have the distance required to see how individual actions are shaped by forces outside of the actors’ control and oftentimes beyond their ken? A method that affords the audience (spectators, readers) an equal if not privileged epistemic standing cannot foreclose the possibility that it is reading a philosophical position into, rather than out of, a given text. Thus this project—which espies the emergence of a wider philosophical problem in the unresolved tensions that arise from Kant’s attempt to accommodate the aesthetic object within his critical system—will inevitably be held in suspicion or dismissed out of hand by those for whom the only philosophically worthwhile questions about Kant’s aesthetics are (i) whether Kant’s texts answer our own questions as we previously understood them or (ii) whether they answer his own questions as he understood them. And since an interpretation like this one, not led by intentionalist commitments, will accordingly not be preoccupied with measuring the philosophical significance of Kant’s aesthetics against Kant’s own stated intentions, there is bound to be some confusion about just what is being claimed about Kant and in what sense a project like this one is a contribution to “Kantian aesthetics”. It is, of course, possible to insist that the term “Kantian” be reserved for those projects dedicated to the task of understanding Kant as he understood himself. This book is avowedly not a work of “Kantian aesthetics” in that sense. (And I will not stop here to wonder about the prospects for any such project if there happens to be genuine confusions and unresolved issues in the texts themselves.) This book, however, may be considered a devoted work in “Kantian aesthetics” in the sense that it is motivated by the proposal that an unresolved and largely unnoticed problem shaping our intellectual landscape comes first and best into view by Kant’s attempt to bring taste and normativity together in a comprehensive view of aesthetic experience. I am not unaware that many who identify themselves as “Kantian” will have very little patience for a project of this kind, and I hold out little hope that this introduction will persuade anyone not already open to the possibility that the philosophical value of Kant’s aesthetics lies in the questions it raises, not in the ones it answers. What I do hope to accomplish in this

30  Aside from Beauty introduction, however, is to eliminate the possibility of misunderstanding what this book considers the philosophical importance of Kant’s aesthetics to be. I am happy to cede the term “Kantian” if that is the price of shifting attention towards the philosophical consequences of Kant’s aesthetics and away from the interminable debates about its provenance and intentions. As it stands, the title of the book, “Kant and the Reorientation of Aesthetics”, leaves it grammatically open whether Kant’s aesthetics is that which is being reoriented by a new set of philosophical concerns or whether it is that which is doing the reorienting. But nothing of philosophical consequence hangs in the balance. There is nothing very deep to be won by insisting on one reading at the expense of the other. A New Shape of Knowing It is somewhat ironic that many who insist upon an originalist reading of Kant’s texts do so under the mantel of fidelity to Kant, since the texts leave little room to doubt where Kant himself would come down on the issue: If we start from a well-founded, but undeveloped, thought which another has bequeathed to us, we may well hope by continued reflection to advance further than the acute man to whom we owe the first spark of light. (4:260) Or again: I need only remark that this is by no means unusual, upon comparing the thoughts which an author has expressed in regard to his subject, whether in ordinary conversation or in writing, to find that we understand him better than he has understood himself. (A314/B370) But it is hardly news that in order to be “Kantian” in spirit one would have to depart from the letter of the texts, to which one nevertheless remains deeply indebted. The project of reading mit Kant gegen Kant has always been the tack of Kant’s best readers and has a historical legacy which runs from the 20th-century Anglo-American appropriations of Strawson and Sellars back to Kant’s immediate successors in German Idealism. Perhaps no one understood himself as attempting to fulfill the Kantian critical spirit by criticizing the Kantian letter more than Hegel, who found in Kant the revolutionary insight that the ultimate grounds of knowing an object “are not found in perception, and therefore they have a source other than perceiving. . . [and this] other source is the subject or the I, the subject in its self-consciousness” (Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 218). It is when Kant brings one to the realization that a subjective self-relation is a

Aside from Beauty  31 condition for an objective, intentional relation, and vice versa, that, according to Hegel, we as philosophers are finally able to “enter into the homeland of truth” (sind wir also nun in das einheimische Reich der Wahrheit eingetreten) (Phenomenology, ¶167). Taking up residence on the philosophical grounds that Kant discovered, so to speak, while disputing whether he should continue to govern as a sole authority is no more a repudiation of Kant than entering into the Promised Land would have been a rebuke of Moses. What makes Kant’s philosophy so historically promising for Hegel is not that it finally solves the long-standing problem of how a subject comes to know an object as it had hitherto been construed but rather that it gives rise to a “new shape of knowing” (¶167)—that is, a new conception of what kind of answer we are looking for when we question how the mind comes to know the world. From this broadly “post-Kantian” point of view, it is only when what counts as “knowing” takes on the new Kantian shape that we are finally in position to appreciate how the mind is oriented in the world. The effort of this book to flesh out such a “new shape of knowing” is the oldest way of reading Kant—what is new here is the emphasis that many of the resources needed to fill in that shape are available in the otherwise marginal and incipient notions of Kant’s aesthetics concerning the way feeling orients our cognitive bearing in the world. The positive argument is that the tensions in Kant’s texts would be resolved if our fundamental modes of knowing the world are construed as a matter of orientation, where the capacity to orient ourselves is at once perceptual, cognitive, and affective. The “new shape of knowing” is therefore oriented along three axes of “sense”: perceptual sensation, cognitive sense making, and affective sensibility. If the relations between these three senses of sense become perspicuous in working through the “aesthetic” elements of experience, then the initial departure of the “Copernican turn” in the first Critique, where there is no perceptual sensing without cognitive sense-making, comes full circle in the third Critique, where there is no sense-making without the cooperation of affective sensibilities. The final philosophical significance of Kantian aesthetics is that it puts us, as readers, in the position to see that since our mode of knowing the world is through and through aesthetic, aesthetics is the way we come to know the world.

2 The Productive Imagination An Aesthetic Touch

Introduction A project to show that a viable account of empirical cognition comes best into focus through Kant’s investigation into aesthetic experience could hardly do better, and could hardly do worse, than begin with the notion of the “productive imagination”.1 One could hardly do better because, at first glance, the imagination appears made to order as the intended answer to the inevitable question that arises from the basic dualism between mind and world (understanding and sensibility): namely, if “these two powers [sensibility and understanding] cannot exchange their functions” and “only through their union can knowledge arise” (A51/B75) how, then, are they to be united? If there is to be knowledge of the world at all, then, “Obviously there must be some third thing, which is homogeneous, on the one hand, with the categor[ies of the mind] and, on the other hand, with the appearance, and which thus makes the application of the former to the latter possible” (A138/B177). There is no shortage of candidates for such a “third thing”—in this passage “The Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding” is the name for such a mental function, but Kant also assigns the role of mediation to judgment and the imagination as well as to mother-wit, talent, and genius. All of these capacities have something, somehow to do with each other, but each entails its own set of consequences and commitments; thus teasing out the similarities and subtle differences between them has been the occasion for no small amount of scholarly jockeying.2 The interminable supply of literature on this topic may, however, be a sign that the issue of a “third thing” is not just deep but bottomless. Moreover, if Kant’s own mind was not entirely made up on the matter, it may well turn out that the quest to follow the interpretive threads is to enter a textual labyrinth with no exit point other than to return by way of entry, having gotten nowhere. No less a Kantian than Kant himself seems to come to the conclusion that one could hardly do worse than pursue this line of inquiry any farther than the obscurity of the matter ultimately admits: “our understanding, in its application to appearances. . . is an art concealed in the depths of the human

34  The Productive Imagination soul, whose real modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to have open to our gaze” (A141/B180–181). Despite the fact that “obviously there must be some third thing” that mediates between sensibility and the understanding, on further reflection any such capacity for Kant apparently turns out to be a mental black box, something that in the end, according to Robert Brandom’s reading, “we must just accept that we have, without understanding just what we have”.3 Brandom, for his own part, however, does add a footnote mitigating his skepticism about the opacity of Kant’s account of epistemological intermediaries, qualifying that it applies “[a]t least as far as the doctrines of the first two Critiques are concerned”.4 After all, the third Critique, the Critique of Judgment, is often held out (again, by no less a Kantian than Kant himself) as the place where the unfinished business of the first two Critiques is finally to be resolved. And, indeed, it initially looks promising that the question of how the inner workings of the imagination are supposed to mediate between sensibility and understanding is one of those unresolved issues that will finally come to the light of day. That is because in order to develop an adequate description of aesthetic experience, Kant draws heavily on a “productive and spontaneous” exercise of the imagination (5:240), which certainly looks like an elaboration of the “productive imagination” that is mentioned but not developed in the enthymematic Transcendental Deduction of the first Critique (A118–123, B151–152).5 Indeed, the notion of a free and spontaneous exercise of the imagination referred to in the first Critique becomes key to the central notion of the entire third Critique, that is, “reflective judgment” (5:179)—the ability to consider a particular instance as the source of a governing universal (as it were, a token that defines a type). This reflective capacity of judgment is, moreover, exhibited in the greatest detail in the context of aesthetic reflective judgments concerning beauty. In that event the capacity for reflective judgment at the heart of Kant’s account of aesthetic experience appears to be the key to unlock the black box of the imagination and thus open to the light of day Kant’s account of the inner workings of the mind as it relates to the world. There are moments when Kant comes tantalizingly close to suggesting such a deep connection between aesthetic and empirical judgment. In the passage quoted above Kant likens the schematism that mediates between sensibility and the understanding to “an art [Kunst]”, a turn of phrase that can be read either as fortuitous or as foreshadowing the aesthetic turn in the third Critique.6 Kant’s cautioning in the first Critique that any such art lies “hidden in the depths of the human soul (verborgene Kunst in den Tiefen der menschlichen Seele) (A141/B180–181) reverberates in the third Critique where taste is said to “stem from a deeply hidden (tief verborgenen) basis, common to all human beings, underlying their agreement in judging the forms under which objects are given to them” (5:232). In both cases the language of art and taste is central to Kant’s posing the problem of how the given objects of sense come to have a determinate form through an act of

The Productive Imagination  35 judgment. Thus if we could manage to illuminate the “deeply hidden” basis of judgments of beauty—the goal of the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”— we would be well on our way to explaining how we judge objects at all. The conceptual innovations needed to execute the “Analytic of the Beautiful” in the third Critique appear to harbor a hidden trove of intellectual resources needed to fill in Kant’s account of judgment and cognition. In that case, the suggestion would be, the interrogation of aesthetic judgment is an examination of empirical judgment à clef. The aesthetic key, however, may not fit the empirical lock. Even in the passage that perhaps comes closest to allowing that the free exercise of the imagination in aesthetic judgment “does serve cognition too”, Kant greatly restricts any such overlap between aesthetic and empirical judgment since the aesthetic imagination exploits sense material “not so much objectively, for cognition, as subjectively” (5:317). To be sure, a reader of the Critique of Judgment should never have clung to any hope that the imagination would be a bridge from aesthetic to empirical judgment. In the first sentence of the first section of Part I, Division I, Book I, of the Critique of Judgment, Kant intones a theme that recurs in variation throughout the text: If we wish to decide whether something is beautiful or not, we do not use the understanding to refer the presentation to the object so as to give rise to cognition; rather we use the imagination (perhaps in connection with understanding) to refer the presentation to the subject and his feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Hence a judgment of taste is not a cognitive judgment and so is not a logical judgment but an aesthetic one by which we mean a judgment whose determining basis cannot be other than subjective. (5:203) Kant concludes the first paragraph by emphatically asserting that the reference of an aesthetic judgment “designates nothing whatsoever in the object” (gar nichts im Objecte bezeichnet wird) (5:204, see also 20:222). Whatever the productive imagination is doing in aesthetic judgment, it cannot tell us anything about empirical judgment. The message is clear: what happens in aesthetics, stays in aesthetics. The quarantining of the free and playful aesthetic imagination from the serious business of cognition does, after all, seem to confirm the attitude expressed in the common usage of terms like “imagination” and “imagining”. The association of imagination with phantasia has long drawn it into the realms of sheer fantasy, the merely imaginary, “as in dreams and delusions” (B278–279, see also 7:167) And Kant clearly ascribes to the aesthetic imagination the ability to cross into pure imaginativeness unconstrained by reality, describing “beautiful views of objects” as providing the imagination the occasion “to engage in fiction [dichten], i.e., on the actual fantasies with which the mind entertains itself as. . . when we watch, say, the changing

36  The Productive Imagination shapes of the flames in a fireplace or of a rippling brook” (5:243). In its ability to indulge in poetic flights of fancy, the “productive and spontaneous” mode of the aesthetic imagination need not be constrained by any determinate form of an object but can be considered “the originator of arbitrary forms of possible intuitions [Urheberin willkürlicher Formen möglicher Anschauungen]” (5:240, translation modified). The apparently uninhibited freedom of the imagination in its aesthetic mode to entertain fiction would seem to undermine the assertion that aesthetics provides much of a guide to how the mind discerns fact. Scrounging about for answers to Kant’s notion of empirical cognition in the midst of his observations on the beautiful and sublime appears as mistaken as if a cab driver delivered one to the museum of fine art when one had asked to be taken to the museum of natural science. Overview Kant himself admits that it will seem “embarrassing” (befremdlich) that “experience itself . . . should only be possible by means of this . . . [productive] function of the imagination” (A123).7 Embarrassing or not, the routine phenomenological observation that the brute data of sense impressions are both too much and too little to yield sense perception gives multiple points of entry into Kant’s argument that “imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself” (A120) and hence plays a central role in any claim to empirical cognition. The Kantian argument can be expressed in positions that fall in, or at least near, the current philosophical mainstream; what is not yet mainstream, however, is that aesthetics provides a productive if not privileged mode for getting a handle on the role of imagination in empirical cognition. It is not until the analysis of the imagination in aesthetic experience in the third Critique that the full force and scope of Kant’s account of intentionality comes into view, although the relation between aesthetic and cognitive judgment nevertheless remains “indirect” (5:317). (I). Trying to follow the indirect route from aesthetic to empirical judgment without any mysterious gaps requires separating out and tying back together several of the various functions that Kant assigns to the productive imagination, each of which takes considerable exegetical and interpretive effort.8 The first section explores a major task assigned to the imagination in apprehending sense givens in perceptual acts. However, Kant’s account of the role of imagination in perception is immediately complicated by the fact that apprehension itself requires two related but distinct functions of the imagination: namely, both the ability to discern a particular against a background sense manifold from which it is separated and also the ability to bind or synthesize a manifold of properties that are combined together in the object. Thus to have an object of sense requires the imagination to hold apart and to hold together one and the same object.9 Since Kant often links the latter, synthesizing activity of the imagination with the cognitive function of concepts, the question of whether the

The Productive Imagination  37 separating and the binding elements of perception are two independent functions or rather two aspects of the same act divides contemporary interpretations into two familiar camps. One interpretive camp reads Kant as a “conceptualist” for whom the unified functions of the productive imagination demonstrates how the conceptual capacities are at work “all the way out” in sense experience; that conceptualist interpretation is opposed by a “non-conceptualist” reading of Kant in which a close look at the variegated functions of the imagination shows that concepts are deployed upon prior sense deliverances that work “all the way in” in empirical cognition. Section I ends with an attempt to move beyond the resulting stalemate by reconsidering the terms shared by each side of the debate. The notion of a “concept”, taken literally, concerns not only the content of a sense experience but just as importantly the form or way in which the content is taken to hand. Repositioning the role of concepts as they function in perception for Kant is the bridge that unites the first and second major sections of the chapter. (II). The first section ends by suggesting a reading of Kant in which the use of concepts designates a distinctive form or manner of perception. The defense against the criticism that such a modified version of conceptualism is ultimately vacuous requires an investigation into yet another function ascribed to the productive imagination. That is, Kant tasks the imagination not only with discerning and binding the given but also with imagining the absent. The bulk of section II considers two different ways to conceive how the imagination invests absent features into the sense givens. On one common reading intuitions come to have a logical richness, rather than just spatial depth, by way of the descriptive content provided by particular, determinate concepts deployed in particular sense acts. A critical reappraisal of the “Antinomy of Taste”, however, exposes the alternative possibility that perception could be logically structured by an “indeterminate” use of concepts through which intuitions come to bear the form of a concept in general. Freed from Kant’s moral and metaphysical concerns in the “Solution to the Antinomy of Taste”, the notion of an “indeterminate” concept links up textually with the “free yet lawful” exercise of the imagination in aesthetic experience. The overlap between Kant’s descriptions of an indeterminate use of concepts and a freely lawful imagination begins to give shape to a consistent, if inchoate, model of a mindful orientation towards the world, a shape that the subsequent chapters attempt to fill in. In all, the main effort of this chapter is to identify and defend the productive imagination as it functions in aesthetic judgment as the most refined model of the role of imagination in empirical judgment. That project sets the occasion for the following essays insofar as it illustrates how much of a Kantian account of intentionality remains to be developed and how many of the resources for that development become available in the attempt to take aesthetic experience seriously. In that case it turns out that fiction does, after all, become a guide to fact, and providing a satisfactory account of how it

38  The Productive Imagination is we can know an object or scene really does turn on why Kant thinks we can find them beautiful. But that argument admittedly requires a fair bit of imagination.

Too much Perhaps the shortest argument why one would think that “imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself” (A120) comes by way of a pair of routine phenomenological observations: the ambient array of sense data that impinges on our sense organs is both too much and too little to yield sense perception. It is too much because our sensory nerve endings are not struck by discrete objects in an orderly fashion but by what William James poignantly described as a “blooming, buzzing confusion” in which any one sense organ is stimulated by any number of objects and any one object impinges on a variety of sense organs. Standing in a garden, for instance, my ears are stimulated all at once by the buzzing of bees, the chirping of birds, and the rustling leaves of a nearby tree; all the while, light reflecting off of that same tree impresses upon my eyes while the pollen it emits stimulates my nose inducing both a fragrant scent and the irritating tickle of an impending sneeze. John McDowell points out that the “responsiveness to features of an animal’s distal environment. . . are strikingly underdetermined by the impingements on sensory nerve endings in the animals perceptual equipment”,10 but he could have also added that our responsiveness is at the same time overdetermined by the same set of sense impingements. The Binding Problem The notion that the wash of sense stimuli acting upon the nerve endings is of a different order than the objects or properties as perceived is not novel to modern philosophy, but it does get increasing traction in an era when advances in the physics and physiology of the sense organs leave little room to doubt just how unlike the objects of perception (e.g., the tree in the garden) are the impingements upon the sense organs.11 As the science of perception improves there is an increasing need to appeal to some mental activity to explain, for example, how a single, stable, three-dimensional visual representation of a tree arises out of the saccadic movements of the eyes, which yield a frenetic succession of two-dimensional images inverted on two separate fovea.12 According to Kenneth Westphal, the question “how do our minds determine which among the plethora of any full set of concurrent sensations are sensations of any one object or event, both within any one sensory modality, and even more so, across our sensory modalities” has become known to contemporary neuroscience as the “binding problem”. (278–279) And, Westphal adds, “[a]lthough this ‘binding problem’ . . . is embedded in the core of the Modern ‘new way of ideas’ and the entire sense-data tradition, it was recognised only by Hume, Kant, and Hegel” (292 n. 12).

The Productive Imagination  39 In large part, what makes Kant’s response to this problem original and distinctive is that he identifies that which does the binding (or, in his terms, “synthesis”) as the “imagination” (Einbildungskraft): “Synthesis in g­ eneral . . . is the mere result of the power of imagination” (A78/B103); and again, “There must therefore exist in us an active faculty for the synthesis of this manifold. To this faculty I give the title, imagination” (A120). In that case, whatever the “imagination” turns out to be, it must be considered the centerpiece of a Kantian answer to what is now generally recognized as the “binding problem” in the philosophy of mind. The Discerning Problem Just what Kant is committing the imagination (or any binding activity of the mind) to by assigning it the role of synthesizing the perceptual manifold, however, comes into full relief in philosophy only after Kant. It quickly came to be appreciated that the “binding problem”, in order to be a problem at all, already rides on the back of a logically prior problem, namely the question of what it is that is to be so bound. The prior problem stems from the fact that if the imagination synthesized sense properties “in any order, just as they happened to come together, this would not lead to any determinate connection of them, but only to accidental collocations [regellose Haufen]” (A121). Thus Kant himself is not unaware that in order to yield objects of experience the imagination must bind together not just any and every sense property, or some arbitrary aggregation, but rather it must bind those properties that have some claim to belong together.13 The thought that before the mind could bind the manifold properties of an object together “one must know which object is in question” has been dubbed by Gareth Evans as “Russell’s Principle”.14 It is not then entirely outré to argue that the question of how various properties are bound together in an object is logically dependent upon the question of how a particular is separated out as an object from the entire sense manifold. In other words, before the various sense properties that do belong to an object can be bound together, some particular object or singular reference must be separated out and discriminated from everything else available in the ambient array that does not belong to the object of reference. Which is all to say that the “binding problem” necessarily entails a “discerning problem” in the literal sense of discenere, a Latin term whose original meaning—from the prefix dis- meaning “off” or “away” and the verb cernere meaning “to separate” or “sift”—conveys a sense of a separating out or dividing up an original mass inheritance as in the legal process whereby the heirs to an estate come to cern who is the rightful owner of which particular bits of property.15 While the “discerning problem”, or the question of singular reference, has become established within contemporary philosophy of mind,16 it was Kant’s immediate successors, like Hölderlin and Hegel, who spelled out why binding together necessarily entails a separating out. In the perceptual case,

40  The Productive Imagination that which is to be bound by the imagination cannot be conceived to be the whole undifferentiated mass of the entire available ambient sense array itself. That is because attempting to take the whole sense manifold as the object of reference rather than separating out any determinate part would be equivalent to intending nothing other than “Being, pure being, without any further determination”. In the first sentences of Volume One, Book One, Section One, Chapter 1 of the Science of Logic, Hegel argues that such “pure being” cannot even be the object of consideration, not to speak of possessing or perceiving the whole itself: Being, pure being—without further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself and also not unequal with respect to another; it has no difference within it, nor any outwardly. If any determination or content were posited in it as distinct, or if it were posited by this determination or content as distinct from an other, it would thereby fail to hold fast to its purity. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness.—There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or, it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.17 The Hegelian thought applied to sense perception would mean that attempting to perceive or attend to the entire manifold of sense as a whole, without fixating upon any particular part or property, is logically indistinguishable from attending to nothing at all. (In other words, when there is nothing that you do not have in view, there is nothing in particular that you do have in view.) Thus to have anything whatsoever in mind or in view is already to have made an act of discrimination or negation whereby a determinate object or referent is separated out from everything else available in the sense manifold. Whether or not the Spinozist principle “All determination is negation” is true as a metaphysical doctrine, in the perceptual case it holds that all binding together entails a separating out. Insofar as having perceptual properties or objects in view requires an activity of the mind, that activity itself is two-fold: a holding together and a holding apart. A Manifold of Manifolds As the mental tasks required to render a sense object available to view multiply, a question arises as to just what role or roles Kant assigns to the imagination. How, exactly, does the productive imagination relate to the manifold of sense? Does it work within the way an object is given, discriminating it from the manifold of background properties? Or does it work upon an object given to sense, binding together its manifold properties? The question of whether Kant intended the imagination to work upon or rather

The Productive Imagination  41 within the way the sense manifold is given is, however, greatly obscured by the ambiguity of the term “manifold”. The notion of a “sense manifold” can be understood in two distinct senses: it could either be considered as the background out of which an object is separated (“manifold” as everything else that is not the object) or, alternatively, it could be considered as the various properties that are bound together in the object (“manifold” as that which, taken all together, is the object). At first glance, it appears that Kant has the former meaning in mind when he claims: if this manifold is to be known, the spontaneity of our thought requires that it be gone through in a certain way (durchgegangen), taken up (aufgenomnen), and connected (verbunden). This act I name synthesis. (A77/B102) The binding in this case seems to be of one piece with a discriminating activity by which a particular object is “taken up” out of a background sense manifold. “Synthesis” would be the name for the entire process, which itself is comprised of several different moments, including both a taking up and a binding together. But as the text proceeds it becomes increasingly unclear whether Kant does in fact intend the “manifold” to refer to the entire perceptual background out of which a particular object is “taken up”. In the very next sentence, Kant continues: I understand the term “synthesis” in the most general sense to be the action of adding together various representations and grasping their manifold in one act of knowledge. [Ich verstehe aber unter Synthesis in der allgemeinsten Bedeutung die Handlung, verschiedene Vorstellungen zu einander hinzuzuthun und ihre Mannigfaltigkeit in einer Erkenntniß zu begreifen.] (A77/B103, Translation modified) In this sentence, at least, the “manifold” in question is a feature not of the background but of the representations themselves, representations moreover that are already given prior to any synthetic activity. The “manifold” refers to the various properties subsequently bound together within the representations—it is literally “their manifold” (ihre Mannigfaltigkeit), that is, the manifold properties of the representations. “Manifold” in this sense does not refer to that background out of which the representations are separated out but to the various foreground properties that are bound together in the object. The question of how the imagination relates to the manifold of sense is complicated, then, by an ambiguity in the notion of “manifold”. But this semantic and seemingly pedantic quibble has drastic interpretive and philosophical consequences. Hanging in the balance are such issues as the scope of the imagination in the process whereby sense objects become available to

42  The Productive Imagination view and the boundary between the activity of the mind and the passivity of the senses. The two different senses of “manifold” yield two fundamentally different conceptions of the extensiveness of the imagination’s productive activity: in the first case the imagination would be at work “all the way out” in the very encounter by which an object is given to sense in the first place through a discriminating activity of taking an object out of a background manifold; while in the second case the imagination’s spontaneity would be bounded and dependent upon the passive deliverances of the senses to render discrete perceptual unities upon which the imagination’s synthetic activity would be subsequently activated. The ambiguity in Kant’s notion of the “manifold” is part and parcel of the more familiar ambiguity in the notion of an “intuition” and its relation to the discursive, claim making capacities of the “understanding”: is an intuition actively constituted by the mind through an activity of the productive imagination or is it passively given to the senses?18 In other words, does the unity of an intuition come to be as the result of or as a prior condition for the activity of the imagination? The scope and limits of the productive imagination is at the heart of the debate that divides contemporary Kantians into two camps. And while the debate among Kantians grows increasingly technical, the fundamental, underlying philosophical question remains quite simple: are we, at bottom, active or passive with respect to the world? Two-Unity Views What might be called “two unity views” are those readings that separate out the binding activity of the productive imagination from a prior discrimination whereby passive sensibility, not the active mind, renders discrete, spatio-temporally cohesive representations.19 Kant means there to be a hard line between “the two stems of human knowledge” (A15/B29), a passive receptivity of sense and the spontaneous activity of thought, and “[t]hese two powers or capacities cannot exchange their functions” (A51/ B75).20 For any given sense object there can be said to be “two unities” because the aesthetic unity of the representation occurs prior to and independently of the conceptual unity that guides the binding, discursive activity of the imagination in attributing particular properties to the object. In that case, our passive capacity to perceive sense objects is not dependent upon our active ability to think about them. Such a “two unity” view thus gives voice to the plausible empirical principle that we can have a particular object or property in view without needing to have any idea about what it is we are viewing. It thereby appears to do better justice than the alternative in explaining how the perceptual rapport that adult human beings have with the world is continuous with the experience of infants and animals who are credited with the capacity to perceive sense objects despite their lack of the rational ability to comprehend or articulate them in language.

The Productive Imagination  43 On the “two unity view”, the active, productive imagination is tasked with solving the “binding problem”, but the responsibility for solving the “discerning problem” comes by way of the receptive faculties of sensibility. This division of labor between the active imagination and the passive senses not only makes Kant compatible with broadly empiricist commitments (perception precedes conception), but it arguably makes better sense of the nuances of Kant’s own texts. Clinton Tolley has recently made a case that the division between discriminating the aesthetic form of an object and conceptually binding the various properties that inhere in that object tracks along with a technical distinction in the A Deduction between the “synopsis of the manifold . . . through sense” as opposed to the “synthesis of this manifold through imagination” (A94).21 What the presence of such an “original source” of experience in the synopsis of sense is thought to signal is that before the synthesizing activity of the productive imagination works to bind together the manifold properties of an object, the manifold already, by way of the senses, evinces an aesthetic unity that can be “distinguished by the mind”.22 Such a reading is able to forgo the synthetic activity of the imagination to solve “the discerning problem” to the extent that it affords the senses a considerable amount of autonomy and activity in taking up or separating out a determinate, particular object of reference. Sensibility is no mere conduit of sensations but also presents them in a discernible form, albeit a uniquely “aesthetic” form, not indebted to the spontaneous synthesizing activity of the imagination under the direction of the “conceptual” understanding.23 The determination of form (the grounds that separate out an object as a unified particular) does not begin with the productive imagination but is already the prerogative of sensibility. The synthetic activity of the imagination might subsequently “run through” and “bind together” the manifold properties that inhere in the object of reference, but, according to Tolley, “[t]he original belonging-together of a manifold, by being contained in an intuition, however, is something that is present prior to this synthesis” in virtue of a synoptic or aesthetic unifying capacity of the senses.24 Conjointness Views “Two unity” views are opposed in part on interpretive grounds. On the balance, it is argued, Kant’s texts do not consistently maintain an independent moment of apprehension or synopsis prior to the imagination’s synthetic activity, and in fact they explicitly renege on any such possibility. Even in the passages cited in favor of an independent moment of perceptual synopsis, such independence is qualified: “To such synopsis a synthesis must always correspond” (A97). But still a relationship of “correspondence” with a synthesis that binds the manifold properties of an object does not foreclose the independence of a synopsis that discriminates the aesthetic form of the object. What might foreclose the autonomy of aesthetic form, however,

44  The Productive Imagination is the introduction of the “productive imagination” as “an action of the understanding on the sensibility” (B152). But it is still possible to interpret this passage as attributing to the productive imagination simply the ability to work upon the prior deliverances of sensibility, not the license to work within the way they are given to sense, thereby preserving for sensibility its own, uniquely aesthetic capacity of form giving, its own discriminating activity. Such a “two unity” reading could even accommodate Kant’s clear insistence that “[i]t is one and the same spontaneity, which in the one case, under the title of imagination, and in the other case, under the title of understanding, brings combination into the manifold of intuition” (B162 n.b). Even this passage would not entail that the productive imagination is at work in ground level sensation if both the understanding and the imagination are understood to be downstream from a prior aesthetic unity in just the same way that Kant separates both the unity of apperception and the synthesis of the imagination from a prior synopsis of sense in the passage at A94. The “two unity” interpretation, however, has a much more challenging time giving an unforced reading of Kant’s explicit claim in the footnote to §26 of the B Deduction that “[i]n the Aesthetic I have treated this unity [of intuition] as belonging merely to sensibility, simply in order to emphasize that it precedes any concept, although, as a matter of fact, it presupposes a synthesis which does not belong to the senses” (B160 n.a). The assertion that the unity of intuition presupposes a synthetic activity “which does not belong to the senses” is, in any event, the strongest claim against the interpretation that Kant intended there to be an “aesthetic unity” of discrimination (by which an object is held apart from a background manifold) independent of and prior to the synthetic or binding activity of the imagination (by which manifold properties are held together in an object). This passage appears to clarify that (synoptic) discrimination and (synthetic) binding are separated out in the text simply because of the limits of explanation, not because there is an essential division within the explanandum. The primary opposition to “two unity” views, however, is not textual but philosophical. If Kant had meant to argue that the discriminating activity by which a sense object was separated out and held apart from the background manifold is discontinuous with the binding activity by which the manifold properties of an object are run through and held together, then he would have committed himself to an incoherent view. The hermeneutic principle at play is that it is best not to assign a philosopher an incoherent position when a coherent alternative is available in the text. The incoherent position in this case is that the discerning problem can be notionally isolated from the binding problem—that is, that there would be some grounds explaining why an object should be separated out from a background manifold in just this way and not another (a this-such), which does not appeal to how the manifold properties are bound together in the object (a this-such). It is incoherent, in other words, to claim that one has an object in view without the

The Productive Imagination  45 capacity to specify what one has.25 Spatio-temporal coherence alone does not pick objects out of a manifold any more than cookie-cutters pick cookies out of dough; in either case it is question begging to say that aesthetic unity alone can make claim to have landed upon a particular object and not upon another or several or none. The coherent alternative available in the texts, according to Kenneth Westphal, is that “spatio-temporal designation [discernment] and ascription of manifest characteristics [binding] are conjoint, mutually interdependent cognitive achievements that integrate sensation (‘sensibility’) and conception (‘understanding’)”.26 Although Westphal finds the conjointness of sensible discernment and conceptual binding available in Kant’s texts, he names the position the “Evans thesis” after Gareth Evans’s semantic argument that spatio-temporal discrimination of a determinate region (the identification of a particular) is not possible without a conjoint cooperation of mental, conceptual capacities.27 Westphal sees Evans’s conjointness thesis as a semantic version of a position argued on epistemic and transcendental grounds by Hegel and Kant.28 In all of its forms, the position amounts to the claim that the mere capacity to hold an object apart as discriminated from a manifold is logically inseparable from the capacity to hold an object together as a manifold. In other words, the “discerning problem” and the “binding problem” are logically biconditional. And if separating out and binding together an object are two sides of the same coin, then one would expect Kant to assign them to one and the same mental capacity—some “third thing” (A138/B177) or “common root” (A15/B29) of sensibility and the understanding. An Intervention: The Argument from Metaphor The current fault line in the scholarship on Kant’s philosophy of mind is most often framed in terms of the relation of concepts to intuitions, but another way to stage the same issue is as a dispute about the scope of the productive imagination: is it required only to bind the manifold or is it also required to discern an object against a manifold? In short, are binding and discerning one problem or two? A simple reframing of the debate, however, is unlikely to affect any major rapprochement. The two interpretations of Kant are expressions of a deeper philosophical disagreement about the priority of thinking and perceiving, and that debate may have passed the point of even diminishing returns.29 In place of a further reprisal, it may be productive to note that despite their different ends, the two positions actually share a common starting point insofar as the mutual terms with which each side stakes out its position revolve around a common imagery or metaphoric. For example, regardless of what relation one believes “perception” has to the “conceptual” capacities—whether or not one can “perceive” what she cannot “­conceive”— in each case, the debate brokers in a suite of terms that derive from the

46  The Productive Imagination common Latin root capare, which literally means a seizing, grasping, or a taking to hand. And, indeed, the language in which the operation of the mind is modeled on the action of the hand is pervasive in the philosophical lexicon. Whether or not one “apprehends” a sense manifold prior to the mental activity by which one “comprehends” it, each term is a mental and metaphorical extension of the “prehensile” ability of the hand to seize, grasp, or take hold of physical objects. While Kant appropriates in German the scholastic term “apprehension” throughout the first Critique, adopting the manual as a symbol for the mental is not unique to the Latin family of languages. In the third Critique, for example, Kant increasingly associates apprehensio with the Germanic Auffassung (e.g., 5:192), which itself derives from the verb fassen, a term that literally means to grasp or seize. And the notion of grasping or gripping conveyed by the Germanic term greifen is the source of the philosophical terms begreifen meaning to comprehend and Begriff used for concept, term, or idea.30 What is thus shared within the terms of the debate is the notion that what hands do physically and visibly in reaching out and grabbing onto some part of the world is the symbol or metaphor for what minds do mentally and invisibly in intentional acts. One interpretive consequence of this excursus into the etymology of philosophical terms is to consider how locating the paradigm case of perception in the sense modality of touch rather than the typical context of vision alters the way we consider the kind of activity whereby the imagination interacts with the world. The optical imagery of the Latinate “imagination” construes the activity as a kind of seeing in a way that the Germanic Einbildungskraft does not. Rodolphe Gasché credits Jean Beaufret with drawing attention to the important difference in the terms: as Beaufret has pointed out. . . the meaning of the Kantian imagination draws not on the semantics of the Latin imago, which according to Thomas Aquinas is believed to originate in the verb imitari, but instead on the German meaning of Bild in Einbildungskraft. Beaufret notes that Bild is closer in meaning to painting, tableau, or scene than to image. It is in this sense that imagination in Kant synthesizes the manifold of intuition into a tableaulike unity.31 Although the term Bild at the root of einbilden can connote a kind of picturing, the verb bilden and the noun Bildung suggest a developmental process of creatively giving form, of building or fashioning into a serviceable framework. Those “hands on” connotations appear to be reinforced by the term for the objects of the Einbildungskraft, namely the “Vorstellungen”, which in the German speaks to an active arranging and setting out (stellen) or a framing of a position (Stellung). Thus “Vorstellung” has less of a spectatorial connotation than the English “representation”.32 The metaphor of the imagination as a kind of seeing of representations thus misplaces Kant’s sense of the activity by which the Einbildungskraft

The Productive Imagination  47 invests a form or Bild in a Vortstellung.33 When I open my eyes to the world, it naturally appears as though the form or shape of an object strikes me passively as a brute fact, a datum of sense that is given without my having to do anything. But things stand otherwise with touching and taking to hand as Alva Noë, coming upon the same set of issues from a different context, emphasizes: there are differences between the experience of a scene and the experience of its picture. . . . Most writings on the importance of art for perception focus on pictures and paintings as objects of perception, and explore the way in which the perceptual process itself depends on pictorial representations (e.g., the retinal image). I would like to suggest a rather different point of contact between art and pictoriality, on the one hand, and perceptual experience, on the other. It is not pictures as objects of perception, that can teach us about perceiving; rather it is making pictures—that is, the skillful construction of pictures—that can illuminate the experience, or rather the making or the enacting of experience.34 And, although he does not pursue the historical connection, Noë’s suggestion that “[w]hat a picture and the depicted scene have in common is that they prompt us to draw on a common class of sensimotor skills” can be seen to have been implicit in the “hand” language by which Kant describes the activity of the productive imagination. To touch in the usual sense is to reach out, to grope, tap, or even taste. Likewise, the form of an object cannot be felt without holding it in hand or discursively running one’s hands over it. And one literally cannot hold an object apart without, in one and the same act, holding on to the object, thus holding it together, having a handle on it. The paradigm of touch requires a dependency between activity and form not readily suggested by sight. While both vision and touch share a sense of being passively impressed upon, when it comes to a consideration of which sense modality best models our “intentional” relation to the world, touch additionally suggests an active reaching out towards and taking to hand. Thus the hand metaphors implicit in our philosophical vocabulary provide an occasion to reconsider whether the discriminating and binding activities of the Einbildungskraft are two separable acts or two sides of the same coin. An Imaginary Scenario An extended metaphor can help illustrate what is at stake in construing perception as a kind of mental taking to hand. Imagine, for example, a happy-go-lucky vacationer strolling along a beach on her last night of an exotic holiday and fumbling her last handful of foreign coins into the sand and surf. If she wants to follow through on her plans to use the coins to

48  The Productive Imagination buy a drink at a seaside cantina, she cannot claim, with a sweeping gesture toward the beach, that she has plenty of treasure buried somewhere in the sand although she cannot specify just where it is or how much it amounts to. The sense environs may well afford a wealth of properties, but without having purchase on them, those coins have no purchasing power.35 If she wants to buy the drink, she will have to get her hands on those coins. It will not behoove her to open her palms and wait passively for the coins to impress themselves on her. But neither will it be enough simply to reach out and place her hands on the beach or even run them lightly across the surface of the sand. Coming to have the money, to possess the available funds, requires her to separate, strain, and sift through the sand, discriminating coin from debris. However, the act of separating out the coins from the sand cannot succeed without her simultaneously holding on to the recovered change, lest she continuously drop back into the sand the very coins she proceeds to pick back up. A passerby seeing her plight might take pity and try to give her some money as a pure gift. But still in order to receive the donation the recipient must know how to seize hold of the gift or the new coins too will fall into the sandy mix.36 Even if the donor were to slide some coins into the purse or back pocket of the hapless vacationer, such a welcomed imposition will be of no use without her reaching in and taking the money to hand and discerning just what it is she has been given. What this imaginary scenario is meant to illustrate is that taking seriously the manual metaphors built into our mental concepts suggests why the ability to discriminate sense properties is continuous with the capacity for taking hold of and possessing property. And if holding apart is inseparable from a holding together, then discriminating and binding are two sides of the same coin—two different elements of one and the same act. The Short Argument to Conceptualism and the Triviality Objection It is more than unlikely that a cursory argument from metaphor will have the rhetorical or logical force to put to rest the contentious issue of the relation of perception and conceptuality, but what attention to manual metaphors can more modestly accomplish is to make one sensitive to the tendencies or even the mere possibilities available in Kant’s texts that are misplaced in translation or not otherwise salient against a background of expectations. As Béatrice Longuenesse has pointed out, Kant himself draws attention to the fact that “the word ‘concept’ [Begriff] might of itself suggest” a connection to a synthetic, discursive, or binding activity (A103).37 And in the same passage in which Kant asserts that the manifold must be “gone through, taken up, and connected” in an act of synthesis, he goes on immediately to define synthesis in the language of grasping [begreifen] what is manifold in them (A77/B102–103). But while Kant associates the notion of a concept

The Productive Imagination  49 [Begriff] with the activity of getting a hold of sense objects [begreifen], Longuenesse admits “[t]his is a very unusual use of the term ‘concept’ ”: “It is clear that this ‘concept’ is quite different from the ‘universal or reflected representation’ defined in the Logic”.38 In the more familiar sense, a concept is “a representation of what is common to several objects” (9:91).39 But Kant also uses the term “concept” in a second sense to designate that which “combines the manifold. . . into one representation” (A103), a description that contains both a binding of the manifold and a separating out of one particular representation. Thus, on Longuenesse’s reading, we have to take a nuanced view of the relationship between concepts and intuitions since Kant operates with a “twofold meaning of the term ‘concept’ ”.40 Hannah Ginsborg is another reader who finds that Kant identifies the use of concepts with the activity of synthesizing the sense manifold, although she admits that it amounts to a “less demanding notion of what it is to be a concept” to associate concept use with a capacity for perceptual discrimination rather than with linguistic or inferential mastery.41 Such a different sense of what it is to be a concept thereby makes for a considerably less demanding notion of what it means for perceptual content to have conceptual form. Rather than construing concepts as previously possessed general or generic names that are applied to particular objects given by sense in acts of judgment, a concept would rather designate the way in which one experiences an object or a scene, the manner in which she “takes in” the world. And this notion of a concept as a capacity for perceptual discrimination makes, indeed, for a very short argument for conceptualism—that is, the position that all experience is a conceptual affair or, alternatively, that the conceptual capacities work within, not merely upon, the objects of perception. If any perception requires a conjoint activity of discerning and binding (all holding apart is a holding together), and Kant defines this two-sided activity as begreifen, a function of concepts [Begriffe], then all perception is “conceptual” by definition. One objection to the claim that perceptual content has conceptual form in virtue of the meaning of the terms is not that the argument is too short but rather that it does not actually go anywhere at all. As Ginsborg herself acknowledges, one may argue that to construe a “concept” merely as a way of experiencing the world is not simply a “less demanding” notion of a concept, it is so undemanding as to be vacuous.42 Associating conceptual content with a perceptual capacity for discrimination waters down the notion of a concept to the point of triviality; it no longer means anything to say conceptual capacities are drawn on in perception other than to assert the tautology that perceiving objects of sense requires a perceptual capacity for discriminating sense objects. Refashioning the meaning of “concept” to be the activity of seizing ahold of perceptual content is a Pyrrhic victory for conceptualism. It makes all of perception conceptual only by giving up on any meaning of “conceptual” other than a merely perceptual capacity for beholding whatever sense objects happen to be present.

50  The Productive Imagination Locating in Kant a notion of “concept” as a perceptual capacity for “taking in” the sense manifold would indeed be hollow if the productive imagination (Einbildungskraft) derived the form (Bild) of sense objects simply in virtue of discriminating and binding the manifold of properties given to sense. But that is not the case. Kant notably defines the Einbildungskraft as “the faculty of representing in intuition an object that is not itself present” (B151).43 The “imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception” for Kant because objects of sense derive their form not simply by binding what is present but also by imagining what is absent. It is therefore the absent features, which the productive imagination is responsible for bringing to experience, that show why the conceptual form of intuition is more than a trivial perceptual taking of the given.

Too Little Perhaps the shortest argument why one would think it is not trivial to say that “imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself” comes by way of a pair of routine phenomenological observations: the ambient array of sense data that impinges on our sense organs is both too much and too little to yield sense perception. It is too little because we cannot account for the objects of perception merely in terms of a synthesis that binds a manifold of impressions given to sense. To have an actual sense object in view requires us to take in “more than meets the eye”; quite simply, to perceive a normal object of experience requires a good deal of “imagining” features of the object that are not present in the sense material. As P. F. Strawson puts the point, When I naively report what I see at a moment (say, as a tree or a dog), my mind or my report certainly ‘looks further’ than . . . its immediately appearing to me. Of a fleeting perception . . . I give a description involving the mention of something not fleeting at all, but lasting . . . a distinct object. It is clear, contra Hume, not only that I do do this, but that I must do it in order to give a natural and unforced account of my perceptions.44 Except in rare and highly unnatural circumstances, we do not consider our phenomenological accounting of sense objects to be exhausted by enumerating the properties that are impinging upon our senses, as if the object itself was the thinnest of tissues, free-floating on the perceptual surface; rather we normally perceive a sense impression as the façade of a full-bodied object, parts of which are presently out of view, anchored, as it were, in an object beneath the sensational surface. To see a dog walk across a room, for instance, is to have synthesized a manifold of sense not only into the form of the profile given in the sense impression but to have “imagined” that object as a fleshy, full-bodied animal although its rear-side and innards remain

The Productive Imagination  51 hidden from view. It would, after all, be rather unnerving to walk around to the other side of the dog and find one’s expectations disappointed. What it tells us that one would be surprised and rather put off by the uncanny experience of half a dog is that in the normal course of affairs we already imagine there is much more to an object than what is given in the sense impressions. The thought, in short, is that the ability to imagine the absent is already at work in the way we normally perceive the present. One deflationary response to the alleged identity of imagination and perception is to separate sense experience into a two-stage process whereby the imaginative activity adds depth or dimension unto a perceptual façade given to sensibility in an earlier step. The interpretive cum philosophical question in that case is why Kant would assign the mental capacity for imagining or anticipating the absent features of an object to the same mental faculty that discriminates and binds the manifold given to sense. One charitable interpretation would have Kant holding that the perception of sense objects requires the imagination (Einbildungskraft) to give to sense material a form (in ein Bild bringen) not just by organizing the present sensations into a coherent façade but also by investing or enriching that façade with a cogency or depth that is not itself present. In other words, just how the imagination is to go about organizing or holding together the features that are given depends on its ability to imagine which features are absent. On this interpretation, Kant would have assigned both the binding of the given and the imagining of the absent to one and the same mental faculty of the imagination because he understands them to be two elements of one and the same act. But is it true that Kant actually espouses such a unified view of the imagination? Einbildung as Ausbildung It would understate the interpretive challenge to allow that Kant has little to say directly about how concepts inform the way the imagination brings absent features to bear on the given sense manifold. And the formidability of the challenge is not entirely abated by noting the irony that coming up with a complete Kantian position on how the imagination is at work in empirical perception requires one performatively to imagine many features of that account that are not themselves presented in the austere and enthymematic description of the transcendental imagination given in the first Critique. That said, by bringing together a manifold of elements across several texts, the outlines of a complete view can gradually be discriminated. For a start, Rudolf Makkreel finds in the “Lectures on Metaphysics” a clue for how Kant thinks the imagination fills in the absent features of a sense object:45 Finally, one could add a faculty of cultivation [Vermögen der Ausbildung]. We have not only a faculty but also a drive [Trieb] to cultivate

52  The Productive Imagination and to complete everything. So if things [Sachen], stories, comedies or the like appear to us to be deficient, then without fail we endeavor to bring it to an end [zum Ende]; one is annoyed that the thing is not whole. This presupposes a faculty for making an idea of the whole and for comparing objects [die Gegenstände] with the idea of the whole. (28:237, Metaphysics L1) The Ausbildungsvermögen is the twofold faculty of “making an idea of the whole” and of “comparing objects” given to sense with that “idea of the whole”.46 The implicit analogy in this case is that, just as we feel compelled to imagine how interrupted “stories” would end given the parts already presented, so too with “things” or “objects” is the imagination at work building out (ausbilden) or cultivating present sense material into “an idea of the whole” object of perception. It is clear that stories have a narrative or teleological structure; if there were no logic to a story other than the temporal succession of events, a narrative would be finished whenever the narrator happened to stop speaking, and it would never occur to the audience that anything was missing or incomplete. Thus the very possibility that a theater audience may realize that a break in the action signals an intermission rather than the conclusion exposes how an anticipated sense of the whole already informs the order and significance of the individual parts. Fiction becomes a guide to fact if the perception of empirical objects has a similar teleological structure. And we have already seen that for Kant spatial contiguity or temporal succession alone underdetermines the object of reference: if the imagination synthesized sense properties “in any order, just as they happened to come together, this would not lead to any determinate connection of them, but only to accidental collocations [regellose Haufen]” (A121). Drawing a connection between the functions of Einbildung and Ausbildung adds an important depth or dimension by which one can differentiate between a randomly amalgamated heap and the kind of Bild or form into which the imagination synthesizes a perceptual manifold. That imagined depth is not merely intuitional (spatially coherent) but also notional (logically cogent) insofar as the imagination orders the features present to sense in light of some “idea of the whole”, other parts of which are concealed or only partially given. Thus, to be able to seize upon [begreifen] an object of perception is to take the sensational surface as the visible part of a partially imagined whole, where the missing parts of the whole are supplied by an idea or a concept [Begriff]. It is precisely at the point of bringing the expectation of a teleological (or whole-part) order to the experience of the successive (part-whole) temporal order of the sense manifold that Béatrice Longuenesse locates the contribution of the productive imagination: To borrow a term from Spinoza and Leibniz, one might speak of an actual conatus, a continual effort, to shape the representation of what

The Productive Imagination  53 affects us in order to exercise our judgment . . . sensation leads to intuition of an object only if it is apprehended in such a way as to be reproduced, and reproduced in such a way as to be recognized, by virtue of one and the same intellectual conatus. The actualization of this conatus is the ‘action of understanding on sensibility,’ [B152] namely . . . the figurative synthesis carried out by the imagination.47 According to Longuenesse’s interpretation, not only does perceptual experience require a drive towards cogence (an Ausbildungsvermögen), it is none other than the productive imagination (Einbildungskraft) that is responsible for executing the drive towards a teleological whole. W. H. Walsh similarly sees Kant’s account of perception as requiring an anticipated or provisional sense of the whole, which he describes not in terms of a conatus but rather a prolepsis.48 While the essential teleological structure of sense experience remains unchanged, one bonus feature of adopting the language of “prolepsis” is its proximity to the suite of hand metaphors, stemming as it does from the Greek lambanein, meaning to take or seize. (Compare with analambanein meaning “to receive, take up in one’s hands”.) Thus prolepsis literally connotes a provisional, even grappling attempt to grab ahold of something not unlike the way in which a hand opens out onto the shape of a door handle prior to getting a grip on it or the way one might manipulate a heavy object before determining just the right way to lift it up off the ground. This proleptical sense of conceptual deployment suggests a non-trivial way in which concepts “seize upon” the perceptual given; rather than simply picking up or catching sense impressions it connotes a preliminary opening up onto, a positioning oneself towards, much like the way an athlete has to reach out in preparation for making a catch.49 To identify conceptual content with the way in which one “takes in” sense objects would only be trivial if there is no difference between being passively struck by an object and actively disposing oneself to catch ahold of it. Thus taking seriously a proleptical, anticipatory, or even dispositional form of concept deployment requires a departure from the usual way Kant is conceived to be a conceptualist and prompts a reconsideration of the purported role the imagination plays in introducing logical form to the affordances of sense. Sellars and Strawson on the Particularity of Logical Form in Kant A common interpretation of how Kantian intuitions would be structured by conceptual form is shared by Wilfrid Sellars and P. F. Strawson, both of whom turned at about the same time to Kant’s account of the imagination as a mechanism for elaborating how the conceptual capacities could be at work within, rather than merely upon, the deliverances of sensibility. The general strategy of each is to invoke Kant’s notion of the imagination in order to undermine the assertion that, properly speaking, empirical objects are given to sense in what Sellars terms a “bare” or “pure demonstrative”

54  The Productive Imagination form, completely prior to and independently of the logical form provided by concepts. In his essay “The Role of Imagination in Kant’s Theory of Experience”, Sellars remarks: One might be tempted to think of “this” as a pure demonstrative having no other conceptual content than that involved in being a demonstrative. Kant does think of an act of intuition as a demonstrative thought, a Mentalese “this.” However, he does not think of this Mentalese demonstrative as a bare Mentalese “this.” (¶47, pp 242–243) A “bare demonstrative, a sheer this” (¶9, p 233) could only be possible if the apprehending imagination could “run through” the perceptual manifold and “hold together” various attributes that would have some determinate relation to each other independently of the relation provided by an “idea of the whole”—as if the logical form offered, as it were, a second reason why the sundry features of a manifold cohere in just that way. In other words, a “sheer this” would be the product of an apprehending Einbildungskraft working in isolation from the Ausbildungsvermögen. But while “pure demonstratives” might be the building blocks of the traditional empiricist picture of sense perception, Sellars argues, they are not compatible with what Kant means by empirical intuitions. Rather, “for Kant intuitions are complex demonstrative thoughts which have implicit grammatical. . . form” (¶49, p 243). Accordingly, Kant’s insight into the workings of the imagination was to have seen that the objects of perception are not given or synthesized only in a spatial unity but that a grammatical or logical form is part of the original synthesis, the initial “perceptual taking” (¶10, p 233). In “Imagination and Perception”, Strawson opts for a metaphorical description of the way intuitions have conceptual form: “the visual experience is irradiated by, or infused with, the concept; or it becomes soaked with the concept”.50 But Strawson otherwise shares with Sellars an interpretation of the specific sense in which the conceptual capacities would be at work within perceptual experience. That is, each sees the “implicit grammatical. . . form” of perception in Kant as requiring the investment of particular concepts in particular intuitions. To say that an intuition is “taken” or “infused” with the logical form of the concept “apple”, for example, is not to claim that the sense impression presents several features which overlap with or imply the full set of marks contained in the concept apple any more than seeing the façade of a building causes us to merely suspect that the building contains an interior and rear side. Rather, to glance across the room and see an apple is already to have “taken” the object to be “infused” with the regular attributes contained in the concept “apple”, even though the full set of attributes is not present in intuition (and, given the perspectival character of finite, embodied perceivers, a complete set of marks never could be fully present in intuition). For Sellars,

The Productive Imagination  55 We see the cool red apple. We see it as red on the facing side, as red on the opposite side, and as containing a volume of cool white apple flesh. We do not see of the apple its opposite side, or its inside, or its internal whiteness, or its coolness, or its juiciness. But while these features are not seen, they are not merely believed in. These features are present in the object of perception as actualities. They are present by virtue of being imagined. (¶21, p 235) On this interpretation by synthesizing the sensory manifold into a logical or conceptual form of an “apple”, the imagination takes the object as having the regular features or attributes of that particular concept, like an interior crunchy white flesh, even though the whiteness or crunchiness are present only by way of the imagination until one bites into it. In that case, the absent and imagined properties are not inferences but are perceived as internal attributes already present insofar as they belong to the necessary marks of a specifiable “idea of the whole” whose conceptual form the sense object exhibits. Thus, I would not perceive some object as an apple because I have surveyed its red opposite side and tasted its crunchy white flesh; rather, I perceive it as having a red opposite side and a crunchy white flesh because I have seen it as an apple. In a manner of speaking, if that thing didn’t already appear as that apple, its facing side certainly wouldn’t appear like that. The absent but imagined features provided by a determinate concept inform and structure the binding of the impressions that are given to sense. What it means, in that case, for a perception to have conceptual content is that a sense object is perceptually taken as having some specific descriptive content, as being a particular way, which is specifiable in terms of nameable concepts that one has mastered.51 Sellars explains one consequence of this view in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind: “For we now recognize that instead of coming to have a concept of something because we have noticed that sort of thing, to have the ability to notice a sort of thing is already to have the concept of that sort of thing”.52 And it is in this particular form, according to which the mastery of specific concepts must precede the ability to perceive specific objects, that conceptualism, and its Kantian precedence, most often comes under attack for allegedly making mysterious the acquisition of concepts and the perceptual experience of infants and animals, who appear to notice objects but lack the linguistic capacity to name them. But regardless of whether or not those objections hit the target of Strawson and Sellars’s version of Kant, there is, however, another form of conceptualism available to a Kantian. Two Concepts of Concepts in the Third Critique Sellars and Strawson are impressed by the explanatory potential of Kant’s account of the imagination for articulating how sense experience has

56  The Productive Imagination conceptual content; but they both explicitly distance themselves from the “mysterious”53 account of the productive imagination in the first Critique and claim to draw only inspiration, not specific arguments, from the text.54 And there is reason to be cautious since it is a long hermeneutical stretch to derive an account of the way the imagination is to mediate between particular empirical concepts and specific intuitions from the discussion provided in the Deductions and Schematism of the Critique of Pure Reason, which are concerned to address the question of how the transcendental imagination mediates between the categories (i.e., the pure concepts of the understanding such as causality or unity) and the mere forms of any intuition (space and time) as such.55 But to see that the mediating role of the imagination in everyday, empirical experience is not just a position inspired by Kant but one he actually held, it is necessary to take seriously resources and developments in his work with which Sellars and Strawson do not engage, namely, the general treatment of the productive imagination in the Critique of Judgment. It is, after all, not until the third Critique that Kant turns from the transcendental question of the conditions of any possible experience to the empirical question of how a “particular [besonder] experience is possible” (20:213). And it is not without reason that the relation of the imagination to actual, particular, empirical objects receives the most sustained engagement in the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”: it is neither any object as such that is beautiful nor certain general kinds of objects, such as roses or paintings; rather in order to determine beauty, according to Kant, each individual instance must be considered in and of itself.56 There is a modal difference, so to speak, between the transcendental conditions for the possibility of the experience of objects in general and the aesthetic appraisal of actual, particular objects. Thus to see Kant’s most extended discussion of the relation between the productive imagination and empirical experience, one must take seriously his writings on aesthetics. But a turn to the third Critique exposes a much different picture of the way in which the “productive and spontaneous” imagination invests an object with the form of a concept. The notion that perceptual experience could have a meaningful form in something other than the determinative sense of “subsuming a particular intuition under a universal (whose concept is given)” is, of course, integral to the central philosophical development of the third Critique, namely the notion of reflective judgment that works “the other way round” as “an ability to find the universal for the particular” (20:209). The question then becomes what the particular intuition that one judges reflectively must be like so that it “makes possible” a concept rather than having been made possible by one (20:211). In other words, in what form, if any besides a “lawless heap” [regellose Haufen] (A121), is the particular intuition before reflective judgment has found the universal for it? Aesthetic judgments of taste become a proxy for the general question of reflective judgment because of two peculiar traits that Kant ascribes to

The Productive Imagination  57 beautiful objects. On the one hand, the beautiful form of an object cannot be derived from the logical form specified in the attributes of a determinate concept; that is, something cannot be deemed beautiful by definition or because it is a member of a certain class. There can be no a priori guarantee, for instance, that all roses are beautiful or all sonatas by Mozart sound pleasing; each particular instance must be subject to taste. (In other words, the notion of an “ugly rose” is not logically contradictory). Thus there is something more to the form of a beautiful object than can be accounted for in general, determinate concepts. And yet, on the other hand, there is something peculiarly concept-like about beautiful form; for instance, even though the artistic products of genius do not appear to follow a previously specifiable rule, their works of art do, however, seem to give rise to one, as though one can give reasons after the fact why this particular piece of art “works”, why things “hang together” well in this particular case. “[W]hat kind of rule is this?” Kant asks: It cannot be couched in a formula and serve as a precept. . . [and thus] determined according to concepts. Rather, the rule must be abstracted from what the artist has done, i.e., from the product, which others may use to test their own talent, letting it serve them as their model. (5:309) Kant then immediately admits, “How this is possible is difficult to explain”. That which needs to be explained is, at least in part, how a particular sense object could model the general or universal form of a concept without being previously determined by any specific concept. And that which will provide the explanation, we will presently see, is none other than the productive imagination, which Sellars poignantly characterized as “a unique blend of a capacity to form images in accordance with a recipe, and a capacity to conceive of objects in a way which supplies the relevant recipes” (¶31, p 238). The question at hand is, then, what is a “capacity to conceive of objects” other than “a capacity to form images in accordance” with determinate concepts? Can there be any other meaningful sense of “conceptual”? A Domesticated Reading of the Antinomy of Taste Kant’s most extended treatment of two differing conceptions of concepts occurs in the “Antinomy of Taste”. And disambiguating the notion of a concept is precisely the key to the “Solution to the Antinomy of Taste” laid out in §57 of the Critique of Judgment. Although it would otherwise be natural to link Kant’s two senses of concepts in the Antinomy of Taste of the third Critique with the alleged “twofold meaning of the term ‘concept’ ”57 in the first Critique, that connection is obscured if not obstructed by Kant’s eagerness to exploit the similarity between the second, non-determinative notion of a concept and a specific “idea of reason”, namely, the supersensible

58  The Productive Imagination substrate of humanity that provides humankind with hope that its existence has a moral vocation. That is to say, the metaphysical possibility that beauty can be the symbol of morality immediately overshadows the epistemic question about the twofold nature of concepts. In that case, to see the overlap between the twofold sense of concepts at issue in the Antinomy and the possibility of a non-determinative “capacity to conceive of objects” requires a reader to work against the direction Kant wants to push the argument. Some initial resistance can come from showing how Kant’s “Solution to the Antinomy of Taste” overshoots the requirements of the argument on its own terms. Additional resistance comes by showing that there is, in fact, a much more modest solution, one, however, in which beauty tells us less about the prospect for a supersensible moral world and more about how we perceive and come to know the sensible world.58 The problem of the “Antinomy of Taste” as presented in sections 55–57 of the “Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment” turns precisely on the ambiguous nature of concepts in the preceding 54 sections of the “Analytic of Aesthetic Judgment”, the result of which is two apparently contradictory conclusions about the role of concepts in judgments of taste. According to the thesis, “A judgment of taste is not based on concepts; for otherwise one could dispute about it (decide by means of proofs)” (5:338) which Kant had earlier argued decisively against on the grounds that no general concept (type) can guarantee that its particular (token) instances will, in fact, appear beautiful.59 According to the antithesis, however, “A judgment of taste is based on concepts; for otherwise. . . one could not even so much as quarrel about them (lay claim to other people’s necessary assent to one’s judgment)”, a position for which Kant had extensively argued for, particularly in the Deduction. Kant then immediately goes on to argue that the only way to resolve the Antinomy of Taste is to “show that the concept to which we refer the object in such judgments is understood in different senses” in the positions laid out in the thesis and antithesis. In other words, the Antinomy is a product of confusion caused by conflating two very different conceptions of the nature of concepts appealed to in aesthetic judgment. The key to resolving the antinomy is thus to disambiguate the notion of “concept”. Accordingly, the very next step in Kant’s argument is to maintain that “some concepts can be determined” while “others. . . are intrinsically both indeterminate and indeterminable” (5:339). But in this particular way of distinguishing between two different kinds of concepts, some of which are determinate and others indeterminable, Kant takes the first leap not required by the argument itself. On Kant’s own terms, resolving the antinomy does not require a concept that is “intrinsically indeterminable” but only that one “show that the concept to which we refer the object in such judgments is understood in different senses”. No fewer than three more times in §57 does Kant reinforce the relatively modest targets of the argument: showing two different notions of “concept” in the thesis and the antithesis so that “they may both be true” is “all we need” (5:341); “Eliminating this conflict

The Productive Imagination  59 between the claims and counterclaims of taste is the best we can do”; “What is needed to solve an antinomy is only the possibility that two seemingly conflicting propositions are not in fact contradictory” (5:340). Kant could hardly have been more emphatic in stating that all that is required to resolve the antinomy is to show that there are two discernible notions of the way concepts bear on aesthetic objects. In other words, the antithesis would not contradict the thesis if it is possible that being subsumed under specifiable, determinative form is not the only way an experience could be considered conceptual. Kant defines a determinate concept as one “through whose predicates a corresponding sensible intuition is determined [der durch Prädicate der sinnlichen Anschauung, die ihm correspondiren kann, bestimmbar ist] (5:339, translation modified60). What the argument requires by means of contrast is an alternative notion of “concept” that would not be determinate in the sense that a corresponding intuition would not fully be determined through the predicates of the concept, which is the issue Kant immediately goes on to address: Now. . . a judgment of taste does deal with objects of sense—though not so as to determine a concept of these objects. . . . And yet there can be no doubt that in a judgment of taste the presentation of the object. . . is referred more broadly [eine erweiterte Beziehung der Vorstellung des Objects. . . enthalten], and this broader reference is our basis for extending such judgment as necessary for everyone. Hence this extension must be based on some concept or other [irgend ein Begriff], but this concept must be one that is not at all determined by an intuition [der sich gar nicht durch Anschauung bestimmen], that does not permit us to cognize anything and hence does not permit us to prove a judgment of taste. (5:339–340, translation modified) Thus, “all we need” to resolve the antinomy is “some such concept” [irgend ein Begriff] that is not such so as to determine an intuition through its predicates. In that case, all the argument requires is a functioning sense of an “indeterminate” concept, not one that is “intrinsically both indeterminate and indeterminable”. It is not, then, at all essential to the argument that Kant immediately moves to identify “one such concept” (ein dergleichen Begriff) as the indeterminable pure concept of reason of “the supersensible underlying the object (as well as underlying the judging subject)”. Even the language in which the notion of the supersensible is described as “one such concept” seems to concede that there may well be others. And Kant himself appears to be aware that it is supererogatory to identify the indeterminate function of concepts needed to resolve the antinomy with the “supersensible substrate of appearances”, which is why he hedges, claiming only that the indeterminate sense of concepts needed to resolve the antinomy is “perhaps (vielleicht) in the concept of what may be considered the supersensible

60  The Productive Imagination substrate of humanity” (5:340). By that count, the non-determinative function of concepts may “perhaps” be located elsewhere. Kant’s hope to the contrary notwithstanding, the resolution of the antinomy does not require any morally robust claim about the “indeterminate idea of the supersensible in us” as the “sole key for solving the mystery” of taste (5:341). The requirements of the argument are in fact much more modest, namely, that “a judgment of taste is indeed based on a concept, but an indeterminate one [Das Geschmacksurtheil gründet sich doch auf einem, obzwar unbestimmten, Begriffe . . .]” (5:340). The immediate slide from an indeterminate concept to the indeterminable supersensible substrate of humanity would appear less illicit if there were no other possible or plausible candidates for a non-determinative function of concepts. But, in fact, the third Critique frequently draws on the notion of a conceptual form at play in aesthetic experience in which the relevant sense of “conceptual” refers neither to a specific, determinate concept nor the supersensible substrate of humanity. As we will presently see, the non-determinative conceptual form is rather that which is imparted by the “productive and spontaneous” imagination in its “free yet lawful” engagement with beautiful objects (5:241). Thus it is the description of the “free lawfulness” of the productive imagination in aesthetic experience that contains Kant’s most refined account of the way in which empirical content bears conceptual form. The Form of a Concept in General In the “General Comment” appended to the end of the “Analytic of Aesthetic Judgment”, Kant defines taste as the “ability to judge an object in reference to the free lawfulness of the imagination”, a description that has about it an air of paradox: “to say that the imagination is free and yet lawful of itself . . . is a contradiction” (5:240–241). However, Kant’s account of the nature of this contradiction at the heart of the productive imagination bears likeness to the contradiction at issue in the Antinomy of Taste. And in both cases the apparent contradiction “falls away [fällt aber aller Widerspruch weg]” (5:340) with the realization that having a specifiable, determinate form is not the only way in which an aesthetic experience can be considered “conceptual”. Although the text of the third Critique does not draw attention to the relation between the notion of an “indeterminate” concept and the “free lawfulness” of the imagination, the two notions are clearly linked when Kant describes the “freedom” of the imagination in opposition to determinate conceptual form. “[W]hen the imagination is compelled to proceed according to a determinate law, then its product is determined by concepts” (5:241), and insofar as “the imagination is tied to a determinate form of this object. . . to that extent [it] does not have free play” (5:240). Kant thereby opposes the “productive and spontaneous” exercise of the imagination in judgments of beauty to those “where the presentation is referred to

The Productive Imagination  61 a determinate concept of an object” (5:241). In that case, to say that the produktiv Einbildungskraft is “free” is tantamount to saying that it does not impart a Bild or form according to the specifiable logical form of a particular determinate concept. In other words, it is free from the proleptical demand that it behold a particular object “in accordance with a recipe”, in Sellars’s terms, as a house or as a flower, for example. (Of course, a flower can be beautiful, but it is not beautiful because it is a flower.) Freedom from the epistemic demand that the imagination “build” or fashion a sense object according to a determinate concept would, however, yield a “lawless heap” [regellose Haufen] of sense properties (A121) unless there were some other way in which form could be considered conceptual or lawlike. And in the same section Kant accordingly divulges that the productive imagination “may offer. . . just the sort of form [eine solche Form an die Hand geben könne] in the combination of its manifold” not as the determinate form of any particular concept but rather as the form that accords with “the understanding’s lawfulness in general [in Einstimmung mit der Verstandesgesetzmäßigkeit überhaupt]” (5:240–241). The question of whether there is an alternative notion of “conceptual” operative throughout Kant’s works turns on what, exactly, it means to be lawful “in general”. The “Introduction” to the “Transcendental Judgment in General” in the first Critique defines “understanding in general. . . as the faculty of rules” and “judgment. . . [as] the faculty of subsuming under rules” (A132/B171). The prospect of unraveling the mystery of a “free yet lawful” exercise of the imagination turns on answering whether it makes sense to say that the faculty of judgment can subsume intuitions not under particular rules per se but under “the faculty of rules” in general. But what would it even mean to allow that the conceptual capacities could be operative in perceptual experience in a general sort of way whether or not one possesses or deploys particular, determinate concepts? A deflationary reading would deny that Kant intends any robust, substantive claim about the capacity of the imagination to combine a sense perception in a general, indeterminate way rather than according to a particular, determinate form. For the imagination to combine the sense manifold according to the “understanding’s lawfulness in general” simply means that the imagination must subsume an intuition under some concept or other, although it does not matter for the sake of the general point that particular concept is intended in any specific instance. Moreover, the progression of the discussion in the first Critique indicates that the question of which particular concept governs in any particular case falls to the “peculiar talent” of “mother wit” (A133/B172). In that event, what it means in the third Critique to assign the imagination a certain amount of freedom is not that aesthetic experience is structured by an essentially different kind of form than that provided by determinate concepts; rather, in aesthetic judgment the epistemic stakes are lowered thus easing the proleptical drive towards a final, conceptual form and thereby allowing the imagination considerable latitude

62  The Productive Imagination to play with the way different particular concepts might structure the rich variety of sense properties. It thus falls to the “free play” of imagination, as Fred Rush puts the point, “to survey the manifold and ‘pose’ or ‘suggest’ different ways in which it may be arranged”.61 Paul Guyer describes the way determinate concepts factor into what he calls such “multicognitive” views: Instead of suggesting no determinate concept for the manifold of intuition that it furnishes, a beautiful object suggests an indeterminate or open-ended manifold of concepts for the manifold of intuition, allowing the mind to flit back and forth playfully and enjoyably among different ways of conceiving the same object without allowing or requiring it to settle down on one determinate way of conceiving the object.62 On the multicognitive interpretation the determinate nature of the conceptual form in aesthetic experience is essentially the same as in cognitive judgment that subsumes individual intuitions under particular concepts; the difference is that in the aesthetic case the level of epistemic commitment is lowered so that imagination can defeasibly slip a given intuition into and out of particular forms, perhaps altering foreground and background elements of the sense manifold not unlike the way a Rubin illusion can appear now as a vase and then as a pair of faces but always as one or the other. There is no reason to rule out the possibility that Kant would allow the kind of “sustained cognitive exploration”63 described by the multicognitive approach. The next appearance of the free imagination in the text even seems to support it: the aesthetic power of judgment in judging the beautiful refers the imagination in its free play to the understanding so that it will harmonize with the understanding’s concepts in general (which concepts they are is left indeterminate). (5:256) But as the third Critique proceeds it becomes increasingly apparent that the defeasibility of perceptual form that allows intuitions to accommodate an open range of determinate concepts is not what it means for the productive imagination to meet the demands of lawfulness “in general”. The next time Kant returns to the notion of a free yet lawful imagination, he writes of, taste as a subjective power of judgment [which] contains a principle of subsumption; however, this subsumption is not one of intuitions under concepts, but, rather, one of the power of intuitions or exhibitions (the imagination) under the power of concepts (the understanding)), insofar as the imagination in its freedom harmonizes with the understanding in its lawfulness. (5:287)

The Productive Imagination  63 In this passage from the Deduction, the lawfulness of the imagination derives from its compatibility not with an open range of determinate concepts but rather with the general form of the “power of concepts” as the entire faculty of rules; the imagination’s freedom consists, then, precisely in its not being beholden to the form of any particular concept, even if it is left undetermined or open-ended which particular concept that might be. The interpretative suggestion, then, is when Kant says in this passage that “in its freedom” the imagination is identified as a “power of intuitions (Vermögen der Anschauungen) that is conjointly attuned (zusammenstimmen) to the understanding as the “power of concepts (Vermögen der Begriffe)”, what he means is that the conceptual form provided by a “free yet lawful” exercise of the productive imagination is general or indeterminate, rather than particular or determinate.64 Conceptuality, properly considered, is a feature of the mind’s orientation towards the sense manifold—the way in which it is taken up—not just a description of its specific contents. Moreover, this passage is not the only, perhaps infelicitous, instance of the suggestion that in aesthetic experience the productive imagination strives to fashion an intuition according to the whole “faculty of concepts” in general. In the first “Comment” following the “Solution to the Antinomy of Taste”, Kant again writes: we must judge the beautiful not according to concepts, but according to the purposive attunement of the imagination that brings it into harmony with the power of concepts as such. [Denn da das Schöne nicht nach Begriffen beurtheilt werden muß, sondern nach der zweckmäßigen Stimmung der Einbildungskraft zur Übereinstimmung mit dem Vermögen der Begriffe überhaupt]. (5:344) It is again the generic form of the “power of concepts as such” that accounts for the lawfulness of the imagination while its freedom is a function of its not being beholden to any particular, determinate concept. There is, then, in the notion of a “free yet lawful” imagination a general notion of being “conceptual” that is not equivalent to bearing particular, determinate form. There are, in sum, two different concepts of concepts in Kant, one of which refers to a specifiable, determinate form and the other of which is entirely general.

A Conclusion as Symbolic as It Is Imaginary Having exegetically identified an alternative notion of the conceptual in the imagination’s form of the “power of concepts as such”, the interpretive question naturally becomes what such a general or generic conceptual form would really be. And, furthermore, does the prospect that the productive imagination builds or structures a sense experience in the form of a concept

64  The Productive Imagination in general solve any problems or does it simply rename them, opening up one black box to find another? The following chapters each aim to provide reasons to believe that Kant would have (or could have) considered there to be a distinctive manner or way of perceiving—a discernible orientation towards the world. The strategy in this chapter for opening to the light of day how such an orientation can be considered to bear the general form of a concept is to have carefully separated out the various aspects of the productive imagination. What remains is to tie those threads back together. Shortly after the final reference to “the power of concepts as such” in the Antinomy, Kant moves to consider whether it is possible to conceive of “Beauty as the Symbol of Morality”. Although the focus in that section is specifically on the symbolization of moral ideas, Kant is quite aware that there are wider, general implications concerning the nature of human mindedness that remain to be extracted from the discussion of symbols.65 “This [symbolic] function has not been analyzed much so far, even though it very much deserves fuller investigation; but this is not the place to pursue it” (5:352). What is worth pursuing for present purposes is that Kant explicitly describes symbols as a way or manner of intuitive presentation (eine Art der intuitiven [Vorstellung]) (5:351), which at a minimum makes clear that he considers there to be discernible manners or modes of having an intuition, that is, different ways of taking up or taking in the sense givens. What is distinctive about a symbolic representation is that one attends “not to the content (nicht dem Inhalte)” of the intuition but rather “merely in terms of the form of reflection (bloβ der Form der Reflexion)” (5:351). Reflection on the nature of symbols is one occasion to recognize that specifying the matter (Inhalte) of a perception is not the same as determining the manners or forms in which it is taken up.66 But, the objection would run, even if Kant allowed different orientations towards one and the same object, what would it mean to say that for conceptual beings such as ourselves, sense matter is taken up in the form of a concept in general? Actually, I think, the notion of taking up objects of sense in the form of an object in general is not so mysterious, and the account of the productive imagination articulated in this chapter explains why. The first considered aspect of the productive imagination, namely as a capacity for discrimination, was to have shown that having awareness of any particular object (or property) at all is to have separated that object out from a background manifold of sense. And the argument of the first section was that there is no discerning, holding apart, without a correlative binding, holding together. An appeal to the language of touch rather than sight was to have reinforced the notion that holding apart and holding together cannot be meaningfully separated into independent acts, which is why Kant assigns them to the same mental faculty. The combined result of the first section prepared the thought that the productive imagination is involved in a particular way of perceiving, a distinctive claim to have a grip upon the given. The second section, then, linked such a way of perceiving with the conceptual capacities, at least

The Productive Imagination  65 for Kant, insofar as the binding together of that which is given requires the imaginative presence of that which is absent. Conceptuality, then, reflects a particular way of perceiving or mode of activity in which the mind binds together the manifold of sense, not just in light of spatio-temporal coherence but also of teleological cogence. Awareness of just what it is one has in view requires some understanding, some anticipation, of what one does not have in view. A clue to the ways in which discerning, binding, and imagining operate conjointly comes when Kant assigns them to one and the same mental function of the productive imagination. The argument that would justify Kant, in short, is that separating out, holding together, and imagining a whole are mutually co-dependent, incapable of completing their functions independently from each other. A having is a holding, a holding is a binding, and a binding is an imaginative act. Those various elements taken in their relation is what it means to bear the form of a concept in general, to have a logical shape within what Sellars calls the “space of reasons”. To identify in the various elements of the productive imagination the logic or shape of a certain way of taking up the world is, I think, to have said something substantive and meaningful about our basic intentional rapport with the world. To acknowledge that having any sense object to hand is not just to be affected by a world outside of oneself but to be opened out onto it, to be oriented to the possible ways things hang together in a logically cogent rather than merely spatially contiguous order, is to allow a non-problematic and non-derogatory way in which animals and infants do not, in fact, have a grip upon their perceptual environment. Inversely, without some sense of where a thing is going, one cannot hold all of its pieces together, and without holding it together one has not successfully separated it out from the background of everything else. Which is not to say that as physical beings with a sensory apparatus we cannot be merely affected by the world, impinged upon, and bombarded by sense stimuli. Of course a closed door can be knocked upon; indeed, knock hard enough and the objects inside may be caused to reverberate or quake. It is just to say that such inner reverberation is not what it means to have a sense perception. A having is a holding, a holding is a binding, and a binding is an imaginative act. Thus our basic rapport with the world has a discernible and non-trivial form. Prior to closing in on the given is a reaching out towards it. The form of an intentional encounter is not only to be passively struck but to have opened oneself up, exposed oneself, to the outside. Our basic relation to the outside world, then, is less like having one’s door knocked upon by a stranger and more like opening up to, welcoming in, and embracing an invited guest.

Notes   1 Cf. Dieter Henrich: “If one had to name a single component of the doctrines of the Critique of Pure Reason as the means by which Kant could integrate his aesthetics into his epistemology, it would have to be Kant’s analysis of the various functions of imagination within cognition” (1992: 36).

66  The Productive Imagination   2 See also Crowther (2010: 1).   3 1998: 615.  4 Ibid. 712 n. 3.   5 For important differences between the “productive imagination” in the Deductions of the first Critique and the “productive imagination” of aesthetic judgment of the third Critique, see note 7 below.   6 That Kant’s phrasing in the first Critique indicates a dawning awareness of the themes of the third Critique is suggested, for instance, Bell as well as Matherne (2014).  7 I have substituted the word “productive” for “transcendental” in the quotation since the context makes explicit that the “transcendental function of the imagination” is a species of the “productive imagination”. Although the transcendental and the aesthetic functions of the imagination are both described as “productive” exercises of the imagination, there are essential differences between them. The transcendental imagination is pure in the sense that “without distinction of intuitions it is directed exclusively to the a priori combination of the manifold” (A91); the aesthetic imagination, however, is empirical to the extent that it remains “tied to a determinate form of [an] object” (5:240). In the visual context, we must “submit the object to our own eyes, just as if our liking of it depended on that sensation” (5:216); and in a gustatory case “I shall try the dish on my tongue and palate, and thereby (and not by universal principles) make my judgment (5:285). And yet Kant gives the appellation “productive” to both the aesthetic and transcendental functions of the imagination, at the very least to distinguish each from imagination in its “reproductive” mode “whose synthesis is entirely subject to empirical laws . . . of association, and which therefore . . . falls within the domain . . . of psychology” (B152). By contrast, the imagination as productive, “is an expression of spontaneity, which is determinative and not . . . determinable merely” (B151). Thus it is spontaneity, not purity, that constitutes the “productive” imagination and that links the aesthetic and the transcendental imagination as two members of a common class.   8 The following treatment of the productive imagination, while extensive, is not exhaustive. In particular, I do not discuss the imagination’s role in exhibition (Darstellung, hypotyposis) of concepts whose mind-world direction of fit runs in the opposite direction than the world-mind relation of apprehension, which is the primary topic of this chapter. A complete interpretation has to be able to explain why Kant assigns the two contrasting functions of apprehension and exhibition to the “same power” of imagination (5:269, 279). The first such interpreter to see that the “power of the imagination is the original two-sided identity” was Hegel (1977: 73), who espied in the third Critique the outlines of a dialectical rather than a dualistic account of the mind-world relation. The following investigation is a retelling of only part of that story, and it departs from the Hegelian focus on the speculative elements of the “Critique of Teleological Judgment” and aligns with a recent trend in the Anglo-American scholarship to locate the key Kantian innovations within the empirical elements of the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”.  9 An anonymous reviewer helpfully pointed to a similar distinction within the psychology of perception between “within-object” and “between-object” processing. See Humphreys and Riddoch. Here is a case, I think, in which philosophical analysis and cognitive research mutually support each other (lest Kantian thoughts without empirical content be empty and psychological intuitions without conceptual apparatus be blind). 10 2011: 55. 11 See Silva, Mikko, and Yrjönsuuri.

The Productive Imagination  67 12 For a more extensive handling of visual perception, see Noë pp. 35–55. 13 See A104: “the object is viewed as that which prevents our modes of knowledge from being haphazard or arbitrary”. 14 1982: 65. 15 Discernere is related etymologically to the Greek terms krisis and krinein, the latter meaning “to separate” or “to judge”; and it is related conceptually to the German terms Unterscheiden (from scheiden meaning to separate or divide) and Urteil, which, according to Hölderlin, connotes an original (Ur-) separation or division into parts (teilen). On the latter, see Henrich (1997: 75–76). 16 For a helpful overview, see “Neo-Kantian Individual Representationalism: Strawson and Evans”, in Burge (2010: 154–210). 17 2010: 59 18 For one iteration of the question, see McDowell’s Woodbridge Lectures, collectively titled “Having the World in View”, for a critique of Sellars’s distinction between two notions of Kantian intuitions. 19 I take the term from Colin McLear’s “Two Kinds of Unity in the Critique of Pure Reason” (2015). 20 On the “transcendental distinction” between sense and the understanding, see Caygill (1989), esp. 205–206. 21 Tolley considers the textual case in favor of the isolability of a perpetual synopsis, prior to and independently of the synthetic activity of the imagination (2013, esp. 121–127). 22 “distinguished by the mind” is Tolley’s translation (p. 122) of “Jede Anschauung enthält ein Mannigfaltiges in sich, welches doch nicht als ein solches vorgestellt werden würde, wenn das Gemüt nicht die Zeit, in der Folge der Eindrücke aufeinander unterschiede” (A99). 23 Tolley points to a helpful discussion in Allison (2004: 113–114). 24 Tolley, 133 n. 34. 25 The capacity to specify just what it is one has when one has a capacity to specify is, ironically, a delicate matter. I mean to be treating that question in Part II of the following, particularly in the section on “The Form of a Concept in General”. 26 p. 281. 27 See Westphal’s description of Evans’s position at p. 281, which he gleans from Evan’s essay “Identity and Predication”. For a critical treatment of Evans’s position that largely agrees with Westphal’s interpretation, see Burge, 181–208. 28 Paul Crowther also reads Evans as developing positions that run parallel to arguments in Kant, e.g., (2010: 23–26). 29 Cf. Speaks. 30 See Caygill (1997: 118). 31 (2003: 217) citing Beaufret p. 102. 32 It is not a coincidence that Beaufret’s comments on the notion of Bild in Kant come in a volume titled Dialogue avec Heidegger. Beaufret would be well aware that Heidegger offered an extended reflection on the nexus of the terms repraesentatio, vorstellen, and das Vorhandene in “The Age of the World Picture” (e.g., pp. 131–132). 33 That is not to deny the importance of the imagination for visualization. For a profitable account, see Matherne, “Images and Kant’s Theory of Perception”. 34 2004:178–179. 35 The way mental capacities come to be “cashed out” in monetary metaphors in the philosophical lexicon is explored by Mark Shell in Money, Language, Thought and with special reference to Kant in Chapter 5, “Money of the Mind: Dialectic and Monetary Form in Kant and Hegel”, pp. 131–155. Shell did not capitalize, however, on the fact that Kant’s term for a mental “faculty” is

68  The Productive Imagination Vermögen, which literally means fortune, wealth, property, or asset. Kant’s socalled “faculty psychology” is literally a mental economy. 36 It is hard to resist comparison to Melville’s ambivalent description of Billy Budd whose naivety precluded him from being able to perceive real and dangerous features of his social and spiritual world despite the promptings of Captain Vere and the ship’s chaplain: “Out of natural courtesy he received, but did not appropriate. It was like a gift placed in the palm of an outreached hand upon which the fingers do not close” (161). 37 1998: 46. 38 Ibid. 39 Kant also defines a concept as that which refers to an object “mediately by means of a feature which several things may have in common” (A320/B377) and as a “universal or reflected representation” (9:91). 40 1998: 47. 41 2006: 356. 42 Ginsborg (p. 356) attributes the charge that a less demanding notion of “concept” becomes vacuous and trivial to Michael Ayers (1991: 176–177). 43 The Anthropology also defines the imagination as “a faculty of intuition without the presence of the object” (7:167). 44 p. 87. 45 1990:19. 46 The Ausbildungsvermögen bears some similarity to the definition of “Reflectiren (Überlegen)” in the “First Introduction” to the third Critique as the ability “to hold given presentations up to, and compare them with, either other presentations or one’s cognitive power, in reference to a concept that this [comparison] makes possible” (20:211). 47 1998:208. 48 1975:15. 49 I mean here to be re-emphasizing the distinction between reception (Empfäng­ lichkeit) and perception (Empfindlichkeit) treated in Chapter 1, pp. 14–16. 50 p. 93. Strawson’s language bears some likeness to Husserl who describes the appearing object as “stitched” or “interwoven” (umflochten) with intentional empty horizons. For an illuminating comparison between themes in Kant and Husserl, see de Warren who discusses the “inherent teleological structure” (46) that Husserl calls a “pretension” (43). There is also some similarity between what Husserl calls a “determined indeterminateness (bestimmbare Unbestimmtheit)” (44) of an appearance and Kant’s notion of an intuition informed by an “indeterminate” concept, which will be the topic of the following three sections of this essay. 51 The question of whether an object can be perceived in a certain way (e.g., a regular rectangle oriented as a diamond) without being perceived as being that way, as having that particular descriptive content, is taken up by Ginsborg (2006: 358, 368–369, n. 24–25) and in another form by Tolley p. 130, n. 23. I return to the question in the final chapter (p. 210–11 n. 26). 52 1997: 87, formatting removed. 53 Strawson, p. 88. 54 Strawson p. 82; Sellars ¶¶1–2 (p. 231). 55 That is not to say it is an impossible stretch. See, for example, chapter 2 of Rudolf Makkreel’s Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: The Hermeneutical Import of the Critique of Judgment. Chapter 4 also addresses the problem of the “empirical gap” in light of Kant’s engagement with the rhetorical tradition. See pp. 101–5. 56 See the references in note 7 above in which Kant ties judgments of taste to the actual, empirical experience of particular objects.

The Productive Imagination  69 57 Longuenesse (1998: 47). 58 As the other chapters of this book attest, I do not think the epistemic and moral issues are unrelated; I just do not think the Antinomy of Taste provides the best presentation of their relation. 59 I return to some of the specific terms of the Antinomy, especially the difference between quarrelling and disputing by concepts, in Chapter 4, especially pp. 139–48. 60 Kant sometimes writes as though it is the concept that becomes determined by an intuition. I actually do think the third Critique goes some way in showing how Kant does allow the determination of concepts by intuitions (see, for example, Makkreel on “Reflective Specification” (1990: 51–58)). Such a reading blunts the Hegelian criticism of the abstractness of Kant’s alleged two-phase theory of concepts (see e.g., Brandom, 2002: 213–214; cf. Sedgwick (125–128; 158– 162) for a Hegelian reading that is more sensitive to the conceptual possibilities already available in Kant). I think it is clear in the context of the “Antinomy of Taste”, however, that the dominant issue on Kant’s mind is the precise sense in which intuitions are determined by conceptual form. I have accordingly altered the translation (but not, I think, the text) to emphasize that the determination is one of intuitions by concepts. 61 2001: 56. 62 2006: 166. 63 Crowther (1996:114). 64 I return to this passage at p. 171 in Chapter 6 in connection with the way Kant associates freedom of the faculties with an aesthetic feeling. 65 I return to the wider implication of symbols in Chapter 7, “Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World”, esp. pp. 197–207. 66 Symbols are not, however, the only such occasion. See also Kant’s discussion of “manner” and “mode” at 5:318–319, which is treated in Chapter 3 (pp. 85–7).

3 Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity The Aesthetics of Intentionality

Introduction In a later section of the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”, Kant places aesthetic expression in analogy with linguistic communication. if we wish to divide the fine arts, we can choose for this, at least tentatively, no more convenient principle than the analogy between the arts and the way people express themselves in speech so as to communicate with one another as perfectly as possible, namely, not merely as regards their concepts but also as regards their sensations. Such expression consists in word, gesture, and tone (articulation, gesticulation, and modulation). Only when these three ways of expressing himself are combined does the speaker communicate completely. For in this way thought, intuition, and sensation are conveyed to others simultaneously and in unison. (5:320) Kant’s purpose in drawing an analogy between linguistic and aesthetic communication at this moment in the text is to establish a framework for a provisional theory of fine arts. It is, therefore, not at all inappropriate that scholars who attend to this passage concern themselves by and large with evaluating whether or not Kant succeeds in doing what he says he is doing: that is, taking the analogy from communication at face value, does Kant provide a coherent and novel theory of the arts?1 But such a prior orientation towards a Kantian theory of art means that few scholars are in a position to attend to the implication that the passage contains the outlines of a Kantian theory of language.2 It is interesting enough in its own right to consider the incipient theory of communication, built as it is upon a tripartite structure of “word, gesture, and tone”. What is especially intriguing, however, is that such a tripartite theory of language appears to be modeled on the broad architecture of Kant’s philosophy of mind. The Kantian master thought, the axis around which the critical project turns, is that the minimal basic unit of human awareness is neither a passive

72  Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity impingement of sensation nor the spontaneous action of the intellect but the combination of both in a judgment—in a phrase, “thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind . . . [o]nly through their union can knowledge arise” (A51/B75). Thus, when Kant touches in passing on the nature of language it is not surprising that an implicit account of communication would be built upon the two elements that combine to form a judgment: thinkable concepts (associated in the passage with “word”, “articulation”, “thought”) and perceptible intuitions (“intuition”, “gesticulation”, “gesture”). Moreover, if a Kantian theory of language is modeled on his theory of mind, it might also be expected that there would be some “third thing” analogous to judgment, schematism, or the imagination that mediates between concepts and intuitions. What is unusual, however, is that Kant associates such a third element of communication with “tone”, “modulation”, and “sensation”. Not only is it unclear why Kant would group tone, modulation, and sensation as though they somehow belong together, it is far from obvious how this third element combines in unison with the other two so as to enable speakers “to communicate with one another as perfectly as possible, namely, not merely as regards their concepts but also as regards their sensations”. What does it mean to say that “thought, intuition, and sensation are conveyed to others simultaneously and in unison”? What does sensation have to do with thought and intuition? The general goal of this chapter is to determine how “tone”, “modulation”, and “sensation” relate to each other and how they fit alongside the other elements of Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Rather than merely exploring the backwaters of Kant’s aesthetics, the wider purpose of examining the notion of tone or modulation as it functions in communication concerns the way a Kantian theory of language inflects the overall shape and significance of a Kantian theory of mind. One force by which Kant remains a live option within, rather than a mere historical prelude to, contemporary philosophies of mind can be credited to a broadly Sellarsian reading in which the “concept-intuition” model of judgment provides a suitable technical framework to work through the relation between mind and world. That is, Kant’s distinctive mental function of “judgment” is thought to give a viable model of intentionality for those sensing beings like ourselves who possess distinctively rational capacities. In that case the possibility that Kant himself placed a third—tonal, modal, or sensational—element among the judgmental capacities raises the specter that there is more to the mind-world relation than a discrete pairing of concepts and percepts. The wider philosophical issue at stake, then, in the seemingly arcane question of what Kant means by introducing a notion of tonality and modulation is whether it makes sense to speak of “modes” of judgment. In other words, does the basic intentional encounter with the world operate according to a single criterion of success (e.g., adequatio intellectus et rei), or are there rather something like “tones” of intentionality, that is, various ways of perceiving an object or scene, diverse forms of orientation towards the world?

Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity  73 The several contexts in which the notions of modulation and tone have relevance for a broad array of contemporary issues might be best seen by going counter-intuitively in the opposite historical direction, back to the etymological origins of the term “tone”. The notion of a “tone” (“Ton” in German) derives from the Greek tonos, literally a chord that was “stretched” to produce a given pitch and timbre.3 The Greek “tonos” is related to the verb “teinein” (Latin, “tendere”) meaning “to stretch” and belongs within a family of terms, many of which have acquired specific technical meanings in the metaphorics of the philosophical lexicon such as “tenet”, “tense”, “attention”, and “intentionality”. In the last two cases especially, what the literal sense of “stretching” calls attention to is that the relation between mind and world can subsist in various “tenses” or modes. In the literal sense a tonos or chord, such as the string on a guitar, can be tuned in a number of ways by tightening or loosening the tension on the string, which produces not only different pitches but also a spectrum of tones.4 The line on a fishing reel must similarly be adjusted for tension: too taught and a quick strike from a big fish will snap the line; too slack and the hook will not set on a gentle nibble. In fishing, at least, closing the distance between self and object is a matter of finding just the right amount of tension. The philosophical issue that is brought into view by the guitar string and fishing line is that the question of the mediation between mind and world is not all or nothing; it is not simply the case that awareness amounts to bringing together a concept and intuition once and for all in a single act of judgment. What the notions of “tone” and “attunement” make explicit, therefore, is that there are various ways or modes in which the mind can attend to or be directed towards the world. In that case, it simply will not do to talk about attention and intentionality unless one is also prepared to take seriously that there are various ways one can be “attuned” to the world. Attending to the third “tonal” element of judgment makes it necessary to refer not just to the mediation but also the modulation of the concept-intuition (mind-world) relation. Looking at the text of the third Critique, however, it appears overblown and distorted to focus on the nature of tone as an essential but neglected element of judgment rather than as an incidental feature of an admittedly provisional theory of fine art (5:320 n). Emphasis on the wider philosophical implications of tone, however, sounds less discordant when placed in the intellectual context of the 1780s and 1790s.5 There is a very clear precedent for using music as a way of explaining how the tonal elements of language can modulate one’s attention to an object or a scene in Rousseau’s “Essay on the Origins of Languages in Which Something Is Said About Melody and Musical Imitations”, published posthumously in 1781. Rousseau argues at length for the interrelation between the trilogy of musical tonality, linguistic meaning, and affective sentiments, and several of Kant’s conclusions about the relation between tone, modulation, and sensation—and even some of the phrases he uses—show the clear influence of Rousseau’s “Essay”.6 In this

74  Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity intellectual environment it is no coincidence, then, that the Critique of Judgment was read closely by Schiller and Christian Gottfried Körner who, in a series of publications and private exchanges, considered musical tone as an essential element of poetic expression.7 Schiller and Körner’s publications in Die Horen in the mid-1790s in turn set the context for Hölderlin’s abstruse but influential essays such as “Wechsel der Töne” (On the Modulation of Tones) and “Über den Unterschied der Dichtarten” (On the Difference of Poetic Modes).8 The decidedly metaphysical turn in Hölderlin’s so-called Affecktenlehre, according to which there is a particular mood appropriate for reflecting on being itself, was followed in the 20th century by Heidegger and Derrida. And both Heidegger and Derrida place features of Kant’s aesthetics—for example, the notion of a Stimmung or “attunement” of the mind—within this wider historical line of thought concerning the relation between mind, mood, and language.9 When placed in a wider historical context, and with an eye to an open philosophical question about modes of intentionality, Kant’s otherwise scattered and marginal remarks about tone begin to appear deserving of attention in their own right, rather than just as a minor element of a provisional theory of art. And, indeed, on closer inspection the notion of “tone” raises challenging questions for a Kantian model of mind: for one, Kant is surprisingly undecided about whether tonality is a property of the sense material of an intuition or rather a formal determination of the sense manifold characteristic of a concept. Thus the notion of “tone” cuts across an easy “concept-intuition” model of judgment and suggests that our basic intentional orientation towards the world may be more rich and nuanced than a discrete subsumption of percepts under concepts. Moreover, it is not immediately obvious why Kant would link tonality to modulation and sensation. Are tone, modulation, and sensation three different elements that overlap in various ways, or are they three aspects of one and the same function? To answer these questions, the following chapter explores in turn each ­element—tone, modulation, sensation—and concludes by suggesting how they are drawn together by Kant into an interrelated whole.

Tone The Short Argument: Tone, Sensation, and Secondary Qualities The historical context notwithstanding, it is not at all clear that the actual treatment of tones in the text of the third Critique has anything near the philosophical wherewithal to sustain the prospect that it contains any wider, extra-aesthetic significance. Moreover, because Kant specifies that tone and modulation are equivalent to “sensation”, one might think that the prospect of any new, third element of judgment or intentionality can be deflated by way of a rather “short argument”.10 The argument is short because it turns on clarifying the meaning of just one term, “sensation”, which is

Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity  75 “Empfindung” in the quoted passage that relates it to tone and modulation (5:320). “Empfindung” is a stock term that Kant regularly associates with the sense material, a component of an intuition (e.g. 5:206). In that case, the introduction of the notion of tone does not show that there must be some fantastic third element to judgment that modulates the relation between concept and intuition, but, at most, it may cast light on a new element or development within Kant’s notion of “intuition”. One instance, in particular, that would show how tonality belongs squarely within the realm of intuition is the consistent presentation of tones as the acoustic counterpart to optical color as two modalities of secondary qualities. The question about either a particular hue of color or the timbre of a note concerns whether the phenomenal character of a secondary quality subsists in the material object itself or whether it is formed by the mind. As late as the second edition of the first Critique (1787) Kant held that all secondary qualities were “effects accidentally added by the particular constitution of the sense organs” (A28–29) and thus had a merely subjective, phenomenal character.11 In other words, in the first Critique secondary qualities are “in the head”. But by the time of the third Critique (1790), Kant had significantly refined his position so that “the green color of the meadows belongs to objective sensation [objectiven Empfindung]” (5:206). Now secondary qualities are “in the world”. Although he still maintains that some sense qualities, such as the agreeable feeling of pleasure, remain merely subjective, he introduces a technical distinction between subjective “feeling” (Gefühl) of pleasure and objective “sensation” (Empfindung) of color.12 It could very well appear, then, that linking secondary qualities with “objective sensation” is exactly what Kant has in mind when, while introducing the notion of tone for the first time in the third Critique, he followed Swiss physicist Euler to consider whether “colors are vibrations (pulsus) of the aether in uniform sequence, as, in the case of sound, tones are such vibrations in the air” (5:224). If that were the case, Kant continues, then “the green color of a lawn, or a mere tone . . . [would] both seem to be based merely on the matter of presentations, i.e., solely on sensation [Empfindung]”. Thus the least that can be said is that by the time of the third Critique, Kant’s position has evolved so that tones, like color, are a property of the material of sense data that impinge on the sense organs. And, one could make the “short argument”, that is also the most that can be said. Appreciating the specific meaning of the “sensation” (Empfindung) that Kant associates with tone and modulation places these notions not as some fantastic third element in judgment but squarely within the domain of intuition. The full context of those textual passages seeming to identify tonal sensations with sense impingements, however, is not as unambiguous as the “short argument” would require. On closer review there are substantial reasons to doubt whether Kant’s considered judgment was that colors and tones were (solely) properties of the sense manifold. The same passage that suggests that color and tone “both seem to be based merely on the matter of

76  Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity presentations, i.e., solely on sensation” continues to lay out a more nuanced position: [I]f we assume what is most important . . . that the mind perceives not only, by sense, the effect that these vibrations have on the excitement of the organ, but also, by reflection, the regular play of the impressions (and hence the form in the connection of different presentations), then color and tone would not be mere sensations but would already be the formal determination of the manifold in these [formale Bestimmung der Einheit eines Mannigfaltigen]. (5:224) Thus—despite initial appearances in an early section of the third Critique that Kant thinks of secondary qualities as “objective sensations”—the text clearly means to be presenting two stark alternatives: either tones are merely sense material (Empfindung) or they already possess a reflective, formal (formale) element. In the first case tones are just “the effect of . . . vibrations on the elastic parts of our body” (5:324); in the second case we “regard sensation of color and tone not as mere sense impressions, but as the effect of our judging of the form [Form] we find in the play of many sensations” (5:325). In the latter case the experience of tone is not merely caused or induced by the impingement of an Empfindung on the sense organs but only arises when sense material exhibits a “temporal division”, meaning that it has been taken up as having a particular rhythmic structure or temporal form. The short argument that would lump tonality in with material sensation, then, is not conclusive because the passages in which Kant writes of tone as mere “objective sensation” must be considered not as a statement of his final position but rather as an expression of one possible alternative, the other being that tone includes a formal determination (a binding together in a particular way) of the manifold of sense. The question of which of these two positions Kant himself actually endorsed, however, is enormously complicated by a small typographical change in the third edition printing of the Critique of Judgment. In the first two editions of 1790 and 1793, Kant wrote that he “very much doubted” (ich doch gar sehr zweifle) that “color and tone would not be mere sensations but would already be the formal determination of the manifold” (5:224), evidently tipping his hand towards a reading of tone as an element of Empfindung. In the third edition of 1799, however, the key phrase “gar sehr zweifle” is replaced by “gar nicht zweifle”, which literally inverts the meaning. Far from “very much doubting” that tones need to be understood as anything more than sensation, the text now has Kant claiming “not to doubt at all” that tones are a “formal determination of the manifold”.13 The typographical matter and subsequent controversy concerning whether Kant held to either the formal or material extreme may, however,

Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity  77 be beside the point since, on further consideration, he may have endorsed neither position. In several instances Kant appears to be neutral or undecided about the status of tones, urging caution because “it is difficult to decide whether it is based on sense or reflection”, and therefore “we cannot say with certainty whether a color or a tone (sound) is merely an agreeable sensation or whether it is of itself already a beautiful play of [component] sensations and as such carries with it, as we judge it aesthetically, a liking for its form” (5:324). In any case, no “short argument” from the meaning of the term “Empfindung” can guarantee that Kant meant to reduce tones to the sense material of an intuition. The Long Argument: Tone and the Form of an Intuition Even if one were to exercise interpretive caution and not foreclose the possibility that tones have a formal structure over and above their material element, one could still make the argument that such an open reading is a long way from demonstrating that the notion of tone is a unique element of judgment, distinctive from intuition. An alternative strategy to dispel the appearance of a difference between tone and intuition would be to shift from limiting the nature of tone to expanding the nature of intuition. That is, if intuitions themselves are not reducible to the brute sense material but already have some discernible unity in and of themselves prior to conceptual determination, then the “formal determination” of tonality would help to illuminate just how rich and nuanced was Kant’s notion of a pre-conceptual, intuitional form.14 However, the “long argument” to show that intuitions themselves have form is not enough to show that tones are coextensive with intuitions as the spatio-temporal unity of the sense manifold. Admittedly, glossing the formal element of tone as one of “temporal division” (5:324) certainly makes it appear as though Kant meant the formal element of tone to be part and parcel of the spatio-temporal Gestalt of an intuition. But, on closer review, the form of tones is distinguishable in important respects from the spatiotemporal form of intuition. The first hint of difference comes when Kant insists that one can be deficient in one’s receptivity of tonal form without in the least failing to perceive the spatio-temporal form. Speaking of tone and color, Kant says: It is worthy of note that these two senses, besides having whatever receptivity for impressions [außer der Empfänglichkeit für Eindrücke] they require in order [for us] to obtain concepts of external objects by means of these [senses], are also capable of [having] a special sensation connected with that receptivity [noch einer besondern damit verbundenen Empfindung fähig sind], a sensation about which it is difficult to decide whether it is based on sense or reflection; and yet the ability to be affected in this way [Affectibilität] may at times be lacking, even though

78  Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity the sense is not at all otherwise deficient concerning its use for cognizing objects, or is perhaps even exceptionally keen. (5:324) The point that one can be “exceptionally keen” at “cognizing objects” and yet be deficient in recognizing its color or tone recurs in the Anthropology: There have been people for whom the representation of light by their faculty of sight consisted of no greater selection than white or black, and for whom, although they could see well, the visible world seemed like a copperplate engraving. Likewise, there are more people than one would believe who have a good and even extremely sensitive sense of hearing, but who have absolutely no musical ear; whose sense for tone is entirely indifferent not merely to imitating tones (singing) but also to distinguishing them from noise.—The same may be true with the ideas of taste and smell; namely that the sense lacks the material of enjoyment for many specific sensations, and one person believes that he understands another in this connection, while the sensations of the one may differ from those of the other not only in degree but specifically and completely. (7:168) What is noteworthy in considering the relation between the form of tones and the form of intuitions is that Kant characterizes the distinction between hearing noise and hearing music (Tonkunst) as a difference not “in degree but specifically and completely”. Unlike deafness, tone deafness is not the incapacity to take in available sense material but rather the inability to take it up in a “specifically and completely” different way. It is only if there is something about tonal form that outstrips the form of spatio-temporal contiguity that one can hear noise in ordered succession but fail to hear it as music. In that case, the relevant form of musical tone represents an additional layer of experience or, as it were, a higher-level property supervening on top of noise.15 And given the possibility that one might “take in” a sound of a particular duration and intensity yet fail to hear that sound as music, Kant must think that the tonal elements can, so to speak, be “peeled back” or (in cases of deficiency) mishandled without any loss to the spatio-temporal integrity of the intuition.16 But that means that any prospective “long argument” to reduce tones to intuition through the form inherent in intuition will eventually fail. Even if intuitions and tones both include a formal element, the relevant tonal form is different “not only in degree but specifically and completely” from the spatio-­ temporal coherence of an intuition. But what more is it? What is a “tonal form”? Or, to be more precise, what is the nature of form such that it may be structured by tones?

Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity  79 Tonal Form and Ambiguous Figures On the considered Kantian view, tonal form cannot be reduced to the spatiotemporal form of an intuition. And because one could conceivably disagree about whether some noise was music without any disagreement about what pitches occurred in which succession, the relevant form of tone is clearly defeasible and contestable in a way the spatio-temporal form is not. Thus the defeasible status of tonal form serves in some respects as an acoustic analogue to the more familiar optical versions of “ambiguous figures” in which phenomenally different images (say, a duck and a rabbit) are spatially congruent.17 Some optically ambiguous figures—such as the difference between a square and a diamond—result from different spatial orientations to one and the same object. But still some instances of ambiguity can occur within a single spatial frame of reference. For example, in the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein puzzles over changes in form that cannot be reduced to changes in shape or physical perspective. I suddenly see the solution of a puzzle-picture. Before, there were branches there; now there is a human shape. My visual impression has changed and now I recognize that it has not only shape and colour but also a quite particular ‘organization’ . . .—If I represent it by means of an exact copy . . . no change is shewn. (167) By claiming that branches (perhaps seen from a distance) are an “exact copy” of a human shape, Wittgenstein points to a peculiar kind of change in “visual impression” that is induced neither by the addition or subtraction of parts of the sense manifold nor by adjustments to their spatio-temporal position. The ambiguity occurs at the level of some formal element working on top, as it were, of one and the same visual impression. It is, of course, not an uncommon problem in philosophy to wonder how a given object or scene can by undergoing a “gestalt switch” appear in an entirely different way without any corresponding difference in the objective sensation or physical perspective. While the phenomenon of gestalt switch or aspect change is predominantly discussed by philosophers and psychologists in the sense modality of vision, there is no obvious reason not to extend the phenomenon to the other sense modalities. In the passage from the Anthropology, Kant himself says of the difference between blindness and color-blindness, “The same may be true with the ideas of taste and smell”.18 One acoustic analogue to visually ambiguous figures is the phenomenon of enharmonics in music, in which one and the same pitch (e.g., 247 Hz) can alternatively sound either as a B natural or as a C flat, depending on the harmonic context. The difference between C flat and B natural, which are played by the same key on a keyboard, is not merely one of nominally “spelling” the same note in different ways, depending on

80  Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity which key signature one is in. That is to say, the notes are spelled differently because they function differently, and they function differently because one and the same note sounds differently depending on the harmonic context. A more developed instance of such enharmonic variation is the fully diminished seventh chord composed of four successive intervals of minor thirds. Because the harmonically unstable chord can resolve into a number of different chords by raising or lowering any one of its notes, the way the notes in the chord will phenomenally sound depends on the chords that precede and follow it. Depending on which key one is in, one and the same set of notes can literally sound different as they lead to (entail) different resolutions (consequences). Thus it is not only with visual form that it makes sense to speak of a kind of perceptual defeasibility in which we attend to one and the same set of sense data but, as Paul Crowther puts the point, “we can see them as either foreground or background elements . . . [and] [w]ith each switch from one to the other, the whole structure of virtual space is reconfigured into new possibilities”.19 It is no coincidence that the sonic ambiguity of the diminished seventh chords is frequently employed by classical and jazz musicians to modulate from one key to another (e.g. D to F) or between modes (e.g., major and minor). The philosophical challenge in such cases is not to note what is, after all, a rather common experience (e.g., Rubin illusions in optics) but rather to explain what, exactly, is changing in those cases in which differences of perception do not in the least track differences in spatio-temporal (intuitional) form. What is it that “runs through and holds together” the sense manifold in such various ways? Here the intellectual vocabulary offered by the history of philosophy is plentiful. In the passage above Wittgenstein names such changes as “aspects of organization”, and more recently Daniel Dennett and Stanley Cavell have normalized talk of “patterns” in the Anglo-American lexicon.20 On the other end of the historical spectrum, Aristotle offers a notion of “disposition” (διάθεσις) as a general term describing “the order (τάξίς) of that which has parts” (Metaphysics 1022b, 1–2), which applies both to the various ways of arranging perceptual objects and scenes and to the various dispositional states of mind (e.g., Rhetoric 1356a).21 Kant, for his part, describes such phenomena, at least in the case where sound is concerned, as a matter of “tone”, at one point defining tone as “the ratio in the varying degrees of attunement (tension) of the sense to which the sensations belong [die Proportion der verschiedenen Grade der Stimmung (Spannung) des Sinns, dem die Empfindung angehört]” (5:324). By speaking of the “varying degrees”, “attunement”, and “tension” of a sense episode, Kant shows that he is quite alive to the wider philosophical problem that one and the same sense manifold can be run through and held together in any number of ways—at one point in the Anthropology he even says there is an “infinite variety” of ways to “look at exactly the same objects” (7:228). Although the philosophical issues themselves are general and can be translated into a number of scholarly idioms, the advantage of working through

Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity  81 such issues in relation to Kant is the way he clearly links the problematic of tones to two other notions: sensation and modulation. Neither “sensation” nor “modulation” is an idle term for Kant, and each serves to situate “tones” in a wider philosophical framework.

Modulation One philosophical question raised by Kant’s notion of tone is how to address a kind of perceptual form that, unlike spatio-temporal intuition, is obviously defeasible and contingent and thus open to criticism and reconsideration. A clue to a distinctively Kantian answer comes when he pairs “tone” with “modulation”. “Modulation” belongs together with a host of cognate terms—such as “mode”, “modality”, and “modification”—all of which are used by Kant to denote judgments and experiences that are essentially contingent in the sense that they can be construed in a number of ways. To be sure, a brief inventory of these “modal” terms in Kant does not expose a systematic but esoteric doctrine of “modulation”. But that is not to say such a survey is useless or merely speculative. Rather what attention to this family of terms—not only of the way they are defined but also of the way they are used—does reveal is why Kant would, without much by way of argument or explanation, situate modulation in relation to tonality and sensation. Mode (Contingency) The term “mode” for Kant has a specific meaning, which is detailed on several occasions in the “Lectures on Logic”. [I]nternal contingent relations are called modi . . . Modi are nothing but inner determinations and alternations that can be thought in a thing . . .  Modi are notae internae, quarum possibilitas tantus per essentiam determinatur [internal marks whose possibility is determined only by the essence]. The modi are thus not rationata essentiae [things grounded in the essence] in regard to their truth, but only in regard to their possibility. Modi are thus nothing but contingent marks. Modi . . . do not belong to the essence at all, ad essentiam non pertinent, either as constitutiva or as attributa. (“The Blomberg Logic” §121, 24:114–115) The precise meaning of “modi” is determined by its placement in a baroque taxonomy of the way attributes can be “extra essentialia”, that is, among those “marks without which the thing can nonetheless be thought” (24:113). For instance, among such “extra essential” attributes, Kant draws a distinction between those that are internal and those that are external. An example of the latter is whether a given man is a father, a status that depends on an external relation to another person; by contrast, the question of whether a

82  Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity given man is educated or not is an internal relation (24:728). Both fatherhood and education are “extra essential” in the sense that one could call to mind such a man without knowing whether or not he is a father or educated. Kant technically reserves the term “modi” for internal contingent attributes (such as education) and calls external contingent attributes (like fatherhood) “relations”; and other scholastic distinctions proliferate from there. The wider point, however, is simply to note how Kant draws on the language of “modes” in order to address issues of contingency and possibility. In the Logic Kant repeatedly and consistently defines “modi” as “internal” attributes of a thing that are nevertheless “extra-essential” and therefore “contingent” (9:61, 24:839, 728). Thus, “modus” and “modi” are deployed as technical terms in order to refer to the various possible modifications a thing can undergo and still be essentially the thing that it is. In sum, for Kant “modes” refer to the range of possible, contingent forms a particular object can assume. Modality (Possibility) A determination of an object’s “mode” thereby belongs to one specific “modality” of judgment about that object. The “modal” status of a judgment is a philosophical term of art to describe the status imputed to an object or claim as necessary, actual, or possible. For example, it is said that Descartes argued it is necessarily true that if I am thinking, then I exist. It is not, however, necessarily true that Descartes actually made such a claim; one can at least entertain the thought that he did not. And it is entirely possible one has not read enough Descartes to determine the matter. Those three judgments not only assert different claims—I think therefore I am, Descartes said so, and one has read Descartes—but more importantly each of those claims has a different modal status: the first is put forward as necessarily true, the second as actually true, and the third as possibly true. The point for present purposes is to see that Kant’s discussion of “modes” is meant to designate the possible attributes of an object, and hence judgments about them have a particular modal status, namely, they concern neither its necessary essence nor its actual form but rather its contingent possibilities. Given that “modality” is the name of one of the four primary functions, or “categories”, of judgment, the term carries a specific technical meaning in the critical system (A70/B95). As compared to the other three categories— namely, quantity, quality, and relation—Kant claims, The modality of judgments is a quite peculiar function [ganz besondere Function]. Its distinguishing characteristic is that it contributes nothing to the content of the judgment (for, besides quantity, quality, and relation, there is nothing that constitutes the content of a judgment), but concerns only the value of the copula in relation to thought in general. (A74/B99 ff.)

Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity  83 Kant specifies that there are three distinct “modalities” of judgment—­ problematic, assertoric, and apodeictic—corresponding to the three distinct modal states of a thing—possible, actual, or necessary. Of particular importance for situating the suite of “mode” related terms in a wider philosophical framework is the modality of possibility. Corresponding to the possible, contingent forms an object can take is the modal class of “problematic” judgments. And, the immediate point is, such a “problematic” judgment is precisely the logical form appropriate for making claims about the tonal or organizational form of an object or scene that is defeasible, contingent, and contestable. Thus tonality is a prime example of a mode of a thing that could be judged in one way (e.g. as music) and yet could also be judged in another (as noise). It is noteworthy that Kant also points out that the possibility of various outcomes of problematic judgments is attributable to the spontaneous or autonomous capacities of the judging subject: The problematic proposition is therefore that which expresses only logical (which is not objective) possibility—a free choice of admitting such a proposition, and a purely optional admission of it into the understanding [eine freie Wahl einen solchen Satz gelten zu lassen, eine blos willkürliche Aufnehmung desselben in den Verstand]. (A75/B101) It requires further exploration to consider why Kant reserves an element of spontaneity within the modality of problematic judgment upon possible forms and, moreover, why he even goes so far as to suggest a logical priority of the category of possibility “inasmuch as we first judge something problematically, then maintain its truth assertorically” (A76/B101).22 For the time being, however, the main point is to see clearly that the “modality” of problematic judgment is the logical form by which a judging subject freely engages with objects that can possibly be construed in a number of different ways. Thus the modality of judgments and the modes of objects are clearly related for Kant: the consideration of an object’s possible modes is a modally “problematic” judgment. Modification and Modulation (Subjectivity) The modality of problematic judgment is, then, the logical category appropriate for judging that form of an object that is capable of undergoing “modification”, a term Kant regularly uses to denote the process of alteration from one state to another. For example, in the second Critique Kant describes the feeling of respect in a moral judgment as “a special and peculiar modification of the feeling of pleasure and displeasure that does seem to differ somehow from both the pleasure and displeasure we get from empirical objects” (5:222, see also 5:277). In the third Critique Kant describes tone itself as a kind of modification.

84  Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity The charms in beautiful nature, which we so often find fused, as it were, with beautiful form, belong either to the modifications of light (in coloring) or of sound (in tones). For these are the only sensations that allow not merely for a feeling of sense, but also for reflection on the form of these modifications of the senses, so that they contain, as it were a language in which nature speaks to us and which seems to have a higher meaning. Thus a lily’s white color seems to attune the mind [das Gemüth zu stimmen] to ideas of innocence. (5:302) And yet both of these passages seem to signal that Kant means to designate that which undergoes modification as the judging subject; it is the mind, not the world, which is “attuned” in various ways. Cross-reference to the similar notion of “modulation” at first seems to confirm that the “object” that is modified or undergoes change is nothing other than the physical or mental state of the perceiving and judging subject; hence, “modulation is . . . a universal language of sensation” (5:328) comparable to what Kant called in the above passage a “modification of the senses” (5:302). In that case, Kant would appear to relegate the modality of problematic judgments to a merely subjective or purely contingent way of taking things in. At one point it seems as though Kant even goes so far as to deny that it makes sense to think of aesthetic objects themselves as candidates for modification in the sense that different judgments about them are responsive to differences existing in the objects: The expression, aesthetic way of presenting [Vorstellungsart], is quite unambiguous if we mean by it that the presentation is referred to an object, as appearance, to [give rise to] cognition of that object. For here the term aesthetic means [only] that the form of sensibility . . . attaches necessarily to the presentation . . . . However, for a long time now it has become customary to call a way of presenting aesthetic, i.e., sensible in a different meaning of the term as well, where this means that the presentation is referred, not to the cognitive power, but to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure. Now it is true that (in line with this meaning of the term aesthetic) we are in the habit of calling this feeling too a sense (a modification of our state), since we have no other term for it. Yet this feeling is not an objective sense, not a sense the determination of which we would use to cognize an object, but a sense that contributes nothing whatever to our cognition of objects. (For to intuit, or otherwise cognize, something with pleasure is not merely to refer the presentation to the object, but is a receptivity of the subject). (20:221–222) With such passages in mind, Kant’s position seems to be that aesthetic modification occurs within the judging subject but does not track along with any

Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity  85 modulation in the object judged. It is as though tonal or organizational form is just an arbitrary way of looking at things that could just as well be looked at otherwise without making any difference to the object: where I hear a note as a C flat, you hear a B natural, but it is the same note sounded by the same key on the keyboard. There is, however, one remaining “modal” term that makes it clear that Kant does not restrict modulation to a merely subjective status. Modus aestheticus and Manner (Objectivity) Kant introduces in the third Critique the notion of a distinctively aesthetic “mode”: Whenever we convey our thoughts, there are two ways (modi) of arranging them, and one of these is called manner (modus aestheticus), the other method (modus logicus); the difference between these two is that the first has no standard other than the feeling that there is a unity in the exhibition . . . whereas the second follows in . . . this determinate principles. (5:318) At first blush, describing the modus aestheticus as having “no standard other than . . . feeling” and denying that it “follows . . . determinate principles” seems to confirm the suspicion that modification is a condition of judging subjects, not the objects judged. Such a conclusion might have been warranted if Kant did not link the modus aestheticus to the notion of “manner” (Manier). Although he does not formally define “Manier”, he does on more than one occasion use the term to refer to the way in which a judging subject represents the objects judged. Discussing at one point a particular Manier that Kant calls Laune (roughly, “mood”), Kant claims, Laune, in its favorable sense, means the talent enabling us to put ourselves at will [sich willkürlich versetzen] into a certain mental disposition [Gemütsdisposition], in which everything [alle Dinge] is judged in a way quite different from the usual one (even vice versa [sogar umgekehrt]), but yet is judged in conformity with certain principles of reason [present] in such a mental attunement [Gemüthsstimmung]. (5:336) This passage does associate the “manner” of Laune with a subjective mental disposition, one, moreover, which is “willkürlich” not only in the sense that it is arbitrary or contingent but also in that it expresses the Willkür (a capacity for choice or discretion), something for which one is responsible. But the passage also does more than that by suggesting that it is out of such a subjective disposition that one judges the objects themselves (alle Dinge)

86  Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity not only in a “quite different” or even “contrary” manner but one that is, nevertheless “in conformity with certain principles of reason”. The suggestion, in that case, is that such judgments, while perhaps not the “usual” way of construing things, have the rational warrant to claim purchase on the states or properties of the objects themselves—that is, make claim to see the objects themselves, albeit in a new way.23 The usage in the third Critique of “manner” (modus aestheticus) as a way of representing objects is consistent with the later essay “On a recently prominent tone of superiority in philosophy” of 1796 where Kant claims, the didactic procedure of bringing the moral law within us into clear concepts according to a logical methodology is the only authentically philosophical one, whereas the procedure whereby the law is personified and reason’s moral bidding is made into a veiled Isis . . . is an aesthetic mode of representing precisely the same object; (eine ästhetische Vorstellungsart eben desselben Gegenstandes ist) one can doubtless use this mode (deren) of presentation backward . . . in order to enliven those ideas by a sensible, albeit only analogical, presentation. (8:405) Although in this passage Kant is wary of the implications of such an ästhetische Vorstellungsart (which “always runs the danger of falling into enthusiastic [schwärmerische] vision, which is the death of philosophy”), he nevertheless allows that such danger stems from the fact that there are various aesthetic modes of presenting or “enlivening” one and the same object of reference. A passage from the Jäsche Logic, with no such air of reservation, serves to reinforce the contention that the difference between the logical and the aesthetic modes concerns not what is judged but how it is judged. All cognition, and a whole of cognition, must conform to a rule. (A lack of rules is also a lack of reason.) This rule is either manner (which is free) or method (which is constraint). (9:139) The comparison in the third Critique between “manner” (modus aetheticus) and “method” (modus logicus) does not, then, indicate that one refers to the judging subject and the other to the object judged but rather that there are two different modes of judging objects (5:355, 318). It is worth bearing in mind that by describing such a “manner” or “aesthetic mode” of presenting objects as free (frei) or discretionary (willkürlich) Kant draws on what he elsewhere calls the “productive” capacity of the imagination in aesthetic judgment, namely the faculty that, in “apprehending a given object of sense”, remains “tied to a determinate [spatio-temporal] form of this object” but nevertheless is “productive and spontaneous (as the originator of chosen forms of possible intuitions) [als Urheberin willkürlicher

Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity  87 Formen möglicher Anschauungen]” (5:240). Inserting the productive imagination into the “manner” of presentation entails that what Kant calls the “aesthetic mode” of presenting an object, by which one remains to a certain extent free to view the object in one manner or another, thereby corresponds to the “problematic” modality of judgment whereby one considers a given object in its various possible forms. And, moreover, appreciating the link between the productive imagination and the various “modes” of judgment means that any such “aesthetic mode” of presentation amounts to a distinctive way of relating to an object rather than a simply subjective reaction or response. The modus logicus is constrained by an assertoric rule (determinate and specific conceptual form) whereas the modus aestheticus is “free” to present an object in various possible ways. As Kant himself puts the point, When the imagination is used for cognition, then it is under the constraint of the understanding and is subject to the restriction of adequacy to the understanding’s concept. But when the aim is aesthetic, the imagination is free, so that, over and above the harmony with the concept, it may supply, in an unstudied way, a wealth of undeveloped material [reichhaltigen unentwickelten Stoff] for the understanding which the latter disregarded [nicht Rücksicht nahm] in its concept. (5:316–317) Kant’s considered position must be that a distinctly “aesthetic” form of presentation does not disregard the spatio-temporal form of an intuition but still remains free to supervene additional “contingent forms”, as it were, over and above the intuitional form. And (to anticipate a theme developed in the following chapters) the same is true of determinate conceptual form.24 In an aesthetic mode of judgment, one need not contravene or suspend the logical form provided by a concept, but one may, so to speak, “go beyond” it, seeing a depth or a richness to the perceptual experience not exhausted by its determinate conceptual content. Thus a wider implication of the modus aestheticus is that phenomenal qualities, such as tonality, clearly defy a facile “concept-intuition” model of judgment: the aesthetic “manner” of presentation concerns a form that is neither intuitional nor conceptual on the usual definitions of those terms. A more immediate consequence, however, is to appreciate that the “aesthetic mode” of presentation concerns possible forms of the object, possible ways the object could be said to be, not simply possible responses of the judging subject.

Sensation The very notion of modus aestheticus, an “aesthetic mode” of presenting an object, literally conjoins the final two terms of the trilogy tone-modulation-sensation. But it is not at all obvious what the intention or significance of such a coupling would be. The words “sensation” and “aesthetic” are

88  Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity highly ambiguous insofar as they can connote a range of meanings from brute sense impingement to affectively rich feelings or moods.25 It is unmistakable that the notions of tone and modulation are linked with sensation in the affectively thick sense of emotions or sentiments in Rousseau and poetic moods in Hölderlin. But there may be some cause to object that the tonal forms of an object, modulations of judgment, and affective predispositions do not come together as a coherent notion in the text of the third Critique itself without a willful misreading motivated by philosophical considerations quite foreign to both the letter and the spirit of Kant’s aesthetics. After all, there appears to be nothing particularly “affective” or felt in the characterization of a “free” or “unconstrained” manner in the modus aestheticus. The term “aesthetic” in those cases seems rather to serve as a point of contrast to the “constrained” method of modus logicus appropriate for cognitive judgments.26 To be sure, the notion of an “aesthetic mode” of presenting objects would still point to something interesting and worth attending to, namely, a reflective surplus of form over and above both spatio-temporal contiguity and even notional coherence, as in the passage above where Kant allowed that in aesthetic judgments the imagination was unconstrained and so able to consider “a wealth of undeveloped material . . . which the [understanding] disregarded in its concept”. Thus the notion of an “aesthetic mode” of presenting objects can be credited with drawing attention to the richness and depth of perceptual experience, about which more can profitably be said; but it stretches the interpretation too thin to tie the free and unconstrained manner of modus aestheticus to “sensation” in any affectively thick sense of feelings or moods. Moreover, it can be hard philosophically to see how it could be possible to connect the “free”, “unconstrained”, and “willkürlich” manner of aesthetic presentation with the essentially passive nature of affectivity. Affectivity describes what happens to a subject, not the actions she “freely” undertakes. The spontaneity and autonomy of the “aesthetic mode” seem to rule out any meaningful association with sensation, mood, feeling, or affect. There are thus textual and philosophical reasons to doubt whether the “aesthetic mode” of presentation is somehow conditioned by a distinctively affective disposition in Kant as it clearly is in Rousseau and Hölderlin. And the position might be rejected out of hand if Kant himself had not put it forward. The passage in which Kant compares the modus aestheticus to modus logicus explicitly identifies the “aesthetic” component not just negatively as a lack of constraint but positively as an affective “feeling”: [T]he difference between these two is that the first has no standard other than the feeling that there is a unity in the exhibition [kein anderes Richtmaß hat, als das Gefühl der Einheit in der Darstellung], whereas the second follows in this determinate principles. (5:318–319)

Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity  89 In this passage, at least, the modus aestheticus is not only one in which the sense manifold can be “run through” and “held together” in a number of different modes over and above its conceptual and intuitive form but, moreover, what provides that additional structuring is literally described as a feeling (Gefühl).27 The suggestion that a Gefühl could itself be an Unterscheidungsvermögen—a capacity for making distinctions—might be debatable in terms of the text of the third Critique alone, but it is explicitly put forward in the “Orientation” essay of 1786, where a “feeling of a difference between . . . the right and left” is literally part and parcel to the way in which particular objects are oriented in space. (8:135)28 Taken at face value, both of these passages from the third Critique and the “Orientation” essay entail that over and above spatio-temporal unity and conceptual determination there is an additional perceptual form—such as in the cases of tone, beauty, and orientation—which is “aesthetic” not only in the thin sense of evincing a reflective openness but also in the thick sense of being rooted in a distinctively felt or affective state of mind. At minimum, then, there is cause not to dismiss out of hand the possibility that the final term of the trilogy tone-modulation-sensation refers in Kant, as it does in Rousseau and Hölderlin, not primarily to the Empfindung of sense impressions but to the Gefühle of affectivity and the Empfänglichkeit of the various modes of our receptiveness to the world.

Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity It is one thing not to dismiss the possibility that Kant intentionally grouped the talk of affects (Sprache der Affecten, 5:328) together with tonality and modality in an interrelated trilogy of terms; but it is, of course, another thing to defend that position and to locate it in the texts. As a start, the several relations among the triad of terms tone-modulation-sensation can be gleaned from a dense passage in §53 of the third Critique, a “Comparison of Aesthetic Value in the Fine Arts”, in which Kant returns to the comparison of the art of music (Tonkunst) with the tonal elements of linguistic communication: Every linguistic expression has in its context a tone appropriate to its meaning. This tone indicates, more or less, an affect of the speaker and in turn induces the same affect in the listener too, where it then conversely arouses the idea which in language we express in that tone. And just as modulation is, as it were, a universal language of sensations that every human being can understand, so the art of music employs this language all by itself in its full force, namely, as a language of affects; in this way it communicates to everyone, according to the law of association, the aesthetic ideas we naturally connect with such affects. (5:328)

90  Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity A close look at each sentence of this passage opens up a conceptual space along the three intersecting axes of tone, modulation, and affectivity.29 Tone and Modulation The first sentence that begins the dense passage draws on the relationship between tone and modulation. Every linguistic expression has in its context a tone appropriate to its meaning [jeder Ausdruck der Sprache im Zusammenhange einen Ton hat, der dem Sinne desselben angemessen ist]. (5:328) The premise of this sentence—namely, that the meaning or sense (Sinne) of any linguistic expression takes place within a “context” (Zusammenhang)—amounts to an admission that a Kantian semantics is broadly holistic. That is, the way in which one speaks to how an object is “run through and held together (Zusammennehmung)” (A99) in the space of appearances depends on a transcendental framework that establishes how things could intelligibly “hang together” (zusammenhängen) in a space of reasons. But Kant’s position as expressed in this passage differs from standard-issue holism insofar as it connects logical context with linguistic tone. Thus, the coupling of context with tone in §53 of the third Critique places further specifiable constraints upon exercises of the communicative capacities over and above the simple deployment of concepts and the possible logical relations between them. As is evident in instances of sarcasm or understatement, it is not merely the terms themselves but the tone that indicates the context in which a communicative act expresses its particular meaning. In such cases, a change of tone without a change of terms can effectuate a change in meaning. (In other words, sentences themselves can be “ambiguous figures”.) It is as though the tonal elements of language do not merely operate within a logical context, but also serve to draw attention to which context is in place; thereby tones have the capacity not only to color but also possibly to contest the governing semantic framework. Tone and Affect The passage that begins “Every linguistic expression has in its context a tone appropriate to its meaning” continues: “This tone indicates, more or less, an affect [Affect] of the speaker and in turn induces the same affect in the listener too, where it then conversely arouses the idea which in language we express in that tone” (5:328). To begin, it is important to note that Kant associates tone clearly with the affective state of the linguistic participants [Affekt], rather than simply with the brute impingements upon their sense organs [Empfindung]. Moreover, this sentence not only ties the

Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity  91 tonal elements of communication to distinctively affective states of communicating subjects, but it does so in a very particular way. Tones are said not merely to “indicate” (bezeichnet) the affective condition of the speaker, as though they simply meant to signal a first-person report on the subjective state from which one happens to be reporting. Rather Kant makes the more substantive and controversial claim that tones can “induce” (hervorbringt) a similar affective state in the listener, as though those subjective and affective mental states are themselves communicable. Taken at face value, the claim is not simply that through tone one communicates about an affective state; the position, rather, is the more substantive and controversial one that it is through tone that one communicates the affective state itself. But can such a claim be taken at face value? It seems not only unusual but unmotivated to suggest that tone could be a linguistic vehicle by which one could seek to establish a “shared sense”—not just the common understanding of a sensus communis logicus but the common affective sensibility of a sensus communis aestheticus (5:296 n). What would drive anyone into such an unusual position? What philosophical problem cannot be answered unless affective states are themselves communicable? Affect and Modulation Given that the passage under consideration designates one relational axis between tone and modulation and another between tone and affect, it ought to come as no surprise that the text would proceed to delineate the remaining relation in the trilogy of tone-modulation-sensation, that between modulation and affectivity. Thus the very next sentence of the passage continues: “And just as modulation [Modulation] is, as it were, a universal language of sensation [Sprache der Empfindungen] that every human being can understand, so the art of music [Tonkunst] employs this language all by itself in its full force, namely, as a language of affects [Sprache der Affecten]”. (5:328) This passage not only conjoins modulation with sensation but also makes clear that the term Empfindung in the original trilogy of tone, modulation, and sensation refers primarily to affective states rather than sense impingements. In this sentence, “sensation” and “affect” are used interchangeably to refer to that which by undergoing “modulation” functions as a language. In the case of distinguishing music from noise, for example, what is being modulated is not that which strikes the tympanic membrane but rather the affective state of the listener—his or her “mood” so to speak, one’s “mode” of taking in the world. The question of tonal modulation, which is itself described as “a language of affects”, is thus a matter of bringing a listener into the particular affective state appropriate to the context of a given expression so that language users would “communicate with one another as perfectly as possible, namely, not merely as regards their concepts but also as regards their sensations . . . [f]or in this way thought, intuition, and sensation are conveyed to others simultaneously and in unison” (5:320).

92  Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity But, one might continue to wonder, even if the text does literally join together tone, modulation, and affectivity, what philosophical matter hangs in the balance? Perhaps the tripartite relation of “thought, intuition, and sensation” (or “word, gesture, and tone” 5:320) provides some heuristical structure to Kant’s provisional taxonomy of fine art, but it lacks the development needed to support a cogent theory of communication much less an enriched model of judgment. After all, why should the affective state of a listener matter to the meaning (or truth) of a speech act such that the success of any given expression turns upon tonal modulation? That kind of claim would make sense only if there is something about the meaning of an assertion that could not be properly evaluated or appreciated unless one happened to be in a particular affective state. In other words, there would have to be some claims whose truth conditions are affect dependent. But is such a position even intelligible or is it mere historical folly in search of Kantian authority?

Conclusion The following two historically oriented chapters, the next on rhetoric in Aristotle, and the following on aesthetic discourse in Hume and Rousseau, attempt to fill out a wider philosophical context without which certain aspects of Kant’s aesthetics appear marginal or even simply mistaken. In the meantime, we are not in a position to conclude that the interrelation of tone, modulation, and affectivity mentioned in passing in a provisional theory of art at the end of the “Analytic of Aesthetic Judgment” bears any extra-aesthetic weight. But the present chapter on “tone” does pair together with the previous one on “imagination” to open up the possibility of a third dimension to the concept-intuition model of judgment. That is, the previous chapter argued that Kant understands the productive imagination to “run through and hold together” the perceptual manifold in a variety of ways; and the notion of “tone” suggests that the difference in manners or modes of taking in the world applies not simply to an open-ended configuring and reconfiguring of sense elements on a single perceptual plane, so to speak, but allows for the availability of deeper or richer levels of experiential content over and above that provided by a discrete pairing of a determinate concept with a spatio-temporally unified intuition. In the most basic sense, tone functions in music as a higher-level property that supervenes upon the temporal duration and pitch of a particular noise, providing sound with a depth and richness that is afforded, but not strictly required, by the sense manifold. Thus, even though the issue of tone figures in Kant’s aesthetics primarily in an analysis of music (Tonkunst), close analysis exposes a tonal feature of intentionality that is not limited to any one sense modality. That is to say, Kant’s handling of the tonality of sound demonstrates a general “tenuousness” within intentionality—i.e., various ways of stretching out towards and being impressed upon—which not only mediates, but also modulates,

Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity  93 the relationship between mind and world. The notion of tonal modulation thus provides an unexpected venue to work through the delicate relation between sense and reference; but what gives Kant’s aesthetics a distinctive voice within such discussions concerns the way it takes tentative steps to link the “sense” of a judgment with a distinctively affective sense in a “sensus communis aestheticus”. It cannot be said that Kant’s aesthetics works out a systematic doctrine of intentionality that links objective modes of reference to subjective moods. But it is clear that Kant’s provisional theory of art was modeled on the logical shape of judgment. In that case, coming up against certain puzzles in aesthetic experience—such as the interrelation between tonality and ­affectivity—inflects the limits of a Kantian theory of judgment and exposes the possibilities for a richer model of human mindedness. In other words, this chapter, like the others in this volume, is guided by the heuristic that trying to accommodate the peculiar features of aesthetic experience requires Kant (regardless of his intentions) to develop a richer model of the way the human mind is oriented in the world perceptually, conceptually, and affectively. And it requires working through that wider account of orientation in order to vindicate the proposal that tone, modulation, and affectivity are related not merely in a provisional theory of art but within the very fabric of intentionality.

Notes   1 For example, concerning music, see Guyer (1994: 241–242), Ginsborg (2011: 336), Matherne (2014: 132).   2 Few but not none. Podro (66–67), Parret (254), and Derrida (1981: 17) appreciate the significance of the analogy for a Kantian theory of language, but none offer a systematic reconstruction. There are some recent efforts to show that Kant’s aesthetics harbors an implicit “rhetoric” (Stroud) or “pragmatics” (Vandenabeele), but neither exploits the analogy with artistic expression.  3 Peter Fenves (39–40, n. 5) points to Jacob and Willhelm Grimm’s Deutsches Wörterbuch in which the German “Ton” is said to have two sources, one the Greco-Latin, “tonos”, and the other Germanic, “Don” (related to “Donner” meaning thunder and the English “din”, noise).   4 What musicians call “tone” concerns not just pitch (frequency) but also timbre (which includes, among other factors, harmonics or overtones). One example of the distinction between pitch and tone is the audible difference between an identical melody played on a piano and a harpsichord. Another example is the difference between a passage played on the same stringed instrument but with different gauges (weight) of string.   5 See Matherne (2014: 129, 140 n. 5) on the wider historical context. Peter Kivy (1978: 171–173) emphasizes the relation between linguistic intonation and the affective sentiments in Thomas Reid.   6 I argue for a direct influence of Rousseau’s “Essay on the Origins of Languages” on Kant’s Critique of Judgment in pp. 138–9.  7 On the discussion between Schiller and Körner on Kant’s third Critique, see Riggs (601), and for the exchanges on music and poetry more generally, see Mittenzwei (212–222).

94  Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity   8 On the influence of Schiller on Hölderlin see Hamlin, 292, 297–299; for Korner’s influence, see Donelan, 136–140.  9 Derrida explicitly engages with Kant’s use of “Stimmung” in “On a Newly Arisen Apocalyptic Tone in Philosophy” (1993: 131, 150). For a discussion of the influence of Kant’s aesthetics, broadly construed, on Heidegger’s account of “moods”, see p. 204 and pp. 211 n. 30 10 E.g., Guyer (1994: 282). To be clear, Guyer himself does not offer this position as an argument but as an assumption, exposing a blind spot for the position that was coming gradually into view for Kant. 11 See also B44 and B70n and Ameriks (301–302). 12 Although as Pluhar notes (48 n. 12) Kant does not consistently observe his own terminological stipulations. 13 Kant’s considered position has been a matter of scholarly debate at least since Windelband’s editorial comments to the Königlich Preuβlischen Akademie der Wissenschaften edition of the text in 1908 (see “Sachliche Erläuterungen” in volume V of Kant’s gessamlte Schriften, pp. 527–529). For an overview of the debate, see Uehling (22–26). 14 I mean here to be referring back to the discussion on pp. 42–3 of the “two unity views” according to which intuitions have a “synoptic” form prior to the “synthetic” order determined by concepts. The significance of tone, on the long argument, might run: Kant’s ambivalence about the nature of tones (i.e., whether they are sensory or also formal) helps substantiate the claim that there is a formal unity of an intuition prior to and independent of the kind of formal determination provided by concepts. Although a discussion of the status of tone is virtually non-existent in contemporary Kant scholarship, how one is apt to decide on the matter likely turns on one’s position in the wider conceptualism/ non-conceptualism debates (i.e., whether the “binding” activity is similar or different in the cases of spatio-temporal contiguity and notional coherence). One effect of taking seriously the seemingly marginal notion of “tone” is to point to a way out of the stalemate. That is, attention to the category of tone demonstrates that the notion of “form” shared by each side of the conceptualism/non-conceptualism debate assumes a much cruder philosophy of mind than Kant actually has on hand. 15 On pp. 86–9, I revisit the issue of whether and in what sense aesthetic properties for Kant provide additional structuring over and above its intuitional and conceptual form. 16 The imagery of “peeling” off one form from another comes from Matthew Boyle who critiques the suggestion that conceptual form can be peeled off of a prior, independent intuitional form. However, on the “dispensability” of aesthetic form, see Ameriks (305–306) and Aquila (1982:109, 109 n. 17). The apparent tension between those two positions (that is, the extent to which additional layers of form can or cannot be added on or peeled back from intuitional form) would however be reduced, if not eliminated, by a careful handling of the relevant “conceptual” form said to structure an intuition. See Chapter 2, especially pp. 48–50 and pp. 60–3. 17 To be clear, I take the tonality of sound (or the color of vision) to be a placeholder for a general question of whether and to what extent a Kantian should admit there to be layers of perceptual experience above and beyond an intuition understood as spatio-temporal unity. The general question of the depth and defeasibility of perceptual experience can be divested from the specific characteristics of acoustic tonality, which remains nevertheless a useful occasion for appreciating how the concept-intuition model threatens to oversimplify Kant’s considered position. The topic of tonality is an especially instructive case study

Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity  95 both because the textual record clearly shows that Kant had a difficult time placing tones within the basic structure of a concept-intuition model of judgment and because Kant consistently linked tonality with affectivity. 18 In Chapter XV of the “Essay on the Origins of Languages”, Rousseau extends the phenomenon to another modality with a description of the different feelings associated with touching a living and a dead body. That the animate body and inanimate body are ambiguous figures is the basis for the notion of the uncanny in Jentsch and Freud. 19 (1996: 113–114) 20 Dennett (1991) and Cavell (2008: 94). For a discussion of the latter, see Mulhall (1998: 26) and Zerilli (75). For more talk of the problem of higher-level organization in terms of “patterns”, see also Haugeland as well as Goodman (1978: 133–137). 21 For further discussion of the notion of diathesis in Aristotle, see Chapter 4, especially pp. 108–10. 22 I return to this issue in relation to the difference between strategic and alethic uses of language in Rousseau’s “Essay on the Origin of Languages”. See pp. 132–3. 23 I return in Chapter 4 (pp. 113–6) to a further discussion of this passage on the relation between Laune and rational judgments in light of Aristotle’s notion of diathesis or disposition. For Aristotle, both subjects and objects have a “disposition”, and the subjective and objective senses of “disposition” are related. 24 Ameriks (305–306) and Aquila (109, 109 n. 17) read Kant as positing an “aesthetic form” that outstrips the intuitional form of singular reference and link the additional structuring to the feeling of pleasure. Rush (56) ties such a form to the “productive” function of the imagination. But, again, to draw the “nonconceptualist” conclusion that the defeasibility of aesthetic form indicates that that which gives unity to aesthetic intuitions is something other than the conceptual capacities assumes a too narrow view of the sense in which “concepts” are deployed in intuitions. 25 See Chapter 1, esp. p. 2. 26 A “two stage” view of aesthetic judgment in which an independent moment of the “free play” of the faculties in reflective judgments must be separated from a consequent “feeling” of pleasure in judgments of taste is endorsed by Allison (2001: 153) and Pippin (1996), among others. For further discussion and criticism of this view, see pp. 162–8. 27 Cf. Pippin (1996), who sees such talk of “feeling” as simply a placeholder for a non-discursive “sense” of things. In other words, “feeling” here refers to what Kant elsewhere (5:296 n) calls a sensus communis logicus (a shared reflective sense of what counts as what) rather than a sensus communis aestheticus (a shared affective response or disposition). Each of the following chapters argues against a clean separation between a reflective and an aesthetic common sense; see, in particular, the “Conclusion and Implications” of Chapter 5, pp. 149–51. 28 In the following chapters, I argue at length for the generalizability of the orientational capacity of affects such that the aesthetic common sense is presupposed as a condition of perception and cognition. Henry Allison says of this line of thought: “To attribute such a view to Kant is in itself highly implausible, though something resembling it is to be found in Hume. It becomes completely impossible, however, if one keeps in mind that the common sense at issue in the case of taste is the effect of the free play . . . of the cognitive faculties. There is simply no way in which a feeling resulting from the noncognitive condition of free play could serve as a condition of cognition” (2001: 153). Chapter 6, in particular,

96  Tone, Modulation, and Affectivity defends both the logical possibility and the textual plausibility of the position Allison rules out of bounds. 29 I discuss the Rousseauian provenance of this passage at p. 138. Peter Fenves (1991: 63–65) provides a close reading of this passage, but decides that its main philosophical innovation lies in the introduction of “aesthetic ideas”. Samantha Matherne (2014: 133–134) also gives a close reading of this passage as the basis for what she calls Kant’s “expressive formalism”. As should be clear by now, my interest is in the “extra-aesthetic” implications of such passages for a Kantian view of judgment and intentionality. I am reading the third Critique with the goal of seeing what there is, so to speak, “over and above the harmony with the concept” of “the aesthetic” in the sense of a theory of beauty and art, and I am suggesting that it does indeed divulge “a wealth of undeveloped material for the understanding which the latter disregarded in its concept”.

4 The Implicit Affection between Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric

Introduction When Kantian judgment and Aristotelian rhetoric are paired a curious but unmistakable position emerges at the intersection of philosophy and rhetoric: the human mind is oriented in the world in part, but not exclusively, through an exercise of communicative capacities; coming to see the world aright does not just call for placing an object in the right conceptual frame but also requires an extra-conceptual, affective disposition. The outlines of this view come gradually into focus in the overlap of three significant areas of Kantian judgment and Aristotelian rhetoric. First and most broadly, each allows that the concepts with which one communicates operate not merely to determine what one says about a perceived object or scene but also to inform the way the object appears in the first place. Secondly, each avoids a familiar mischaracterization of how linguistic capacities operate within, rather than upon, the deliverances of sense experience by significantly broadening the relevant conceptual activity beyond a simple one-to-one subsumption of individual perceptions under determinate concepts so as to include the entire conceptual form of one’s disposition or orientation to the world as a whole. Thirdly, each takes the further step of linking those broad mental dispositions to specifically affective states of mind. Taken together, the areas of overlap between Kantian judgment and Aristotelian rhetoric adumbrate an integrated picture of the affective sensibilities and cognitive capacities largely missing from the contemporary landscape.

The Problem of Kant and Rhetoric At first glance, the claim that there is common ground between Kantian judgment and Aristotelian rhetoric can seem not only unmotivated (what is the point of forcing together such dissimilar thinkers?) but, moreover, historically falsifiable. There is no clear textual evidence that Kant ever read Aristotle’s Rhetoric, and a first look at Kant’s several engagements with the general topic of rhetoric makes any prospect for an alliance with Aristotle appear dead in the water. The explicit treatment of rhetoric in the Critique

98  Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric of Judgment, for instance, is especially critical if not downright hostile. In one particularly dramatic passage (5:327n), oratory is vilified as the “insidious art that . . . came to its peak both in Athens and Rome only at a time when the state was hastening to its ruin, and any true patriotic way of thinking was extinct”, and consequently the ars oratoria is deemed “unworthy of any respect whatsoever”. It is often noted in the scholarship that Kant’s explicit objection to rhetoric in this passage is its capacity “to move people like machines to a judgment”, which is perceived as a threat to the internal autonomy required for moral judgment.1 But Kant’s misgivings about rhetoric go still further. Don Paul Abbot has also suggested that in addition to this moral critique, one can identify further aesthetic and epistemic ­objections— for example, oratory is less beautiful than poetry (e.g., 7:247) and less truthful than logical demonstration (e.g., 9:16–17).2 In short, Kant’s rejection of rhetoric is not only apparent; it is real. Those genuine concerns notwithstanding, a distinctive trend in the recent literature, led primarily by scholars of rhetoric, has been a shift beyond denouncing or defending Kant’s explicit criticism of the ars oratoria to reconstructing the implicit but positive role that rhetoric plays in the Kantian system. A new line of inquiry has opened up, as scholars such as Samuel McCormick and Pat Gehrke have turned attention from what Kant explicitly says about rhetoric to what he does in his own practice. Most recently Gina Ercolini has looked to Kant’s “pragmatic anthropology” in order to identify specific techniques of communication needed when a Kantian wants to fill in the gaps between the abstract principles of a metaphysics of morals and the actual ethical practices realized in political communities.3 The upshot of recent work on Kant by rhetoricians is to have shown that, despite the apparent hostility and genuine differences between the critical system and the rhetorical tradition, there are key features of Kant’s own philosophical program that cannot be understood without an appreciation of the rhetorical practices implicit in his own account. This “rhetorical turn” is a welcome development in the understanding of Kant’s project, especially when the philosophical issues at play in a “communicative ethics” are seen to be symptomatic of a larger and deeper role for rhetoric in the critical system beyond the ethical or practical domain. With this wider scope in view, it becomes possible to connect the recent attention by rhetoricians towards Kant’s practical ethics to other, seemingly disparate, analyses of the placement of rhetoric within the critical system. Scholars such as John Poulakos and Thomas Hove, for instance, have recently pointed to the significance of rhetoric for the development of Kant’s aesthetic theory, and philosophers such as Ernesto Grassi and Rodolphe Gasché have examined some of the rhetorical tropes employed in the theoretical and epistemological domains. Of particular importance in the latter context is Kant’s appropriation of the rhetorical notion of hypotyposis, by which abstract or general concepts are exhibited in vivid images or concrete experiences. Recently Scott

Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric  99 Stroud has drawn out of the wider theory of hypotyposis the important but neglected notion of “examples”.4 Stroud demonstrates that examples, properly understood, function as a particular mode of persuasion that communicates not by making an assertoric claim, the truth value of which the auditor is left to judge, but rather by engendering in an audience a prior disposition or frame of mind in which it becomes possible to experience for oneself an object or situation in a particular way.5 Thus an example, which is initially developed in an epistemic context, is shown to be a necessary element of moral development insofar as it is the rhetorical vehicle by which an interlocutor is able to cultivate in an auditor the appropriate affective disposition required to attend to an object or situation as one wherein ethical properties are instantiated.6 The provocative implication of this account is that there are affective grounds that facilitate perceptual judgment and that these conditions can be communicated. Although the unity of Kant’s account of rhetoric is not Stroud’s central theme, his treatment of examples can be seen as taking the important first steps in drawing together the epistemic, moral, and affective or aesthetic strands of a Kantian rhetorical theory. As attractive as a unified picture of Kant’s rhetoric may be, it is highly questionable whether such a view can be defended, not only as a reading of Kant but as an intelligible position in its own right. That is because an account of examples like Stroud’s requires, in order for an event or scene to bear ethical significance in the first place, that an affective disposition work within, so to speak, and not merely upon the way one attends to and judges the relevant objects (otherwise anything would appear morally significant if one happened to cast a certain sentimental tinge on it). But there is a genuine philosophical difficulty concerning the relationship between affective dispositions and moral and epistemic judgments that makes it hard to see how examples could bring them together in the required way. The problem arises because a dominant picture of the human mind draws a categorical distinction between affection and cognition and thereby makes any claim to their integration appear false by definition. Of course, in the third Critique Kant does develop a notion of “aesthetic judgment” that grounds an affective feeling within the judgmental capacities at work in cognition. But, even so, most interpreters are led by a prior conviction that Kant could only have meant that the affective feeling is either a prior cause or a subsequent effect of a perceptual judgment, not, that is, an internal factor in the judgment itself as the notion of examples would suggest.7 Lacking any philosophical clarification as to how an affective state could be integral to a perceptual judgment, the promising notion of examples sketched by Stroud is ruled out of bounds as a matter of principle. It is precisely in response to this problem concerning the vexing relationship between affectivity and judgment that a turn from Kant to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, otherwise seemingly Pickwickian and forced, becomes well motivated. That is because at the head of book 2 (1378a) Aristotle makes a claim that would be patently false if it were true that affective and judgmental

100  Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric capacities are different in kind: the pathē “are those things through which undergoing change, people come to differ in their judgments”. If it can be made intelligible how Aristotle places the pathē (affects) in an intimate and internal relation to kriseis (judgments), then the Rhetoric may provide a precedent for placing the moments of an “aesthetic” feeling or affective disposition in relation to “judgment” in the way required to unify a Kantian communicative theory. In that case, the homology between the moments of aesthetic feeling and judgment in Kant and pathē and kriseis in Aristotle becomes a model for disarming the philosophical objection that affective dispositions and cognitive or moral judgments are categorically distinct and cannot be integrated. Thus, while the immediate aim of this chapter is to point out the symmetries between Kantian judgment and Aristotelian rhetoric, the main payoff of the argument does not concern the historical question of whether such a position was in fact advanced by Kant or Aristotle; the question, rather, is the philosophical one of whether it can and should be adopted by us. In all, the primary task of this chapter is to identify the overlap between Kant and Aristotle as a ground on which to articulate and defend the imbrication of judgment, communication, and affectivity.

Communicative Capacities in Perception The Problem of Judgment in Kant Kant’s master thought, the axis around which the critical project turns, is that judgment is the minimal basic unit of human intelligibility. In its widest scope, judgment, for Kant, “is the ability to think the particular as contained under the universal” (5:179). The leading thread of the critical system is that the logical form of a judgment that structures human thinking also gives form to the ways we perceive or experience the world. Kant’s basic point is both simple and striking: the smallest mental move, the most basic experience of which a conscious subject can be aware, is neither a bare perceiving nor a pure thinking but already the combination of both in a judgment. In a phrase, “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind” (A51/B75). While the emptiness of mere thought plays a crucial role in a complete picture of Kant’s critique of rhetoric, it is the blindness of mere perception that puts the critical project at odds with popular philosophical assumptions.8 Starting from the prevailing naturalistic outlook, the most basic encounter with the world for humans, as it is for nonlinguistic sentient animals, is through sense perception; it is only as they mature, if ever, that rational animals come to interpret or articulate those perceptions in conceptual form. Kant’s claim, by contrast, is not that intuitions without concepts are mute (as if we see them but, like dumb animals, do not yet know what to say) but rather that they are blind (as though if we do not know what to say, then we cannot properly be said to see them at all).9 On the face of it, the move to

Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric  101 locate the same linguistic or conceptual capacities with which we communicate at the very site of our basic perceptual encounters with the world seems to over-intellectualize sense experience and needlessly obscure the division of labor between seeing and saying. However, the Kantian thought that our communicative capacities are operative in the way we experience the world begins to appear less mysterious when it is seen to be anticipated by Aristotle, at least in his practical, anthropological writings. For example, in a passage from the Poetics (1456b8), which itself refers back to the Rhetoric, Aristotle notes, “What, indeed, would be the good of the speaker, if things appeared in the required light even apart from anything he says?”. A passage like this gives one reason to believe that when Aristotle defines the human being as zōon logon echon—those beings with discursive, claim-making capacities—he does not intend to suggest that the conceptual or linguistic element of having speech (logon echon) is merely tacked on to a prior and independent sense apparatus otherwise shared by any sentient being (zōon).10 In this passage, at least, the function of the communicative capacities is not just to name or interpret a given experience, one that already “appears” in a prior act of perception, but also to ensure that things appear in the “right light”. Passages like this one, then, give some evidence that there is for Aristotle a distinctively logical way or conceptual form in which humans employ perceptual capacities. And it is in this very broad sense in which speech and perception go hand in glove that Aristotle can be seen to anticipate the Kantian claim that our communicative capacities are integral to the way in which humans perceive and attend to the world. From Transcendental to Empirical Much more would need to be said to establish that there is indeed a productive overlap between Kant and Aristotle that can be faithfully read out of the texts rather than willfully read into them. But it can be easy to miss the mere possibility of a general turn of thought shared between Aristotle and Kant because a good deal of Kant’s argumentation about the conceptual form of intuition operates specifically at a “transcendental” level. That is to say, Kant’s preoccupation, especially in the Critique of Pure Reason, is to show how the object of any possible experience, given in the pure sensible forms of space and time, could in principle be subject to the logical forms of the pure concepts of the understanding. The application of the pure concepts of the understanding to the pure forms of intuition is the task of the complex doctrine of the transcendental schematism, an operation that Kant himself describes as “an art concealed in the depths of the human soul, whose real modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to have open to our gaze” (B180–181). Suffice it to say, such a transcendental project is a considerable undertaking and largely exhausts Kant’s efforts to demonstrate that conceptual capacities

102  Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric operate within perceptual experience. For his part, Kant does not draw any obvious connection between the transcendental account of judgment and the rhetorical situation in which an orator appeals to an audience to view a particular object or scene according to one description or narrative rather than another. The distance between Kantian judgment and Aristotelian rhetoric, however, is not as great as it may initially appear. Even in the thick of the first Critique, Kant refers to the way experience is structured not only by higher order transcendental categories like causality or substance but also by mundane, empirical concepts like body (A106), plate (A137/B176), red (A101), and dog (A141/B180). Thus Kant himself seemed to think that the dialectic between the conceptual and intuitive elements of experience operative at the transcendental level would in some fashion carry over to the empirical level of ordinary experiences populated by dogs, plates, and bodies—that is, the familiar kinds of things that, unlike causality or substance, orators might address. But even though Kant does seem to think that empirical concepts like “plate” and “dog” are deployed in sense perception, he largely leaves to his readers the task of extending the transcendental dialectic between the categories and pure forms of intuition to the empirical world of things and names. It is hard to see, however, how the relation between the categories of thought and the pure forms of intuition could inform or carry over to the relation between empirical concepts and empirical intuitions. The difference stems from the fact that, unlike the categories in relation to space and time at the transcendental level, there is no necessary or automatic fit between empirical concepts and empirical intuitions. It is, in fact, the necessity of its application to any possible experience that separates the “transcendental” from “general” logic for Kant (A135/B174). That is, what the “transcendental deduction” sets out to prove is that an object could not possibly appear (could not be experienced) if it did not conform to the sensible conditions of space and time and the logical forms of the categories such as cause and effect. But the necessary application of the categories, such that experience could not occur without them, does not carry over to empirical concepts: it is not at all impossible that one could have an empirical perception (“that thing, there”) while lacking a determinate concept (“which I’ve never seen before”). There is thus an element of contingency or a looseness of fit at the empirical level that does not, and could not, exist at the transcendental level.11 Having tackled what appears to be the more philosophically formidable question of how the conceptual relates to the perceptual at the transcendental level, Kant seems to trust his readers to fill in the empirical gap. But the prospects for such an empirical extension are mixed. On the one hand, the problem of empirical judgment seems menial, as though nothing much needs to be said. Unlike the transcendental level of the categories, in empirical cases “the concepts through which the object is thought in [its] general

Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric  103 [aspects] are not so utterly distinct and heterogeneous from those which represent it in concreto, as given”, and therefore “no special discussion of the applicability of the former to the latter is required” (A138/B177). On the other hand, however, the problem of empirical judgment appears impossible, as though nothing more could be said. Whereas at the transcendental level the rules of applying the categories to experience can indeed be determined a priori, with empirical judgment there can be no such guidance: “it appears that . . . judgment is a peculiar talent which can be practiced only . . . [i]t is the specific quality of the so-called mother-wit, and its lack no school can make good” (A133/B172). And it is in going on to explain why there cannot possibly be any specifiable guidelines for empirical judgment—that there is a standing threat that one could “lack” the requisite “mother wit”—that Kant finds himself directly on the home ground of traditional rhetoric. Crossing the Empirical Gap: From Dummheit to Defeasibility To see why Kant’s account of judgment in the first Critique finds itself squarely in the traditional domain of rhetoric it is important to see both that there are a number of reasons why there is an inherent mismatch between empirical intuitions and empirical concepts and that it is precisely in this gap that rhetoric resides. One reason for an inherent mismatch between concepts (the kinds of things we say) and intuitions (the kinds of things we see) is, for Kant, that intuitions or perceptions are singular or particular whereas concepts are generic (e.g., B377). Still less is an object of experience or its image ever adequate to the empirical concept; for this latter always stands in immediate relation to . . . a rule for the determination of our intuition, in accordance with some specific universal concept. The concept “dog” signifies a rule according to which my imagination can delineate the figure of a fourfooted animal in a general manner, without limitation to any single determinate figure such as experience, or any possible image that I can represent in concreto, actually presents. (B180) There is thus a fundamental gap between what a generic concept can describe and how a particular object appears because empirical concepts are “universal” or general insofar as they apply to a class of objects (e.g., the features that all dogs have in common) whereas the “concrete” objects of experience are individual or unique (e.g., the features that set one particular dog apart from all others). There is then, by the very definition of the terms, a looseness of fit between empirical concepts and intuitions such that there is a surplus of perceptual material that individuates any given object over and above the characteristics captured in its generic name.12 Thus (in a passage we have seen in the previous chapter), “over and above the harmony

104  Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric with the concept . . . [there is] a wealth of undeveloped material . . . which the [understanding] disregard[s] in its concept” (5:317). One consequence of this looseness of fit is that in empirical judgments concepts (what we say) match up with intuitions (what we see) not “once and for all” but rather “more or less”. A second but related problem follows from the inherent mismatch between general concepts and specific intuitions. Because at the empirical level it cannot be set out beforehand how concepts apply to experience, it requires a separate act of judgment to determine which intuitions match up with which concepts. The job of mediating between general concepts and particular intuitions is the task of judgment, “the faculty of subsuming under rules”, which in the empirical case must determine “how to apply to appearances the concepts of understanding” (A132/B171). But since intuitions can be subsumed under concepts only “more or less”, that means the standard for empirical judgment cannot be “right or wrong” but rather “better or worse”. And Kant is well aware that there is nothing in the act of judgment itself that guarantees it could not be for the worse. In fact, Kant even goes so far as to assign a name to the standing possibility of poor judgment: “Deficiency in judgment is just what is ordinarily called stupidity [Dummheit], and for such a failing there is no remedy” (B172n). Somebody who is “dumb” in this sense is not one who fails to exercise judgment, that is, who would have empirical intuitions with no conceptual comprehension and who thus gawks mutely at a scene he cannot understand. Stupidity, rather, is a feature of somebody who exercises judgment (applies concepts to experience) but does so poorly. A nonlinguistic animal, like a dog, may be “obtuse” (“obtusum caput”) but would not qualify as “dumb” (“stupiditas”) because it does not make poor judgments. Instead, it does not make judgments at all (7:204). It is thus only humans, beings who structure their particular experiences through general concepts, who are uniquely capable of being stupid. The standing threat of stupidity cannot be cut off at the empirical level as it can at the transcendental level because, on the pain of regress, the application of empirical concepts to empirical intuitions cannot be prescribed a priori by a higher order governing rule or policy. That is to say, one may very well try to set out ahead of time a guiding rule or procedure that would specify which concept should determine which intuition, but that alone would not undermine the threat of stupidity but rather relocate it to the question of which (higher order) guiding rule governs the deployment of concepts in any given case. If [one] sought to give general instructions how we are to subsume [intuitions] under these rules [concepts], that is, to distinguish whether something does or does not come under them, that could only be by means of another rule. This in turn, for the very reason that it is a rule, again demands guidance from judgment. (A133/B172)

Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric  105 Trying to replace the talent and wit of judgment with a higher-order procedure does not remove the initial contingency but, so to speak, simply moves around the bump in the rug without smoothing it out.13 A physician, a judge, or a ruler may have at command many excellent pathological, legal, or political rules, even to the degree that he may become a profound teacher of them, and yet, none the less, may easily stumble in their application. For, although admirable in understanding, he may be wanting in natural power of judgment. He may comprehend the universal in abstracto, and yet not be able to distinguish whether a case in concreto comes under it. (A134/B173) Because of the inherent mismatch between concrete empirical intuitions that we perceive and general or abstract concepts by which we conceive them, there is and can be no conceptual safeguards against exercising poor judgment. Or, rather, there is no way to define which judgments are poor.14 And it is precisely the unavoidability of making a “judgment call” that opens the door to rhetorical contestation. Because empirical judgments can only apply concepts to experience “more or less” and therefore its standard of success is “better or worse”, it is to some extent always debatable whether one perceives an object or a scene under the right conceptual description. As Aristotle suggests, a speaker can contest whether one is perceiving an object “in the right light”. And if one can bring to concrete experiences concepts that are better or worse, then experience itself (in the verbal sense of experiencing an object or a scene) falls within the realm of things we can praise or blame one another for doing well or poorly. In other words, it is not just what one says but what one sees that is liable for reconsideration, reconstrual, and renewed attention. Thus the way the world appears (the way in the first instance “it seems to me”) is the kind of thing about which we can make claims on one another and is thus a legitimate topic for discourse and debate.

From Concepts to Contexts The Rhetorical Subtext: Paradiastole The possibility that one may be faulted for having the wrong perceptions or experience of the world puts the Kantian account of judgment squarely in the domain of traditional rhetoric, a fact of which Kant himself appears to be at least partially aware. Granted, an engagement with rhetoric does not take center stage amid the transcendental preoccupations of the first Critique, but it does emerge along the margins. In a footnote (B173n), for example, Kant notes that “narrow-minded . . . people . . . lacking in judgment (secunda Petri) . . . betray that original want, which can never be

106  Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric made good”. Buried in this footnote and couched in parentheses lies a signal that Kant was not unaware that the question of the “empirical gap” is not unique to the critical system but is situated in a deeper and richer problem, one that has roots in the rhetorical tradition. Kant apparently assumed that his readers would have needed no explanation that the secunda Petri was the second major division of the logic of Peter Ramus, which dealt specifically with judgment (iudicium); it is not clear, however, whether Kant and his readers would have appreciated the extent to which Ramist logic contrived to incorporate into the philosophical category of judgment features of language that had traditionally fallen under the domain of rhetoric, such as the proper arrangement (dispositio or taxis) of an argument. The point of drawing attention to what is to contemporary readers an obscure historical reference in a marginal note is simply that it allows us to appreciate how the Kantian problem of empirical judgment is situated on the grounds of a wider and earlier problematic over which philosophy and rhetoric both made claims. Thus one way to see that there is a genuine gap in the Kantian account of empirical judgment and to explore what resources may be available to fill it in is to locate the problem of judgment as a later philosophical iteration of an earlier rhetorical problem. But again, it is easy to overlook the common ground shared by Kant and rhetoric in part because the way the first Critique construes the question of empirical judgment can make it appear as if the problem concerns only the mismatch of level between the generality of concepts and the specificity of intuitions. But even on Kantian grounds the problem must be more complicated because empirical concepts themselves range in degree of generality or specificity (for example, from object to animal to mammal to dog); one pragmatic consequence of this semantic ambiguity is that single objects of reference can themselves be subject to several conceptual descriptions at various levels of specificity (depending on which concepts one employs one may be said to perceive a dog, a Brittany spaniel, a particular Brittany, or my pet Lily). So it is that a “stupid” or “narrow-minded” person may be faulted for deploying an overly general concept (“animal” or “dog”) in a situation that calls for a more particular term (as in the case where one were to say to a friend whose beloved pet has just died, “Come now, how can you be so saddened by the death of an animal? We can go get you another dog”). The rhetorical subtext, however, indicates how the problem of judgment goes still deeper than one and the same object bearing compatible descriptions at varying levels of specificity. The menu of possible concepts that inform or structure a perception may not only differ with respect to the level of specificity, since at one and the same level there may be competing and contradictory claims on a single object. (Is that animal a dog or a wolf? Is that dog feral or domesticated?) The rhetorical tradition is in some sense constituted by the recognition that objects or scenes can bear competing

Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric  107 descriptions, and thus a speaker has the power to effect a reorientation to an object or an action by way of conceptual redescription. One version that the wider phenomenon of “rhetorical redescription” can take is the figure of speech known as paradiastole, which Quintilian, for example, taught as a way to “call yourself wise rather than cunning, or courageous rather than overconfident, or careful rather than parsimonious”.15 Quintilian’s use of paradiastole to redescribe vicious qualities as virtuous, or vice versa, is fairly typical in the sense that the figure is most often used in moral or evaluative contexts, but such moral redescription would not be possible if it were not already the case more generally that one and the same event, situation, or object can be described in competing, if not contradictory, terms. The philosophical insight underlying the rhetorical technique of paradiastolic redescription, then, is that it is because differing conceptual descriptions effect differing perceptual orientations toward an object or a scene that one and the same event can therefore bear different narrative interpretations. Thus the seemingly endless rhetorical quibbles over which terms to use in a given situation is the upshot of a subterranean philosophical battle over the very question of empirical judgment: which concepts allow this particular sense episode to appear in the right light? Paradiastole amounts, therefore, to a rhetorical version of the philosophical claim that there is an essential connection between the way an object is described and the way it appears (its seeming to me in a certain way is conditioned by the kinds of things I can say about it). The suite of philosophical cum rhetorical issues bound up in the problem of paradiastolic redescription only becomes compounded the further one gets from the abstract philosophical question of how an empirical concept could ever apply to a single intuition and the closer one comes to the realm of lived experiences that a rhetorician would actually address. Live experience rarely, if ever, presents a viewer with a single, discrete object isolated in space and time from those other objects and events that form a background or context in which a given object is situated. In practice, to make a proper judgment about any single object or event often requires one to make a determination about the whole scene or situation in which it occurs (Was my neighbor’s insistence on petting my dog an act of friendliness or imposition? Was the patrolman’s decision to approach my vehicle with a canine unit a routine procedure or an implicit threat?) In those cases in which making an explicit determination about any single object in the empirical world is tied up with implicit claims about the background framework, coming to see an object or action in the right light may require a paradiastolic redescription not directly of the object or action itself but indirectly of the context in which it is situated. Disputes over any particular judgment—whether one is experiencing some object or scenario correctly or incorrectly, well or poorly—can thereby take the form of a contest to establish the scene in which the object can “appear in the right light”.

108  Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric Diathesis: Objective Frame of Reference, Subjective Frame of Mind While the term “paradiastole” does not itself occur in Aristotle, the wider problem in which one and the same object or situation is subject to competing conceptual descriptions does certainly play a prominent role in the Rhetoric. At 1377b—1378a, Aristotle notes, for instance, that “things do not seem [phainetai] the same . . . to the angry and the calm but either altogether different or different in importance”. Book 2 in particular is organized around the supposition that judgments do not occur in a perceptual and cognitive vacuum but are already situated in a wider contextual frame. Thus whatever the problem may be in the abstract concerning how conceptual and linguistic capacities inform perception, in the actual flux of human experience coming to see an object in the right light is never a matter simply of pairing off a discrete object or scene with a single concept. In practice, rather, the question concerns how an object or event gains significance or salience, how it gets picked out of the wider contextual background in which it is situated. An object’s salience or significance is neither an exclusively internal property of the object itself nor an aspect of the scene itself but consists in the relation between them.16 Salience is a matter of an object’s “disposition” within the scene in the sense that Aristotle explains in his “book of definitions” in the Metaphysics: “ ‘Disposition’ [διάθεσις] means the order [τάξις] of that which has parts, either with respect to place, or with respect to potency, or with respect to kind; for there must be a position [θέσις] of a sort, as the word ‘disposition’ indicates” (1022b). To say that disposition, or diathesis, is a property of an object (that is, among the attributes that make that thing that object that it is) entails that the full meaning or significance of an object can never be given straightaway, without reference to its position in a wider order (taxis) of which it is a part. For example, the attribute by which it is true that the star known as Polaris is the “Pole Star” has effectively nothing to do with its internal properties and everything to do with its position in a celestial constellation. For an inhabitant of a different planet, for whom the objects in the night sky have a different order, it simply is not true that Polaris is the “pole star”. Without the slightest change in any of its internal attributes, the significance and identity of an object—as well as the true claims one can make about it—can change as it becomes situated in a different order. And what goes for objects extends to events and situations. The simple act of my neighbor’s petting my dog as I am trying to hurry out the door is in some sense mute. It does not tell me anything until it is placed in a broader order or pattern of behavior; only then can I see it rightly for what it is, for example, a botched attempt to be neighborly. One rhetorical implication of the wider metaphysical property of diathesis is that competing claims on any given object can not only lead to a verbal skirmish over which concepts apply to specific objects but can also involve

Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric  109 a wider battle over which context or frame makes certain descriptions seem appropriate or relevant in the first place. Aristotle’s lesson to aspiring orators in the Rhetoric, however, goes still deeper insofar as he suggests that there is more than a nominal connection between the external “disposition” of the object viewed and the internal “disposition” of the viewing subject. The line of thought that emerges in book 2 is that the way an object is apt to appear is determined in part by the situational frame, and, moreover, the way one is inclined to frame a situation or constellation of objects is influenced by one’s “frame of mind” (denoted at 1368b and 1378a by the participle “diakeimenoi”).17 The underlying connection between the diathesis of the object and the diathesis of the subject very much matters to the work of the rhetoricians who must learn how to “prepare the judge” (“ton kritēn kataskeuazein” [1377b]) by actively “disposing the listener in some way” (“ton akroaten diatheinai pōs” [1356a]). The rhetorical battle to situate the disposition of the object in the right contextual frame thereby opens onto an endeavor to bring the disposition of the subject into the right frame of mind. If Aristotle is right to tie together the subjective and objective senses of diathesis—one’s frame of mind and the way one frames a situation—one immediate consequence is that a claim may be completely consistent from a logical point of view and yet still fail to persuade an audience, not because it is demonstrably false but because it strikes the audience as irrelevant or out of order. An advocate could press a case, for example, that the party responsible for breaking a chair ought to be charged for the replacement cost. But that claim, as rational and consistent as it may be, could nonetheless seem completely beside the point to an audience; for instance, if the offending party had suddenly taken ill and that is what caused him to break the chair, he would not be obviously “responsible” in the relevant moral sense of bearing credit or blame for the consequences of actions that he should have been expected to foresee. Aristotle further insists that establishing the appropriateness of the objective frame of reference depends, in part, on the subjective frame of mind of the audience. Thus, “it might be needful in a speech to put [the audience] in the state of mind of those who are inclined to anger and to show one’s opponents as responsible for those things which are the causes of anger” (1380a). The work of rhetoric thereby extends beyond the mere logic of truth claims to the psychology of how the truth of the matter is received and construed by a human audience. In a phrase, a condition for determining the truth of the matter is a prior sense for how the truth matters. If the audience is not first in the right frame of mind, and thus not already oriented to the scene in the appropriate fashion, the words themselves, however logically consistent they may be, risk sounding “out of tune”. Such claims could not be deemed false as long as the speech has the right logical form, but for an audience who cannot see how such a logically consistent argument is supposed to apply in the given context, the claims could still appear irrelevant. The philosophical upshot is that while logos, discursive conceptual

110  Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric articulation, may very well be a necessary condition of perception and judgment, it cannot alone be sufficient. The audience’s subjective disposition or “frame of mind” thereby amounts to an “extra-conceptual” condition that can make conceptual, discursive claims appear relevant before it matters whether they are accurate.18 Orientation: Holism and Upward Dependence in Kant Judging only from the formal arguments laid out in the three Critiques, it can be hard to see that Kant would actually agree that there are extraconceptual constraints on individual empirical judgments. The treatments of judgment in the Critiques most often take the abstract form of pairing off a single intuition with a single concept (e.g., 5:179), which can give readers the impression that applying such capacities to the flux and flow of lived experience would involve a rapid-fire succession of myriad discrete judgments. The idea of such a rapid-fire interpretation, however, is not only implausible as a position in the philosophy of mind but is also insensitive to the actual sophistication of Kant’s own position as it is filled out, sometimes in lesser-known works. In the “Orientation” essay of 1786, for example, Kant imagines a “joke” in which a prankster “moved all the objects around . . . in a room that is familiar to me . . . so that what was previously on the right was now on the left” (8:135). In such a verkehrte Welt, Kant concludes, “I would be quite unable to find anything in a room whose walls were otherwise wholly identical”. The serious insight that comes out of this mischievous prank is that without a prior and proper orientation to the room as a whole, objects that are otherwise familiar are rendered unrecognizable.19 To return to the Polaris example, even if I were competent to judge on a general level that some shiny white light in the night sky is a star, I might be totally incapable of recognizing it as the particular object it is, namely the pole star, unless I have the appropriate orientation toward the wider constellation in which the star inhabits a particular position. Thus Kant’s considered position cannot (only) be that the proper identification of familiar objects renders the context as a whole recognizable (from part to whole, as it were) but (also) that the wider orientation toward a context renders the particular objects within the framework recognizable as the objects they, in fact, are (from whole to part). This holistic constraint on individual empirical judgments significantly broadens and complicates Kant’s dictum that “intuitions without concepts are blind”. While it may be true that perceptual intuitions need to be structured by conceptual forms in order to appear at all, here we see additionally that without one’s having first established a prior conceptual frame those sense objects cannot appear in the right light and are thus unrecognizable as the objects they, in fact, are. As it was for Aristotle, for Kant too there is an extra-conceptual constraint on individual, empirical judgments in the form

Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric  111 of a disposition or orientation to the scene as a whole. Securing a conceptual grasp on any one object may very well involve a moment of pairing one perception with one conceptual description, but that determination cannot get started unless one first has the world in view as a whole.20 In sum, to make an explicit claim about any given object or scene is to make an implicit claim on the world in which it is placed. Clearly much more needs to be said to spell out fully how one’s frame of mind or orientation toward the world places extra-conceptual constraints on the way our linguistic capacities operate within sense experience. But for present purposes we have seen enough to draw a further conclusion about the productive overlap between Kantian judgment and Aristotelian rhetoric. If the first broad juncture point is a general sense that communicative capacities go hand in glove with perception, the second and narrower area of overlap shows how both avoid a popular mischaracterization of what it means for conceptual or linguistic capacities to be operative within sense experience. That is because, for both Aristotelian diathesis and Kantian orientation, the activity of empirical judgment is significantly broader than a simple subsumption of one object under one concept. It concerns, rather, the conceptual form of the wider frame of mind or disposition that orients one to the scene or situation as a whole.

The Affective Grounds of Orientation From Frame to Feeling: Kant The overlap between Aristotelian rhetoric and Kantian judgment, however, goes still one layer deeper insofar as each takes the rather unusual step of linking those extra-conceptual, cognitive dispositions to distinctively affective states. The entrance of an affective or “felt” element into the realms of perception and cognition is particularly striking in Kant given what often appears to be a strict injunction against allowing that how something subjectively feels could inform one of how it objectively is. As the first Critique bluntly puts the point, “feeling [Gefühl] is not a faculty whereby we represent things, but lies outside our whole faculty of knowledge”. (A801/B829) Even the third Critique, which takes pains to link the pleasure of beauty to the mental faculties operative in cognitive judgment, still repeatedly insists that the feeling of pleasure “brings to our notice no characteristic of the object” but only reflects the mental state of the judging subject (5:228).21 If one takes at face value those passages that seem to draw a clear division of labor between affective feeling and cognitive knowing it will come as a surprise that the extra-conceptual element required to orient oneself in the world as a whole is explicitly and repeatedly identified as a “feeling” (“Gefühl”): “I orient myself through the mere feeling of a difference [bloße Gefühl eines Unterschiedes] between my two sides, the right and left” (8:135).

112  Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric In the “Orientation” essay, Kant gives three different examples of how we manage to situate ourselves and the world around us, and all three explicitly include a “faculty of making distinctions through . . . feeling” (“Unterscheidungsvermögen durchs Gefühl”) (8:135–136). What is striking about the repeated use of the language of affective “feeling” in the discussion of how we manage to situate both ourselves and the objects around us is that Kant’s considered position would be that coming to the right subjective disposition is not merely an extra-conceptual judgmental capacity but also an aesthetic judgment.22 That is, the affective element within orientational judgment is both ineliminable and integral to finding our way about the familiar world— so much so that without establishing the right affective state, a judger is rendered incapable of discerning an otherwise familiar objective state of affairs. Thus even with all of the objective data of the sky, I orient myself geographically only through a subjective ground of differentiation; and if all the constellations, though keeping the same shape and position relative to one another, were one day by a miracle to be reversed in their direction, so that what was east now became west, no human eye would notice the slightest alteration on the next bright starlit night, and even the astronomer—if he pays attention only to what he sees and not at the same time to what he feels [wenn er bloß auf das, was er sieht, und nicht zugleich, was er fühlt, Acht gäbe]—would inevitably become disoriented. (8:135) Taking the analysis of orientation seriously, then, commits Kant to the following turn of thought: to get the right conceptual grip on an object is to appreciate its disposition in a wider contextual frame, but the proper discernment of the object’s disposition is tied to a subjective disposition, and, moreover, those subjective dispositions are embedded in irreducibly affective states of mind. To put the point in shorter order: on a Kantian picture, there must be more than a nominal link between (perceptual) sensation, (cognitive) sense making, and (affective) sensibility. From Frame to Feeling: Aristotle Taken only on their own, those suggestions in Kant that affective conditions are necessary to make appropriate judgments about a scene appear to be marginal and dubious, but they seem less so when brought into contact with a curious but unmistakable feature of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. A major theme of the Rhetoric is that “persuasion through the hearers”, as an orator prepares them by actively “disposing” them, occurs “when they are led to feel pathos by the speech” (1356a, translation modified). Just as Kant links the ability to orient oneself to a “felt” component within judgment, so too does Aristotle tie the “frames of mind” that underlie judgments to a pathē-tic or

Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric  113 affective state of mind of the audience. The most provocative but mysterious formulation of this thought comes in the claim at the head of book 2 that the pathē “are those things through which undergoing change, people come to differ in their judgments” (1378a). The position that begins to emerge here is that there is a pathē-tic element that is not just causally associated with a judgment but, somehow, an active component within it, without which the appropriate judgment would not ensue. Thus the thought that ultimately ties together Kantian judgment and Aristotelian rhetoric is that a felt or affective disposition is part and parcel of the objective disposition of a scene, as if coming to see and judge the world aright requires one to be affected by it in the right way. But, again, perhaps such a sweeping conclusion is being willfully read into rather than faithfully read out of the texts. After all, Aristotle’s definition of the pathē at the outset of book 2 has itself always been contentious because it appears to reverse a fairly standard picture of the relationship between reason and the passions that has been in place since the Stoics demonstrated that changes in rational judgments can effect changes in subsequent emotional states (so that, for example, if I come to believe that a wolf in retreat is not a threat to me I no longer feel afraid of it).23 Nevertheless, Aristotle suggests the opposite here, making rational judgment dependent on affectivity: he literally claims that changes in the pathē effectuate changes in judgment. The direction of dependency between an affective state and judgment is no idle matter to rhetoricians, who, as we have seen, must learn how to dispose the listener in some way for an eventual judgment. If Aristotle literally means that changes in one’s pathē occasion changes in the judgments one is apt to make, then orators must learn how to “prepare the judge” in part by engendering changes in the pathetic or affective conditions of their audience. And, as we have already seen, Aristotle did indeed so instruct his students, remarking that “it might be needful in a speech to put [the audience] in the state of mind of those who are inclined to anger and to show one’s opponents as responsible for those things which are the causes of anger” (1380a). There is good reason, then, to believe that Aristotle literally meant not (only) that judgments about a scene affect one’s pathē but (also) that one’s pathē affect one’s judgments about a scene. The Influence of the Pathē on Judgment: Laune In many respects, philosophy and rhetoric are united in their recognition of the potential for the passions to affect the outcome of a judgment. But such a picture of the affective sensibilities as preceding and (in some sense difficult to define precisely) conditioning judgment gives rise to a philosophical worry that the pathē change judgments precisely by corrupting them and rendering them irrational. The traditional philosophical accusation against rhetoric is that orators seize on the susceptibility of judgments to the power of the emotions in order to manipulate an audience into accepting whatever

114  Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric conclusion the rhetorician happens to desire, irrespective of the truth of the matter. It is telling that this deep skepticism about the truth-distorting potential of “emotional appeals to the jury” is advanced by Aristotle himself in books 1 and 3 of the Rhetoric. At the very beginning, Aristotle comments that the effect of pathē like anger, envy, or pity is to “warp” the jury “as if someone made a straight-edged ruler crooked before using it” (1354a). Subsequently, Aristotle expresses some regret at having to introduce the extralogical rhetorical techniques, including style (lexis), delivery (hypokrisis), tone (tonoi), and arrangement (taxis), because “everything except [logical] demonstration is incidental” to the truth and justice of a case, but he reluctantly concedes that it is necessary to discuss these rhetorical skills because of the “corruption of the audience”, which renders the common man unable or unwilling to judge a case solely on its rational merits (1404a). Aristotle’s own equivocation concerning the relation between rationality and affectivity makes it that much more difficult to interpret the claim at the head of book 2 that the pathē harbor the potential to effect the outcome of a judgment.24 Against the weight of the passages in books 1 and 3, which impugn the corrupting influence of the pathē, it would appear that Aristotle’s position in book 2 is a concession to the practical benefit of learning how to exploit the affective disposition of an irrational audience in order to win an argument. But before coming to the conclusion that the relation between pathos and krisis at the head of book 2 ought to be indexed to Aristotle’s suspicions about the corrupting influence of the emotions in books 1 and 3, it is worth first taking measure of a similar ambiguity concerning the relationship between affectivity and rationality in Kant’s extended account of aesthetic judgment.25 We have already seen that there is a moment in Kant’s “Orientation” essay at which an underlying affective state, rather than corrupting or distorting a judgment, is required to come to the right understanding of the true state of affairs. That is, the appropriate orientation to an object or scene could not be achieved without the right affective feeling; thus, for Kant, admitting an affective moment into a judgment of this type is not a concession to the weakness of the judger but an insight into the affective conditions of such a judgment. The question at hand is whether this fledgling moment in Kant affords adequate grounds for reappraising the role of the pathē in Aristotle’s account of how an audience comes to see an object in the “required light”. And taking a close look at another seemingly minor feature of Kant—the question of how Laune or “mood” is inherent in, rather than inimical to, rationality—goes some way to showing why worries about the conflicts between emotional pathē and rational kriseis, while warranted, are not overriding. Like Aristotle’s sense of pathē in the Rhetoric, which are associated with an auditor’s “frame of mind”, Kant identifies Laune as a “mental disposition” (“Gemütsdisposition”) and a “mental attunement” (“Gemütsstimmung”) (5:336). The German word “Laune” can carry the sense of droll whimsicality or mere caprice, which lends credence to the suspicion that

Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric  115 affective moods are inimical to rationality. In the third Critique Kant himself states that a “person who is subject to such changes involuntarily is moody [launisch]”, and he points out later in the Anthropology that a “moody temper [launische Sinnesart] . . . is a disposition to attacks of joy or grief for which the subject himself can give no reason” (7:235). Given this clear association between moodiness and irrationality, it is all the more striking that Kant proceeds to claim (in a passage we considered in the previous chapter) that Laune, in its favorable sense, means the talent enabling us to put ourselves at will into a certain mental disposition, in which everything is judged in a way quite different from the usual one (even opposite of it) [ganz anders als gewöhnlich (sogar umgekehrt)], but yet is judged in conformity with certain principles of reason [present] in such a mental attunement. (5:336, translation modified) What is particularly revealing about this passage for present purposes is not Kant’s association of a mental disposition or attunement with an affective mood or his suggestion that changes in affective disposition correspond to changes in one’s judgment. What is striking about this passage, rather, is the clear indication that he allows that one’s mood, or Laune, does not necessarily distort one’s view of the one, truly described world but may enable one to disclose the world in a way “contrary” to the “usual” judgment.26 Moreover, while the judgment resulting from a change of affective mental disposition may be the opposite of the normal view of things, it need not be considered out of “conformity with . . . reason”. Thus in his discussion of Laune Kant allows, at minimum, that one’s frame of mind may be both affective and rational. Coming to see whether and how Kant is entitled to such an affective rationality requires further discussion, but for the time being we have covered enough ground to assert that there are moments when Kant at least considers such a possibility. Thus, when Aristotle claims at the head of book 2 that the pathē change judgment, we need not feel compelled by the absence of possible alternatives to conclude that the influence of the pathē can only be to distort or corrupt sound judgment (as Aristotle himself seems to propose in books 1 and 3). The thought that presses to the fore when book 2 of the Rhetoric is read in conjunction with Kant’s extended account of aesthetic judgment is that there is a sense in which it can be said that affective mental states are internal and necessary to sound judgments about objects and scenes in the world. Finally, then, we can identify a third significant area of overlap between Aristotelian rhetoric and Kantian judgment insofar as each associates one’s broad “frame of mind” in which specific judgments occur with distinctively affective mental states. Moreover, each suggests (at least tentatively) that

116  Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric these affective dispositions can condition without corrupting such judgments. In sum, the final overlap between Aristotelian rhetoric and Kantian judgment amounts to the claim that our affective dispositions are part and parcel of the rational process of coming to see the world aright.

Conclusion This chapter was occasioned by an appreciation for the way recent investigations into Kant and rhetoric have collectively been able to bring into view a unified picture of the cognitive, moral, and aesthetic or affective elements of judgment and communication. That achievement, however, is threatened by a philosophical objection that any account that places affective dispositions within perception and judgment illicitly conflates categorically distinct capacities. The work of this chapter has been to deflate that objection by carefully outlining a position that emerges in the areas of overlap between Kantian judgment and Aristotelian rhetoric. Both are broadly committed to a view that humans exercise conceptual, rational capacities in sense perception, and both develop that general position in two specific ways, namely, by showing that communication and judgment require the establishment of a general orientation to the scene as a whole and by indicating that such dispositions are irreducibly affective in nature. If these two points are taken seriously, moreover, together they entail a further corollary, which is that the objective question of what one witnesses or judges cannot be considered independently of the subjective question of how one ought to be struck, that is, the way in which one should “take up” or be oriented towards an object or scene. While disarming the assumption that sense perception, linguistic conceptuality, and affective disposition need be categorically separated does not by itself amount to a positive and integrated account of judgment as an orientation towards the world, the implied affection between Kantian judgment and Aristotelian rhetoric does, I think, point us in a direction worth pursuing. And it is in pursuit of this direction that the next chapter finds itself taking sides in a quarrel between Hume and Rousseau over the aesthetic nature of discourse.

Notes   1 The conflict between external rhetorical persuasion and internal moral autonomy is noted by Abbot (2007: 275–279), Dostal (1980: 232), Garsten (2006: 87–88), and IJsseling (1976: 84–88).   2 For more on the epistemological critique of rhetoric, see also pp. 139–42.   3 (2012: 314, 321–325).  4 Although the importance of the notion of “exemplarity” for Kant’s aesthetic theory is represented in the literature, the significance of the notion of “examples” for his wider epistemological theory is not. Kant defines examples in the Critique of Judgment as the hypotyposis or exhibition (Darstellung) of empirical concepts in empirical intuitions (5:351). Hence examples are concrete objects

Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric  117 that exhibit (instantiate, embody, exemplify) determinate concepts. The placement of examples in Kant’s wider account of hypotyposis is involved, and the implications for his theory of judgment or intentionality are extensive, such that I cannot directly pursue them here. (See also Chapter 2, notes 8 (p. 66) and 60 (p. 69).   5 (2011: 426). Interested readers might also consult Stroud’s full-length treatment of Kant and the Promise of Rhetoric (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014), which contains a chapter on examples but which appeared in print too late to be integrated into this chapter.  6 Ibid. (426–427).   7 See Chapter 6, especially pp. 158–9 and 162–6.   8 It is a topic in its own right to show that Kant’s condemnation of rhetoric in the logical or theoretical domains turns heavily on the emptiness of mere thought and “idle chatter” (“Geschwätz”) that divorces the use of concepts from their intuitive, experiential content. I return to the notion of Geschwätz in Chapter 5, pp. 140–2.   9 This reading of Kant is contested vigorously by “non-conceptualist” interpretations, and in particular by those who see Kant’s distinction in the Logic (e.g. 9: 64-5) between “acquaintance” (kennen) and “cognition” (erkennen) as the site of an intelligible distinction between animal sensation and human thought. See, e.g., Okrent (2006) and McLear (2011). 10 See Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a3–5. For a critique of “additive” theories of perception (wherein rational capacities are added or tacked on to a prior and independent perceptual episode) that draws inspiration from the Aristotelian heritage, see Boyle (2016). See McDowell (2002, 3–50) for an application to Aristotle’s ethics and Pippin (2013) for Kantian implications. Needless to say, my handling here of Aristotle’s placement of rationality in our perceptual faculties is highly gestural, and I am adopting rather than defending a debatable interpretation. So much for an excuse for not pursuing the complex and debated issues in Aristotle’s texts is that at this point I am trying to set the broad parameters within which Aristotle’s rhetoric and Kant’s aesthetics can be seen to share a common view concerning the way our affective dispositions condition or structure our perceptual experience. 11 On the “underdetermination” of sense experience by the transcendental categories, see also p. 181  n. 29. 12 It can appear that the possibility of a “mismatch” between concepts and intuitions entails a “non-conceptualism” about perceptual form. To see that such a conclusion turns on a mischaracterization of what it means for conceptual or linguistic capacities to be operative within sense experience, it is important to see this chapter as a variation on a theme running throughout the book: human rational faculties are at work not simply in the subsumption of discrete intuitions under determinate concepts but as a particular form of receptivity or an orientation towards the world. 13 The phrase comes from Brandom (1998: 615). 14 Although we can certainly quarrel (“streiten”) about which judgments are poor, we cannot solve the matter by appeal to definitions alone—a procedure Kant calls “disputing”. The quarreling/disputing distinction is the topic of the following chapter. As we will see, Kant does believe that we actually can rationally resolve such “quarrels”, although the grounds for doing so will have more in common with traditional rhetoric than with logic, appealing as they do to a shared affective sensibility. 15 Quoted in Skinner (1990: 6). On the history of the concept of paradiastole, see Skinner (1990: 4–13).

118  Kantian Judgment and Aristotelian Rhetoric 16 The question of an object’s salience or disposition by which it is discerned from its contextual background falls generally in the neighborhood of what Kant calls the “mode” of an object. See pp. 81–7. 17 On the function of rhetoric to put the audience in a “frame of mind”, see 1354b. 18 The term “extra-conceptual” is placed here in scare-quotes to separate the narrower sense of “conceptual” whereby empirical judgments subsume empirical intuitions under determinate concepts from the wider sense of “conceptual” according to which the faculty of concepts, as a form of perception, orients a rational disposition towards the world. In the remainder of this chapter, I use the term “extra-conceptual” in the narrower sense of “extra-determinative”, but a wider theme of the book is that such a view is by no means incompatible with (in fact, actually requires) “conceptualism” in the wider sense. 19 The argument of the “Orientation” essay is intended to demonstrate how a familiar point of reference can orient one to the world as a whole, but I argue in Chapter 7 that the reverse dependence also holds: without a prior orientation in the whole, the orienting object could not function as a point of reference. 20 “Having the World in View” is the title of John McDowell’s 1997 Woodbridge lectures. On the holistic constraint in Kant, see McDowell (1998: 435–436, 464–465). 21 Other passages that appear to reject the objectivity of aesthetic judgment include 5:203, 215, 228, and 20:223. For further discussion of these passages, see pp. 160–1. 22 Recall, however, that some scholars see talk of “feeling” within judgment in Kant as a placeholder for a non-discursive, reflective “sense” of things with no commitment to any thick sense of the affects (pp. 87–9 and p. 95 n. 27). While the analogy with Aristotle’s pathē in this chapter is supposed to make such “deflationary” readings non-compulsory, the following chapters (especially the concluding discussions of each) mean to elaborate an alternative to such a view, e.g., pp. 149–51, 176–80, and 200–7. 23 Various treatments of the role of the pathē in Aristotle’s rhetoric include Walker, Smith, Rorty, Garver, and Fortenbaugh. Also compare the stoical position concerning the relation between judgment and emotion to that of Barrie Falk as discussed on pp. 202–4. 24 For an overview of the variety of explanations offered for the apparent inconsistency in the text, see Walker (2002: 75). 25 I explore the several logically possible meanings of the phrase “aesthetic judgment”, and the corresponding relations between the judgmental and affective elements, in Chapter 6. For interpretations of Kant that parallel the readings of Aristotle presented here, see especially pp. 162–4. 26 I had discussed this passage (pp. 85–6) in terms of the various “manners” or “modes” of presenting an object. Here I am trying to draw out similarities with Aristotle’s notion of pathos, and (p. 153 n. 16) I compare it to Hume and Rousseau’s use of “disposition”.

5 Kantian Quarrels Hume, Rousseau, and the Making of Aesthetic Discourse

Introduction It requires a fresh look at the infamous quarrel between Hume and Rousseau to see that there are deep philosophical issues at stake when Kant unceremoniously claims in a backwater passage of the Critique of Judgment that there is a specifiable domain of rational discourse appropriate for aesthetic judgments. Kant calls this domain of aesthetic discourse “streiten”, which is fairly translated as “quarreling”; but the words “streiten” and “Streit” also connote a fight in the sense of a heated argument or even a brawl—the kind of thing to which one resorts when rational, discursive, and diplomatic procedures to resolve a dispute come up short but when the issue at hand is too important to remain unsettled. Unlike the anomie of a free-for-all, however, Kant clearly wants to distinguish streiten from the brute imposition of superior force. In other words, Kant intends the Streit to operate within a distinctively normative arena. He does not appear, however, to specify what normative constraints govern the tenuous middle ground between the rational force of the better argument and the irrational force of the stronger party. Instead, the passage that introduces the notion of “streiten” negatively demarcates what the operative conditions regulating a quarrel about taste are not: There is no disputing about taste . . . [because] the basis determining a judgment of taste . . . cannot be brought to determinate concepts; and hence even proofs do not allow us to decide anything about such a judgment, although we can certainly quarrel about it, and rightly so . . . [And] if it is granted that we can quarrel about something, then there must be some hope for us to arrive at agreement about it, and so we must be able to count on the judgment’s having bases that do not have merely private validity and hence are not merely subjective. (5:338) There is an air of conflict in the very notion of a quarrel: such an activity is normative insofar as it refers to a basis of determination that is not private,

120  Kantian Quarrels and yet the purportedly “not merely subjective” basis of such judgments does not admit of proofs or even of determinate concepts of the kind that can be brought to debate in a verbal dispute. But on what possible other basis could there even “be some hope for us to arrive at agreement”? Thesis & Methodology The interpretive cum philosophical argument of this chapter is that the outstanding “agreement” that would bring a quarrel to resolution is one and the same with what Kant earlier in the third Critique calls the “demand of reason to produce such an agreement in the way we sense (eine Vernunftforderung . . . eine solche Einhelligkeit der Sinnesart hervorzubringen)”. (5:240) The Kantian proposition, I suggest, is that such quarrels are possible because the normative domain—the realm of the “ought” in which we place rational demands upon one another—extends beyond agreement according to determinate concepts and includes “agreement in the way we sense”. But Kant himself was quite aware that this position taken out of context would sound foolish. [E]veryone acknowledges that his judgment, which he bases on a private feeling . . . is by the same token confined to his own person. Hence, if he says that canary wine is agreeable he is quite content if someone else corrects his terms and reminds him to say instead: It is agreeable to me . . . . It would be foolish if we quarreled about such differences with the intention of censuring another’s judgment as incorrect . . . . (Darüber in der Absicht zu streiten, um das Urtheil anderer . . . für unrichtig zu schelten, wäre Thorheit). (5:212) Surely part of the reason it appears foolish to censure the feelings of others is that the term “feeling”, like that of “affect” and “sense”, is commonly used to refer to the entire range of ways in which we are passive in respect to the world; and so the terms can be taken to mean anything from the mere receptivity of external sense stimuli all the way to full-fledged emotion. And yet, despite the notoriously amorphous breadth of meanings that terms like “affect” can connote, it can still appear a category mistake to think there can be any overlap between the domains of passivity, that which happens to one, and the normative, that for which one actively assumes responsibility.1 Nevertheless, that active responsibility for passive affectivity is exactly what Kant expects when he speaks of a distinctively aesthetic “ought i.e., the objective necessity that everyone’s feeling flow along with the particular feeling of each other person (das Sollen, d. i. die objective Nothwendigkeit des Zusammenfließens des Gefühls von jedermann mit jedes seinem besondern)” (5:240). Given that demonstrating good aesthetic taste requires

Kantian Quarrels  121 assuming responsibility for what one passively undergoes, it is not, then, entirely inappropriate that Kant puts the domain of beauty and refined taste in the same arena as a raucous brawl: after all, a champion boxer wins a match not only by actively delivering blows upon his or her challenger but also by withstanding the opponent, having mastered the skill of taking a hit. Redoublement Although entering into an argument in order to defend the claim that (some) affectivity falls within the domain of the normative and hence rational certainly appears philosophically foolish from the outside, this is a fight from which Kant won’t back down: “we can certainly quarrel about [taste], and rightly so [mit recht]” (5:338). Kant’s conviction that it is rational to expect “agreement in the way we sense” is emboldened in no small part because he had seen just such a quarrel play out in front of his eyes. In the formative years in which he was conceiving of a third Critique and developing a technical notion of “quarreling” as a normative arena between discursive proof and physical force, Kant was witness to an extraordinary but now long forgotten quarrel between Hume and Rousseau concerning the intersection of three related issues: (1) Affectivity—how we are passive in respect to the world; (2) Normativity—the extent to which one is responsible for how he is passive in respect to the world; (3) Discursivity—the possibilities and limits of conceptual speech to ­address and place exhortative demands upon the way in which another is passively struck or otherwise affected by the world. The wager of this chapter is that taking a focused look at the neglected aesthetic issues at play in the quarrel between Hume and Rousseau as a case study in the relation between affectivity and normativity will, as a matter of methodology, provide a convenient means to stage the scope of the problem and explore the philosophical options available to Kant to respond. As an opening shot, I demonstrate in the first part of this chapter that if posing the question of the normativity of affect at the limits of discourse is sheer foolishness, it is, at the very least, a folie à trois.

The Quarrel between Hume and Rousseau Strange Historical Circumstances Surely part of the reason why the aesthetic chapter of the infamous quarrel between Hume and Rousseau has been lost to history can be chalked up to rather unusual historical circumstances, not the least of which is that such a

122  Kantian Quarrels debate did not, strictly speaking, actually happen. That is to say, the intervention between them is most clearly visible in positions laid out in texts that the other could not have seen, at least in published form, since those texts only appeared in print several years after both had died. The overlap and contrast between their considered positions would have been available only to an interested and careful reader of each who was himself deeply involved in the triangle of issues at hand. Rousseau’s most sustained reflection on the common ground between linguistic discourse and aesthetic experience occurs in the Essay on the Origins of Languages (whose full title continues: “in which Something is said about Melody and Musical Imitation”). Although there is no direct historical evidence that Kant read the “Essay”, it strains belief to explain how else Kant’s description of the relationship between language and music in §53 of the third Critique reads as little more than a German translation of key Rousseauian claims.2 The “Essay”, which argues for affective determinants of language, was published in 1781, three years after Rousseau’s death and at a crucial moment in the development of many key concepts in Kant’s third Critique. The same year also saw the appearance of two different German translations of Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Religion, both of which Kant is known to have possessed.3 It is an uncanny historical coincidence that the composition of Hume’s Dialogues parallels Rousseau’s “Essay”: each had been drafted in the 1750s, reworked and revised throughout the author’s life, withheld from publication until after his death, and appeared in print around 1781. Each would have been read by Kant at a decisive moment in the construction of the third Critique, and an appreciation of each is necessary to fill in Kant’s suggestive but enthymematic notion of “streiten”. Another strange fact of intellectual history is that while Rousseau’s position on the relation between affection, art, and speech plays a decisive role in Hume’s Dialogues, this role has not been recorded in the scholarly literature.4 This failure of recognition occurs in part because of yet another unusual circumstance. The debate between Hume and Rousseau transpires under the guise of fictional characters when Cleanthes of Hume’s Dialogues (otherwise a spokesman for Clarke’s Newtonian Deism) doubles at two crucial moments for the Savoyard Vicar of Rousseau’s Emile. It is under the cover of artful contrivance that Hume and Rousseau quarrel over the legitimacy and philosophical significance of art. That Hume is Engaging Rousseau That Hume takes Rousseau as his target at key moments in the Dialogues is unmistakable provided that one is alert to their overlapping interest in sentiment, art, speech, and the way all of those issues bear on religious belief. One passage in the Dialogues is taken out of the mouth of the Savoyard Vicar, as a comparison of the two texts makes plain:

Kantian Quarrels  123 Parallel Passages in Part III Hume’s Cleanthes: The declared profession of every reasonable skeptic is only to reject abstruse, remote, and refined arguments; to adhere to common sense and the plain instincts of nature; and to assent, whenever any reasons strike him with so full a force that he cannot, without the greatest violence, prevent it. Now the arguments for natural religion are plainly of this kind; and nothing but the most perverse, obstinate metaphysics can reject them. Consider, anatomize the eye; survey its structure and contrivance, and tell me, from your own feeling, if the idea of a contriver does not immediately flow in upon you with a force like that of sensation. The most obvious conclusion, surely, is in favor of design; and it requires time, reflection, and study, to summon up those frivolous though abstruse objections which can support infidelity (455).

Rousseau’s Savoyard Vicar: Therefore, taking the love of truth as my whole philosophy, and as my whole method an easy and simple rule that exempts me from the vain subtlety of arguments, I pick up again on the basis of this rule the examination of the knowledge that interests me. I am resolved to accept as evident all knowledge to which in the sincerity of my heart I cannot refuse my consent. Let us compare the particular ends, the means, the ordered relations of every kind. Then let us listen to our inner sentiment. What healthy mind can refuse its testimony? To which unprejudiced eye does the sensible order not proclaim a supreme intelligence; . . . how will you divest me of that involuntary sentiment. and how many sophisms must be piled up before it is impossible to recognize the harmony of the beings and the admirable concurrences of each piece in the preservation of the others (429, 436)?

In these parallel passages, both Cleanthes and the Savoyard Vicar (1) reject abstract reasoning and accept only those claims that strike them as immediately true, (2) attest that the teleological, design argument is one such claim, and (3) assert that it requires considerable sophistry to bring such convictions into question. In the passage immediately after the Vicar’s profession, he goes on to consider the implausibility of the Aeneid having any causal origin other than rational intention. In the passage immediately prior to Cleanthes’s argument, he had just considered whether the Aeneid could have proceeded from anything other than thought and design. Although there is scant extra-textual evidence that Hume is directly responding to Rousseau, it is ironic that the wider philosophical issue at stake in each passage is whether the appearance of intentional order could have been caused by sheer coincidence. The Moral Argument of Part XII That the connection between Cleanthes and the Savoyard Vicar is, in fact, intentional is reinforced when the vexing question of affection, language,

124  Kantian Quarrels art, and their relation to religious belief reappears in the final chapter of the Dialogues. After Hume, in the guise of Philo, finally musters the words to deflate Cleanthes’s Rousseauian conviction that one cannot be talked out of the way appearances strike his senses or the manner in which sentiments grip his heart, Cleanthes immediately shifts from an aesthetic to a moral and political defense of religion. The outlines of Cleanthes’s final argument that something akin to religious belief is a necessary condition of moral and civic duty (538–543) are clearly recognizable Rousseauian positions as espoused not only in the “Savoyard Vicar” but also in the Second Discourse, the Social Contract, and the “Government of Poland”.5 What is at Stake Strike It is not too far out of character for Cleanthes, who otherwise speaks for Newton and Clarke, to take on the persona of Rousseau since the “Savoyard Vicar” explicitly adopts the design argument of “the illustrious Clarke” and promotes it as “at the same time so striking, so luminous, so simple” (429). The Vicar later reasserts that “the beauty of the order will strike all the powers of our soul” (446), just as he had earlier placed the argument upon premises whose “truth strikes me and to which I am forced to acquiesce” (429). In the passage at the head of Part XII, when the Dialogues again take on the spirit of Rousseau, Philo uses the notion of “striking” four separate times, for example, “The comparison of the universe to a machine of human contrivance, is so obvious and natural, and is justified by so many instances of order and design in Nature, that it must immediately strike all unprejudiced apprehensions, and procure universal approbation” (583). An inability to see that Hume is quite deliberately invoking Rousseau might be a consequence of the failure to appreciate why the notion of “striking” is so important to each of them. Immediacy The primary goal of Hume’s Dialogues is to test the rational merits of the argument from design and with it the Enlightenment conviction that religious belief can be rationally derived from the observable order of the universe. However, even assuming that Hume decisively undermines the rational warrants of the a posteriori design arguments advocated by Newton and Clarke, the collateral damage done to religious belief itself would be rather limited and beside the point if it can be demonstrated that the credentials of religious belief derive from some other grounds altogether. Hence the foothold for the Savoyard Vicar’s position: religious belief, like our fundamental orientation to the physical world itself, is grounded not in reason at all but rather in sense. A central stratagem of the Vicar’s argument

Kantian Quarrels  125 is to liken the religious convictions of the inner sentiments of the heart to the brute deliverances of the sense organs insofar as neither is built upon rational inferences but concern rather the way one is immediately “struck”.6 It is thus fair to conclude that Hume is deliberately invoking the spirit of Rousseau by the repeated use of the notion of “striking” at those key moments in the Dialogues when the grounds for religious belief shift away from mediated, rational inferences to the immediacy of feeling, sentiment, and sensation, as in the passage quoted above: “Consider, anatomize the eye; survey its structure and contrivance, and tell me, from your own feeling, if the idea of a contriver does not immediately flow in upon you with a force like that of sensation”. According to Cleanthes’s Rousseauian position, the design-like appearance of the natural world does not even purport to be a valid conclusion derived from rational inferences but is part and parcel of how we are passively struck by the world. Thus the idea of intentional order “immediately flow[s] in” upon a viewer “with a force like . . . sensation”; the appearance of order “strike[s] him with so full a force that he cannot . . . prevent it”. Hume is well aware that the most challenging response to Philo’s having undermined the rational inferences that underwrite the argument from design is Rousseau’s counter that the core experience of sentiment and conscience on which religious belief is based is not subject to rational critique because it is not rationally mediated but is rather immediate, like a “plain instinct of nature”.7 Exculpability It follows from Rousseau’s argument from sincerity that since religious conviction like sense perception is something that happens to one, passively, rather than something one actively performs, then one’s foundational beliefs can at most be confessed, but they cannot be justified. If one’s core beliefs are “forced” upon one, having them is something for which one can neither be praised or blamed nor reasoned into or out of. And it is not exactly news to say that beliefs that are non-optional are simply not up for debate. It has been an explicit philosophical theme at least since Aristotle’s Topics that core beliefs when grounded in immediate sensation or feeling appear to lie outside of the domain of discursive rationality and thus elude criticism and appeal: Not every problem, nor every thesis, should be examined (ἑπισκοπεῑν), but only one which might puzzle one of those who need argument (λὀγου δεμἐνων), not punishment or perception (κολάσεως ἥ αίσθἠσεως). For people who are puzzled to know whether one ought to honor the gods and love one’s parents or not need punishment (κολάσεως), while those who are puzzled to know whether snow is white or not need perception (αίσθἠσεως). [And these] involve difficulties too great for the art of the trainer. (A 11, 105 a 5)

126  Kantian Quarrels Here Aristotle expresses the thought that, if language picks up downstream from prior immediate experiences like sense perception (the whiteness of snow) or existential commitments (honoring one’s parents), then there is a domain of experience that is simply beyond the reach of rational criticism and appeal. False beliefs of this order are countered not by rational argument but either by opening one’s eyes or a “quick smack upside the head”.8 Silence Rousseau’s Vicar consistently draws out the implication that whereof one cannot speak, one has the right to remain silent: “I do not want to argue with you or even attempt to convince you. It is enough for me to reveal to you” (425); “It would be vain to try to use reason to destroy this sentiment in me. It is stronger than any evidence. One might just as well try to prove to me that I do not exist” (432); “They can talk to me all they want about combination and chance. Of what use is it to you to reduce me to silence if you cannot lead me to persuasion, and how will you take away from me the involuntary sentiment that always gives you lie in spite of myself?” (436); “One may very well argue with me about this; but I sense it, and this sentiment that speaks to me is stronger than the reason combating it” (441). The spirit of Rousseau’s principled refusal to enter into verbal disputes about what he sees and values reappears in Kant’s imagery of the young poet who “cannot be brought to abandon his persuasion that his poem is beautiful, neither by the judgment of his audience nor by that of his friends” (5:282). As much as Kant reprimands the young poet, there is still something the poet seems to get right: If someone does not find a building, a view, or a poem beautiful, then, first, he will refuse to let even a hundred voices, all praising it highly, prod him into approving it inwardly . . . If someone reads me his poem, or takes me to a play that in the end I simply cannot find to my taste . . . I shall stop my ears, shall refuse to listen to reasons and arguments, and shall sooner assume that those rules of the critics are false, or at least do not apply in the present case . . . for it is meant to be a judgment of taste, and not one of the understanding or reason. (5:284–285) And Hume too seems to fall silently in line. It is no coincidence that after hearing Cleanthes’s Rousseauian argument in Book III Hume writes that “Philo was a little embarrassed and confounded . . . while he hesitated in delivering an answer, [and] luckily for him, Demea broke in upon the discourse and saved his countenance” (456). Even though Hume’s Philo disagrees with Cleanthes’s Rousseauian conclusions, he appears to acquiesce in the Rousseauian premise that religious belief like sheer sense perception is

Kantian Quarrels  127 an immediate force akin to a “plain instinct of nature” and thus beyond the reach of discursive, rational appeal. Conclusion Thus Hume, Rousseau, and Kant appear to unite in silent agreement. There is nothing to say concerning those differences that occur in that domain of human experience in which we are fundamentally passive in respect to the world—sensations, appearances, tastes, and core existential values force themselves on us and are thus not something for which we can be praised or blamed. As Rousseau insists in the Confessions, criticizing him on this score is akin to blaming the victim. While Rousseau’s confessional tone is dramatic and defiant like Luther at the Diet of Worms—“Here I stand. I can do no other . . . May God help me. Amen”.—Hume responds with a reticent shrug of the shoulders like Wittgenstein after him—“If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: ‘This is simply what I do.’ ” (§217) Differences of disposition and tone aside, the core point is the same: when it comes to what we see and what we value, there is nothing to be gained by arguing.

The Aesthetic Discourse of Concord The insight motivating this chapter is that while Hume, Rousseau, and Kant each hold a thoroughly disillusioned view of the limits of rational ­discourse—and thus concede the problem to which silence is a response—all three reject the implication that there is nothing else to say in the face of differences in perception and value. Hume and Rousseau, each in his own probing way, criticize an exclusively conceptual standard of discourse and find in aesthetics an alternative ground for rational consent (parts 1 and 2 below). And it is with those tentative moves before him that Kant comes to appropriate the notion of “streiten” as a means to formalize the idea of a realm of aesthetic discourse which could establish “agreement in the way we sense” (part 3). Hume From Religion to Art “Embarrassed and confounded” by Cleanthes’s prospect that perception and value outstrip the reach of discourse and debate, a diffident Philo “hesitated in delivering an answer” at the end of Part III of the Dialogues. But a hesitant silence is not Philo’s final answer. The question of the limits of discourse returns at the head of Part XII, and this time a confident Philo is ready with a long disquisition that “delivers” his considered “answer” to Cleanthes. It might otherwise be hard to see how the series of passages in the

128  Kantian Quarrels first half of Part XII, which move obliquely between questions of religion, sense perception, and aesthetics, are meant to be Philo’s response to Cleanthes’s Rousseauian challenge unless it is noticed that such a shift in topics is a deliberate repetition of Cleanthes’s earlier shift in attention from religion to art in Part III. In each case, the move to a discussion of art in the midst of a religious controversy is not non sequitur because the argument begins from a perceived “similarity of the works of nature to those of art” (452). It is on the analogy of the order of the world to a work of art that aesthetics becomes a proxy ground to work through arguments ostensibly concerning religion. Thus in Part III after what would otherwise have been a tangential discussion concerning how one perceives works of art, Cleanthes explicitly insists that “the arguments for natural religion are plainly of this kind”; and again in Part XII after Philo raises the question of how to judge beauty, he too emphasizes that “the dispute concerning theism is of this nature”. One immediate consequence of the analogy between world and artwork is that the philosophical issues concerning religion are not sui generis but are rather of a “kind” or “nature” that also includes aesthetics. Arguments of This “Kind” Hume is quite clear that what distinguishes arguments of this “kind” concerns their inability to be resolved by discursive procedures. Philo propounds, uninterrupted by Cleanthes: All men of sound reason are disgusted with verbal disputes which abound so much in philosophical and theological inquiries, and it is found that the only remedy for this abuse must arise from clear definitions, from the precision of those ideas which enter into any argument, and from the strict and uniform use of those terms which are employed. But there is a species of controversy which, from the very nature of language and of human ideas, is involved in perpetual ambiguity, and can never, by any precaution or any definitions, be able to reach a reasonable certainty or precision. These are controversies concerning the degrees of any quality or circumstance. Men may argue to all eternity whether Hannibal be a great, or a very great, or a superlatively great man, what degrees of beauty Cleopatra possessed, what epithet of praise Livy or Thucydides is entitled to, without bringing the controversy to any determination. The disputants may here agree in their sense and differ in their terms, or vice versa, yet may never be able to define their terms so as to enter into each other’s meaning: Because the degrees of these qualities are not, like quantity or number, susceptible of any exact mensuration, which may be the standard in the controversy. That the dispute concerning theism is of this nature, and consequently is merely verbal, or, perhaps, if possible, still more incurably ambiguous, will appear upon the slightest inquiry . . . . Will you quarrel, Gentlemen,

Kantian Quarrels  129 about the degrees, and enter into a controversy which admits not of any precise meaning, nor consequently of any determination? (536) Philo certainly leads his audience to believe that the question ought to be answered in the negative: no, one should not quarrel about that which does not admit of precise determination. In Part III Hume had already dismissed religious and aesthetic disputes from the realm of “serious argument and philosophy” to the extent that they were resistant to a standard of proof that could be adjudicated through the clear definition and the consistent use of terms. Just as the arguments for theism appear “contradictory to the principles of logic” so too “[s]ome beauties in writing . . . seem contrary to rules, and . . . gain the affections and animate the imagination in opposition to all the precepts of criticism” (455–456). That is, both religion and art appeal to standards that not only are “not . . . susceptible of any exact mensuration” but, moreover, contradict and oppose any such standards. Arguments of this “nature” are “incurably ambiguous” because “the real point of controversy” lies not at the level of the terms one employs but in the nature of his “sense”, and thus no amount of conceptual rigor can guarantee that disputants “enter into each other’s meanings”. So what, Philo asks, can quarreling about such matters possibly accomplish? Aesthetic Disputes If it follows that there is nothing more to say concerning religious disputes whose “real point of controversy” lies in “sense”, then Hume’s so-named “Dialogues” would end, in fact, in silence—a quietism of the philosophical, therapeutic kind. But, again, the problem that generates the religious dispute is not sui generis but is of a “kind” that includes aesthetics. We know, however, that when it comes to art, silence is not Hume’s final answer, but rather he is dedicated to identifying a distinctively aesthetic “Standard of Taste”. In fact, a passage from Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste” of 1757 traverses so many of the themes of Part XII of the Dialogues that it might be considered its ur-form: The sentiments of men often differ with regard to beauty and deformity of all kinds, even while their general discourse is the same. There are certain terms in every language, that import blame, and others praise; and all men, who use the same tongue, must agree in their application of them. Every voice is united in applauding elegance, propriety, simplicity, spirit in writing; and in blaming fustian, affectation, coldness and a false brilliancy: But when critics come to particulars, this seeming unanimity vanishes; and it is found, that they had affixed a very different meaning to their expressions. In all matters of opinion and science, the case is opposite: The difference among men is there oftener found

130  Kantian Quarrels to lie in generals than in particulars; and to be less in reality than in appearance. An explanation of the terms commonly ends the controversy; and the disputants are surprised to find, that they had been quarreling, while at bottom they agreed in their judgment. (256–257) The problem concerning the nature of discourse about religion in the ­Dialogues—that the nature of the dispute turns on something other than the terms employed—is of the same “kind” as the problem concerning aesthetic discourse in the “Standard of Taste”. And the answer in each case is also the same. Irregular Arguments In the Dialogues an exasperated Cleanthes suggests that Philo’s “abstruse cavils” against religious arguments are similar to an aesthetic dispute in that, although neither can be refuted by “serious argument and philosophy”, they are, however, subject to “arguments of a like irregular nature” (456). What makes such arguments “irregular” is that those differences that are grounded not in general principles but in an extra-conceptual sense “ought to be refuted . . . by illustrations, examples, and instances”. Likewise, in the “Taste” essay Hume requires art critics to “come to particulars” in order to discover that “they had affixed very different meanings” to common terms. In the case of aesthetics, however, the mere discovery that critics may agree in their terms but differ in their sense is not the end of a dispute but just the beginning. The very idea of a “Standard of Taste” is that one can “pronounce without scruple the sentiment of these . . . critics to be absurd and ridiculous” (261). That is to say, for Hume aesthetic discourse not only addresses itself to one’s “sentiment” but, moreover, takes the distinctly normative form of criticizing the sense of another as wrong and blamable. Thus the effort of the essay is to locate a “true standard of taste” in the joint verdict of critics who come to share a “strong sense” and who are united in “delicate sentiment” (273). In aesthetic discourse, then, it is not “clear definitions” or “exact mensuration” but rather a shared sense or sentiment that provides the normative “standard of taste”. Thus, when Philo rhetorically asks “Will you quarrel, Gentlemen, about . . . a controversy which admits not of any precise meaning, nor consequently of any determination?” Hume’s considered answer is decidedly “yes”. Rousseau Read with an eye to the similarity between Hume’s approach to “irregular arguments” concerning art and religion, it becomes apparent that disputes that cannot be settled by defining terms need not necessarily withdraw into confounded silence. Nevertheless, reconstructing the norms that govern

Kantian Quarrels  131 Hume’s largely implicit account of such “irregular arguments” would require a careful interpretation of the “Standard of Taste” essay and considerable speculation about the reasonability and defeasibility of the extraconceptual “inclinations” (539) and “dispositions” (427–428, 545) that appear in Parts I and XII of the Dialogues, bookending Philo’s contributions. The same speculation and reconstruction is not required of Rousseau. The “Essay on the Origins of Languages” works out at length a critique of that attitude expressed by Philo that it is solely through clear definitions, the precision of ideas, and strict and uniform use of terms that it becomes possible for disputants to “enter into each other’s meaning”. That is because, according to Rousseau, meaning is communicated first and foremost not by defining shared concepts but by establishing shared affects or sentiments. Overview of Rousseau’s Essay Hume is not the only one to have accused Rousseau of having a flair for the outlandish, and it is initially not easy to see how Rousseau could actually argue for a sweeping claim like, “as enlightenment spreads, language changes in character; it becomes more precise and less passionate; it substitutes ideas for sentiments, it no longer speaks to the heart but to the reason” (256). But the rhetorical strategy of Rousseau’s “Essay” is to reverse the burden of proof by offering a genealogical account of language in which speech and concepts are seen to be later developments of a prior affective experience of attuning the passions through the tonal character of voice. Rousseau’s turn of thought posits the idea of a “common sense”, as Kant put it, not as “only the idea of an ability yet to be acquired” in the future but rather as “an original and natural ability” that can be witnessed in our past (5:240).9 In that case, all language itself would have originally been a form of aesthetic discourse and all agreement would have been “agreement in the way we sense”. The question that the “Essay” takes itself to address, then, is not how conceptual language could ever come to communicate affective sensibility but rather how in formal argumentation language became divested from its prior affective grounding. The Argument of Rousseau’s Essay Formal Argument, Written From a Rousseauian perspective it is not at all coincidental that Hume’s socalled “Dialogues” are not actually dialogues in the sense of an open-ended and spoken conversation between several parties; rather the Dialogues, like Rousseau’s “Essay”, is a written work. Rousseau would be the first to insist that the standards of what Hume would call “serious argument and philosophy” require the replacement of the extra-conceptual, tonal features of spoken language by the formal rules of written language. Thus, as “accent

132  Kantian Quarrels dies out, articulation spreads, language becomes more exact, clearer”. (256) This advance in clarity and precision, however, comes at a cost. Writing, which might be expected to fix language, is precisely what adulterates it; it changes not its words but its genius [pas les mots, mais le génie]; it substitutes precision for expressiveness . . . . In writing one is forced to use every word in conformity with common usage; but a speaker alters meanings by his tone of voice. (260) According to Hume, disputants may fail to “enter into each other’s meaning” because, while they agree in their terms, they differ in their sense. Rousseau fundamentally agrees, stating that one and the same “mot” can convey an entirely different “génie”, but he disputes the suggestion that agreement in terms is the only, or even primary, means of establishing consensus since “a speaker alters meanings by his tone of voice”. Thus, for Rousseau, the primary agent of meaning is not the definition of the terms but their génie, their spirit or sense, which is indicated by tone. While writing can formalize the definition of a term, it is the tonal nature of speech that is uniquely suited to communicate its sense: “One conveys one’s sentiments in speaking, and one’s ideas in writing” (262). STRATEGIC, ALETHIC USES OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION

The “Essay” means to offer a genealogical argument in support of the position that there is a loss of meaning when language is expressed in visual symbols rather than in tonal speech. A key element of that argument is to show that vocal language has a distinct origin (fills a distinctly different need) as compared to visual language, which includes writing but also gesture. To highlight this difference Rousseau emphasizes that while humans are not the only animals with sophisticated means of communication, they are the only animals with speech: Here, it seems to me, is a most distinctive difference. Those among them that work and live together, Beavers, ants, bees, have some natural language for communicating with one another, I have no doubt about it. There is even reason to believe that the language of Beavers and that of ants is gestural and speaks only to the eyes. (252) Rousseau need not be taken to deny that some animals use vocal signals to communicate (the songs of birds or cries of wolves); his point rather is to emphasize that, when it comes to humans, language as spoken is neither necessary nor even particularly advantageous for satisfying physical needs: “Fruit does not shrink from our grasp, one can eat it without speaking, one

Kantian Quarrels  133 stalks the prey one means to devour in silence” (253). The “Essay” offers a series of examples to cast suspicion on the assumption that vocalized speech must have arisen out of strategic and practical needs, leading to a skeptical conclusion: It is claimed that men invented speech in order to express their needs; this seems to me an untenable opinion. The natural effect of the first needs was to separate men and not to bring them together . . . it would be absurd for the cause of their separation to give rise to the means that unites them. (253) Where it comes to satisfying the physical needs of our animal natures “. . . one speaks much better to the eyes than to the ears” (250). Thus vocalized language holds no distinctive advantage of utility. That is not to say, however, that spoken language does not hold some advantage of a different kind. DISTINCTIVE ORIGIN OF SPEECH

While Rousseau does conclude, on the one hand, that “if we had never had any but physical needs, we might very well never have spoken and yet have understood one another perfectly by means of the language of gesture alone” (251), on the other hand, he insists that “when it is a question of moving the heart and inflaming the passions, it is an entirely different matter” (250). Thus for Rousseau spoken language has a distinctive origin; it addresses a specific kind of need: “it clearly follows that the origin of [spoken] languages is not due to men’s first [physical] needs . . . To what may this origin then be due? To the moral needs, the passions” (253). A key claim, then, of the “Essay” is that the original need for, and distinct advantage of, vocalized language can be clearly traced to the passionate, affective side of human experience. “Not hunger nor thirst, but love, hatred, pity, anger wrung their first voices from them” (253). The “Essay” does not merely assert that speech arises out of passion, not utility, but presses a positive case for a privileged relation between the passions and “voix”, Together with the first voices [voix] were formed either the first articulations or the first sounds, depending on the kind of passion that dictated them. Anger wrests [from us] threatening cries which the tone and the palate articulate; but the voice of tenderness is gentler, it is modulated by the glottis, and this voice becomes a sound . . . Thus . . . passion rouses all of the [vocal] organs to speech, and adorns the voice with their full brilliance. (282)

134  Kantian Quarrels Through an analysis of voice, Rousseau wants to demonstrate that language arises not as a strategic means to satisfy a physical need or to volunteer a fact about the world; rather, primitive vocal utterance is wrung from one, passively and perhaps despite oneself, out of the experience of undergoing passionate affects. At its very core, then, speech is the expression of passion. TONE, ACCENT

Rousseau not only traces the communicative function of spoken language to an expression of the passions but also locates its distinctive form in a linguistic mechanism not available to gesture or writing, namely, the “accents”.10 The passions have their gestures, but they also have their accents [accens], and these accents, which cause us to shudder, these accents to which one cannot close one’s ear and which by way of it penetrate to the very depths of the heart, in spite of ourselves convey to it the [e]motions that [they] wring [from us] and cause us to fear. (250–251) Thus it is “accent” (from the Latin “accentus” referring to a “cantus”, a song or a “chant”) that affords spoken language an enchanting, song-like quality; and it is the inherently musical nature of the voice that gives speech a communicative advantage over gesture and writing insofar as it is uniquely suited to express the sentiments: “By imitating the inflections of the voice, melody expresses plaints, cries of suffering or of joy, threats, moans; all the vocal signs of the passions fall within its province” (287). While Rousseau has no need to deny that there are some respects in which a formal, symbolic, or logical language is necessary and superior to speech, there are other respects in which conceptual determination is at a communicative disadvantage. A language that only defines terms “is therefore in possession of only half its resources; it conveys ideas, it is true, but in order to convey sentiments . . . it still needs rhythm and sonority [sons]” (282). PERSUASIVE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE

Rousseau’s leading historical claim is that the original unit of speech is not concept but accent, hence, “the oldest invented words . . . were songlike and passionate before they were plain and methodical” (253). But, much like the historical methodology of the second Discourse, the claim about historical origins is itself employed in the service of assessing the possibilities of the present.11 Thus, the question of its factual accuracy aside, the philosophical advantage of the historical narrative is to “[l]et us conclude that visible signs make for more accurate imitation, but that interest is more effectively aroused by sounds” (251).12 It is the “interest arousing” capacity of speech that primarily interests Rousseau and to which the “Essay” repeatedly

Kantian Quarrels  135 draws attention by the various exploitations of the term “voix”, a word that literally means “voice” but is also used for a persuasive “appeal”. The upshot of Rousseau’s historiography, then, is to establish that the primary capacity of speech, in rhetorical terms, is not forensic (to establish facts) but is rather deliberative (to encourage or dissuade) and epideictic (to assign praise or blame). In other words, it is because of its tie to the affects that the specific vocation of speech is not to “convince” the head but to “persuade” the heart.13 “WOO” AND “WHOA”

A visual, written, or formal language may very well be equipped to assert, define, ostend, reveal, and disclose, but it is language as accented and enchanting that can appeal, implore, threaten, and persuade. “[I]n order to move a young heart, to repulse an unjust aggressor, nature dictates accents, cries, plaints”. (253) As language becomes formalized it develops the capacity to define terms and establish facts, still from a Rousseauian perspective the original function of speech is to offer an inviting woo to “a young heart” or issue a threatening whoa to an “unjust aggressor”. The strategic advantage of discourse lies, so to speak, not in proving and showing but in “wooing” and “whoaing”. Rousseau’s big claim, then, is that voice can communicate something that gesture and visual sign cannot: not what is the case but what ought to be. It is not true, of course, that one cannot receive a formal invitation in writing; the point rather is that simply issuing a written invitation is a different communicative act than persuading one that she should accept, that the event is worth attending. Likewise, it is not that bodily gestures and displays of size cannot visually communicate a physical threat; but what chest puffing alone cannot indicate is one’s actual level of willingness to execute the attack. For example, two dogs circling around a prized bone might be observed to bump hips as a way to gauge their respective sizes, but they are also heard to growl. The display of size demonstrates an available reserve of physical strength, but that is a different matter than determining how much each values the contested object and therefore just how much of one’s resources one is willing to expend to secure the prize. An erect posture and a show of teeth can display the size of the dog in the fight, but the growl is needed to indicate, as the saying goes, the size of the fight in the dog. In its “whoaing” function, speech has the ability to communicate something about one’s “feelings”. Such speech is “expressivist” not only in the sense that it expresses or makes a public report on what was a private state of mind but also in the sense that it indicates one’s values, one’s level of commitment. It is the “wooing” function of speech, however, which indicates that language is equipped not merely to signal one’s own affective state but to appeal to the affects of another. To “woo” one’s beloved it is not enough to declare one’s availability or even express one’s own desire;

136  Kantian Quarrels rather, seduction requires one to arouse desire in the other. While a threatening “whoa” makes known to another what one values, a seducing “woo” appeals to the other and pleads that there is something that both should value together. Thus seduction is an example of epideictic discourse that establishes that something is praiseworthy precisely by eliciting an “agreement in the way we sense”. In that case, romantic speech is not merely speech about the affects but is rather speech in which affect is the medium by which consensus is reached; in other words, affect belongs not just to the content but also to the form of aesthetic discourse. The Philosophical Upshot of Rousseau’s Philosophy of Music Rousseau’s claim about the persuasive function of tonal language can be seen to turn on the rather substantive but controversial claim that affective states of mind—passions, moods, dispositions, attitudes, orientations—can themselves be communicated. Whether or not it amounts to what Hume calls “serious argument and philosophy”, Rousseau at least reveals his philosophy of mind in his philosophy of music. Like Hume and Kant, it is when Rousseau turns to aesthetic considerations that his fundamental philosophical commitments are most exposed. The Rousseauian position is that the moving experience of music reveals how the affects or sentiments play a quasi-representational (or para-representational) role within ordinary perception and language. One of the great advantages the musician enjoys is that he can paint things that cannot be heard, whereas the Painter cannot represent things that cannot be seen . . . [because] the musician’s art consists in substituting for the imperceptible image of the object that of the [e]motions [mouvemens] which the object’s presence excites in the heart of the beholder. (292) The musical qualities of language are at work in the intentional experience of an object but not in the sense of directly determining a representation in ideational or conceptual form. As opposed to the visual arts, music “will not represent these things directly, but it will excite in the soul the very same sentiments [sentimens] which one experiences upon seeing them” (293). Rousseau repeats this claim nearly verbatim in his “Musical Dictionary” except that he substitutes for “sentimens” the word “mouvemens”.14 The ambiguous term “mouvemens” literally means “movement” but it also conveys a sense of stirring or agitation and thus can be used to refer to the “emotions”. But the full sense of what Rousseau means by “mouvemens de l’ame”, which the presence of an object is said to provoke in the beholder, is rounded out in a Letter to d’Alembert, which makes the nearly identical claim that, “the art of the musician consists not at all in immediately

Kantian Quarrels  137 painting objects, but in putting the soul in a disposition [disposition] similar to that in which their presence puts it”.15 Thus, what Rousseau means by the “sentiment” that music addresses is less a capricious and passing emotion and more an underlying mental “disposition” or moodful frame of mind.16 By claiming that music represents objects indirectly by provoking “movements of the soul”, Rousseau’s point is not to deny that objects may very well be represented to the human mind in ideational and conceptual form but rather to insist that those ideas are themselves already embedded within a wider mental “disposition” or various ways of attending to the object. Part and parcel of intentional directedness towards any given object are not only the words one uses to describe the object but the génie, the mental disposition or “sentiments” that orient an object in a constellation of associations and significances.17 If the represented object is the content of intentional awareness, for Rousseau the sentiments belong to the mental form, the “disposition” or manner in which the object is attended to. And the aesthetic suggestion is that the visual arts attend to the represented object while the auditory arts address the mental dispositions of the representing subject. Just as a musician can take an identical melodic figure but modulate the harmonic mode from major to minor, vastly altering the way in which the melodic figure will strike the audience, so too can a speaker repeat verbatim a conceptual claim yet “alter [its] meanings by his tone of voice”, prompting a listener to hear one and the same set of terms in an entirely different sense. A further philosophical upshot of Rousseau’s bold claim about the musical nature of language and the mind is that such affective mental dispositions can not only be communicated about but can be communicated themselves. “In a melody, sounds act on us not only as sounds but as signs of our affections, of our sentiments; this is how they arouse in us the [e]motions [mouvemens] which they express and the image of which we recognize in them” (288). That is, the communicative potential of music is not merely that it discloses one’s own (the composer’s) state of mind but that it elicits a similar state in another (the audience). By imitating the inflections of the voice, melody expresses plaints, cries of suffering or of joy, threats, moans; all the vocal signs of the passions fall within its province. It imitates the accents of [various] languages as well as the idiomatic expressions commonly associated in each of them with given movements of the soul [Elle imite les accens des langues, et les tours affectés dans chaque idiôme à certains mouvemens de l’ame]; it not only imitates, it speaks; and its language, though inarticulate, is lively, ardent, passionate, and a hundred times more vigorous than speech itself. (287) Music “speaks”, it functions as a “language”, not by attaching a word to an object but by communicating the wider dispositions that set the mental

138  Kantian Quarrels stage, so to speak, on which any given object may be presented. Because the intended result of the genealogical investigation was to have shown that “verse, song, speech have a common origin” in accent (282), the Rousseauian conclusion is that spoken language harbors a similar potential as music to communicate not just the terms that attach to an object but also the sense that accompanies them and situates them in a particular field of meaning. With Rousseau, finally, one can have a debate not just about what an object is (conceptual determination of content) but how the object should be attended to (an aesthetic consideration of form). Kant Although Rousseau leans rather heavily on a theory of musical expression in order to substantiate bold claims about the nature of communication and its relation to an affectively thick picture of mind, at least one philosopher took this strategy quite seriously. In §53 of the Critique of Judgment, just as he turns his attention to the place of music in a provisional theory of fine art, Kant abruptly enters into a terse theory of language. The central paragraph is little more than a translation of the key claims of Rousseau’s “Essay”, for example: Every linguistic expression has in its context a tone appropriate to its meaning. This tone indicates, more or less, the affect of the speaker and in turn induces the same affect in the listener too, where it then conversely arouses the idea which in language we express in that tone. (5:328) This passage asserts three claims about the tonal nature of language, all found in Rousseau: (1) tone is connected with meaning, (2) tone indicates the speaker’s affective state, and (3) tone imparts an affective state to the listener.18 Although §53 presents strong textual evidence that the affectively rich picture of mind and language advanced by Rousseau’s “Essay” is adopted and developed by Kant in the third Critique, very few scholars have explored this connection.19 The lack of attention in the scholarly literature is in no small part attributable to Kant himself. Although he explicitly states that tone plays a semantically load-bearing role in linguistic discourse, he does not himself dwell on the point but rather immediately goes on to discuss the implications of tone [Ton] in the context of music [Tonkunst]. And just as modulation [of tone] is, as it were, a universal language of sensations that every human being can understand, so the art of music employs this language all by itself in its full force, namely as a language of the affects. (5:328)

Kantian Quarrels  139 Just as when the Critique earlier broached the question of whether “music not set to words” is an instance of “free” rather than “dependent” beauty (5:229), Kant here appears to be interested in tone as a language of affects “all by itself”, functioning independently of all other elements of communication. But it would be a mistake to conclude that for Kant the “language of affects” operates primarily in a sphere of its own, cut off from concepts, perhaps standing in as a substitute where words fall short.20 In §51 he clearly states: people express themselves in speech so as to communicate with one another as perfectly as possible, namely, not merely as regards their concepts but also as regards their sensations. Such expression consists in word, gesture, and tone . . . . Only when these three ways of expressing himself are combined does the speaker communicate completely. For in this way thought, intuition, and sensation are conveyed to other simultaneously and in unison. (5:320) Thus Kant’s considered position on the relation between language and affectivity is the same as Rousseau’s: tone, which communicates sensation, is an integral and irreducible element of language itself. Without it, one would not “communicate completely”.21 What Kant learns from Rousseau, then, is that language about aesthetics, which is discursive, is not different in kind than the language of aesthetics, which is affective. While elements of that comprehensive theory of aesthetic discourse are operative throughout the third Critique, Kant nowhere gives a formal account. He does, however, give it a formal name, that is, “streiten” or “quarreling”.

Streiten “Quarrels” in the Critique of Judgment Disputieren Kant does not define the notion of streiten in the third Critique, but his various uses of the term are consistent enough that a careful reading can fill in most of its attributes, or at least make a start of it by eliminating the alternatives. In the passage quoted at the head of this chapter, we have already seen that Kant opposes the notion of “streiten” to that of “disputieren”. That passage continues, disputing [Disputiren] and quarreling [Streiten] are alike in that [we] try to produce agreement between judgments by means of the mutual resistance between them, disputing is different inasmuch as here we hope to produce this agreement according to determinate concepts, by basing a

140  Kantian Quarrels proof on them, so that we assume that the judgment is based on objective concepts. (5:338) By the time of the third Critique, the term “disputieren” had acquired a specific technical meaning within Kant’s system, one moreover that tracks very closely with what Hume called “serious argument and philosophy”. To “dispute” for Kant is to “decide by means of proofs”, where “proof” means the analysis of the meaning and implications of the relevant concepts (5:338). Thus a Kantian dispute is like Hume’s “regular argument”, which we have seen consists in “clear definitions, . . . the precision of those ideas which enter into any argument, and . . . the strict and uniform use of those terms which are employed” (536). And just as Hume continues to argue that there is a “species of controversy which . . . can never . . . reach a reasonable certainty or precision”, Kant too insists “in cases where we think this cannot be done, we judge that disputing is also impossible”. A standing concern for both Hume and Kant, however, is what, if anything, can be done to address conflicts that are not resolvable by the rigorous, discursive procedures of a “dispute”. Geschwätz Like Hume, Kant appears more eager to rule out the bad alternatives to disputing than to spell out what a good alternative would be. For example, in the Jäsche Logic Kant impugns the oratorical “disputatoria” as a sophistical overstepping of the limits inherent in disputation (9:16). Filling in the context of the hostile condemnation of rhetoric in §53 of the third Critique, the Jäsche Logic formally accuses oratory of distracting an audience from the truth of any matter by verbal misdirection. In particular, orators propagate the manipulative craft of purporting to expand the content of knowledge when in fact they are merely parsing or fallaciously equivocating terms. In short, they proliferate words without deepening understanding. For a long time, too, it was expounded in logic under the name of the art of disputation, and as long as it was, all of logic and philosophy were the cultivation of certain garrulous souls (geschwätziger Köpfe) for fabricating any illusion. (9:17) Although §51 and §53 of the third Critique can leave the impression that Kant’s objection to the rhetorical “art of disputation” is primarily aesthetic (i.e., speeches are much less beautiful than works of poetry), the wider textual record makes clear that Kant’s long-standing concern is epistemological (rhetoric deceptively creates the illusion of truth).22 Anticipating the Logic’s verbal image of the rhetoricians as chatty or verbose “talking heads”

Kantian Quarrels  141 (geschwätziger Köpfe), the first Critique already warned that “any attempt to use logic as an instrument . . . that professes to extend and enlarge our knowledge can end in nothing but mere talk (Geschwätzigkeit)” (A61/ B86). Thus Kant had long used the notion of “Geschwätz”—garrulous, idle talk—as the figure of the bad alternative to a proper “dispute”. The threat that discourse would collapse into “mere talk” becomes particularly prominent in the third Critique precisely because aesthetic judgments are essentially grounded in the affective experiences of the subject, not primarily the concepts of the object, and hence judgments of taste are exactly the kind of thing for which “disputing is impossible”. By a principle of taste would be meant a principle under which, as a condition, we could subsume the concept of an object and then infer that the object is beautiful. That, however, is absolutely impossible. For I must feel the pleasure directly in my presentation of the object, and I cannot be talked into that pleasure by means of any bases of proof (durch keine Beweisgründe angeschwatzt werden). (5:285) The third Critique repeatedly raises the possibility that if “schwatzen” is the only alternative to “disputieren” then all discourse concerning matters of taste necessarily misses its target. That something is beautiful is true only in the seeing, not in the saying. If we judge objects merely in terms of concepts, then we lose all presentation of beauty. This is why there can be no rule by which someone could be compelled to acknowledge that something is beautiful. No one can use reasons or principles to talk us into a judgment (läßt man sich sein Urtheil durch keine Gründe oder Grundsätze aufschwatzen) on whether some garment, house, or flower is beautiful. We want to submit the object to our own eyes, just as if our liking of it depended on that sensation. (5:216) It is not, then, possible to “talk someone into” (aufschwatzen) a conviction that any given aesthetic response is right or wrong. Accordingly, Kant associates “Geschwätz” with the kind of “loose talk” that circulates around at a dinner party, for which “no one wants to be held responsible for what he says” (5:305) Because “a judgment of taste is not based on concepts” there really is “no disputing about taste” (5:338)—there is nothing to be accomplished concerning the aesthetic merit of a particular object by holding each other responsible for how we use established terms. Given that discourse about aesthetics does not qualify as a “dispute”, the question, then, is whether it is any different than the “table talk” in which there is nothing to hold

142  Kantian Quarrels each other responsible for. In the absence of some linguistic alternative to disputation it would appear that actual debates about taste, in the sense of wrangling over whether some particular thing is or is not beautiful, simply fall outside the bounds of serious argument and philosophy and become what Hume calls “merely verbal, or, perhaps, if possible, still more incurably ambiguous” (536). Quarrels and the Neglectable Alternative Whether or not a case can be made that Hume’s “Standard of Taste” exposes a logical and linguistic domain between “serious argument” and “merely verbal” cavils, Kant for his part does not conclude that the inability to dispute about taste entails that all aesthetic discourse devolves into pointless chatter. even though the basis determining a judgment of taste . . . cannot be brought to determinate concepts; and hence even proofs do not allow us to decide anything about such a judgment, . . . we can certainly quarrel about it, and rightly so [mit Recht]. (5:338) The linguistic category of “streiten” clearly stands in the place of a neglected alternative between “disputieren” and “schwatzen”—it is not a dispute because proofs do not allow us to decide anything, but it is not idle chatter insofar as we assert some “right” to our claims. However, in the section in which he introduces the notion of “streiten” as an alternative to “disputieren”, Kant is surprisingly uninterested in defining the term. Rather than asking the first-order question, “what is a quarrel?” he simply asserts, as a matter of course, it is something “everyone has in mind”, and he immediately proceeds to the second-order question “how is a quarrel possible?”. Kant appears content in §56, “Presentation of the Antinomy of Taste”, to take the notion of quarreling as a mere hypothetical in order to move in §57, “Solution to the Antinomy of Taste” to the question of the transcendental grounding that makes judgments of taste possible. Just after the introduction of “quarreling”, the philosophical center of gravity shifts from discourse to judgment: if it is granted that we can quarrel about something, then there must be some hope for us to arrive at agreement about it, and so we must be able to count on the judgment’s having bases that do not have merely private validity and hence are not merely subjective. (5:338) It seems quite clear from the context, then, that Kant introduces the notion of “quarreling” not because he is much interested in actual quarrels about

Kantian Quarrels  143 particular, sensible objects of taste but rather because he needs a heuristic to set up the transcendental question of a “supersensible substrate of humanity” that (purportedly) underwrites the possibility that aesthetic reflective judgments are not merely subjective.23 Thus the particular occupation of the Antinomy, where “streiten” is introduced as an alternative to “disputieren”, certainly gives the impression that there really is no substantive notion of actual aesthetic quarreling in Kant, after all. That is, what Kant apparently considers legitimate aesthetic discourse to refer to is not some actual ground-level debate about whether this particular object or that particular narrative is beautiful; rather what one may “hope” to settle through debate is the transcendental question of whether it is even possible under ideal circumstances to make a pure judgment of beauty. In that case, we can productively talk about why I would be entitled under ideal conditions to think that I could make a pure judgment of beauty; but that is an entirely different matter than trying to persuade you, when we “come to particulars”, to share my specific aesthetic response. Defending Quarrels There is no need to deny that Kant ties the success of his critical philosophy to the project of delivering a positive answer to the transcendental question of whether judgments of beauty are possible in principle—and that is exactly what critical philosophers, qua philosophers, debate.24 But it is simply an interpretive error to assume that “streiten” is merely the formal name of that transcendental debate. Prior to the Antinomy, Kant assigned “quarrels” to a different category altogether. What is strange is that the taste of reflection should . . . find itself able (as it actually does) to conceive of judgments that can demand . . . agreement, and that it does in fact require this agreement from everyone for each of its judgments. What the people who make these judgments quarrel (in Streite sind) about is not whether such a claim is possible; they are merely unable to agree, in particular cases, on the correct way to apply this ability. (5:214) Thus Kant clearly separates aesthetic debates onto two different levels and looks to establish two different kinds of “agreement”. One agreement, the one at issue in the Antinomy and the Deduction, certainly operates on the transcendental level of establishing the mere possibility of judgments of taste. A “Streit”, on the other hand, seeks to establish agreement of a different kind. The “demand” in the case of a quarrel is to “require others to agree”, Kant says like Hume before him, “in particular cases”.25 “But surely there is something strange here”, Kant continues to remark, since, unlike a dispute, “in making a judgment of taste . . . we require everyone to like

144  Kantian Quarrels the object, yet without the liking’s being based on a concept”. Judgments of taste are explicitly “aesthetic” in the sense that they concern the relation between the presentation of an object and the feeling (Gefühl), rather than the concepts, with which it is attended (5:214, cf. 5:191). Thus, as Kant actually uses the term, a Streit amounts to a demand for agreement in a particular case where the agreement is established not through shared concepts but through a shared sense or “feeling”. And that kind of “demand” is quite different than the transcendental demand to recognize the legitimacy of the grounds of judgments of taste in a supersensible substrate of humanity. In the transcendental case the demand is about an affective state, namely, a claim about its legitimacy. When it comes to the particular case, however, the demand is placed upon an affective state; it is a “demand of reason to produce such an agreement in the way we sense” where the aesthetic “ought” indicates “the objective necessity that everyone’s feeling flow along with the particular feeling of each person” (5:240). Consistency in the Third Critique The textual threads that tie affective agreement in particular cases to the notion of a Streit in the third Critique, taken on their own, are thin; but in context, they appear woven together in a wider pattern with terms like “disputieren” and “Geschwätz”, whose lines they interweave but do not cut. Thus what Kant lacks in specificity he makes up in consistency. There is no instance in the third Critique in which Kant uses “streiten” in any way other than as a claim upon the affective states of others. In the passage already quoted at the head of section I, Kant appears to say “it would be foolish if we quarreled [streiten] about such differences [of taste] with the intention of censuring another’s judgment as incorrect”. (5:212) But there he immediately qualifies that such “foolishness” lies not in the censuring of feelings, per se, but in the mistaken assumption that the standard of correctness in such cases is “logical”, where the text had just re-asserted “logical” means “a cognition of the object through concepts of it” (5:211). In another instance Kant considers an aesthetic disagreement over whether a particular judgment is free and pure or merely dependent and accessory because informed by a concept of the object’s purpose. The disagreement in this case concerns a claim about the status and provenance of a particular judgment of taste but does not amount to a claim upon the particular aesthetic response of another. In the event that Kant had not meant to be careful in his use of terms, he might have used the word “Streit” to describe such a disagreement, but he opts instead for another word altogether, “Zwist” (an altercation or melee), thus preserving a consistent use of the notion of “quarreling” as a distinctive linguistic act. (5:231) To appreciate, however, that a specific technical meaning of “quarrel” is being read out of rather than into the third Critique, it is helpful to see how

Kantian Quarrels  145 Kant actually uses the term in other contexts. A brief survey of the genesis and development of the notion of “streiten” in Kant’s corpus confirms that the term had come to acquire an established technical meaning by the 1790s. Such an inventory also supports the contention that Kant’s development on the issue of aesthetic discourse arises among the fallout from the aesthetic quarrel between Hume and Rousseau in their posthumous texts of 1781. Excursus on the Genesis of the Term “Streiten” in Kant Kant’s concerns about the possibilities and limits of aesthetic discourse were longstanding. Reflections recorded from the early 1770s show that Kant was well aware of the problems that would be at the heart of the posthumous quarrel between Hume and Rousseau, but he had yet to settle on the terms of the debate, much less an adequate solution. The . . . proposition: degusto non est disputandum. . . is entirely correct . . . if “disputing” [disputiren] means the same as to establish positions on both sides by rational grounds . . . But if it means that there is [in matters of taste] no rule at all, hence no rightful contradiction, then it is a principle of unsociability, crudeness and even ignorance. [R706, 1771(15:313)] Thus two decades prior to the third Critique Kant already wanted to assert that there is some rightful way to contradict a judgment of taste other than by disputing its “rational grounds”, but he had no working concept of what the alternative to “disputing” would be. By the winter of 1772–1773, however, he had begun to use the word “streiten” and its cognates “Streit” and “abstreiten” in relation to the problem of whether aesthetic judgments of taste are rule-governed and, accordingly, in what sense they can be rationally contested. But while Kant frequently uses the word “streiten”, the term lacks a clear and consistent meaning and is often conflated with what he would later call “disputes”. Because a quarrel is not yet distinguished from a dispute in the early 1770s, Kant is compelled to deny that any such thing is possible in the case of taste. For example, in the lectures called Anthropologie Collins, Kant is recorded as saying: Taste is universal, it indicates a certain agreement [Ubereinstimmung]. If one disputes [disputirt], then one wants to prove that our judgment of taste is supposed to be valid for others too. But one does not quarrel [streitet] about taste, because in taste no one demands [Verlangt] that anyone should follow the judgment of the other. (25:180)26 The Anthropologie Parrow confirms that in the winter semester of 1772–1773 Kant wants to assert some grounds for contesting aesthetic

146  Kantian Quarrels claims—that is, those based on sensibility rather than conceptuality—but that he still ascribes such a debate to the term “disputing” rather than “quarreling”. Taste indicates an agreement of sensible judgment, thus it is false that one cannot dispute taste [es ist also falsch, daβ man über den Geschmack nich disputiren könne]; the disputing stands as assurance that my judgment is meant to be valid for an other, and the commonplace “each has his own taste” is the saying of the ignorant and the principle of the unsociable. (25:378) It is not until the mid-1770s that Kant develops a clearer sense of what standard one appeals to in contesting the aesthetic responses of another, at which time he also shifts away from the term “disputieren” and towards “streiten” as the preferred description of such a conflict. In order to distinguish the agreeable and disagreeable we need feeling; in order to distinguish the beautiful and ugly, we need taste . . . In the investigation of the agreeable and disagreeable we have no communal standard, because it refers to the private sensation of the subject. Therefore one cannot engage in any quarrel [Streit] over the agreeable and disagreeable, for a quarrel [Streit] is an attempt to bring the other to consent to one’s judgment. But because each has his own private sensation here, no one can be required to accept the sensation of the other. But with the beautiful it is otherwise. There the beautiful is not which pleases one, but rather what has the approval of all. It does please through sense as well, but through a universal sense. For the investigation of the beautiful and the ugly we thus have a communal standard; this is the communal sense . . . . Taste is thus the power of judgment of the senses, through which it is cognized what agrees with the sense of others; it is thus a pleasure and displeasure in community with others . . . . One can quarrel [streiten] about the beautiful because the agreement of many human beings provides a judgment which can be set against a single judgment. (Metaphysik L1, 28:250–251) After repeatedly using the term “streiten” to describe the “attempt to bring the other to consent to one’s judgment” where such a judgment refers to a “communal sense”, Kant then immediately goes on in this passage to distinguish “streiten” from “disputieren”: while the former is empirical because grounded in the actual, sensible responses of others, the latter is determinable a priori because it refers solely to the “principles of reason”.27 By the time of the publication of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 Kant had begun to associate the term Streit with a debate

Kantian Quarrels  147 not over the content of the direct object of representation but rather with the form of the presentation. Reason is benefited by the consideration of its object from both sides . . . . What is here in dispute [streitig] is not the practical interests of reason but the mode of their presentation [nicht die Sache, sondern der Ton]. (A744/B772) It is quite intriguing that by describing as a matter of “Ton” the various ways in which an object can be considered, Kant anticipates a key theme of Rousseau’s “Essay”. But even though Kant may be seen to be turning in a Rousseauian direction, comments from the winter semester of 1784–1785 show that he was still not yet there. In the Anthropologie Mrongovius Kant asserts, “It is always possible to dispute taste; one cannot demonstrate it [Ueber den Geschmak läβt sich immer disputiren demonstrieren kann man ihn nicht]” (25:1326). The lectures of the mid-1780s reinforce the clear and technical distinction between two kinds of disagreements already laid out in the lectures of the mid-1770s; but here the terms shift so that “demonstriren” comes to play the role formerly assigned to “disputiren” as that logical proof that is denied of judgments of taste, while “disputiren” takes the place of “streiten” as the name for the alternative mode of debate allowed to aesthetic discourse. Although the distinction between two kinds of debate—one appealing to concepts and the other to affective sensibility—is clearly in place by the mid-1770s, it is not until the Critique of Judgment of 1790 that Kant finally settles on the particular terms “disputiren” and “streiten” to track the difference. And although Kant’s understanding of the nature and terms of aesthetic debate continue to develop up until 1790, they do not appear to change much afterwards, confirming that the third Critique represents Kant’s considered view.28 Lectures on metaphysics from the winter semester of 1794–1795 refine and clarify the nature of an aesthetic conflict, but they do not fundamentally alter the terms of the debate as established in the third Critique. A peculiar phenomenon manifests itself in judging of the beautiful. One demands [fordert] and presupposes what we find beautiful as an object of taste, everyone else who has taste will, like us, also find beautiful; and it is just as peculiar that a judging person absolutely cannot determine whether something is beautiful otherwise than through his own judgment; else he would want to imitate another’s judgment without himself judging . . . and there arises therefore a peculiar antinomy, which at this time cannot be developed very distinctly with respect to its ground. One assumes that the other must find something beautiful, at the same time one fears his dissatisfaction, because one has no grounds to force his approval [man keine Gründe hat, um ihn zum Beyfal zu zwingen] . . . .

148  Kantian Quarrels For, what is supposed to please the other absolutely must be able to be cognized a priori by him, thus there must be a rule present which is prescribed to him [eine Regel vorhanden seyn, die ihm vorgeschreiben wird], by virtue of which he is determined to approval or dissatisfaction; therefore only when a principle of the beautiful exists can the necessity and universal validity of the beautiful be demonstrated [dargethan]. But now a demonstration of the beautiful is impossible [Nun ist aber eine demonstration des Schönen unmöglich] . . . Therefore the judgment of the beautiful [die Beurtheilung des Schönen], likewise the ground and the source of taste in general, which the soul takes as a basis [of] so much, remains an object of the most difficult investigation. [Metaphysik K3 (Vigilantius), (29:1011)] Kant’s comments in the 1790s deepen without necessarily resolving key questions of the third Critique. The final sentence of the quoted passage speaks to the “ground and source of taste in general”, which is, moreover, somehow operative at the basis of “so much” of the soul or mind. More intriguing, perhaps, is that this passage quietly voices a suggestion that agreement concerning the transcendental legitimacy of judgments of taste cannot be substantiated or displayed (dargethan) independently of actual exercises of the rule by which one demands [fordern] but does not force [zwingen] the consent of another in judgments of taste—that is, the very rules about which one “quarrels” in aesthetic discourse. The muted suggestion is that the kind of verdict or judgment arrived at through a quarrel is no mere side issue, to be taken up when the serious, transcendental work is done. The shared capacity to quarrel is the condition for establishing not the mere possibility of a principle of taste, but its actuality. Quarrels and the Sensus Communis Aestheticus Although Kant had arrived at a stable and meaningful definition of “streiten” by the time of the third Critique, he also appears to have had very little to say about the philosophical importance or implications of such a capacity. The third Critique would, however, be much less reticent if it had meant to tie the practice of streiten to the establishment of a sensus communis aestheticus—a “common sense” that is aesthetic rather than logical insofar as it issues the “demand of reason to produce such an agreement in the way we sense”. (5:240)29 And, indeed, the third Critique actually uses identical language to describe the “agreement” that we try “to produce” in the “way we sense” [Einhelligkeit der Sinnesart hervorzubringen (5:240)] in a sensus communis as it does to describe the “agreement” that “we try to produce” between our judgments when we enter into quarrels over taste [der Urtheile Einhelligkeit . . . hervorzubringen suchen (5:338)]. If the literal textual connection between the “agreement” to be produced in quarreling and “agreement” produced in common aesthetic sense is more than verbal

Kantian Quarrels  149 coincidence, then Kant’s considered position is that a Streit amounts to a communicative form that demands agreement in a particular case where such agreement is established not through shared concepts but through a shared sense or “feeling” (Gefühl). On this reading, a “quarrel” amounts to a mode of discourse that is explicitly “aesthetic” not just in the sense that it refers to objects of beauty but also insofar as it concerns the relation between the presentation of an object and a concomitant feeling. Moreover, quarrels are not only affective but also normative insofar as they express a “demand . . . to produce agreement in the way we sense”. The particular grounds of their normativity are what make quarrels both distinctive and philosophically potent. Unlike a “dispute” the demands of a quarrel are not underwritten by discursive rules but by an affective feeling. But, unlike the transcendental demand to recognize the general possibility of pure judgments of taste, the claim is not about an affective state (a claim about its legitimacy) but is rather one placed upon an affective state. The aesthetic “ought” demands that “everyone’s feeling flow along with the particular feeling of each person” (5:240). The philosophical importance of the otherwise incidental notion of “quarrelling” is that it amounts to a claim that feeling can be normative. Streit is the linguistic vehicle whereby one places claims upon the sentiments or affective states of others and, likewise, exposes oneself to their demands in turn.

Conclusion and Implications The overall goal of this chapter is to have made intelligible the claim that Kant developed a functioning notion of “streiten” as a distinctive form of discourse that literally seeks to establish “consensus”—not simply an agreement in terms but also a “shared sense” of the particular meanings of general terms. Without a survey of the way the term gradually develops a specific meaning, it can be hard to see that such a notion of “quarreling” really is there in the text. But that interpretive possibility remains philosophically invisible unless it is paired with the historical case that “quarreling” represents an answer to a wider problem that emerged in the posthumous texts of Hume and Rousseau. That problem, in short, is that there is a gap between concept and meaning that cannot be made up only by defining terms or adding concepts because (as Hume put the point in the Dialogues) “disputants may here agree in their sense and differ in their terms, or vice versa—yet may never be able to define their terms so as to enter into each other’s meaning”. (536)30 Hume, Rousseau, and Kant all appreciate the consequences: faced with the inherent limits of discursive rationality, one must either become skeptical about other minds and retreat into an isolated silence, or he must allow that we “enter into each other’s meanings” not exclusively via agreement in terms but also by agreement in sense. All three philosophers are especially alert to the ways in which a reflective “common sense” is a condition for communication or cognition, and all three adopt

150  Kantian Quarrels the same methodological strategy of shifting to the aesthetic domain in order to demonstrate the ways in which such a reflective “sense” is linked to sentiments or affective states of mind. Aesthetics, then, becomes privileged as a philosophical domain insofar as it is especially clear that aesthetic discourse communicates not only about the sentiments but also by means of appeal to affective states, the same underlying mental dispositions that underwrite any intentional representation. Kant draws the direct conclusion: the universal communicability of a feeling presupposes a common sense . . . it would seem that we do have a basis for assuming such a sense . . . as the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our cognition, which must be presupposed in any logic and any principle of cognitions that is not skeptical. (5:239) The Kantian resolution to the quarrel between Hume and Rousseau is that the reflective “common sense” (sensus communis logicus), which operates as a condition of communication for Hume and representation for Rousseau, may be different in degree but not in kind than the affective “common sense” (sensus communis aestheticus) about which aesthetic discourse quarrels (5:295 n24). Philosophical Plausibility The philosophical importance of resuscitating the notion of “quarreling” in Kant is not only to fill in a fascinating but overlooked chapter in the history of philosophy but also to reconstitute a position not otherwise well represented on the contemporary scene. There has been a surge of interest in recent philosophy concerning the relation between cognition and affection, with current controversies centering on whether the emotions are intentional or moods are representational.31 The philosophy of mind that underwrites the aesthetic quarrel between Hume and Rousseau, however, raises the possibility that the current controversies have the terms of the debate back to front. Rather than defining intentionality as a perceptual or cognitive achievement and then asking if affects or moods can qualify as a special case of representation, Hume and Rousseau pose the prior question of whether representation itself is inherently moodful in the sense that any act of attention is grounded within wider mental dispositions and affective states of mind.32 The position that intentionality is, in some meaningful sense, affective is certainly debatable on its own terms, but it is also controversial as a reading of Kant because it cannot be reconciled with all of the details of the third Critique’s complex account of “aesthetic reflective judgments”.33 It is to the details of that account, then, that we must next turn. But by way of concluding the present chapter, it is worth noting that the notion of “quarreling” as a model of linguistic discourse does fit quite well with Kant’s “Copernican”

Kantian Quarrels  151 master-thought that the reception of perceptual content is dependent upon cognitive schemes or rational forms of thought. Kant’s most famous way of putting the point, “intuitions without concepts are blind” (A51/B75), stresses that the form in which perceptual content is received is expressible in terms of the conceptual capacities that are exercised overtly in discursive, communicative utterances. But what the Humean and Rousseauian background adds to the otherwise familiar “Copernican” position is that Kant’s own developing understanding of the actual exercises of the communicative capacities is informed by a wider consideration of our subjective (and inter-subjective) “forms” of attention—our various shareable “modes” of receptivity or basic orientations towards the world.34 It is through our shared capacity to quarrel that affectivity (in the broad sense of all the ways we are open, receptive to, and affected by the world) is brought into the domain of the normative, but not as a special case. If claims about the sense by which our words become meaningful cannot be normative, then what can? Following from the basic Kantian insight that the perceptual form of an object, expressible in conceptual terms, cannot be determined independently of the forms of the subject—forms that include one’s “frames of mind” or mental “dispositions”—is the consequence that any claim about what one is attending to implicates a claim upon how one is attending to it. In that case, all agreement requires an “agreement in the way we sense”, and thus all language itself is of a kind with aesthetic discourse. If there cannot be consensus about our basic orientations towards the world, the rest is silence. And yet we continue to quarrel, and, as Kant points out, rightly so.

Notes   1 Recent philosophy has witnessed a turn towards the “Rationality of Emotion” (e.g., de Sousa); but there is considerably less philosophical interest in what is involved in making appeals to such emotions, a traditional concern of rhetoric. Kant scholars sometimes note in passing the presence of the notion of “streiten” (e.g., Guyer and Matthews translators’ notes to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, p. 385), but besides Zerilli (74–76) there are no studies concerning how the concept of “quarreling” developed and functioned in Kant or how it relates to contemporary interests.   2 On the textual connection between Rousseau’s “Essay” and Kant’s third Critique, see pp. 138–9. More circumstantially, the “Essay” would have attracted Kant’s attention not just because of his interest in Rousseau in general but also because the topic of the origins of languages would likely have been perceived as providing a timely intervention with the work of Herder, about whom Kant at that time was becoming increasingly open in criticizing. His critical reviews of Herder appeared in print in 1785.   3 Hamann’s partial translation (which includes Cleanthes’s argument in Part III) was openly circulated but withheld from publication because a complete translation by K. G. Schreiter was already in press. Schreiter’s translation is on the Warda list of Kants Bücher in his possession at the time of his death. For further historical details, see Winegar (2 n. 2)

152  Kantian Quarrels   4 I have not had any success in tracking down anyone else who notices that Cleanthes’s so-called “irregular argument” in Part III (and Philo’s recapitulation in Part XII) is a summary exposition of Part II of “The Savoyard Vicar”. Nelson Pike (xvi-xix) summarizes the case that Cleanthes’s formal arguments track those of Joseph Butler and even paraphrase the theological writings of Newton’s 18th-century followers George Cheyne and Colin Maclaurin. Rousseau, however, is not considered by Pike. Nor is he even mentioned in the commentaries of Kemp Smith, Gaskin, Penelhum, or O’Connor.   5 Rousseau’s arguments prefigure Kant’s position that belief in the freedom and responsibility of the subject and God as guarantor of the possibility of a moral world order are postulates of pure practical reason.   6 Whether or not the considered position of Rousseau or Hume amounts to a form of crude perceptual determinism (what Hegel calls “Sense Certainty” or Sellars the mythical “Given”), such a position is the expressed view of the fictional characters of the Savoyard Vicar and Cleanthes in the passages under consideration.   7 O’Connor shows just how closely Hume himself comes to identifying religious conviction with “instinctual belief” (86–91).   8 A “smack upside the head” is Metcalf and Tanzer’s translation (107) of Heidegger’s use of Zurechtweisung in his 1924 lectures on Aristotle to translate κολάσεως in this passage from the Topics (GA 18: 158). This passage from the Topics serves Heidegger as an entry into a discussion of Aristotle’s Rhetoric whose notion of pathē becomes the occasion for Heidegger to introduce the notion of Stimmungen, roughly “moods”, and its relation to public discourse. In the related sections of Being and Time, Heidegger laments that the philosophical understanding of “the affective life in general has been able to make scarcely one step forward worthy of mention since Aristotle” (H 139), but he does not note that the notion of a Gemütsstimmung is Kant’s preferred term for the human “mind” in the third Critique. Heidegger could have missed the parallels to Kant because the philosophical implications of the clearly affective resonance of both Gemüt (from Mut, courage or spirit) and Stimmung has not been a major concern of Kant scholars. For a start, see Rohden.   9 Kant’s own skepticism about whether “common sense” actually existed in the historical past is not a rebuke but a repetition of Rousseau’s considered genealogical method as expressed, for instance, in the Second Discourse (drafted at the same time as the “Essay”) according to which “it is no light undertaking . . . to know accurately a state which no longer exists, which perhaps never did exist, which probably never will exist, and about which it is nevertheless necessary to have exact Notions in order accurately to judge of our present state” (1997: 125). 10 In Chapter 7, Rousseau argues, “It is an error to believe that written accents can replace vocal accents” (262), and Chapters 5 and 6 bemoan the inability of written language to capture the “genius” of speech. 11 The critical function of philosophical historiography is just one of the many parallels between Rousseau’s “Essay” and Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, published in late 1871. Other obvious similarities include the critique of an overly rationalistic account of truth and argumentation, as well as an appeal to recoup the power of music. Such parallels make it surprising that Nietzsche mentions Kant but not Rousseau in his lecture notes in preparation for his rhetoric course in 1872 (see Blair). 12 Whether or not the “accent precedes concept” thesis is decidable as a historical claim, there is some recent empirical research that suggests that it is true as a matter of cognitive development. See, e.g., the discussion of “affect attunement” between mother and child in the work of Stern (40–43, 112–115) for an

Kantian Quarrels  153 overview of the position and a review of the literature. See also the findings of Andics, et. al., which indicate that dogs can respond to tone independently of lexical processing. 13 It is often pointed out that Rousseau regularly employs the traditional rhetorical distinction between conviction (objective demonstration or logical proof) and persuasion (subjective acceptance, changing one’s mind), as in the passages on silence from Emile cited above. Less well known is that Kant adopts the distinction [e.g., first Critique (A820/B848), third Critique (5:461–462), Jäsche Logic (9:73)] transliterating the respective terms into “Überzeugung” and “Überredung” thereby literally tying the notion of persuasion to speech, “Rede”, which in some ways reverses Rousseau’s having afforded persuasion the privilege of silence. Evaluating whether the differences between Kant and Rousseau are substantive or merely terminological is beyond the scope of this chapter, which aims to address the similarities between the two positions through the notion of aesthetic discourse. 14 OEuvres complètes, volume V, p. 861. Rousseau began work on the “Dictionary” in 1755 and had completed it by 1763. 15 Letter to d’Alembert, June 26, 1751, in OEuvres complètes, vol. II, p. 160. 16 I am reading Rousseau’s use of the word “disposition” to sound not at all unlike [1] the way Hume in the Dialogues used the term “disposition” to refer not to a temporary “bent of . . . mind [that] relaxes and cannot be recalled at pleasure” but rather a persistent “frame of mind” (87) that runs “through the whole tenor of his actions” (6) and [2] Kant’s use of the notion of a “Gemüthsdisposition”, which refers to a “mood” (Laune) in which “everything is judged in a way quite different than the usual one (even vice versa), but yet is judged in conformity with certain principles of reason present in such a mental attunement (Gemüthsstimmung)” (5:336). 17 Compare Kant’s descriptions of the way an aesthetic Geist imparts “momentum” (Schwung) to the mind and how pleasure “accompanies” (begleiten) the cognitive faculties in judgments of taste thereby “furthering” (befördern) their task (pp. 173–5). 18 I offered a detailed interpretation of this passage at the end of Chapter 3 (pp. 89–92). 19 One rare study specifically examining the relation between Rousseau’s “Essay” and Kant’s third Critique is Hobson (1980), but her interest in the metaphysical implications of purposiveness rather than in the affective structure of language leads her to overlook the actual textual connection to Rousseau in §53 and also in §51 where Kant again follows Rousseau by dividing expression into three elements: “word, gesture, and tone” (5:320). For more on the scholarly literature, see also the next two notes. 20 The reading in which the connection between Rousseau and Kant consists in a common claim that the tonal quality of language is an alternative to (and a critique of) the limits of conceptual discourse is a common theme in the French literature (Derrida, Nancy, Hobson; see also de Man and Fenves). The clear virtue of this tradition is that its sensitivity to Rousseau allows it to notice in Kant the deep philosophical and textual connection between affective mood (Stimmung), the tonal nature of the voice (Stimme), and Kant’s preferred description of the human mind as a Gemütsstimmung. Another virtue of the French reading is its historical awareness of how the issues were passed to later continental philosophy via Hölderlin’s “Affektlehre”. Its vice, in my opinion, is that it understates the extent to which it reappropriates elements of Kant’s texts for purposes quite different than Kant’s own; in Derrida’s words, “I am perhaps, in repeating what [Kant] does, going to come round to doing the contrary—or preferably

154  Kantian Quarrels something else”. (1993: 125) It would require an extensive diversion to argue that the French reading leads its readers to distort the relation between Rousseau and Kant by concentrating on the ways in which the tonal elements of language function as an “other” to, rather than a constitutive element within, representational cognition. See also the next note. 21 The distortion by which the affective elements of aesthetic judgment are perceived as something “other” than the cognitive and communicative conditions operative in representational judgment is not a uniquely French phenomenon. Henry Allison rejects the suggestion that an affective capacity of discrimination is an operative condition of empirical cognition. “To attribute such a view to Kant is in itself highly implausible, though something resembling it is to be found in Hume” (2001: 153). Paul Guyer likewise finds against “the argument that the conditions of the communicability of taste are the same as those of the communicability of knowledge in general” (1997: 290). The recent AngloAmerican debates are informed by the ways that Kant’s philosophy of mind is structured in relation to exercises of the communicative capacities, but they are not alive to the way Kant’s own developed understanding of communication clearly bears the marks of Rousseau’s aesthetic philosophy. See also note 34 below. 22 Kant succinctly summarizes the aesthetic critique in the Anthropology, “Among the beautiful (speaking) arts . . . poetry win[s] the prize over rhetoric” (7:247). For the low aesthetic status of rhetoric, see also (5:321) and (5:328 n). However, the epistemological connection between rhetoric and deceit is present as early as the 1777 essay “Concerning Sensory Illusion and Poetic Fiction” (15:903–934, see esp. 903–907). 23 I offered a critical discussion of the “Solution to the Antinomy of Taste” in Chapter 2 (pp. 57–60). 24 Of this special vocation of transcendental philosophy, see, e.g., 5:181–187, 20:241–247, 9:17. 25 On my reading Guyer is right to point out that Kantian aesthetic discourse does seek to come to particulars, but he is wrong to ascribe that task to the Deduction (1997: 242). Contrariwise, Allison is right to think that the issue at stake in the Deduction does not require Kant to come to particulars, but he is wrong to imply that there is no normative claim upon the specific aesthetic responses of others (2001: 180–181). The mishandling in each case is attributable to inattentiveness to the specific function of “streiten”. 26 Allen Wood translates “streitet” in the last sentence of this passage as “dispute”, which is the same word he uses to translate “disputirt” in the prior sentence (Lectures on Anthropology, 25). The conflation of the two terms actually reflects a genuine confusion in (or at least about) Kant’s own views at that time. The Anthropologie Collins is composed by the comparison of two sets of student transcriptions that themselves conflict as to whether Kant used the word “streiten” or “disputiren” when he claims that true taste must admit of a contestation (25:180 n. 3). 27 The first instance of Kant’s having made a clear and formal distinction between “quarreling” and “disputing” is somewhat obscured by the translation of Ameriks and Naragon who render “streiten” as “dispute” and “disputiren” as “debate” (Lectures on Metaphysics, 66–67). 28 A series of essays on the differing authorities of various university departments and their relation to the political state were published together in 1798 under the title Der Streit der Facultäten (“The Conflict of the Faculties”). I leave to the side here whether Kant meant to draw on the technical meaning of “Streit” as developed in the aesthetics or if he is using the term in a more general sense.

Kantian Quarrels  155 29 See the distinction between sensus communis aesthetics and sensus communis logicus at 5:295 n. 24. 30 The previous chapter examined the necessary gap between intuitions and concepts that is filled in, for Kant, by a mother-wit or talent for judgment that can be exercised but not prescribed. This chapter, then, explores the need for, and resources available to, place demands but not prescriptions upon the judgments of others in order to determine whether our mother-wits share, as it were, any family resemblance. 31 On the intentionality of emotion, see, e.g., Debes, and on the representationalism of moods, see the intervention between Mendelovici and Kind in Kriegel, ed. 32 Debes (e.g., p. 12) promotes a similar strategy. See also the position of Barrie Falk discussed at pp. 202–4, especially n. 28 on p. 211. 33 See note 21 above. It is undeniable that some of the broad claims I make about Kant’s notion of aesthetic discourse are incompatible with the psychological mechanics of how the feeling of pleasure is said to enter into the operations of the cognitive faculties in pure judgments of taste for Kant. What is debatable, however, is whether the interpretive conclusion of Kant’s largely implicit but consistent account of the mind as a Gemütsstimmung should be indexed to the explicit but inconsistent account of pure judgments of taste rather than vice versa. I return to this question in detail in the following chapter. 34 To reassert the point of note 21 above, recent Anglo-American debates are informed by the ways Kant’s philosophy of mind is structured in relation to exercises of the communicative capacities, but they are not alive to the way Kant’s own understanding of communication is most developed in his aesthetic philosophy. In short, to take Kant’s own understanding of language seriously is to locate affective elements at the basic site of any representational or intentional encounter with the world. Of course, one may adopt the basic Kantian posture that our communicative capacities are operative in perception while rejecting the specifics of Kant’s incipient theory of communication, but I am not aware of any scholar who admits to such a strategy. It is not that scholars reject the possibility of using the specifics of Kant’s own theory of communication as a guide for working out the details of a Kantian theory of mind, it is rather that such a possibility has not come under consideration at all.

6 Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative

Introduction If aesthetics asks first-order questions about what makes objects beautiful, meta-aesthetics raises second-order concerns about the significance and conditions for the possibility of such judgments about beauty. It is generally recognized that one of the broad aims of Kant’s Critique of Judgment is to locate the criteria for claims about aesthetics within the underlying mental capacity for making judgments as such, thereby resulting in a novel conception of “aesthetic judgment” that ties together aesthetic and meta-aesthetic considerations. However, the scholarly task of actually evaluating just how Kant understood the notion of “aesthetic judgment”, much less defending his position, is beset by considerable exegetical and interpretative difficulties. These difficulties arise not only because the arguments of the third Critique are always enthymematic and sometimes inconsistent but, more troublingly, because the interpretative debates about what Kant might have meant reflect underlying philosophical disagreement about what he could have meant. In this chapter, firstly, I begin by articulating four logically different positions Kant can be argued to hold concerning the nature and meaning of aesthetic judgment so that, secondly, I may endorse the alternative that has been almost entirely neglected. The neglected alternative is that aesthetic judgment may be understood to be both “internalist” in that the pleasure of taste is a constitutive element of the judgment itself (rather than its external effect or prior referent) and “objective” insofar as the pleasure of taste not only reflects the mental state of the judging subject but discriminates features or properties of the object judged. Ultimately I believe that this “internal objectivism” (although bearing a name ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers) is a compelling meta-aesthetic position in its own right, with interesting parallels to recent trends in aesthetic theory, which I discuss in the final sections of the chapter. My primary concern, however, is to demonstrate that one way to get clear about how such judgments are possible and to become comfortable with their significance is to see how this position arises and is resisted in the Critique of Judgment and, accordingly, in the contemporary scholarship on Kantian aesthetics.

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Aesthetic Judgment: External vs. Internal Surely part of the difficulty in interpreting the arguments of the third Critique is that the very notion of “aesthetic judgment” (ästhetische Urteil) can be understood to have at least two different meanings, as Kant himself realized, “so the question arises whether this judgment is made only by means of the pleasure or displeasure we sense, or whether perhaps it even is a judgment about this pleasure or displeasure” (20:229). Thus the interpretative and philosophical question of how the feeling of pleasure relates to judgments of taste reflects an underlying grammatical ambiguity between the different ways the adjective “aesthetic” qualifies the noun “judgment”. This adjectival ambiguity is a general function of grammar itself, rather than a peculiar feature of aesthetics and can also be seen in a non-aesthetic term like “diplomatic policy”, which could be understood to mean either a policy that is about diplomatic matters (as opposed to domestic affairs) or contrariwise a policy that originates by means of a process that is itself diplomatic (as opposed to dictatorial or arbitrary). In the first case the term “diplomatic” functions as a limiting (restrictive) adjective that picks out a certain extensional class or range of referents to which the policy applies, that is, to diplomatic rather than domestic affairs. In the second case, however, “diplomatic” functions not restrictively but descriptively, that is, to specify an intensional attribute or constitutional element of the policy, thereby delimiting the policy’s constitution rather than its referents. A “diplomatic policy in the latter, attributive sense could be a policy about anything whatsoever as long as it was derived through sufficiently diplomatic procedures. There is yet a further sense in which a policy may be said to be diplomatic, even if it does not refer to matters of diplomacy or arise through diplomatic procedures, insofar as it results in an outcome that tactfully satisfies the demands of several competing parties. In this third case the adjective “diplomatic” denotes neither a restrictive (extensional) nor descriptive (intensional) attribute but rather a consequence resulting as an effect of the policy. At the very least, then, it is not the mere terms “diplomatic” and “policy” themselves but the wider context in which they arise that establishes the meaning of the adjectival phrase. Likewise, a careful consideration of the wider context of the Critique of Judgment is required to determine how the elements of the grammatically ambiguous term “aesthetic judgment” should be properly construed. And there is no small philosophical difference between the various grammatical possibilities. If the adjective “aesthetic” is taken in either the extensional or consequential sense then the pleasure must be understood to be external to the judgment; irrespective of the additionally thorny problem of whether the pleasure relates to the judgment as its prior occasion or as its latter consequence, in either case the pleasure and the judgment are notionally separable, coming in logically if not temporally isolatable steps. If, however, “aesthetic” is taken as a descriptive adjective denoting an intensional attribute, then the pleasure must be considered to be

Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative  159 internal to the judgment itself—somehow giving it shape and influencing its outcome—as though feeling could itself be a discriminatory capacity. The problem for readers of the third Critique, however, is that Kant himself seems to have held both the externalist and the internalist views. Central passages appear to take a staunchly “externalist” line, separating out the feeling of pleasure from the judgment of taste. In §9, for example (famously said by Kant to be the “key to the critique of taste”), the “judging of the object . . . precedes the pleasure” (5:218) and even causes the pleasure as its “effect” (Wirkung) (5:219).1 Other principal sections like §38 (the official deduction of taste) also support the externalist interpretation, although they appear to switch the priority of the terms pleasure and judgment so that “in the evaluation [Beurtheilung] of an object of sense in general, we feel this pleasure”; and then it is about this pleasure that a judgment of taste proper (Geschmacksurtheile) judges as it seeks to ascertain whether we are “entitled to require this pleasure from everyone” (5:290).2 So while there is considerable room for debate within the externalist camp over whether aesthetic judgments are judgments about a prior feeling of pleasure or rather judgments about objects that elicit pleasure as a consequence, either way there is widespread textual support for the view that the “aesthetic” element of pleasure remains external to the judgment itself. However, several other passages throughout the text state that pleasure is actually internal if not identical to the judgment. For example, in §VIII of the First Introduction, aesthetic judgments are said to “contain” an element that “is basically identical with the feeling of pleasure” (20:230) and less equivocally “the presentation of a subjective purposiveness in an object is even identical with the feeling of pleasure” (20:228). The language of identity returns in the body of the text where §12 offers an analogy between the feeling of pleasure in judgments of taste and the feeling of respect in moral judgments that is “identical” with the determination of the will (5:222).3 Other passages suggest that the relationship between judgment and pleasure may not be one of strict identity but rather that the pleasure is an essential component without which aesthetic judgment could not proceed. Section VII of the Second Introduction, for instance, states that “pleasure is . . . the basis determining this judgment” (Die Lust ist . . . doch der Bestimmungsgrund dieses Urtheils; 5:191) and goes so far as to stipulate that “our ability to judge by such a pleasure . . . is called taste” (das Vermögen, durch eine solche Lust . . . zu urtheile . . . (heißt) der Geschmack; 5:190).4 At the very least, these passages and others like them lead one to question whether the apparent separation of pleasure and judgment is merely a product of the inevitable discursivity in describing the internal complexity of aesthetic judgments rather than an actual feature of the judgments themselves. While it is admittedly difficult to make out what the alternative to externalism would be—that is, what such claims for a “felt judgment”, as it were, could mean and how such judgments could be possible—for the time being, however, there are adequate textual grounds to at least raise the question

160  Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative whether the feeling of pleasure, properly construed, is neither the prior referent nor the subsequent effect of a judgment of taste but rather a constitutive feature of it. As a result of the ambivalent textual record for whether pleasure is external or internal to judgments of taste, not to mention the various philosophical attractions and liabilities of each position, the divide between the “externalist” and “internalist” readings has become a major fault line within the scholarship.5

Aesthetic Judgment: Objective vs. Subjective As if the involute relationship between pleasure and judgment wasn’t trouble enough, readers of the third Critique are confronted by a related, although not identical, interpretative cum philosophical problem concerning the object or proper referent of aesthetic judgment. The question, in short, is what exactly are aesthetic judgments supposed to judge? At first blush there does not seem to be much of a problem since the objects of taste would appear, obviously, to be objects. Kant himself begins the first sentence of §1 of the third Critique pointing out that questions of taste only arise because “we wish to decide whether something (etwas) is beautiful or not” (5:203); at a very basic level, then, aesthetic judgments would be “objective” in the sense that they are judgments about things in the world, such as a particular artifact or panoramic view, to which we attempt to ascribe the quality of beauty. However, even in the remainder of that first sentence Kant signals a dramatic turn away from the object by claiming that judgments of taste “refer (beziehen) the presentation to (auf) the subject and his feeling of pleasure or displeasure”. The first paragraph of the text ends by reaffirming that “the feeling of pleasure and displeasure . . . designates (bezeichnen) nothing whatsoever in the object, but here the subject feels himself, [namely] how he is affected by the presentation”; and §1 itself concludes by reasserting that judgments are aesthetic “if, and to the extent that, the subject referred (bezogen) them, in his judgment, solely to (auf) himself (to his feeling)” (5:204). In the very first instance Kant seems to be emphatic that taste is “subjective” in the sense that what aesthetic judgments refer to or designate is not some object in the world but the affective state of the judging subject. Trying to reconcile the many details of Kant’s actual arguments exposes a second ambiguity within the very notion of “aesthetic judgment”: does the judgment make a claim about an “aesthetic” quality of an object (i.e., the object’s beauty) or does it reflect an “aesthetic” state of the judging subject (i.e., the subjective feeling of pleasure or displeasure)?6 Hanging in the balance is the wider meta-aesthetic debate about whether (and in what sense) aesthetic judgments are objective or subjective.7 The problem for interpreters, again, is that Kant can be read to have held either view. On the one hand, in addition to the numerous occasions on which Kant positively avows that “a judgment of taste is . . . one . . . whose determining basis cannot be other than subjective” (5:203),8 there

Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative  161 are further passages that most naturally read as an outright denial of the objectivity of judgments. Thus, aesthetic judgments “do not deal with the object at all” (5:215) and “an aesthetic judgment . . . brings to our notice no characteristic of the object, but only the purposive form in the [way] the presentational [mental] powers are determined in their engagement with the object” (5:228). On the other hand, there are several indications that Kant did not, after all, go so far as to hold the counter-intuitive idea that judgments of beauty are cut off from empirical objects altogether. Hence, “in apprehending a given object of sense the imagination (Einbildungskraft) is tied to a determinate form of this object and to that extent does not have free play (as it does [e.g.] in poetry)” (5:240); “Judgments of taste about the beautiful are of this sort . . . [which] . . . concern a liking or disliking for the form of the object . . . For in their case . . . [the] basis [is] in the object and its shape (hat alsdann doch im Objecte und seiner Gestalt ihren Grund)” (5:279). There are even passages, like this one from the Second Introduction, which seem to run together elements of objective and subjective reference: [T]he pleasure in a judgment of taste is indeed dependent (abhängig) on an empirical presentation . . . (we cannot determine a priori what object will or will not conform to taste; we must try it out), but the pleasure is still the basis determining (Bestimmungsgrund) this judgment . . . solely because we are aware that it rests merely on reflection and the universal though only subjective conditions of the harmony of that reflection. (5:191) Yet another key passage suggests that the subjective “harmony” or “attunement” of the mental faculties operative in aesthetic judgment (roughly, the perceiving “imagination” and conceiving “understanding”) cannot be so easily isolated from an objective reference since “this attunement of the cognitive powers varies in its proportion, depending on what difference there is among the objects that are given” (5:238). In that case, the form of the relation between the subjective mental faculties, felt affectively as pleasurable, would still be dependent upon the form of the objects themselves, and the feeling of pleasure would thereby reflect “differences” that inhere among objects in the world. Even if a conciliatory interpretation could show it to be consistent that Kantian judgments of taste can be both objective in that they are “dependent” on differences among empirical objects and subjective in that their “determining ground” is a subjective feeling of pleasure, that capacious account still leaves open the question of what, exactly, aesthetic judgments actually judge. Because the letter of the text is both capacious and contradictory, there is room for nearly endless debate whether the referent of aesthetic judgments is a property of the object judged or rather a state of the judging subject. This divide between “objectivist” and “subjectivist”

162  Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative interpretations thus demarks the two sides of a second major debate within the scholarship on Kant’s aesthetics.

Four Logical Possibilities Taking a broad view of the very notion of “aesthetic judgment”, and overlaying the objective—subjective dispute on the internalist—externalist debate, one may distinguish four logically distinct meta-aesthetic positions that the Critique of Judgment, on the balance, may be argued to hold. External Subjectivism Combining externalism and subjectivism entails that the feeling of pleasure is logically distinct from the judgment itself and the referent of the judgment is a subjective, mental condition. The subjectivism involved, however, can take two broadly different shapes, depending on the alternative ways the feeling of pleasure can be external to the judgment of taste, that is, as its prior occasion or subsequent result. In the first case the feeling of pleasure would itself be given prior to the aesthetic judgment proper, whose formal task, then, is to make a determination concerning some feature or quality of that pleasure such as its psychological origin, inter-subjective communicability, or moral significance.9 Contrariwise a subjective judgment about oneself may be said to come first and elicit a pleasure as a consequence. That would be the case if what I am appreciating in the feeling of pleasure is the accomplishment of a prior subjective task, for example, my ability to judge novel situations “reflectively” in the absence of governing concepts or attribute to my existence a “purposiveness” even in a world without knowable metaphysical purposes.10 External Objectivism One could remain an externalist but hold, unlike the subjectivist, that aesthetic judgments intend features of objects or empirical states of affairs. Again, the alternative prioritization of the pleasure and judgment within externalism gives different shape to the resulting objectivism. If the pleasure precedes the judgment, the judgment could still be objective if it means to trace the etiology of the feeling along a causal chain back to an empirical property of an object that caused the pleasure as its natural effect (in much the same way that a tickle in the nose can be discovered to have been caused by pepper).11 Alternatively an empirical judgment could occur prior to and independently of any particular feeling that would then follow as its result. That result would follow, for instance, if aesthetic judgment discriminated a particular “form” or “shape” (Form, Bild, Gestalt) of an object—say, one in which there was a discernible “harmony” or a reinforcing self-reference between the overall whole and the particular parts—upon which,

Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative  163 subsequently, a feeling of pleasure would supervene.12 In virtue of being a pleasure in a judgment about an empirical object, an affective element would passively track along with, but not itself actively pick out, aesthetic qualities inherent in objects. Internal Subjectivism Opposed to the externalist, an internalist holds that taste is not a matter of making a judgment and feeling pleasure but rather making a judgment in or through the feeling of pleasure.13 In other words, the pleasure itself has an intentional reference and actively participates in the work of judgment. For the internalist who is also a subjectivist, what the pleasure intends—that is, what the feeling itself discloses—is the mental state of the judging subject. On this view pleasure is an affective mode of self-relation without which the judging subject would have no other access to her own internal mental constitution. There is some variation concerning what, in particular, it is about ourselves that we are supposed to come to know through a distinctively “aesthetic” feeling of pleasure. Jean-François Lyotard, for example, interprets Kant to mean that aesthetic feeling exposes various reflective orientations to the world as a whole prior to the conceptual acts by which we can be said to know individual objects.14 Hannah Ginsborg, by contrast, argues that the feeling of pleasure in judgments of taste is the manifest selfreferential awareness that one’s own subjective state of mind is as it ought to be; aesthetic pleasure thereby embodies a normative stance towards its own appropriateness.15 Internal Objectivism It is open to a subjectivist for whom the feeling of pleasure discloses the normativity or communicability of a private mental state to allow that judgments of taste are “objective” in the thin sense that, as grounded in the mental capacity for judgment as such, they are available to all judging subjects and are thus inter-subjectively shareable or “universally valid”.16 We have already seen, however, that aesthetic judgment can be said to be objective in the thicker sense that they refer to and pick out actual properties of empirical objects.17 The addition of internalism to this thick objectivism entails that a feeling accompanies an aesthetic judgment but not as the product or aftereffect of a prior intentional encounter with an object. The thought is rather that the discrimination of aesthetic features of objects takes place in or through a feeling of pleasure. It is admittedly difficult to comprehend what it would even mean to say that an affective feeling could be constitutive of, or involved in, a judgment about an empirical object, and the position has not yet been clearly staked out. One possibility is to say that a feeling of pleasure could itself be active in the discriminatory capacity of picking out and holding together aesthetic attributes so that absent

164  Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative the pleasurable feeling a judging subject could not (or would not) attend to the object or scene in the manner by which its aesthetic properties become salient. Whether or not such an internal-objectivist position is plausible, either as an interpretation of Kant or as a meta-aesthetic option in its own right, it is at least possible in the sense that there is nothing logically contradictory about considering whether affective states play an integral role in the way the mind attends to features of the objective world.

The Neglected Alternative Although the notion of “aesthetic judgment” gives rise to four distinct, logically possible meta-aesthetic positions, the scholarship on Kant has largely neglected the fourth alternative of internal objectivism. But it may be rejoined that the apparent neglect is merely terminological. While the unusual idiom of “internal objectivism” is certainly not current in the literature, the basic logical elements of this position can be found in a range of scholars, including Karl Ameriks, Hannah Ginsborg, Rachel Zuckert, Henry Allison, and Béatrice Longuenesse; and so the position is really not so neglected after all. While it is true that these scholars do indeed advance central elements of a view in which a feeling could be internal to a judgment that itself refers to an object, each ultimately espouses one of the other three alternatives. Ameriks, for instance, goes quite far in showing how aesthetic judgments may discriminate properties of empirical objects, but he explicitly rejects internalism in favor of a “priority thesis” in which the judging must precede the feeling of pleasure.18 Ameriks opposes his “priority thesis” to the “identity thesis” of Ginsborg. But while the feeling of pleasure for Ginsborg is internal to aesthetic judgment, she is adamant that such judgments refer self-referentially to the judging subject herself.19 Zuckert, who insists that pleasure is itself intentional, likewise holds that for Kant “there is an intentional object of pleasure and that this object is not an “object” (or does not refer to an object)”.20 While preserving the thought that the feeling of pleasure in taste is itself intentional, others like Allison and Pippin have tried to give a greater role to the empirical objects of taste, in effect reconciling the objectivity of Ameriks with the internalism of Ginsborg. On close review, however, both Allison and Pippin ultimately agree with Longuenesse that judgments of taste must be carefully separated into two logically distinct steps: the first step reflectively engages an empirical object and elicits a pleasure as a consequence (and is thus objective but external), and this pleasure, in a second step, intends or discloses a feature of the judging subject, namely the normative capacity to judge purposively but without a purpose (which is internal but subjective).21 Thus while there is lively debate within the scholarship concerning just what Kant meant by “aesthetic judgment”, for the most part the discussion occurs between three dominant parties. It is not that the fourth logical option of internal objectivism is raised and rejected but rather it is seldom considered as a

Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative  165 meta-aesthetic option in its own right, much less as a plausible interpretation of the third Critique.22 To be sure, this neglect would not at all appear arbitrary, since it seems to follow Kant himself. Although arguments in favor of each of the previous three meta-aesthetic interpretations are all complicated, if not contradicted, by conflicting passages, internal objectivism appears to hold the unique distinction of being the only interpretation Kant explicitly repudiates: [For to speak of] an aesthetic judgment, if [this were interpreted as meaning a judgment] to be used for objective determination, would be so strikingly contradictory that we would have sufficient assurance against [such a] misinterpretation. (20:222) A passage like this one certainly gives the impression that even if it were not “strikingly contradictory” to consider feeling to be internal to the discrimination of empirical objects, “we have sufficient assurance” that it could not be a plausible interpretation of Kant’s position. But placed within the context of the third Critique as a whole even this passage may not amount to an outright rejection of internal objectivism. One of the extra-aesthetic considerations complicating the interpretation of the Critique of Judgment follows from the terminology set out in the Critique of Pure Reason according to which the notion of “objectivity” is reserved for a specific kind of judgment underwritten by concepts—that is, discursively articulable rules or principles governing the right use of human understanding. One of the central claims of the third Critique, however, is that “the basis determining a judgment of taste . . . cannot be brought to determinate concepts; and hence even proofs do not allow us to decide anything about such a judgment” (5:338). Because taste is avowedly “non-conceptual” in the sense of not subsuming particular intuitions under determinate concepts, it follows simply by definition that aesthetic judgment is not “objective” in the specific sense in which Kant uses that term.23 This conclusion has led Karl Ameriks to caution that the talk of non-objectivity prevalent throughout the third Critique needs to be carefully treated as “complicated shorthand” for a wider set of logical and epistemological debates concerning whether and to what extent claims to “objectivity” must be underwritten by antecedently articulable conceptual formulae—a strict association of which, moreover, those of us living in the philosophical era after Wittgenstein no longer feel compelled to defend, and the overcoming of which, finally, Kant’s analysis of the “non-conceptual” nature of taste may have done much to prepare.24 Ameriks thereby holds out that, “the remark that aesthetic properties are not found in the concepts of things in this sense is still compatible (in Kant’s world) with judgments of beauty functioning just as objectively as ordinary particular empirical judgments” and, he concludes, “it does not seem to me that his view should be taken as involving a restriction that would conflict

166  Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative with what nearly all of us now would ordinarily mean in saying a claim is ‘objective’.”25 This semantic workaround, however, cannot all by itself, deflate the extraaesthetic pressures weighing against the objectivity of aesthetic judgment since Kant’s injunction against internal objectivism is motivated as much by metaphysical worries as it is by semantic considerations.26 That is because the third moment of the “Analytic of Beauty” argues that the appearance of a purposive form is an inherent and indefeasible feature of aesthetic phenomena. To be “purposive” for Kant means to have a form such that a concept or idea of the object as a whole logically precedes and makes possible the arrangement of its parts.27 Of course, the appearance of purposiveness need not preclude objectivity—indeed any object that is intentionally designed has such a technical (whole—part) form. The metaphysical problem arises, however, with a shift from objects of fine art to Kant’s preferred instances of beauty, that is, natural objects. Objects of natural beauty are particularly troublesome because their ineliminable purposive or designlike appearance seems to beg the question of what, or who, designed them. Starting from Kant’s apparent metaphysical assumption that all causality that is not mechanical (part—whole) must be technical (whole—part),28 the design-like appearance of natural beauty seems to bring in tow a substantial metaphysical commitment to the existence of a natural designer, a conclusion that oversteps the critical limits on knowledge argued at length in the “Transcendental Dialectic” of the first Critique. Given the terms of Kant’s critical program, there are, therefore, strong metaphysical reasons to deny that the designed (purposive) form of aesthetic objects is an actual property ascribable to the objects themselves rather than to a mental stance or aesthetic attitude in which the subject views an object “as if” it were purposive but without ascribing to it an actual purpose (20:216, 5:359–361). Thus while there are, on the one hand, clear reasons why internal objectivism about taste could not have been the position Kant himself intended; on the other hand, these reasons are driven primarily by second-order, meta-aesthetic assumptions about the metaphysical significance of ascribing objectivity to first-order aesthetic experiences. As was the case with the semantic questions about the meaning of the term “objectivity”, the metaphysical issues are quite complex and deciding on them would require a careful and extensive treatment. However, if one was not already convinced of the metaphysical position that all causation is exclusively mechanical or technical in the particular senses Kant has in mind, she would not see the denial of internal objectivism as having independent force. Hence, together with a proper understanding of what Kant means by the term “objectivity”, an appreciation that Kant’s aesthetics is embedded within a metaphysics that a modern reader may or may not share should be enough to loosen the extra-aesthetic constraints that rule out internal objectivism as a viable philosophical candidate in its own right.

Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative  167

The Case for Internal-Objectivism Of course, establishing that a measure has a right to be on the ballot is much different than the question of whether it should be approved. One campaign strategy available to supporters of internal objectivism is to align with those readings of the Critique of Judgment that see the whole issue of aesthetic reflective judgment as the logical completion of, rather than a deviation from, the “Copernican turn” set out in the Critique of Pure Reason, according to which features of the human, subjective mind are active in disclosing features of the objective world. The idea is to broaden the subjectivity at work in world disclosure beyond strictly cognitive capacities to include affective sensibilities. The challenge in that case is to show how the affective and “non-conceptual” nature of judgments of taste in the third Critique need not be seen as a revocation of the first Critique’s famous dictum that “intuitions without concepts are blind” (A51/ B75). The thought that could reconcile these otherwise contrary positions is that the emergence of aesthetic judgment represents not a lapse into (or recovery of) an empiricist moment of bare perceptual observation prior to the activation of the conceptual capacities. The point would be, rather, that the exclusively transcendental story articulated in the Schematism chapter of the first Critique by which the categories of the understanding relate to the pure forms of intuition substantially underdetermines the complex empirical operations by which human conceptual capacities bring concrete sense objects into view.29 While the first Critique rather sanguinely assumed that the relation between concepts and percepts at the empirical level “requires no special discussion” (A138/B177), it is precisely the nuances of this relation that come under careful consideration in the instances of “free beauty” that “do not presuppose a concept of . . . the object” (5:229). In the case in which experiences of “free” beauty are not to be read as falling back on a moment of a purely perceptual “given”, the key question is, in the absence of determining concepts, what else could possibly do the work of actively synthesizing or schematizing the manifolds of sense? The particular tack an internal objectivist would be keen to press is that Kant must allow that a feeling of pleasure could be active in the process by which various parts of the empirical manifold are seen to “hang together” to form an ordered, unified whole. It is along these lines that Richard Aquila argues that Kant can be read as holding that “the relation between a given intuition and a feeling of pleasure in an aesthetic experience is analogous to that between intuition and concept in [an ordinary perceptual] judgment”.30 Although the basic philosophical point of internal objectivism threatens to become obscured rather than clarified by the technical jargon of Kant’s critical program, the central idea is not all that outré; at least it is not so different from a popular line of thought about secondary qualities the

168  Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative appearance of which, it is argued, requires an exercise of subjective sensitivities to disclose aspects genuinely inherent in objects in the world but not ultimately describable from “sideways on” without reference to the subjective experience of them.31 All that thought commits one to in the aesthetic context is that without drawing on a range of affective sensibilities one would be effectively “blind” to what it is about a present object that merits aesthetic praise or blame in much the same way that someone who is “tone deaf” can be unable to hear a musical performance as anything but noise (see 7:168).32 Reflecting on the implications of Kant’s aesthetics, Barrie Falk has explored the possibility of placing the role of empirical concepts and aesthetic affects in a common turn of thought according to which subjective capacities must be at work to select among the multiple ways the mind can attend to or make salient various aspects of a perceptual scene. Falk, however, cautions that although the active role afforded to affectivity is a position the third Critique draws us towards, it is not a conclusion Kant himself draws.33 Similarly Richard Aquila—who, with Falk, comes closest to finding in Kant an argument for internal objectivism—also concedes that the most that can be said for such an interpretation is that it is at least “not incompatible with anything Kant says in the Critique of Judgment” and “it provides for a powerful extension of Kant’s earlier developed approach to the problem of perception and hence allows for a more unitary vision of the relation between the first and third Critiques than would otherwise be possible”.34 I think, however, that a Kantian may yet do better. That is to say, a stronger case remains to be made that an internal-objective interpretation can be read out of, not just into, the text of the third Critique. In what remains of this chapter, I want to lay out some features of the Critique of Judgment that are marginalized by Kant and often neglected in the scholarship but suggest, if taken seriously, that the internal-objectivist reading is compatible not just with the spirit of the text but also with its letter.

Feeling in the Place of a Predicate The analogy between an affect and a concept is one that Kant himself repeatedly suggests by situating the feeling of pleasure in judgments of taste in the place of a predicate: What is strange and unusual (Das Befremdende und Abweichende) about judgments of taste is only this: what is to be connected with the presentation of the object is not an empirical concept but a feeling of pleasure (hence no concept at all), though, just as if it were a predicate connected with cognition of the object, this feeling is nevertheless to be required of everyone. (5:191, translation modified)

Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative  169 And again, [J]udgments of taste . . . do not connect their predicate, a liking, with a concept but connect it with a singular empirical presentation that is given. (5:289) On several occasions, Kant seems to shy away from the “strange and unusual” notion that a feeling could literally take over the work of a real predicate whereby a concept specifies the logical form that determines the wholeness or order of the various parts of a sense manifold. Thus several passages cast the association between feeling and the predicative function of judgment in a metaphorical light: We can readily see that judgments of taste are synthetic: for they go beyond (hinausgehen über) the concept of the object, and even beyond the intuition of the object, and add (hinzuthun) as a predicate to this intuition . . . a feeling of pleasure (or displeasure). (5:288) In this context, the feeling of pleasure does not provide the logical determining grounds for an intelligible unity in a sense intuition, as a real predicate would, but rather “goes beyond” and “adds” an additional bit of aesthetic response on top of an object that is already given in the spatial-temporal and conceptual-logical form. In other words, if an object is already presented to sense in a logically unified form before the entrance of the feeling, then a feeling does not literally function as a predicate, giving logical consistency to manifolds of sense, rather it functions metaphorically “as if (als ob) it were a predicate” (5:191) insofar as it provides some subsequent, subjective structuring or colorful flourish added on top of the basic object of experience otherwise available even to the most tone deaf philistine.35 There are, however, other passages in which Kant does not couch the analogy between feeling and a logical predicate in terms of a metaphorical “as if”. For instance, §36 of the Deduction states: But we can also directly connect with a perception a feeling of pleasure (or displeasure) and a liking that accompanies the object’s presentation and serves it in the place of a predicate (statt Prädicats dient). This is how aesthetic judgment arises. (5:288) Another passage from the First Introduction also asserts quite literally that a feeling could somehow do the work normally ascribed to a predicate of a “determining” judgment: [W]e may define an aesthetic judgment in general as one whose predicate can never be cognition (i.e., concept of an object, though it may

170  Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative contain the subjective conditions for cognition as such). In such a judgment, the basis determining [it] is sensation (In einem solchen Urtheile ist der Bestimmungsgrund Empfindung). (20:224) It is admittedly difficult to discern what, exactly, Kant means by allowing a feeling to be the “determining ground” of a judgment; it would move too quickly simply to assume that “feeling . . . serves in the place of a predicate” means that in reflective judgments of taste a certain affect somehow takes over or stands in for a single empirical concept in determinative judgment, as if affects could be substituted for concepts one-for-one. Other features of the text confirm that the analogy between affects and concepts in the function of a predicate must be understood in a much more careful and sophisticated sense.

An Affective Schematism Commentators regularly observe that Kant claims §9 is “the key to the critique of taste and hence deserves full attention”. But midway through his response to the grand and titular question—“Whether in a Judgment of Taste the Feeling of Pleasure Precedes the Judging of the Object or the Judging Precedes the Pleasure”—Kant abruptly “postpones discussion of this question until we have answered another . . . lesser question” (5:218). The “lesser question” that postpones the key to taste concerns “how we become conscious, in a judgment of taste, of a reciprocal subjective harmony between the cognitive powers”. Section VIII of the unpublished First Introduction (which contains so many of the essential features of §9 that it might well be considered the ur-form of the key) makes it clear that the “lesser question” does not apply exclusively to aesthetic judgments of taste but extends generally to “the power of judgment [in which] we consider understanding and imagination as they relate to each other” (20:223). If we understand Kant here to mean by “imagination” the capacity by which we perceptively apprehend manifolds of sense and “understanding” to be the function whereby we comprehend sense appearances in logical or conceptual form, then the functions of the “cognitive powers” in the free play of aesthetic judgment are the same as those active in a deterministic form in cognitive judgment.36 In that case the “lesser question” is one left unresolved by Kant’s discursive model of cognition: how could we ever recognize that perceptual apprehension and conceptual comprehension have suitably matched up; in other words, by what are we aware that the mind and world are in touch with each other? At first glance, both §VIII and §9 make it seem like Kant means to be offering two answers. The first answer puts readers of the first Critique onto familiar ground: “This relation can firstly be considered objectively (as was done in the transcendental schematism of judgment)” (20:223); in §9

Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative  171 Kant, again, explicitly repeats that the question of how the imagination and understanding are “united” was the topic of “the objective schematism of judgment, with which the Critique (of Pure Reason) deals” (5:218). However, after recalling that the question of the “understanding and imagination as they relate to each other” was the issue treated in the Schematism chapter of the first Critique, Kant adds a claim new to the third Critique, “we can also consider this same relation (eben dieses Verhältniß) between [those] cognitive powers subjectively, insofar as these powers . . . affect . . . one’s mental state (Gemützustand afficirt), so that here we consider this relation as one that can be sensed (empfindbar ist)” (20:223). The rather remarkable but enigmatic suggestion that the relation between perceptual imagination and conceptual understanding “can be sensed” is reasserted in §9: “unity in the relation [between the cognitive powers] . . . can reveal itself . . . through sensation (durch Empfindung kenntlich machen)” (5:219). Even though it is not immediately clear for what purpose and on what basis the schematism of the first Critique takes on an affective signature in the third Critique, the surprising result of the “lesser question” is that Kant considers the cognitive schematism to have an aesthetic register insofar as it is somehow supposed to be sensed affectively by the judging subject.37 In his Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, Lyotard notices that “Kant places sensation in a kind of symmetry with the schema . . . [i]n both cases, it is indeed a relation between the same faculties”, but Lyotard regrets that “[t]he parallel is quickly abandoned”.38 A close reading of the third Critique, however, finds that far from abandoning the parallel, Kant in fact adopts the twin notions of schema and affect and raises them together on at least three further and separate occasions. (1) Section 35 of the Deduction explains how judgments of taste exercise a capacity for “schematizing without a concept” where, in the absence of determining concepts, the relation between “the imagination in its freedom and the understanding with its lawfulness . . . must rest on a feeling (auf einem Gefühle beruhen)” (5:287). It is in this situation wherein the activity of schematization subordinates “not intuitions under concepts”, as if in a one-to-one pairing, but rather subsumes “the power of intuitions or exhibitions (the imagination) under the power of concepts (the understanding)” that it appears to be a “feeling” that (somehow) takes over the role in reflective judgment normally assigned to concepts in determinative judging.39 (2) Section 21, in order to determine “Whether We Have a Basis for Presupposing a Common Sense”, lays out the mental conditions (Gemütszustand) that underlie any cognitive process: [I]f cognitions are to be communicated then the mental state (Gemüthszustand), i.e., the attunement of the cognitive powers (Stimmung der Erkenntnißkräfte) that is required for cognition in general . . . must also be universally communicable . . . And this does actually take place whenever a given object, by means of the senses induces the imagination

172  Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative to its activity of combining the manifold, the imagination in turn inducing the understanding to its activity of providing unity for this manifold in concepts. (5:238) In keeping with the symmetry between schema and affect, Kant then asserts: [T]he only way this attunement can be determined is by feeling (diese Stimmung kann . . . durch das Gefühl . . . bestimmt werden). (5:239) Here, in the so-called “first deduction”, the operation of the cognitive faculties themselves is “determined by feeling”—suggesting that there is more than a nominal connection between the “attunement” (Stimmung) of apprehension and comprehension and an affective mood (Stimmung), as though the mode of relationship between mind and world were somehow mediated through an affective mood.40 (3) Finally, in a passage near the end of the “Analytic of Aesthetic Judgment” Kant makes an otherwise unwonted assertion: Whenever we convey our thoughts, there are two ways (modi) of arranging them, and one of these is called manner (modus aestheticus), the other method (modus logicus); the difference between these two is that the first has no standard other than the feeling that there is unity in the exhibition, whereas the second follows . . . determinate principles. (5:318–319) Although Kant does not formally develop the idea that there is an “aesthetic mode” by which a feeling rather than a concept provides the “unity” exhibited in a perceptual object or scene, the notion of an aesthetic “manner” (Manier) of “arranging” thoughts as an alternative to a logical “method” resurfaces on several occasions throughout the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” (5:336, 5:355; cf. 5:204).41 It cannot be maintained that any one of these three themes allows one to articulate, in terms entirely consistent with the others, an adequate answer to the “lesser question” concerning how the schematic coordination of apprehending and understanding an aesthetic object are tied up with a subjective “feeling”. But, taken on the whole, these undeveloped and otherwise marginal passages begin to appear less like scattered and ornamental parerga and more like tentative variations on an implicit, but markedly objectivist, theme: the subjective feeling of pleasure in judgments of taste bears a close affinity to the schematic procedure by which the understanding and imagination bring objects into view.

Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative  173 Bewirken and Begleiten An objectivist of the externalist camp could accept at face value those features of the text that put pleasure at the schematic site wherein the mind encounters the world, but could still deny the internalist interpretation on which pleasure is actively involved in the schematizing activity of discerning or discriminating an object of reference. That is, while the “lesser question” does locate a feeling of pleasure at the scene of a perceptual encounter with an aesthetic object, nothing in those passages commits one to the conclusion that the feeling of pleasure must therefore be an active and contributing participant in the schematic process rather than a passive bystander or latecomer merely elicited by the independent operations of perception and understanding. And, in fact, in his answer to the “lesser question” Kant seems to relegate feeling to just such a passive role where the pleasure is not merely elicited by, but is actually the causal effect of, an independent cognitive activity. After making the surprising claim that “the relation [between imagination and understanding] . . . can reveal itself . . . through sensation”, Kant appears to specify how the feeling of pleasure is related to the workings of the cognitive powers: This sensation . . . is the quickening of the two powers (imagination and understanding) to an activity that is . . . required for cognition in general . . . [I]nsofar as it has subjective conditions, it can . . . be sensed in the effect (Wirkung) it has on the mind. (5:219) The ostensible claim that the pleasure is a causal consequence of a prior and independent mental operation is then immediately reasserted: “we . . . become conscious [of the relation between imagination and understanding] through a sensation of this relation’s effect (durch Empfindung der Wirkung)”. It is no wonder, then, that there is an apparent symmetry between schema and affect because the former simply causes the latter. While it can be admitted that the “lesser question” presents a rich and fascinating picture of the mind (according to which a feeling is found on the scene of our basic encounter with sense objects), as long as that feeling is passively elicited by the schematic process, the feeling has warrant only to report on the cognitive activities but not to participate in them or in any way affect the course of their outcome. It is essential for the internalist interpretation that an affect could be effective in judgment, but the externalist argues that the text only bears out that pleasure is a mere effect of judgment. The textual record, however, is not as decisive as it may initially appear. Anthony Savile points out that the semantic range of Kant’s terms Wirkung and bewirken cannot be so easily translated into the causal sense of the English “effect” since the German Wirkung aus dem can readily mean an

174  Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative outcome or result rather than a specifically mechanical consequence of a prior cause.42 In that case it would not be at all surprising, as Richard Aquila has noted, that while Kant does frequently describe the relationship between pleasure and judgment in causal terms such as bewirken and afficiern, he just as often uses terms that carry little or no causal commitment such as abhängen, bestimmen, beziehen, and begleiten.43 Indeed, Kant’s several uses of the latter term, begleiten, meaning “to accompany” (5:288, 292, 20:230 (cf. 5:232), and the nominative Begleitung, 5:317), are especially revealing for an internalist, since in addition to the passive sense of “attending” or “tagging along after” the term can also convey an active sense of “escorting” or “conducting”.44 Reading the ambivalent term begleiten with an eye to its active rather than passive connotation would admittedly reverse a fairly standard picture of the dependency between the affective and cognitive capacities in judgments of taste since the pleasure would be seen as actively escorting rather than being passively escorted by the aesthetic judgment.45 But there are readers who do see the whole notion of aesthetic reflective judgment as turning on just such a reversal. Lyotard, for instance, asserts, “[i]t does not amount to very much to say that reflection, as sensation, accompanies all acts of thinking: it guides them”.46 Lyotard’s suggestion that feeling does not merely “accompany” but actively “conducts” the cognitive faculties is echoed by Joseph Cannon: “For Kant, [aesthetic] reflection does not just consider the operation of the faculties in working with ideas of sense; it sets them in motion”.47 But it is perhaps Rodolphe Gasché who is most explicit in rejecting the purely passive, reporting role of feeling in judgments of taste in favor of an active alternative: Pleasure, then, is not only the immediate effect of the powers’ playful agreement—hence not straightforwardly distinct from its cause—it is instrumental in the conservation of that agreement . . . It not only keeps the play in place for its own sake but also contributes to the animation of the faculties that have entered an enlivening relation . . . Kant speaks of taste as a “tone of mind which is self-maintaining (Gemütsstimmung, die sich selbst erhält)” . . . Pleasure is thus not merely an effect—an aesthetic manifestation of awareness—it is intimately tied up with taste as a state of mind in which powers freely become attuned to one another in pleasure, or rather as pleasure itself.48 By drawing out the often overlooked active connotations of Kant’s ambivalent terminology, these internalist readings at least permit one to question whether it is the dominant externalist interpretation that is being read into rather than out of the text. But to build a positive account of internal objectivism requires showing that this active, participatory role of pleasure in taste is more than a mere desideratum but is actually defensible, both in itself and as a reading of Kant.

Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative  175 Schwung One final consideration that may swing the balance of the text in favor of an internalist reading surfaces briefly in §49 called “On the Powers of the Mind (Vermögen des Gemüths) Which Constitute Genius”.49 It is here where Kant comes closest to admitting that the cognitive capacities of understanding and imagination are not the prime movers of the mind with the affect of pleasure arising only as an aftereffect but, contrariwise, the cognitive faculties themselves are conditioned by an affective mental state (Gemützustand). After first invoking the distinction he will soon after define as that of the two different “modes” of thought—namely, logical method and aesthetic ­manner—Kant makes a rather remarkable assertion: Geist in the aesthetic sense is the animating principle of the mind (Gemüthe). But what this principle uses to animate the soul, the material it employs for this, is what imparts to the mental powers a purposive momentum (Schwung), i.e., imparts to them a play which is such that it sustains itself on its own and even strengthens the powers for such a play. (5:313) In order for this passage to read through, one must reverse the direction of dependency typically assigned to the relation between the cognitive faculties (mind) and an aesthetic state (mood): the “play” of the mental faculties does not (only) passively elicit a pleasurable consequence but is itself affected by a logically prior “aesthetic” condition that “animates”, “sustains”, and “imparts . . . a purposive momentum (Schwung)” to their activities.50 While it is certainly debatable what Kant had in mind by suggesting that an aesthetic Geist “imparts a momentum . . . to the mental powers”, the imagery of a mental Schwung cannot be easily glossed over, since it returns throughout the text (5:272, 273, 274, 312, 315, 318).51 There are, furthermore, other textual indications that Kant does not hold that imagination and understanding act prior to and independently of a wider, affect-laden mental state but rather allows the cognitive faculties themselves to be affected by such a Gemützustand. For instance, in the First Introduction after making a familiar claim about the necessary “harmony” between imagination and understanding, Kant then adds that this “harmony . . . furthers (Beförderung) the task of these powers” (20:220–221). In several other passages the “harmony” of the faculties—what Kant elsewhere calls “that proportionate attunement (Stimmung) which we require for all cognition” (5:219)—is not a mere consequence of the prior and independent cognitive operations but itself works upon them and “furthers” or “promotes” their activity.52 Kantian Motivations for “Internal Objectivism” Of course, the line of thought in which a mental attunement (Gemütsstimmung) promotes or drives forward the mental faculties only makes sense

176  Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative if perception and cognition are conceived as a kind of ongoing activity in need of animating energy or dynamic drive. And, as already discussed above (both briefly in this chapter in the section on “The Case for Internal-Objectivism” and at length in Chapter 2 on the “Productive Imagination”), at the core of Kant’s Copernican turn is the thought that even mere sense awareness is not simply a matter of being passively struck by a sense “given” but requires an active “taking” of the world to be a certain way, where such “taking” the world to be such-and-so has a conceptual form and is thus communicable and normative (e.g., A51/B75, B137–138).53 One question raised already in the first Critique by the introduction of the “productive imagination” is whether such discursive activity can be accounted for as a simple and discrete pairing of concept and intuition in a one-off and once and for all fashion. According to the “hermeneutic” or “multicognitive” readings of the third Critique, Kant develops the notion of “reflective judgment” in order to accommodate how even ordinary perception is open-ended, highly defeasible, and liable to criticism and must therefore be understood, not as a rapid series of discrete judgments, but as an ongoing negotiation with the world.54 On this reading, one of the philosophical virtues of aesthetic experience is to expose how our perceptual “takings” of the world are determined in no small part by anticipations and associations, routes of attention and patterns of neglect, competing construals by which some elements of a scene become salient as foreground and others recede into the background—in short, all of the various ways the mind can be oriented to, and by, the world. From this multicognitive starting point, it is easy to position Kant as a forerunner of the more familiar, if not quite mainstream, contemporary view that aesthetic experiences make explicit those sustained and open-ended engagements with the world that must be implicit in any perceptual encounter.55 And to the extent that even the most basic perceptual experience is not a discrete and finite event but an ongoing and defeasible activity of orienting and reorienting oneself in the world, that continuous action would stand in need of energy or Schwung to carry it forward and drive it in one possible direction rather than another. Other than Falk, however, none of the advocates of the multicognitive reading have gone so far as to link the activity of orienting oneself in the world with an underlying affective state. To be sure, there is nothing in the passages cited above, besides the equivocal term Stimmung, that requires the Beförderung or Schwung at work in any perceptual encounter to be understood as a feeling or an affective mood as opposed to a generalized reflective mode of judgment that might generate an affective response as a result. But there are other occasions in which Kant does place the feeling of pleasure in intimate relation with the momentum that “animates” the imagination and understanding. An ambiguous statement in §9 even appears to identify the “animation” of the cognitive faculties with a feeling:

Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative  177 The sensation . . . is the animation of both faculties (the imagination and understanding) to an activity that is indeterminate but . . . unanimous: the activity required for cognition in general . . . (Die Belebung beider Vermögen (der Einbildungskraft und des Verstandes) zu unbestimmter, aber doch . . . einhelliger Thätigkeit . . . ist die Empfindung . . .). (5:219; translation modified) Thus while Kant does sometimes position the feeling of pleasure as the “effect” of the harmony, in other passages the feeling of aesthetic pleasure is construed as identical with or even an active driver of (Beförderung) the cognitive operations, as though a feeling could give judgment a shove (Schwung) in a particular direction. There is, however, no small difference between these two alternatives—in the first case one can at most take pleasure in the attuning of the cognitive faculties, but in the latter case it is the feeling of pleasure itself that does the attuning. In other words, to take seriously Kant’s suggestion that an aesthetic Geist “imparts a momentum” to the cognitive faculties is to assign an affective state an active role in the schematic attuning of apprehending imagination (sense perception) and comprehending understanding (sense making). And, finally, if we can become comfortable with the thought that in such a mental Schwung an aesthetic condition works within, not upon, our judgmental capacities, it would at least become intelligible why something like a feeling of pleasure could be said to be internal to or constitutive of judgments about objects in the world. Wider Philosophical Grounds for “Internal Objectivism” But even if it is possible to identify a feeling of pleasure with the mental Schwung or Beförderung required for any sense experience, it can still be difficult to see why such a reading is plausible. Perhaps a clearer vantage of what is philosophically at stake in the claim that an affective state can play an active role in discriminating and orienting perceptual experience can be seen when David Wiggins interrogates the way senses of humor enable a kind of back and forth “mutual instruction” between one’s “grasp of the concept of the funny . . . and . . . [one’s] focus or discrimination of what is funny”. [A]fter the process has begun, those who participate in it may report not only that they discriminate more keenly, make more decisions and are better satisfied with the classifications and subclassifications they now effect, but also that they get more and more cognitive-cum-affective satisfaction in their own responses. Finer perceptions can both intensify and refine responses. Intenser responses can further heighten and refine perceptions. And more and more refined responses can lead to further and finer and more variegated or more intense responses and perceptions.56

178  Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative With this rather unthreatening description of a “mutual instruction” between an affective response and perceptual attention, Wiggins reinforces a thought intimated by Kant: by orienting our patterns of attention, affective sensibilities are involved in the “discovery of properties or the lighting up of properties that are there”.57 By shifting the topic from experiences of beauty to humor Wiggins gives a plausible description of just how a subjective-affective state could be constitutive of our perceptual and cognitive capacities rather than a mere by-product of an independent mental operation, and he thereby demystifies what it would mean to say that an affective or subjective state is internal to the way we discriminate objects and perceptual scenes. [T]he subjectivism we have envisaged does not treat the response as a criterion, or even as an indicator. In the full theory of the last stage of the processes we have been describing, it counts as nothing less than an act of judging a content; it is a judgment indispensably sustained by the perceptions and feelings and thoughts that are open to criticism that is based on norms that are open to criticism. It is not that by which we tell. It is part of the telling itself.58 Once an affective state “is not that by which we tell” but “part of the telling itself” we have a clear conception of what it means to say that an affective or pathological state can be internal to and constitutive of our basic phenomenological encounters with objects or scenes in the world: affective sensibilities can orient our perceptions, which can in turn intensify or refine our responses through a self-reinforcing and self-correcting cognitive-cumaffective “momentum” (Schwung). This is the position that (for lack of a better term) I have called “internal objectivism”, and, if the foregoing argument succeeds, it is both plausible on its own terms and at least possible as a reading of Kant.59

Conclusion My primary concern in this chapter has been to offer a revised interpretation of several “lesser” features of the Critique of Judgment in order to show how the notion of “aesthetic judgment” can be understood to be both “internalist” in that the feeling of pleasure is a constitutive element of the judgment of taste itself (rather than its prior referent or external effect) and “objective” insofar as the pleasure not only reflects the mental state of the judging subject but discriminates features of the object or scene judged. The most that reconstructive argument can show, however, is that such “internal objectivism” is available within the terms of the third Critique, not that it is the position Kant actually adopted. But allowing even that restricted conclusion is no small concession since it entails that Kant’s repudiation of internal objectivism, and its subsequent neglect in the scholarship, is not a

Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative  179 consequence of it being impossible as a conception of aesthetic judgment but rather because it is considered to be simply implausible as a philosophical position in its own right. In that case, what initially appears as an open debate about what Kant could have meant by the notion of “aesthetic judgment” in fact reflects an underlying consensus regarding a deeper philosophical problem, which John McDowell summarizes as: “how can a mere feeling constitute an experience in which the world reveals itself to us?”60 A facile interpretation of Kant’s apparent assurance that it is “strikingly contradictory” to propose that feeling is disclosive of objects in the world has, in effect, established the broad terms of agreement from which subsequent debate has followed. McDowell, for his part, directs his one essay specifically on “aesthetic value”, “to cast doubt on a line of thought that would prevent us from finding this question, and similar questions, so much as worth raising”.61 I have tried to extend that critical and propaedeutic task to Kantian aesthetics by showing that the semantic and metaphysical considerations weighing against internalism and objectivism can be met, at least enough so that internal objectivism cannot be ruled out from the start. But, again, establishing that a candidate cannot be disqualified from the ballot does nothing to settle the question of how it will fare when placed against other qualified challengers. Thus, I also endeavored to show that the letter of the third Critique, if not always its spirit, does actually supply substantial philosophical resources to withstand such a challenge, both in terms of a broad picture of the human mind as active in an ongoing orientation in the world and in the narrower terms of the technical vocabulary that allows one to articulate in just what sense it can be said that a feeling promotes or reinforces the schematic process by which empirical objects come into view in any perceptual encounter. Finally, by overlaying the dynamics of aesthetics and judgment in Kant with the “mutual instruction” between affection and cognition in Wiggins I meant to tie one thread in Kantian aesthetics into a wider strand of thought within contemporary meta-aesthetics and the philosophy of mind concerning how and why affectivity would be at work within intentionality and rationality more generally.62 Indeed, one of the unmistakable trends in recent philosophy is a widespread turn to all things affective; but at least at present this “affective turn” has generated more questions than answers concerning how to construe the relations between cognition, affection, perception, and judgment.63 By taking a step back historically to the Critique of Judgment, this chapter aims to move contemporary philosophy one positive step forward. The initial buds of the Copernican turn that emerge in the first Critique where there is no perceptual sensation without conceptual sense-making come into full bloom in the third Critique where there is no sense-making without the cooperation of affective sensibilities. It is thus by following Kant’s lead in taking the peculiar features of aesthetic experience to open onto serious philosophical reflection that we can begin to see what

180  Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative is at stake in the meta-aesthetic debates about whether and how our affective sensibilities are part and parcel of the way we are oriented in the world.

Notes  1 Additional passages in favor of a causal reading include 5:190, 217, 238; 20:224–225.  2 Translation modified. Paul Guyer offers an extended argument for a logical distinction between (i) aesthetic appraisal (Beurteilung) of an empirical object, which causally generates a “raw feeling” of pleasure, and (ii) aesthetic judgment proper (Geschmacksurteil), which investigates the causal origins of phenomenologically opaque pleasures (1997: 97–103 and 1982: 23–33). Further passages that suggest that Geschmacksurteil amounts to a judgment about a logically prior pleasure include 5:190–191, 288–290, and 296, where Kant even defines taste as “our ability to judge a priori the communicability of . . . [a] feeling”.   3 Because of the language of identity at (5:222) interpretations favoring an internal connection between pleasure and judgment often refer to this passage. However, Guyer argues that the identity in §12 refers only to the feeling of respect in moral judgment and that the analogy to the feeling of pleasure in taste is too weak to establish a similar identity in the aesthetic domain (1997: 94–96). Even if one were to grant this reading of §12, Guyer neglects to mention that this passage is far from the only time Kant suggests that feeling and judgment are identical, and none of the other instances cited in this paragraph are burdened by the analogy with the feeling of respect in moral judgment.   4 Section VII of the Second Introduction twice assimilates feeling with judgment when it glosses pleasure as “this judgment” (5:190, 191).   5 See Günter Zöller (817–818).   6 A distant relative of this second ambiguity concerning the meaning of the term “aesthetic” is present as early as the Transcendental Aesthetic of the Critique of Pure Reason (A21/B35 n. a) and returns in the First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment (20:221–222).   7 See Elisabeth Schellekens (e.g., 170–174). To stipulate that the terms “objectivism” and “subjectivism” denote exclusively the judgment’s referent rather than its criterion is a departure from the way the terms are used in the contemporary subjectivism/objectivism debates. By introducing a terminological distinction between “internalism” and “subjectivism” to track the logical difference between criterion and referent, I aim to keep separate two distinct issues that become conflated in the literature (including that on Kant’s aesthetics).   8 The claim that judgments of taste are “merely” or “only” subjective recurs at 5:189–192, 213–215, 217, 227, 239, 280, 285–290.   9 A loose, family resemblance with Paul Guyer’s “two-step” view, in which a judgment of taste proper that evaluates a pleasure can be separated from a prior aesthetic response that engenders a pleasure, can be seen among Donald W. Crawford (1974: 36, 69–75); Malcolm Budd (2001: 251–252); Anthony Savile (1987:134–135, 157–160); Georg Kohler (1980: 170–174, 273–277); Walter Cerf (1963: 95, 105); and Beatrice Longuenesse’s “twofold pleasure” (2006: e.g., 207). 10 There is a broad affiliation between Robert Pippin (1996: 560–565); Henry Allison (2003: 191 and cf. 2006: 133); Rodolphe Gasché (2003: 8, 30); Jens Kulenkampff (1990: 109); Rachel Zuckert (2002: e.g., 240–241, 247–249); Rudolf Makkreel’s “meta-experiential” reflective judgment (e.g., 2006: 242–244); and Longuenesse’s “second pleasure” (2006: e.g., 207).

Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative  181 11 While this broadly naturalistic approach to aesthetic pleasure could be credited to Hume, I am not aware of anyone who attributes it to Kant. See 5:217 where Kant seems to rule out such a possibility. 12 Karl Ameriks (e.g., 305–306); Paul Crowther (1996:114–115); Longuenesse’s “first pleasure” (2006: e.g., 207); Fred L. Rush, Jr. (2001: 59–60). 13 See Richard Aquila (1982: 95). 14 See “Aesthetic Reflection”, passim in (1994: 1–49). 15 E.g., (2003: 170, 172, 175). 16 Anthony Savile (1981: 365); and Ameriks (2003: 309, 335). 17 As Ameriks has pointed out (Ibid., 302), the debate between “thick” and “thin” conceptions of objectivity crystallizes around Kant’s use of the terms Allgemeingültigkeit and Gemeingültigkeit at 5:214. 18 Ibid., 310–311; see also 337, n. 18. 19 E.g., (2003: 170–175). 20 (2002: 240). 21 Longuenesse (2006); Pippin (1996: 560–565); Allison (2003: 191 and 2006: 133). See also pp. 205–7 for the attempt to reconstruct orientational judgments according to a similar “two-step” logic. 22 Seldom, but not never. I proceed next to lay out elements of this “heterdoxical” reading of Kant that can be found in Falk, Aquila, Lyotard, Gasché, and Cannon. It may also be that the neglect of “internal objectivism” as a meta-aesthetic position in its own right is coming to an end. Mohan Matthen takes a congenial position in the “Pleasure of Art” (2017). 23 I have argued at length (especially in Chapter 4) that there is more to any judgment (not just judgments of taste) than the subsumption of discrete intuitions under determinate concepts, but Chapter 2 should also serve as a warning against confusing that true but limited sense of “non-conceptualism” with the false view that intuitions derive their perceptual form prior to and independently of the form attributable to the faculty of concepts. 24 (2003: 309, 339). 25 Ibid., 297, 335. 26 See J. H. Zammito (1992: 151–155). 27 See 5:220; 20:213–216. On the distinction between the technical (whole—part) and mechanical (part—whole), see Zammito (1992: 209, 214–227); Makkreel (2006: 231); McLaughlin (1990: 49–52, 163–180); and Rachel Zuckert (2007: e.g., 116–118, 136–143). 28 I am not aware of any occasion on which Kant explicitly stated that causation is either mechanical or teleological (or the corollary that explanation is either determinative or reflective), but, as Zuckert suggests (2007: 96), many of his arguments only seem to be valid if one takes them to have the form of a disjunctive syllogism from a tacit premise that mechanism and teleology are exclusive and exhaustive. See 5:372–376, 387–389, 409, 415, and 20:231–237. 29 The question of transcendental underdetermination is most often taken up in the literature in the debates about the Second Analogy. See Gerd Buchdahl (1969: 641–645); Henry Allison (1996: 80–91); Michael Friedman (1992: 61–99); Béatrice Longuenesse (2005: 143–183). The “gap” between the transcendental and empirical levels was also a major theme of Chapter 4 (see especially pp. 101–6). 30 (2002: 110; see 108–112). 31 Ameriks (2003: 320–321); John McDowell (2002:112–150); David Wiggins (1987: e.g., at 189–190). 32 As discussed in Chapter 3 (pp. 77–8) Kant himself discusses color blindness and tone deafness in consecutive sentences in the cited passage, which comes from the Anthropology (2006: 61).

182  Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative 33 (1983: 60). 34 (2002: 88). 35 This way of reading the text is similar to Paul Guyer’s recent “metacognitive” interpretation of aesthetic judgment, which argues that the feeling of pleasure “goes beyond what is required to satisfy the conditions for the application of a determinate concept to the object” and “the aesthetic response to the beauty of an object is not completely separate from ordinary cognition of it but rather in some sense additional to it” (2006: 186, 185). Ameriks had earlier advocated for a similar position (e.g., 2003: 306, 340, 342 n. 26). See also the discussion (pp. 77–81) concerning the nature of a tonal form as a kind of higher-level property. 36 This reading is widely held to be natural and unforced. Hannah Ginsborg, however, balks: “the temptation to understand Kant’s talk of the free play as attempting to capture the rich and complex mental activities that go into the interpretation and appreciating of a work of art is, I think, mistaken” (1991: 308). She adds, “On my account, the free play of the faculties bears no essential relation to the activities of ordering and unifying where we make sense of an object of aesthetic experience” (Ibid.). Thus Ginsborg rejects as “mistaken” the idea that the activity of the imagination in aesthetic judgment is similar to its task in cognitive judgment of synthesizing manifolds of sense. A fair evaluation of Ginsborg’s alternative account of the “free play” of the faculties is not possible here, but I have already discussed (Section III) that Kant denies that freedom of the imagination means free from objective constraint (e.g., 5:240). 37 Recall that Pippin sees such talk of “feeling” in reflective judgment as simply a placeholder for a non-discursive “sense” of things (p. 95 n. 27). The last two citations, however, identify the relation between the cognitive faculties as one that is not merely “free” but, moreover, is affectively “felt” (empfindbar ist). 38 (1994: 14). 39 I had discussed this passage at pp. 62–3 emphasizing the relation is not one between discrete intuitions and determinate concepts but the power of intuitions and the power of concepts. Here we add that the relation between the two powers or faculties is, for Kant, one that is felt. 40 For claims that the feeling of pleasure is present in any cognitive judgment, see 5:187, 191, 232, 292–293. 41 I discussed the notion of a “modus aestheticus” in contrast to a “modus logicus” in Chapter 3 (pp. 85–9). 42 (1987: 143 n. 18). 43 (2002: 93–94). 44 The passive/active ambivalence of the verb begleiten is reflected on the level of prepositions where pleasure is said to be an einer gegebenen Vorstellung (5:217), wodurch ein Gegenstand gegeben wird (5:217), and bei ein Gegenstand gegeben wird (5:317). 45 Compare this point to the debate concerning the relation between pathē and kriseis in Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Chapter 4 (especially pp. 113–16 and p. 118 notes 23 and 24). 46 (1994: 26). 47 (2008: 63 n. 14). 48 (2003: 51). 49 On the affective resonance in the term Gemüt, Kant’s preferred word for the mind, see Howard Caygill (1997: 210–212; Valerio Rohden (2012). The German Mut is a cognate of the English “mood”. 50 See here Matthen’s “The Pleasure of Art” in which he describes the particular quality of aesthetic pleasure as part of a self-reinforcing mental activity that motivates and optimizes a mental nexus and shapes how we engage with

Kantian Meta-aesthetics and the Neglected Alternative  183 the object over time. On my view, a careful reading of the terms Kant uses to describe aesthetic pleasure (e.g., as “accompanying” a judgment and imparting to it a “momentum”) shows where a Kantian account can accommodate, or alternatively anticipates, our best contemporary understanding of the role of pleasure in taste. 51 Recall also Rousseau’s description of the “emotions” as the “mouvemens de l’ame” (136–8). 52 See “Beförderung” and “erfordern”, 5:287; “befördern”, 5:329; “beförderlich”, 20:224. 53 Robert Pippin (1987: 462–463). 54 Rudolf Makkreel (1990); Rush (2001); Paul Crowther (1987: 9–19); Henry Allison (2001: e.g., 171); and cf. Guyer (2006: 166–178). I offered a similar reading in Chapter 4, especially in “From Concepts to Contexts” (pp. 105–11). 55 E.g., Alva Noë (2004: 175–179) and Nelson Goodman (1976: 262–264) and (1978: 102–107). See also the discussion on pages 8–13 in Chapter 1. 56 (1987: 196). 57 Ibid., 207. 58 Ibid., 207–208. 59 At best the transition from Kantian aesthetics to the kind of “sensible subjectivism” advocated here by Wiggins is partial; at worst it is abortive. According to the letter of the third Critique, aesthetic judgments could not extend to include Wiggins’s humor specifically or other affective sensibilities more generally (as I have been suggesting they can) since the “feeling” (Gefühl) involved in taste for Kant is explicitly and specifically limited to pleasure and displeasure (Lust and Unlust) (e.g., 20:224). It requires far more argumentation than I can provide here to demonstrate that Kantian aesthetic judgments can be dissociated from the “privileging of pleasure” thesis. I do, however, argue in the following chapter that on its own terms, Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment must extend to at least one other Gefühl, namely the feeling of left and right in orientation. Moreover, the rough analogy between Aristotelian pathē and Kantian Laune discussed in Chapter 4 is another step in this direction. 60 (2002: 130). 61 Ibid. 62 See, for example, Stanley Cavell, “The Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy” and “Music Discomposed” in Must We Mean What We Say? (2008: 73–96, 180–212) and Barrie Falk “Communicability of feeling” (1983), “Feeling and Cognition” (1996), and “What Are We Frightened Of?” (1982) as well as Stephen Mulhall (“Can There Be an Epistemology of Moods?” 1996), who notes a logical parallel between these discussions and Heidegger’s treatment of “moods” in Being and Time. For even more recent versions of such a problem, see also the “Conclusion and Implications” section of the previous chapter (pp. 149–51, esp. p. 155 notes 31 and 32). 63 For recent trends in the cognitive sciences see John Protevi (2009: 23–30) and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.) (2007); and in philosophy more generally, see Robert Solomon (ed.) (2004).

7 Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World

This final chapter offers a critical and reconstructive reading of Kant’s “Orientation” essay of 1786 for the wider philosophical purpose of arguing that the ability to orient oneself in the world requires knowledge claims about sense objects that cannot be made without an irreducible aesthetic or felt discrimination. The proper conclusion one should draw from Kant’s argument, I aim to show, is that orientation represents a class of judgment that is (i) aesthetic1 insofar as it draws on an ineliminable affective and thus subjective state but is (ii) cognitive in the sense that it gets purchase on and discloses features of the objective world. The payoff of a careful reading of a relatively minor essay in the history of philosophy is that it yields the intellectual resources needed to pose a satisfying answer to the wider contemporary problem that John McDowell summarizes as, “how can a mere feeling constitute an experience in which the world reveals itself to us?”2 An answer comes into view, I will suggest, when Kant leads us to consider whether an affective state can enable a particular sense object to function as a symbol for the layout of the world as a whole. To be clear, the main argument of this chapter does not primarily concern the historical question of whether Kant himself really did allow that orientational judgments are aesthetic and objective in the sense that they discriminate features of objects or states of affairs that cannot properly be recognized prior to or independently of an affective feeling; although, I do make a case against two main rival interpretations that he could have adopted such a view given philosophical innovations for which Kant himself is responsible. The guiding question of this chapter, rather, is that of the philosophical merits of the position that comes into view for us, the readers, who notice an unresolved problem concerning the capacity for orienting oneself in the world that appears especially salient when it arises in the context of the Kantian system.

The Architectonic, Spinoza Controversy, and Standard Reading The claim that “feeling” could be a constituent of “knowing” appears particularly striking within the context of the Kantian critical system because

186  Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World of the way the architectonic, at first glance, seems designed to establish the modern division of labor between the objectivity of cognition and the subjectivity of aesthetic feeling.3 While the Critique of Pure Reason does famously insist that “sensibility” (Sinnlichkeit) is an irreducible stem of human knowledge, it explicitly disassociates the “aesthetic” form of a pure intuition from anything as empirical and epistemologically fuzzy as “feeling” (Gefühl) (A28/B44). Thus, in no uncertain terms, “feeling (Gefühl) is not a faculty whereby we represent things, but lies outside our whole faculty of knowledge” (A801/B829 n.a). And although the Critique of Judgment does locate a feeling of pleasure in the operations of the mental faculties of the (conceptual) understanding and (perceptual) imagination, the coordination of which is a condition of empirical cognition, the text often suggests that the subjective feeling of pleasure reflects only the state of the judging subject and has no epistemological bearing whatsoever on the object judged.4 One particularly striking passage from the “First Introduction” appears to dismiss the very notion of a judgment that is at once aesthetic and objective as a contradiction in terms: “[For to speak of] an aesthetic judgment, if [this were interpreted as meaning a judgment] to be used for objective determination, would be so strikingly contradictory that we would have sufficient assurance against [such a] misinterpretation” (20:222). Thus, while the critical system includes cognitive judgments that get purchase on objects in the world as well as aesthetic judgments that draw on subjective feeling, there seems to be little room to doubt that cognition and affection are divided into categorically different modes of intending and judgment. The popular essay of 1786 “What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?” is, however, sometimes read as complicating the neat separation of the first and third Critiques because of the novel way it addresses the possibility of a complete body of knowledge and a systematic metaphysics by way of an aesthetic “feeling”. While the issue of orientation is by no means a dominant topic in the scholarship, there has recently been a fair amount of interest in the essay, especially among those persuaded that the epistemological and metaphysical positions of the Critique of Pure Reason cannot be properly situated without appreciating the key developments surrounding the introduction of “aesthetic reflective judgment” in the Critique of Judgment. This interest arises not only because the Orientation essay of 1786 falls historically midway between the first edition of the first Critique (1781) and the publication of the third Critique (1790) but also because it makes claims that suggest that, logically considered, the relation between Kantian epistemology and aesthetics is, in fact, much more continuous than a crude architectonic division of labor between the three Critiques would have suggested.5 There is thus a tendency to place the notion of “orientation” as a convenient midway point in a smooth developmental progression from the epistemology and metaphysics of the first Critique to the aesthetics and teleology of the third.

Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World  187 For all the recent attention the notion of “orientation” has received, it has yet gone unremarked that Kant was not motivated to write the essay “What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking” because he was interested in undertaking a neutral examination of the capacity for orientation as a philosophically interesting question in its own right.6 In fact, Kant turns to the notion of orientation as a metaphorical or heuristical device (8:133) in order to disentangle himself from the religiously and politically fraught Spinoza controversy or Pantheismusstreit, which came to a head in the increasingly vitriolic debate between Friedrich H. Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn. This flashpoint in the history of philosophy was fueled by the conflict between Jacobi’s insistence that human reason is limited and must be supplemented by a religious “feeling” as opposed to Mendelssohn’s defense of the sufficiency of rationality.7 For his part, Kant found himself ineluctably implicated in the controversy because the recently published Critique of Pure Reason was claimed by each side in order to bring philosophical weight and authority to its own point of view. Given the mounting political stakes of the controversy in which he was becoming reluctantly embroiled, it is understandable that Kant needed an opportunity to rearticulate how the critical system envisioned in the Critique of Pure Reason effectively steers a middle course between the arguably atheistic and politically subversive enlightenment faith in rationality, on the one hand, and the reactionary and schwärmerisch religious irrationalism of the counter-enlightenment, on the other. And the Orientation essay was just that opportunity.8 These wider social pressures leave a permanent mark on the resulting shape of the text; there was quite a lot that Kant wanted to accomplish in the short essay of 1786, the least of which was a lengthy treatment of the mundane human capacity to situate oneself in relation to the familiar objects of the everyday world. Kant’s attention is focused, rather, as the title of the essay states, on “orientation in thinking”, which concerns how reason can “guide” itself “beyond all the bounds of experience” (8:136). In other words, Kant’s philosophical interest in the notion of “orientation” did not primarily concern how human thought bears on the objects of empirical experience; that question rather is subordinated to the central metaphysical issues of pure reason “when it wants to leave the familiar objects (of experience) behind”. By and large the scholarship follows Kant’s lead in brushing past the logically prior moment of how we orient ourselves in the world of actual human experience as though it were a philosophically uninteresting and unproblematic stepping stone to genuine, metaphysical problems of how we orient ourselves in thinking about those objects that are beyond the range of any possible human experience. The most common reading follows the hermeneutical model pioneered by Rudolf Makkreel in which orientation is properly understood as a “meta-experiential” reflective process of placing objects that are already perceptually given and discursively articulable into a systematically ordered whole as opposed to a prior “proto-experiential”

188  Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World encounter by which those objects are given to sense and discursive cognition to begin with (e.g., 2006: 242).9 According to the “meta-experiential” interpretation, Kant is drawn to the notion of “orientation in thinking” as a heuristical means to clarify how the regulative principles of the Critique of Pure Reason allow him to avoid the antinomous metaphysical positions at war in the Spinoza controversy. Thus, in line with the “Regulative Employment of the Ideas of Pure Reason” of the first Critique (A642/B670 ff.), Kant claims that “to orient oneself in thinking in general means: when objective principles of reason are insufficient for holding something true, to determine the matter according to a subjective principle” (8:136 n.).10 However, as most versions of the standard, hermeneutical reading are careful to point out, the notion of orientation does not just offer a mere redescription of the regulative principles but adds an essentially new element not present in the first Critique. That is, what is introduced for the first time is the claim that “This subjective means still remaining is nothing other than reason’s feeling of its own need (das Gefühl des der Vernunft eigenen Bedürfnisses)”. In no uncertain terms is the subjective principle, now construed as “orienting” rather than “regulating”, explicitly described as a matter of feeling (Gefühl). It is precisely here, with the introduction of an aesthetic or affective element into the faculties of reason and judgment that the standard readings locate the fulcrum between the objective epistemology of the first Critique and the subjective aesthetics of the third. In short, it is with the entrance of the capacity for orientation that Gefühl is given a positive role in the Kantian critical program. But, it is crucial to note, although Kant lets feeling into the critical system, he does not let it in very far. While, the first Critique’s regulative “demand of reason” (A305/B362) to bring the various empirical experiences and metaphysical principles into a complete and systematic body of reason now becomes a “felt need” (8:139), like the regulative principles any such orientational “felt” judgment remains wholly subjective and has absolutely no legitimate purchase on empirical experience where it is not the case that “objective principles of reason are insufficient for holding something true”. In that case orientational judgments can be said to anticipate how the aesthetic reflective judgments of beauty and the teleological principles of the third Critique are likewise wholly subjective in the sense that such judgments do not intend properties of the objects judged but disclose rather a fact about the judging subject (such as her mental state or moral vocation). Thus, while an advocate of the standard, hermeneutical interpretation would insist that Kant intends orientation to be a kind of judgment routed through feeling, she would see no reason to doubt Kant’s conclusion that the referent of orientational judgments is the mental or moral condition of the judging subject rather than a property of a sense object.11 Moreover, this subjectivist reading appears well motivated. Given that Kant’s ultimate purpose in writing the Orientation essay was to distinguish the metaphysical implications of his critical program from Jacobian Schwärmerei, there is

Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World  189 good reason to forbid any judgment, aesthetic or otherwise, from claiming objectivity where “there can be no intuition of [such] objects [Objecte] or anything of the kind through which we can present a suitable object [Gegenstand] to our extended concepts and hence secure a real possibility for them” (8:136).12 Because it becomes necessary to orient oneself in thinking only when reason “extends itself beyond all the bounds of experience and finds no object of intuition at all”, it follows for Kant that such judgments are non-objective; they must be merely subjective or at best regulative.

The Logic of the Orientation Essay As much as there is to recommend the hermeneutical interpretation, it is wrong to assume that the non-objectivity of orienting oneself in thinking necessarily entails the non-objectivity of orienting oneself in the world. Moreover, a careful treatment of the “meta-experiential” faculty whereby we succeed in orienting ourselves in thought cannot simply forgo the “proto-experiential” question of how we ever manage to orient ourselves in the world. That is because Kant’s own strategy for extricating himself from the Spinoza controversy was to identify the mundane human capacity to find our way about in the everyday, sensible world as the reflective key for recognizing how we are likewise able to navigate through the metaphysical, supersensible world. Thus the Orientation essay presents its ultimate, metaphysical position not as a mere stipulation or metaphorical suggestion but rather as the conclusion of a valid argument. While the ostensible goal is to demonstrate that we are indeed able to orient ourselves in thinking, and that because we are guided by a subjective feeling (das Gefühl des der Vernunft eigenen Bedürfnisses), the explicit argumentative strategy is to determine the concept of “orientation in thinking” by means of an “analogy” from a prior sense of how we orient ourselves in the world (8:136).13 The Orientation essay, then, should be read as offering a version of a transcendental argument in which a contested condition, in this case that we can orient ourselves in thinking, is shown to be legitimate by demonstrating that it is logically entailed by a prior condition that is already accepted as unproblematic, namely that we can orient ourselves in the world. So the rather unremarkable fact that most of us most of the time are able to make our way about the everyday world turns out to be a necessary premise required to draw a valid conclusion about how we can likewise avoid becoming disoriented in metaphysical thinking. The major oversight of the standard readings is not to have misread the essay’s stated conclusions about the subjective scope of orientation in thinking; the problem rather is that it takes Kant too closely at his word, uncritically accepting his conclusions about the subjectivism of orientation without evaluating his argument. That is, to infer the non-objectivity of worldly orientation from the non-objectivity of metaphysical orientation is, simply, to beg the question by analeptically substituting the essay’s conclusions for

190  Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World its premises. The problem with this substitution is that if the aesthetic judgment of orientation in the sensible world is to be non-objective, it would have to be so for reasons entirely different from those for the non-objectivity of the supersensible objects of orientation in thinking. The difference is that the objects of worldly orientation that Kant himself cites (such as the Pole Star, the threads of a screw, or left and right-handed gloves) are not, after all, “beyond all the bounds of experience”. Not only are many righthanded gloves a “real possibility”, they are actual objects of experience [Gegenstände]. To determine, then, whether or not the aesthetic judgment of worldly orientation is wholly subjective requires one to work from the explicit conclusions about orientation in thinking backwards through the enthymematic logic of the analogy to the suppressed premises concerning orientation in the world. And it is this logical analysis that reveals that the rather mundane notion of orientation is both more philosophically fraught and fertile than it first appears. Orientational “Feeling” Is Not a Concept Kant begins the argument concerning orientation in the world by pointing out: In the proper meaning of the word, to orient oneself means to use a given direction (when we divide the horizon into four of them) in order to find the others—literally to find the sunrise. Now if I see the sun in the sky and know it is now midday, then I know how to find south, west, north, and east. For this, however, I also need the feeling of a difference in my own subject (das Gefühl eines Unterschiedes an meinem eigenen Subjekt), namely the difference between my right and left hands. (8:134) From the very beginning of the argument Kant establishes that worldly orientation would not be possible without a “faculty of making distinctions through . . . feeling” (Unterscheidungsvermögen durchs Gefühl) (8:135). The remarkable claim here, then, is that feeling itself is taken to be a discriminatory capacity, although it is not immediately obvious what is being discriminated and why feeling would be doing the work. Everything in the argument turns on what exactly is meant by this “feeling” (Gefühl), but Kant’s only stated reason for calling this judgmental faculty a “feeling” is entirely negative: “I call this a feeling (ein Gefühl) because these two sides display no designatable difference in intuition (in der Anschauung keinen merklichen Unterschied zeigen)” (8:134–135). Wholly negative claims like this one would later give Schopenhauer occasion to complain that the “concept denoted by the word feeling has only a negative content, namely that something present in consciousness is not a concept, not abstract knowledge of reason”.14 But for his part, Kant would have considered the negative

Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World  191 conclusion concerning the non-conceptuality of feeling to have been the major philosophical accomplishment of the several arguments concerning “incongruent counterparts” and thus no trivial matter. “Incongruent counterparts” is Kant’s term for the phenomenon known outside of philosophy as chirality or stereoisomerism in which two objects— like right and left hands or enantiomorphic molecules—have identical properties except one cannot be made to coincide with the other in space: for example, although all of the internal properties of a left and right glove are identical (i.e., the thumb lies at the same angle to the index finger) no matter which way you twist and turn a left-handed glove, you cannot fit it onto a right hand. Kant discussed the problem of incongruent counterparts on several different occasions, the last of which, in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786), appeared in print just months prior to the Orientation essay. There Kant is keen to stress the “non-conceptual” nature of orientational judgments. The difference between rightward and leftward: can in no way be made clear in itself by means of universal characteristics (allgemeine Merkmale) and in the discursive mode of cognition, and can yield no thinkable difference in the inner consequences in the things themselves . . . but is nevertheless a genuine (wahrhaft) . . . inner difference . . . I have shown elsewhere that . . . this difference can certainly be given in intuition, but can in no way be captured in concepts (gar nicht auf deutliche Begriffe bringen), and thus cannot be rationally explicated (nicht verständlich erklären) (dari, non intelligi). (4:484) Here Kant’s argument for the non-conceptuality of orientational judgments refers back to earlier treatments in “The Differentiation of Directions in Space” (1768), the “Inaugural Dissertation” (1770), and the Prolegomena (1783) in which the problem of incongruent counterparts was put to several different philosophical purposes.15 It is the “Inaugural Dissertation” that is most concerned to explain why incongruent counterparts cannot be accounted for by a discursive, conceptual understanding: Which things in a given space lie in one direction and which things incline in the opposite direction cannot be described discursively (discursive describi) nor reduced to characteristic marks of the understanding (notas intellectuales) by any astuteness of the mind. Thus, between solid bodies which are perfectly similar and equal but incongruent, such as the left and right hands . . . there is a difference, in virtue of which it is impossible that the limits of their extension should coincide—and that, in spite of the fact that, in respect of everything which may be expressed by means of characteristic marks intelligible to the mind through speech [per sermonem intelligibilis], they could be substituted for one another. It is, therefore, clear that in these cases the difference

192  Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World [diversitas], namely, the incongruity, can only be apprehended [notare] by a certain pure intuition. (2:403) To offer a non-technical and handy illustration of the argument, in the Prolegomena Kant himself uses the example of “the glove of one hand [which] cannot be used for the other” (4:286). One might also imagine a young child struggling to learn how to put the right shoe on the right foot who must sooner or later come to recognize the non-substitutability of leftward and rightward orientated objects. The philosophical import of these examples is that what the child is learning in such cases is a fully normative and epistemically objective standard of judgment (one that applies universally to other subjects and tracks differences among the objects themselves) and yet one that cannot be codified in discursive concepts, i.e., explicit rules fully specifiable in general terms detachable from the concrete situation in which they are instantiated.16 It requires further elaboration of Kant’s specific notion of “concept” to demonstrate exactly why such knowledge “cannot be made intelligible by any concepts” (one might wonder, are not “right” and “left” themselves concepts?).17 But we can prescind from that discussion for present purposes having secured that when Kant defines the capacity for orientation as the “faculty of making distinctions through . . . feeling”, the notion of Gefühl as non-conceptual is negative but it is not wholly vacuous: the use of the term “feeling” means to designate orientation within a class of judgment whose standard of correctness is something other than discursive rules. Orientational “Feeling” Is Not a Pure Intuition It might appear, however, that by referring to the non-conceptual, aesthetic element of orientation as a “feeling” Kant is doing nothing more than reasserting the “intuition thesis” that objects in space and time are given as intuitions rather than concepts.18 That is to say, there is no reason to suppose Kant intends the aesthetic element of orientation to designate anything more than space as the a priori form of the intuition of any external appearance. We can call this a “deflationary” interpretation because, aside from the sense in which the judgment of any object is “aesthetic” insofar as it must be presented in the intuitional forms of space and time, it deflates the claim that there is any new or special capacity of “feeling” required to orient oneself in the world. Moreover, Kant is quite keen to disambiguate the several senses of the term “aesthetic” and to disassociate any empirical “feeling” from the transcendental a priori elements of the pure form of an intuition (A28/B44, A21/B35 n.a,) and, later, of pure judgments of beauty (20:222, 5:205–206). It cannot be denied that some version of the “intuition thesis” is the ostensible conclusion of the four discussions of the “incongruent counterparts”;

Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World  193 and it may very well be true that it was the conclusion Kant had intended to draw in the Orientation essay as well. In that case, orientational judgments would discriminate features of objects (namely, their spatial directedness) and do so through an “aesthetic” element of non-conceptual “feeling”, but the “feeling” in question refers to nothing other than the particular arrangement of intuitions extended in the pure form of space. However, if the deflationary interpretation is right then the essay fails to establish a coherent notion of worldly orientation on which to premise the subsequent argument concerning metaphysical orientation, and it fails for reasons Kant himself gives. Orientation in Pure Space The primary reason why the aesthetic component of orientation cannot be limited only to pure spatial intuition is simply that orienting oneself in the empirical space of the practical world is not reducible to orienting oneself in pure space—the latter may be necessary for the former, but it is not sufficient.19 Kant began his analysis of the capacity to orient oneself in pure space nearly twenty years earlier in the “Directions in Space” essay of 1768 with the claim that “the ultimate ground, on the basis of which we form our concept of directions in space, derives from the relation of these intersecting planes to our bodies” (2:378–379). It is by extrapolating from the material extendedness of the human body that the human mind construes the three dimensions of pure space. The space from head to foot yields the horizontal plane that separates above and below, the vertical plane dividing the two hands anchors the general distinction between left and right, and the remaining plane dividing the face from the rear side of the body makes intelligible the dimensions of front and back. It is with the bodily origins of the notion of pure spatial extension that Kant concludes, “Concerning the things that exist outside ourselves: it is only in so far as they stand in relation to ourselves that we have any cognition of them by means of the senses at all”.20 With the elements of the subject’s body, an external object, and the relation between them, Kant has the bare resources needed to generate an account of orientation in pure space. To orient an object in space is to locate it in reference to the body of the judging subject, and to orient a subject in space is to position oneself in relation to a material and extended object, in the first instance one’s own body. Orientation in pure space, in other words, is a two-term relation between a judging subject and an external object and is thus an extrinsic or relational property rather than an internal or intrinsic feature of an object considered on its own terms (i.e., one of its “marks” (Merkmale) or intensional attributes). Thus a sign that appears to me as a rightward pointing arrow is not rightward pointing in and of itself since it would appear leftward pointing to someone facing me standing on the opposite side of the sign. The orientation of oneself or an object in pure space is therefore indexical insofar as

194  Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World it makes essential reference to the judging subject and cannot be captured by a descriptive content specifiable in terms detachable from the context in which subject and object are situated.21 Since they are expressed indexically, orientational properties might be said to be “ontologically subjective” in the sense that they have no mode of existence independently of the subjects so oriented by them. A post-apocalyptic world could still include the star we now identify as the Pole Star, but without subjects standing in certain relations to that object, the star could not in any sense be said to exhibit northward pointing properties. Despite this inherent subjectivity, orientational properties remain “epistemically objective” in at least two senses: firstly, they carry truth conditions or normative standards of application binding upon all other judging subjects similarly situated and, secondly, it intends features that are instantiated by the object, not simply projected upon it willy-nilly, albeit collectively.22 For example, the truth of the claim that the Pole Star points due north does make essential reference to the point of view of judging subjects and would not be valid without them, but to anyone so oriented its northward pointing property is not an arbitrary way of “looking at things”; orientation is no mere attitude that someone could give up any more than could the fads one day change so that people could start wearing left shoes on their right feet. Orientation is thus an instance of the “Copernican turn” par excellence in that it instantiates a kind of judgment in which subjectivity does not preclude but makes possible knowledge of the objective layout of the world. Orientation in Empirical Space Assuming that the “Directions in Space” essay thus has sufficient resources for an adequate account of orienting oneself and objects in pure space, a problem remains for the deflationary reading insofar as such an account simply does not by itself yield an intelligible explanation of how we are oriented in the empirical world. One of Kant’s own examples in the Orientation essay helps illustrate the difference. In a rare moment of levity Kant imagines the scene of a “prank” (Spaβ) in which he imaginatively places himself in a dark room that is otherwise familiar but in which “someone as a joke had moved all the objects around so that what was previously on the right was now on the left” (8:135). He rightly points out that “I would be quite unable to find anything in a room (würde ich mich in einem Zimmer . . . gar nicht finden können) whose walls were otherwise wholly identical” but then goes on to conclude, “But I can soon orient myself through the mere feeling of a difference between my two sides, the right and the left”. That conclusion would, strictly speaking, be true if Kant means to argue only that in the dark the feeling of difference between the two sides of his body is of itself sufficient to orient himself in the three dimensions of pure space (Raum), although that conclusion would amount to no more than a restatement of the “Directions in Space” essay. But Kant clearly means

Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World  195 something more than the trivial claim that mere darkness does not cause one to lose the capacity to discriminate between the left and right sides of one’s body; rather, he wants to suggest that “through the mere feeling of. . . left and right” one is thereby able to orient himself not in any space as such (Raum) but in a particular room (in einem Zimmer). And it is that nontrivial conclusion that is demonstrably false, although (as we will see) Kant’s own examples obscure the key issue. A non-Kantian example can, however, make the point in short order. Imagine that, on vacation at the seashore, you make daily excursions in a dinghy whose motor has just enough gas to get you out to and back from an unmarked buoy that designates the point at which the shoreline is no longer visible along the horizon. One day, on your trip out to sea, you are surprisingly overtaken by a squall. A heavy rain cuts off view of the shoreline, and the high winds and surf toss the boat helplessly in circles. In an ensuing fog, you come upon the buoy, but you have lost all sense of which direction you are facing; so your usual practice of doubling back in the direction you just came from may, in this case, send you far out to sea. Here is a case like Kant’s inverted room in which you are disoriented. But in this case, in what sense, exactly, are you disoriented? What bit of knowledge has gone missing, the restoration of which puts you back on familiar terms with the world? More to the point, has the storm caused you to lose your ability to situate yourself and an object within the three planes of pure space as articulated in “Directions in Space”? That is, have you suddenly lost the capacity to distinguish whether the buoy lies to your left or right, in front or behind, above or below? Clearly not. It would be ridiculous to think that a sailor castaway at sea would be thereby rendered incapable of discerning the starboard from the port side of the boat. The problem is that this capacity does not, all by itself, suffice to determine whether the shoreline is forward or aft. The relationship between body and buoy is different than the one between buoy and shore, and there is thus a rather sizable gap between orienting the relation between self and object along the three planes of pure space and orienting oneself in the empirical world of safe shorelines and vast oceans. The difference between orientation in pure space and orientation in empirical space is that while the former is a two-term relation between self and object, the latter requires reference to an additional, third term, namely the world itself, which the self-object relation cannot by itself secure. The reason why a castaway can be perfectly oriented to the buoy in space and yet still be disoriented in respect to the rest of the world is that the relation between buoy and shoreline is not entirely indexical in the way the relation between buoy and body is—that is, after locating the buoy in terms of its relation to the subject, nothing more is needed to orient oneself and the object in a common space. But to think that orienting oneself in the world is purely indexical in the manner of orienting oneself in space is akin to the sailor who refuses to admit he is lost at sea, arguing, “I know exactly where

196  Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World I am—I’m here at the bow of my boat; it is the shoreline that has gotten itself lost!” As ridiculous as the sailor’s assertion would be, in another example, Kant, in effect, makes a version of just this argument when he imagines a rather fantastical occurrence in which “all the constellations [of the night sky], though keeping the same shape and position relative to one another, were one day by a miracle to be reversed in their direction, so that what was east now became west” (8:135). He then goes on to argue that a stargazer, “[i]f only he fixes his eye on the Pole Star” and attends to the feeling of left and right, “will be able not only to notice the alteration that has taken place, but in spite of it he will also be able to orient himself”. The question of whether this conclusion is valid depends on the particular sense in which the stargazer is supposed to be orienting himself. Kant’s argument would, strictly speaking, be true if he means to be making only the claim that, given that he already knows his position in the world as a whole and that he retains the capacity to orient himself in pure space in relation to a known external object, then he is in a position to make a determination that the effect of the miracle was that it was the constellations, rather than he himself, that had been turned around. In other words, what Kant would have demonstrated is that, given a prior orientation in the world such that one knows his location to begin with, one can proceed via a felt judgment to orient oneself in respect to particular objects within the world, even if their position were to change. That claim, while not trivial, is not the same as explaining how one “will . . . be able to orient himself” in the world given only the appearance of a particular known object and the discriminatory feeling of left and right. For the celestial reversal example to secure the latter claim, Kant would need to be able to rule out another possible, albeit equally fantastical, explanation of the miraculous events. After all, what is there in the appearance of the Pole Star and the feeling of left and right alone that would indicate that the result of the miracle was the reversal of the constellations and not the removal of the stargazer to the antipodal position in the universe?23 Indeed, in that miraculous alternative, everything would look and feel exactly the same as the first scenario, but one would not thereby be oriented in the world. Thus Kant’s explanation of the miracle only works if he assumes that he was the stable axis around which the world turned rather than the world being the axis around which he was turned. But it is that same assumption that appears comical when the headstrong castaway insists “I know exactly where I am—I’m here at the bow of my boat; it is the shoreline that has gotten itself lost!” A distinctive feature of Kant’s explanation of all of the offered examples of worldly orientation is the use of a hypothetical form where the antecedent term entails being already oriented in the world: “Now if I see the sun in the sky and know it is now midday, then I know how to find south, west, north, and east”; “If only he fixes his eye on the Pole Star . . . he will . . . be able to orient himself”; “In the dark I can orient myself in a room that

Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World  197 is familiar to me if I can take hold of even one single object whose position I remember” (8:135). That is to say, all of Kant’s examples proceed from a prior basic orientation in the world and are thus not arguments for such a capacity.24 Granted, these examples are well suited for the intended purpose of the essay of building out from a prior understanding of orienting oneself in the world to orienting oneself in metaphysical thinking; but it obscures the key philosophical issues concerning the structure of orientational judgments to assume that it works towards rather than from such a capacity. While the analogical argument of the Orientation essay requires an intelligible explanation for the capacity to orient oneself in the world, Kant does not actually provide us with such an account. That is not to say, however, that he could not have provided one given resources near to hand. Moreover, laying out Kant’s best available explanation of worldly orientation has two further consequences: it undercuts the deflationary interpretation because it spells out why the aesthetic dimension should not be reduced to the feeling of left and right in the pure spatial form of an intuition, and it refutes the standard, subjectivist reading because it shows how the feeling discriminates features of the objective world.

Formal Reconstruction: Orientation as the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World Although the essay of 1786 does not offer a justification of how orientation in the world is possible (quid juris), it does give enough indication how to reconstruct what such a capacity would be (quid facti). As we have already seen, in contrast to the two-term relation between self and object required to orient oneself in pure space, orienting oneself in the empirical world is a three-term relation between subject, object, and world (e.g., the sides of one’s body, the Pole Star, and the celestial constellations). While all of Kant’s examples do include the three terms of self, object, and world, the problem he actually presents is how the self can orient itself to particular objects given an antecedent orientation in the world at large. However, the problem of orienting oneself in the world, properly considered, is rather how the given appearance of a particular object (e.g., the Pole Star or a compass) affords one the ability to secure her bearings in the world at large. In other words, the specific problem of worldly orientation is whether it is possible to know something about the layout of the world as a whole, largely absent from view, on the basis of a judgment about a particular object given to sense. The question of orientation proper, then, is how a particular object could effectively stand in for the world as a whole. Such an orientational judgment would be possible only if there is something about the relationship between self and object that entitles one to make a further claim about the relationship between self and world. But we have seen that the two-term subject-object (body-buoy) relation considered only on its own terms would spin in a frictionless void, so to speak,

198  Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World failing to get any purchase on the rest of the world (the shoreline). In order to afford an orientation in the empirical world the orienting object cannot be just any object whatsoever, extended in pure space. If I were to take just any old star in the night sky as my cynosure I would most decidedly not succeed in making my way through the dark surroundings to a determinate location currently out of view. Thus for worldly orientation to be possible there has to be an additional feature of the object term that allows it to carry a further reference to the world that sets it apart from other objects and renders it suitable to orient oneself thereby; that is, there has to be some aspect of the object that renders it, as Kant says three times, “familiar” (bekannten). (8:135–136) And the “familiar” quality of the object that I must “have in mind” (ich im Gedächtniß habe), Kant tells us, is its position (Stelle). (8:135) But by now we can see that, if the account is to succeed, the relevant Stelle has to be the position of the object not vis-à-vis the subject term, oriented in pure space, but rather its position in respect to the empirical world considered as a whole. Thus, what is known (bekannt) or at least claimed about the middle term in recognizing it as “familiar” is that it stands in a certain relation to the world such that placing myself in relation to it I am thereby putting myself in an analogous relation to the world. In sum, it is the relationship between the world and object that allows a familiar object to orient the relation between self and world. That three-term relation between self, object, and world is the kind of logical form Kant would need in order to fill out the account of worldly orientation that his own position implies, and, incidentally, it is a logical form he has on hand. That is, the three-term structure where the middle term is taken to bear a transitive property that enables it to mediate between the other terms is precisely the logical form Kant elsewhere attributes to the “symbol”. In the Critique of Judgment Kant states that a “symbolic presentation is . . . a kind of intuitive presentation” that uses an analogy (for which we use empirical intuitions as well), in which judgment performs a double function: it applies the concept to the object of sensible intuition; and then it applies the mere rule by which it reflects on that intuition to an entirely different object, of which the former is only the symbol. (5:352) But after a brief discussion of the way constitutional laws can be symbolized by an animate body and monarchical laws by a mere machine, Kant remarks, “This [symbolic] function [of judgment] has not been analyzed much so far, even though it very much deserves fuller investigation; but this is not the place to pursue it”.25 The formal structure of a symbol is, however, easy enough to sketch. We can gather from Kant’s treatment that a symbolic presentation is meant to be a kind of analogy. In general an analogy is a

Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World  199 relation between two pairs of terms such that knowing the members of one pair and the relation that holds between them (A : B) allows one to infer the missing member of another pair (C : X) if it is posited that the relation that holds between the first pair also holds between the second pair. A : B :: C : X A symbolic analogy, however, functionally reduces the number of members to just three terms because the “symbol” term appears twice such that the second term of the first pair is one and the same object as the first term in the second pair. B = C A “symbol” is thus the middle member of a three term analogy in which the relation that holds between the first and the second terms is taken to be the same relation that holds between the second and third terms. A : B :: B : X The three-term relation between self, object, and world at issue in worldly orientation perfectly fits the logical form of symbolic presentation; an orienting object is the middle, symbolic term whereby securing the relation between self (A) and the symbolic object (B), one can thereby ascertain the relationship between self and world (X). What is unknown when one is disoriented is how the subject stands in respect to the objects around her. The problem of orienting oneself in the world, then, is how given an object whose relation to the wider world one takes to be “familiar”, one can thereby establish her own relation to the rest of the world. What is known (bekannt) of the middle, object term is its Stelle, that is, its relation within the wider world, but what is initially not known of the subject is her standing in respect to the objects of the world. Stated formally: X : B :: B : C One can succeed in orienting oneself in the world by treating the object term as a symbol for the world as a whole and thereby taking the relation that holds between the world and the orienting object to be one and the same relation that holds between the object and one’s self. In sum, an orientational judgment makes a “familiar” object a symbol of the world when it “performs a double function” upon the rule by which the object is situated in the world and applies that rule to the relation between the object and one’s self thereby situating oneself in the world at large by situating the subject in relation to the object.

200  Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World Formally reconstructed, an orienting object just is a symbol for the structure of the world as a whole. But what makes orientation a peculiar kind of symbolization, however, concerns not what it symbolizes (the world) but how it symbolizes (the peculiar nature of the rule that is transferred from one pair to the other). In the Critique of Judgment Kant says that symbolization first “applies the concept to the object of sensible intuition”, however, as we have seen above, the several discussions of incongruent counterparts went to great lengths to demonstrate that the rule by which one positions objects in space “can in no way be captured in concepts” but must rather be considered an aesthetic “feeling” of left and right. The rather unusual corollary, then, is that in orienting oneself the “mere rule by which it reflects on that intuition” is not discursively codified but is, technically speaking, felt, that is, discriminated aesthetically. Orientation is a judgment about an object made in or through the feeling of left and right. By the “double function” of symbolic judgment, the feeling that functions to put the subject in relation to an orienting object is nothing other than the capacity that puts the subject in relation to the world. It thus follows from Kant’s analysis that the process of orienting oneself is one in which a “feeling” is revelatory of the structure of the world.

Plausibility and Implications It can sound a bit exorbitant to imply that a formal reconstruction of orientation as the aesthetic symbolization of the world demonstrates a case in which “a mere feeling constitutes an experience in which the world reveals itself to us”. But the claim itself is not especially extravagant or mysterious. In taking an object as an orienting point of reference I must place it in space in respect to myself, e.g., this side of the object lies to my right and that side to my left. And on the Kantian grounds explicated above this spatial presentation is an aesthetic rather than a conceptual determination. To allow that an object given to view can function as a symbol of the world largely absent from view is to apply the form of reflection upon a given object to the rest of the world, as is the case for any analogy. The difference in this case is that the “form of reflection” is the non-discursive “feeling” of left and right. To say, then, that a feeling reveals the layout of the world as a whole in this sense means, simply, that taking a given object (e.g., the Pole Star) as a symbol for the world commits the subject to placing a wider constellation of objects (both given and not given to view) to one’s right and another to the left. The feeling that reveals the layout of the world may then best be understood as a form of commitment to placing the objects of the world in one way rather than another. For example, to find oneself on the leeward side of a “familiar” buoy may be to place the unseen shoreline to one’s right and the open sea to the left, and not the other way around. Such commitments, while they are subjective feelings, are not, however, subjective impositions

Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World  201 because they amount to a form of liability and exposure to the objective facts of the matter. That means, of course, that in placing the world in one way rather than another, a subject can go wrong and err in any number of ways. It is not enough that I merely commit myself to acting as if the shoreline is to my right—if I head off in the rightward direction and the shore fails to materialize, I was wrong either about the object being the “familiar” one or about my feeling of left and rightward orientation. Thus my commitment, even though it takes the form of a feeling, is not a mere projection of the way things “feel to me” but constitutes a non-discursive form of liability to the way things, in fact, stand in respect to the world.26 One consequence is that such feelings, considered as forms of exposure to the world, can themselves be right or wrong and thus fall within the domain of things for which one can be praised or blamed. Orientational feelings, in other words, are fully normative because what one is right or wrong about in such cases is not how one happens to feel but whether the facts of the case justify one in feeling that way. Against the Deflationary Interpretation Whether or not there is a phenomenological (or, better, pathological) difference between the raw feel of left and right in orienting oneself in pure space and the feeling of orienting oneself in the empirical world, there is a logical difference between the kind of discriminatory work required of the feeling in the two cases. But, one may reasonably ask, what is the ultimate philosophical significance of this difference? The most minimal interpretation is to allow a somewhat broader role than previously appreciated for the aesthetic or intuitive forms of left and right: that is, the “feeling” of left and right not only is the intuitive form of any object possibly given to sense, but also serves as a rule for imaginatively structuring the rest of the world largely absent from view. Such a deflationary interpretation thus limits the “aesthetic” elements of judging the world to the formal, intuitive elements of placing an object in space—where the “object” in this case is the world considered as the “sum total of all appearances” (A334/B391, A507/B535). This minimal reading, however, stands in contrast to the more robust but controversial suggestion that the feeling of left and right operative in spatial orientation is not sui generis but rather serves as a representative of a wider class of affects that similarly enable particular objects to function as an aesthetic symbol for the wider world. This robust reading holds that other Gefühle, such as pleasure, can also serve as an aesthetic form of reflection by which a particular sense object, say a purposive one, is judged to be a symbol for the world as a whole. While the formal reconstruction of orientation as an aesthetic form of symbolization only licenses the narrower reading, the primary advantage of the wider reading is that it places Kant historically at the forefront of a distinctive turn of thought within contemporary

202  Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World philosophy that locates “aesthetic judgment” as a general and pervasive feature of the way we regularly get our bearings in the world as a whole. Barrie Falk is one example of a recent philosopher who has argued that an affective or emotional engagement with particular sense objects is revelatory of one’s conception of the world as a whole. He points out, for example, A feature of any emotional response . . . is that we attribute a salience to the object of that response. To be hurt by [an] insult is not just to attend to the fact that the other despises me . . . [but] the fact that I am despised becomes, not a fact about how the world is here and now, how I appear to those eyes in particular, but a fact about what the world as such is like . . . . The insult is what the world as such is like, inasmuch as it is exemplary, in Kant’s sense, of how . . . I engage with any part of it. (1983: 74) By calling an affective response to particular objects or situations “exemplary”, Falk means that making a claim about a particular object just is to place a claim upon the layout of the world as a whole—the object appears as such because it is one example of the world that is such. And just as with insult, so too with fear: a currently feared object can come to be perceived not merely as one situation in a world among others, but as the salient fact about the world as a whole. It will explain how the world as such, and not just this or that part of it, can be seen as exhibiting one’s lack of control. (1982: 192) Thus for Falk there is a wide class of affective experiences that are disclosive not just of the psychological state of a perceiver but of how the perceiver takes the objective world to be—revelatory, that is, not just of how things are going for a subject, his foul temper or optimistic disposition, but of how things, in fact, stand in the world that would warrant his feeling the way he does. Of course not any and every “emotional response” is disclosive of the facts of the matter. Surely some feelings, like perhaps restlessness or apathy, are just “ways of responding, which are nothing more than psychological states of the perceiver” (1983: 75). “But in other . . . [affective states]”, Falk continues, “we can suppose, on Kantian lines, that the relatings that occur are themselves exemplary and are therefore indicative of how the world as such actually is”. One may wonder, of course, what is supposed to separate the epistemic authority of such feelings that purportedly reflect the state of the world from those that merely disclose the psychological state of the subject. Here it is interesting to note that rather than opting for a phenomenological or pathological criterion concerning how such affects would feel, Falk instead breaks toward a logical and, more specifically, symbolic

Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World  203 explanation. For Falk, “What symbols are is not clear; but one property they certainly have . . . is that while they are being looked at, they are also, in some sense, being looked through” (1982: 169). And that through to which one sees in looking at a symbolic sense object is the state of the wider world otherwise absent from view. In the dark, for example, “to become frightened of [something] is to find that what it portends is what the world as such portends” (193). What makes a particular object frightening in such cases is not a perceived threat that can be eliminated by removing the object but rather that the threat is symptomatic of the wider world and is thus typical of any possible object. Similarly one may feel “[i]t was not just bad luck that I ran over the nail: that it was there when I was there is symptomatic of how everything I do comes to nothing” (196). “What is interesting about these cases”, Falk claims, “is that the state of myself I reflect on is a state of myself vis-à-vis the world” (196). The symbolic structure that Falk attributes to how a particular object given to view can be taken to be symptomatic of the basic layout of the world is the very structure we found underlying Kant’s account of orientation. So here we can see how Falk effectively extends the class of orienting affects beyond the intuitional feelings of left and right to a wider set of recognizably emotional responses. Fear and frustration can similarly orient one in the world to the extent that they function as commitments to placing objects imaginatively in one way rather than another. Affording such an orientational capacity to a wider range of emotional responses largely reverses the stoical belief about the relation between emotion and judgment according to which, for instance, if I come to perceive a threatening animal as in retreat, I would no longer feel afraid.27 That is, if the feeling of fear has become orientational, once the threatening animal retreats I would not stop feeling afraid but would rather look about for some other available object to symbolize the threat I believe the world as a whole continues to pose. However, to claim that “mere feelings” like fear, hope, or anger orient oneself in the world means that such affects function not simply as projections but rather as forms of commitment that themselves stand liable to the way things in the world actually turn out to be—if it happens that some of my projects do succeed after all, then my anger at the nail that flattened my tire can be seen to be unwarranted because it is rooted in a demonstrably false view of the world. In such a case I would have been epistemically wrong to orient my view of the world according to the imaginative associations guided by my feeling of anger. The full fruition, then, of the seeds of thought planted in Kant is that because orientational feelings are commitments to the world’s being a certain way, a way that can be born out or fail to materialize, such affects are fully normative—one could be wrong to orient herself to a situation as worthy of anger; rather the facts of the case warrant that she ought to see it as an accident. In sum, as revelatory of the way the world is, the mere feeling of orientational affects is objective and normative; it is the kind of thing about which we can be right or wrong and for which we can be praised or blamed.

204  Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World For his part, Falk does not just formulate a broadened notion of “aesthetic judgment” that runs parallel to a possible interpretation of Kant, but he actually attributes the guiding insight to Kant himself. “Kant’s thought [is] that the facts which our feelings are awareness of are facts about our general situation in the world as revealed by awareness of facts about our specific states” (1983: 74).28 By explicitly acknowledging that his account of the disclosive capacity of affective states attempts to refine an insight posed originally and forcefully by Kant, Falk differs from Heidegger with whose account of Befindlichkeit or “moods” he otherwise has much in common.29 The case of Befindlichkeit is also illuminating because a close reading of Being and Time shows that well before Heidegger lays out the well-known account of “moods” in ¶29 he had already prepared the argument for how affective dispositions could be disclosive of the objective world with a discussion of signs or symbols in ¶17 and of spatial orientation in ¶¶22–23. While Heidegger’s acknowledgment of the fact is limited to one passing endnote, a close review reveals that each of these sections (especially the latter) were written as an intervention with Kant’s notion of orientation.30 It is thus through a critical engagement with Kant’s Orientation essay that Heidegger is first able to spell out an instance of an affect or feeling that is “not related to the psychical in the first instance, and is not itself an inner condition that then reaches forth in an enigmatical way and puts its mark on Things and persons” (1962: 176). It is not necessary for present purposes to work through the homology between Falk’s account of epistemic feelings and Heidegger’s notion of Befindlichkeit or trace their origins back to particular passages in Kant. The point rather is to appreciate how adopting a wider interpretation of orientation places Kant at the forefront of a distinctive turn of thought within contemporary philosophy. By deflating the claims to a wider class of orienting feelings beyond the intuitive forms of left and right, the narrow interpretation does not misread the letter of Kant’s account, but it does close itself off to a philosophical spirit to which Falk and Heidegger are alive. The significance of Kant’s notion of orientation, in that case, is not that it purports to offer a solution to the contemporary problem of how affects could disclose rather than distort one’s right view of the world; its accomplishment rather is to have brought into view the problem of “aesthetic judgment”, which has set the agenda for subsequent philosophy. The shortcoming of the deflationary interpretation, then, is that it fails to make sense of why subsequent philosophy increasingly turns to the relationship between feeling and judgment and does so, moreover—whether explicitly or implicitly, sympathetic or critical—within the terms of the debate set by Kant. Against the Subjectivist Reading Unlike the deflationary interpretation the standard readings of the Orientation essay are eager to show how the feeling within orientation points as

Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World  205 much forward to the role of aesthetic reflective judgment in the third Critique as it does backwards to the transcendental aesthetic of the first. Such readings would not deny that the reflective role played by feeling in orientation could in principle extend beyond the pure form of spatial intuition and include, minimally, the feeling of pleasure in judgments of taste. But those readings also see no reason to doubt Kant’s stated conclusion that, like aesthetic judgments of beauty, the expanded class of “feelings” in orientational judgments are wholly subjective in the referential sense that they make a claim only about the state of the judging subject and have no purchase on the object judged. In that case orientational feelings would not discriminate features of the objective world but serve as regulative guides for the imaginative associations of the judging subject. Taken as an argument against the disclosive capacity of orientational feelings, however, this subjectivist interpretation is guilty of a petitio. Given that orienting oneself in the world is mediated by a given object of reference such as the Pole Star or a buoy, such judgments are “objective” in the obvious sense that they intend particular objects in the world. The only way to support the claim that orientational judgments about such objects are, nevertheless, merely subjective is to say that the feeling enters into a subsequent or secondary judgment occasioned by an object but that is, strictly speaking, about the subject. Such subjective feelings would work upon objects already given to sense, as Hume would have it, “gilding or staining . . . natural objects with the colours borrowed from internal sentiment, rais[ing], in a manner, a new creation”.31 To preserve a merely subjective status, then, orientation would have to consist in a “two-step” procedure by which an object given to sense perception is, in a first step, cognitively identified as “familiar” (bekannt) (e.g., the Pole Star is recognized as such) and then subsequently, in a second step, a subjective response would be projected onto it (one orients oneself in respect to it through the feeling of left and right). Whether or not this two-step view of the relation between feeling and judgment could yield a satisfying account of morals or taste,32 it is demonstrably false as a possible explanation of orientation, and it is so for a simple reason we have already seen. There are objective conditions for the success of an orientational judgment (whether or not there are clear equivalents in taste and morals) because the subjective commitments that take the form of affective feelings, in the case of orientation, are also forms of liability to the world being a certain way. If a sailor lost at sea is to make his way safely back to shore it is not enough that he projects a feeling of left and right upon just any buoy. It is only by taking his bearings from a particular, “familiar” buoy that he can succeed in guiding himself to safe harbor. The crux of the matter is that it simply cannot be the case that the sailor can recognize the familiar buoy straightaway as the suitable object of orientation, as if in a prior and independent first step, and then in a second, merely subjective step guild or stain it with a rightward and leftward directionality. That is because, as we have

206  Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World already seen, the very criterion by which a given object can be recognized as “familiar” in the first place is its Stelle or known position within the wider whole. The feature of the buoy that renders it suitable to gain one’s bearings thereby is not an internal attribute of the buoy, considered on its own terms, but is rather its external relation to the wider context. If the very same buoy, perhaps by a strong wind, were to be moved to a different location, it could no longer be correctly recognized as the “familiar” object. In short, one cannot recognize an object as orienting and then infer the layout of the whole since it is only its position within the whole that allows one to recognize it as orienting in the first place. So much follows logically. The damaging implications for the subjectivist reading come when it is recalled that the determination of the position within the whole by which a given object is rendered “familiar” is in an essential respect not a discursive but an aesthetic judgment. Thus it is not the case that I come cognitively to recognize an orienting object and then later orient myself in respect to it through a feeling. Rather to recognize an object as orienting is in the first instance to have placed it in a wider context, and this placing itself proceeds by way of an aesthetic or felt determination. Thus for any object to be a candidate to orient oneself thereby, an aesthetic discrimination would have to work, to borrow a trope from McDowell, within the way the object is given to sense rather than merely upon an independently recognizable object. What Heidegger calls “the peculiar exhibiting of that to which one is oriented” (2009: 95) is not that some familiar object exhibits some “peculiar” mark by which we may then attune or orient our feelings; what is peculiar rather is that the object could not “exhibit” its orienting features unless the felt determination were internal to and constitutive of the way the object is given to human understanding. The claim that an orienting object can only be known in or through a feeling is not all that outré since such affective orientations are a rather common feature of our everyday lives. In the passage cited above, Barrie Falk explains how the mundane experience of feeling insulted functions as a symbol for one’s sense that the world really is such that one has very little standing in it. But it is no more possible to hear a comment as an insult and then, subsequently, feel insulted by it than it is to view any symbol as a symbol, as if in a first and independent step and then, subsequently, in a second step read out of it the features it symbolizes. That is because the feeling of being insulted is criterial for hearing a comment as insulting in the first place. If one does not feel insulted, a comment simply is not insulting. Such a comment could be trivially true (if I myself recognize that I really am a bad singer, I wouldn’t normally feel insulted if you say so); or it could be patently false (since I and many others do consider myself to be an accomplished singer, for you to say that I can’t carry a tune is so patently false as to be ridiculous, not insulting; at most it shows that you have poor taste). But if it is the case that I can only recognize a comment as an insult if I feel insulted by it, then it is not mysterious how a feeling can be constitutive of

Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World  207 recognizing the truth of an objective claim about how things stand in the world.33 The point is that what goes for insults can also be said to go for the wider class of affective feelings by which we orient ourselves in the world. It is not that we come to feel some way or another about the world but rather that we come to expose ourselves to the world’s being one way or another through the way we orient ourselves within it.

Conclusion The immediate goal of this chapter has been to argue that Kant’s account of worldly orientation requires a judgmental capacity that is (i) aesthetic insofar as it draws on an ineliminable affective and thus subjective state but is (ii) cognitive in the sense that it gets purchase on and discloses features of the objective world. The minimal accomplishment of this project is to offer an interpretation of the Orientation essay that is better than its two rivals, not because it rejects them outright but because it combines what is right about each of them. The deflationary reading satisfies the second condition of orientation being revelatory of the objective layout of the world, but it does so by reducing the “aesthetic” element involved to a merely formal aspect of intuition rather than treating it as a genuinely affective mental disposition. The standard readings, on the other hand, deliver on the first condition by allowing a more expansive notion of the “Gefühl” involved in orientation but do so by rendering that feeling wholly subjective, thereby sacrificing the second condition. Whereas the deflationary reading neglected to see the philosophical trajectory that Kant’s account of “aesthetic judgment” makes possible, the standard reading failed to establish the mere subjectivity of orientational judgment. Thus the narrow goal of this chapter was to make a case that the only interpretation of the Orientation essay that yields a coherent account of how we manage to find our way about the world is one in which feelings are disclosive of objective states of affairs. But a wider goal has been to suggest why such a position is both unobjectionable and salutary. By carefully articulating the logical structure by which a particular object of orientation can come to serve as an aesthetic symbol of the world as a whole, we come within range of appreciating the affective quality of our cognitive judgments about the world. Our feelings, considered as orientational, are the forms of commitment by which we expose ourselves to the world’s being the way it is.

Notes  1 In this chapter I use the terms “aesthetic” and “aesthetic judgment” to refer broadly to episodes of intentional awareness that involve an essentially affective component. This general sense of “aesthetic” is related but not equivalent to Kant’s treatment of (i) a subset of those experiences that refer specifically to the feeling of pleasure in aesthetic judgments of taste and (ii) the wider capacity for sheer sense receptivity of the transcendental aesthetic. For a further

208  Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World disambiguation of the term “aesthetic”, see pp. 190–3 and p. 209 n. 19. See also p. 2 and pp. 158–62.   2 (2002: 130).   3 See Gadamer, esp. 41–43.   4 For sample passages either asserting the subjectivism of aesthetic judgment or denying its objectivism see, e.g., 5:203–204, 5:282, 5:285, 5:317 (see also similar comments in the “Lectures on Logic”, 24:705, 708). I attempt a careful reading of these claims in pp. 160–1 of the previous chapter.   5 For example, Caygill, Zammito, Beiser, Pippin, Nuzzo, and Jensen (p. 12, n. 3).   6 To find any exception, one has to go as far back as Heidegger who in ¶23 of Being and Time rightly points out, “Even Kant, of course, has not taken orientation as a theme for Interpretation. He merely wants to show that every orientation requires a ‘subjective principle’ ” (144). But Heidegger fails to give any weight to the historical context that largely explains why Kant was not concerned to investigate orientation as a theme in its own right in the essay of 1786.   7 For extended accounts of the historical background concerning Kant’s role in the Spinoza controversy, see Beiser (44–108) and Zammito (228–247).   8 Zammito (235–237).   9 The most recent generation of scholars to appropriate Kant’s notion of orientation (including Dalton, Goldman, and Moore), generally adopt the hermeneutical framework established by Makkreel in which the question of orienting ourselves in thinking is the primary focus. But, more generally, some version of the privileging of orientation in thinking over orientation in the world can be found in Bernstein, Bertman, Caygill, Neimann, Pippin, and Zammito. Important exceptions include Angelica Nuzzo and Alfredo Ferrarin, who argue that orientation in the world merits careful consideration in its own right (see note 20 below). Nuzzo’s further interest in orienting oneself in “moral space”, however, does follow the standard reading in placing the significance of orientation “on another plane” (352 n. 46), that is, “in the immeasurable space of the supersensible” (14). 10 For the remainder of this section, all citations of the Orientation essay are from (8:136). 11 The objective-subjective distinction can be understood in several different senses. Here, I follow the convention in the literature on this topic, which uses the terms to denote different referents of judgment, roughly whether they intend an external object or internal mental state. That referential sense of “objective”, however, will be too crude to capture the sense in which orientational judgments are subjective, so I make a further distinction between the ontological and epistemic senses of “objective” and “subjective” at p. 194. 12 It is often said that Kant makes a distinction between Gegenstand (roughly, an object of experience) and Objekt (an object of thought), but as elsewhere the text of the Orientation essay is not consistent in this regard. 13 For Kant, some concepts that cannot be determined directly through schematism can be determined indirectly through symbolization (analogy) (5:351– 352, 20:279–280). See also the discussion of analogy and symbolization at pp. 197–200. 14 §11 of The World as Will and Representation, Volume 1. This passage is not directed to Kant specifically but to the “immeasurably wide sphere” of the use of the term “feeling” in philosophy where “the most varied, indeed most hostile, elements lie quietly side by side in this concept; e.g., religious feeling, feeling of sensual pleasure, moral feeling, bodily feelings such as touch, pain . . . and so on . . . [where] there is absolutely nothing in common except the negative quality that they are not abstract knowledge of reason”. See also Wittgenstein: “When

Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World  209 we do philosophy, we should like to hypostatize feelings where there are none. They serve to explain our thoughts to us. ‘Here explanation of our thinking demands a feeling!’ It is as if our conviction were simply consequent upon this requirement’ ” Philosophical Investigations (¶ 598). 15 For a helpful overview, see Bernecker as well as Nuzzo (2008: 22–44). 16 Kant’s argument concerning the non-conceptuality of incongruent counterparts adopts a specific notion of “concepts” as universal, discursive, and rationally explicable. For Kant’s definition of a “concept” as having general extension, i.e., applicability to more than one instance, and as a collection of intensional attributes or “marks” (Merkmale), see (A51/B75, A320/B377, A658/B686) and (9:58, 91). Thus, what I characterized in previous chapters as “determinate concepts” can be defined here as those concepts whose conditions of use are specified by their intensional attributes (what Kant calls its “marks”). It is in accordance with this technical sense that I use the notion of “concept” (and likewise “conceptual” and “non-conceptual”) in this discussion. However, that is not to lose sight of the demonstration in Chapter 2 (pp. 48–50 and 56–8) that there are two functioning notions of “concept” in Kant, roughly, a discursive capacity and a discriminatory capacity (which tracks a distinction between a “determinate” and an “indeterminate” use of the faculty of concepts). To be precise, then, to adopt the language in which orientational feeling is “­non-­conceptual” qua discursivity should not obscure the way it remains “conceptual” qua discriminatory capacity. 17 On the “standard objection” that mathematical coordinates are capable of designating left-right spatial reflection across the y-axis, see Bernecker (522–524) and (530 n. 3). I dispute the objection in note 21 below. 18 Bernecker, p. 519. 19 There are two further strikes against the deflationary interpretation that I cannot pursue in depth. The first is that the use of the word “Gefühl” to describe the aesthetic element is itself noteworthy since in the first Critique Kant explicitly excluded the term from the transcendental meaning of “aesthetic” (A21/B35 n, A28/B44; cf. 2:380). The third Critique does, however, separate out Gefühl (affect) from Empfindung (sensation) and gives it a positive role in judgments of taste. It is thus possible to read the entrance of the word “feeling” in the Orientation essay as pointing forward to the role of feeling in aesthetic judgments of beauty in the third Critique rather than back to the transcendental aesthetic of the first. Secondly, insofar as the intended conclusion of the essay is supposed to be the outcome of a valid argument, there is a serious problem with setting up the subjective feeling in orientation in thinking by way of an analogy from the “feeling” of space that is fully objective in any Kantian sense of the word. Objectivity of that kind would play right into the hands of Jacobi by making the “feeling” of religious Schwärmerei into a new form of intuition about metaphysical objects analogous to space as the form of intuition of empirical objects, surely not the result Kant intended. To sidestep these objections, a deflationary interpretation would have to dismiss the notion that the essay seriously means to be offering an argument rather than a loose metaphor suited to the wider audience of this popular essay. But to deny that Kant means to be offering a rationally valid argument only gives succor to Jacobi’s polemic concerning the poverty of reason. 20 Angelica Nuzzo and Alfredo Ferrarin are exceptions to the “standard reading” to the extent that they argue that the claim to the bodily origins of the notions of pure space makes the capacity of orienting oneself in the world an interesting philosophical problem in its own right, not the least because it undermines the difference between res cogitans and res extensa. For Nuzzo, “Incarnated in the

210  Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World distinction between our left and right hands, oriented space is the first cognitive form that embodiment displays if considered transcendentally” (2008: 10). See Ferrarin (esp. 23–30) for the question of whether Kant establishes the priority of “lived space” to geometric space. 21 It has been argued by Bennett and others (see Bernecker (522–524) and (530 n. 3)) that left-right orientation can be described conceptually in the function of the reflection of mathematical coordinates across the y-axis. Thus it is said that the distinction between left and right can be captured as the difference between >x, y, z< and >-x, y, z-x, y, z< cannot, in fact, discriminate an object in space from its counterpart at >x, y, z< independently of knowledge of the particular orientation in which the viewing subject is situated, but that is what the “standard objection” requires in order to show that location in space can be rendered in conceptually detachable terms. 22 I take from Searle (7–9) this way of separating out the ontological and epistemic senses of the subjective-objective distinction. 23 If the vastness of the three dimensions of outer space and the relative brightness of the relevant stars makes this scenario too unwieldy, we can simplify the point by imagining a viewer looking at a transparent two-dimensional map of the constellations (say the blueprints for the ceiling of Grand Central Station) from above or below. The point is, judging only from the inverted image and the feeling of left-right, there is no way to determine whether the map itself or the viewer’s position was reversed. 24 As Heidegger points out: “If I am to orient myself the ‘mere feeling of difference’ between my two sides will be of no help at all as long as I fail to apprehend some definite object ‘whose position’, as Kant remarks casually, ‘I have in mind’. But what does this signify except that whenever this happens I necessarily orient myself both in and from my being already alongside a world that is ‘familiar’ ” (1962: 144) ? 25 In a footnote to his translation of the third Critique, Werner Pluhar helpfully indexes Kant’s various treatments of symbols (p. 226, n. 31). I also briefly discussed how symbols present the manner rather than the content of an object at p. 64. 26 The most philosophically fraught question I can conceive concerning the stakes of orientational judgments takes its bearing from Hannah Ginsborg’s distinction (noted on p. 68 n. 51) between the question of whether an object is perceived in a certain way (e.g., a regular rectangle oriented as a diamond) and the question of whether it is perceived as being that way (2006: 358, 368–369, n. 24–25). I take myself to be showing that one succeeds in orienting herself in the world only to the extent that the world in fact is the way she perceives it to be. But here, I fear, is an instance where it depends on what the meaning of “is” is. It is arbitrary, I think, whether we perceive the Artic to be at the “top” or the “bottom” of the globe. There is no right way for the globe to be in respect to itself. But there is a right way for it to be in respect to the rest of the world. There is a truth of the matter concerning the relation between the North Pole and the star Polaris that doesn’t hold between Polaris and the South Pole. The sense of how

Orientation and the Aesthetic Symbolization of the World  211 things are at issue in orientational judgments, then, concerns the way things “hang together”, to adopt a Sellarsian tone. In that case, to say how something is is to know one’s way around it, that is, to have oriented oneself with respect to it. 27 See p. 113. 28 See also p. 60: “It should be noted that Kant is making a stronger point than that which is offered by so-called intentional theories of the emotions. He is not just saying that, accompanying any feeling, there is some belief about the object: he is saying that, to understand what is going on in the aesthetic case, we need to make sense of the idea that that something is so can be felt”. 29 See Mulhall (1996) and Falk (1996), which appeared as subsequent chapters of the same volume. 30 See footnote xxi to ¶23. But cf. §25 (esp. pp. 231–234) of the lectures of 1925, published as History of the Concept of Time, which are a draft of this section of Being and Time and where the engagement with Kant’s Orientation essay is more explicit. 31 Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Appendix I. 32 I identified similar “two-step” or “external” interpretations of judgments of taste characteristic of much of the literature on Kant’s aesthetics on pp. 162–4, 180 n. 9, and 181 n. 21. 33 As Heidegger intimates in Being and Time (¶30, n.vi), the connection between recognizing the truth of a claim and experiencing a subjective affect was already outlined in Book II of Aristotle’s Rhetoric (e.g., 1379a). For a more extended exploration of the relation between affect and truth in Aristotle, see the earlier drafts of ¶30 in the lectures of 1924 published as Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, especially §§13–22.

8 Finding the World

How does one find the world? It is not immediately obvious what the question means to be asking since the word “finding” is ambiguous in several ways. It is, first of all, subject to a “noun-verb” ambiguity insofar as the word “finding” is used both as a verb to refer to an activity (process) of finding out and as a noun to designate the resulting object (product) that is found. It is in the latter sense that the word “finding” is used in the scientific and legal arenas. A scientific finding reports on an object that has been found or a force that has been discovered. Prior to the finding, the fact of the matter existed; it just had not yet been found. The result of a juridical finding, by contrast, has a different ontological status. For someone with the appropriate legal authority, it is the performative speech act of “finding someone guilty” that makes it true that a defendant is, in fact, guilty, prior to which time she was presumed innocent. Thus, while both a scientific and a legal finding make a claim about some feature of the world, the former is the result of a discovery and the latter a determination, both a resolution of will and a constitution of social fact. The judge’s “finding” in the sense of a verdict is the same word but carries a different meaning when it is used to describe the jury who may be “finding it challenging” to sort through all the details of a case or “find it hard to believe” that the defendant would be guilty of the accusation. Finding in that sense lies on the other side of the act-object ambiguity. What the jury is “finding” in this sense refers not to an end product but to a developmental process, the experience of coming to awareness. But the developmental or processual sense of finding is complicated by the fact that it is both something that one undergoes or suffers through at the same time it is something one actively does and can therefore undergo in better or worse ways. A jury member may be finding it hard to keep the facts straight but that may be because she isn’t really concentrating. Another may find it hard to believe the defendant is guilty, but that could be because he has not put in check his biases and prejudices. It is the prerogative of the prosecutor to argue that the jury members should not find the evidence hard to follow, that they have a responsibility to discount their prejudices.

214  Finding the World Thus, in addition to the “noun-verb” ambiguity, there is also a “descriptive-normative” ambiguity within the notion of “finding”. For a scientist who finds a new species of insect, there is no way that species should be. Although the scientific method does prescribe the right practices of discovery, the finding itself is wholly descriptive. Likewise, the final verdict of a jury fully descriptive; as a matter of legal fact the defendant is now guilty. There is no standard of guilt or innocence to be found other than the finding of the jury so long as it deliberated according to proper legal procedures. Within the process of their deliberation, however, jury members who are finding it hard to believe a defendant could be guilty are liable to criticism and are held to normative standards: they ought to give proper weight to eye witness testimony, they should attend to mitigating circumstances, it is their responsibility to determine how much doubt is reasonable. But to what, exactly, does one appeal to when placing normative demands on the process of finding? What is it that the jury member who finds the facts difficult to follow or his biases hard to rein in should be doing? The problem is not that he is unaware of the facts, but, rather, that he is attending to them in a wrong or deficient manner. He is not appreciating how the particular facts “hang together” in a discernible pattern or order. But how do we describe, much less prescribe, a manner of attending? How do we make claims not about individual objects or facts but about their relation or order? There is still another usage of the notion of “finding”. It is not uncommon to ask how one “finds a meal” or “finds a performance” such as a symphony or a play. When it comes to questions of taste, however, it is not immediately clear what it is one is finding. When someone answers how she finds a meal, what are we finding out? Are we learning about the dinner or about the diner? Certainly an aesthetic “finding” refers to how some object strikes the subject, how it appears or seems or tastes. But one of the peculiar features of talk about taste is the way it directs attention to the object. If a diner is not finding a dish to his liking, a waiter might draw attention to certain ingredients or tactfully suggest a manner of eating that allows the flavors in the food to emerge. If an audience member is not finding a theater performance all that engaging, a critic may point to understated themes or certain ironies that may have been overlooked. In each case, it is as though the subject does not yet have the right standing to issue a judgment of taste if he has not noticed the truth of the matter, if he has not come to grips with which properties are present in the object and taken stock of how they hang together. The critic’s point is not that objects of taste are the kind of things you can look at this way or that, but, rather, that there is a right way to look at them. There is a way of arranging them or holding them together that makes salient the presence or significance of individual elements; there is a manner of attending that best brings out properties and relations that are there in the object. By redirecting the attention of the audience member, the critic aims to suggest or induce the right manner or attitude for discovering the truth of the matter.

Finding the World  215 And yet another peculiar quality of talk about taste is that the truth of the matter does not determine the manner in which we find objects or receive them. Finding that things are, in fact, thus and so is no guarantee how we will find them. One can invite and elicit a manner of attending in which a full range of properties, relations, and significances come into view, but in judgments of taste there is an ineliminable moment of evaluation, identification, and, ultimately, responsibility. One can fully “get” a joke and still not find it funny; but one cannot laugh at a joke and then deny that she “gets” it or wholly disown the worldview it expresses. Aesthetic findings, perhaps despite oneself, are revelatory of how a subject sees the world. When it comes to matters of taste, the notion of “finding” resonates across all registers. Aesthetic findings are both a product and a process. They point to properties and qualities one finds in an object but also to the process or experience one undergoes in bringing those features into view. An aesthetic experience is both something one does and something that happens to one. Such judgments appeal to how one should be and reveal who one is. Hence aesthetic judgments are both descriptive and normative. They place demands upon the way a subject receives the world and describes what it is she receives. Aesthetic judgments both discover how things are and make them so. By drawing attention to these peculiar features of judgments of taste, I find that the primary effect of Kant’s aesthetics is to reorient the fundamental sense in which the mind is in touch with the world: the world is an object of our finding. That is why I think the philosophical significance of Kant’s aesthetics lies primarily not in the questions it answers but in the one it poses. How does one find the world?

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Index

Abbot, Don Paul 98 accent 131 – 8 acquaintance (kennen) 117n9 activity: in receptivity 8 – 18, 38 – 48, 51, 53, 65, 120, 163, 167 – 77, 213 – 15 (see also disposition; orientation); see also agency; autonomy; spontaneity adjectives 158; see also ambiguity aesthetic discourse see quarrel (Streit, streiten) aesthetic judgment: four possible meanings of term 158 – 64; as normative (see normativity); as opposed to aesthetic appraisal [Beurtheilung] 159, 180n2; as orientational 22 – 3, 214 – 15 (see also “felt discrimination” (Unterscheidungsvermögen durchs Gefühl)); precognitive, multicognitive (hermeneutic), metacognitive interpretations 62, 176, 182; relation to empirical judgment (see judgment); see also beauty (judgments of beauty) aestheticism see Philosophical Aestheticism aesthetics: compared to ethics, religion 19 – 23; meaning of term 2, 6, 11 – 12, 88, 157 – 62, 192, 207n1 affect see affectivity; emotion; feeling; Gefühl; mood; passivity; pathē; sensation affectivity 2 – 5, 11 – 14, 88; as normative (see normativity); role in communication (see pathē; quarrels); role in empirical judgment 99 – 100, 113 – 14 (see also orientation); role in judgments of taste 158 – 64, 168 – 77; tone 90 – 2 agency 2 – 5

Allison, Henry 95n26, 95n28, 154n21, 154n25, 164 ambiguity ambiguous figures 79 – 80 (see also enharmonics); arguments 128 – 9 (see also irregular arguments); of reference 106 (see also familiarity); of the term “aesthetic” (see aesthetics (meaning of term)); of the term “Betrachtung” 7 – 8; of the term “concept” 57 – 8; of the term “feeling” (Gefühl) 190 – 3, 209n19; of the term “finding” 213 – 15; of the term “manifold” 41 – 2 Ameriks, Karl 94n16, 95n24, 154n27, 164 – 5, 181n17, 182n35 analogy 198 – 9; see also symbol antinomy of taste 57 – 60, 142 – 3 apprehension 44, 46, 66n8; see also synopsis Aquila, Richard 95n24, 167 – 8, 174 Aristotle: communicative capacities in perception 100 – 1, 125 – 6; diathesis (disposition) 80, 108 – 10; Heidegger 152n8, 211n33; relation to Kant’s aesthetics 97 – 100, 116; role of pathē in judgment 112 – 15 art, fine art: Hume 122, 127 – 31; Kantian theory of art 71 – 4, 89, 92 – 3; relation to experience 6 – 14, 34 – 6, 47, 57; Rousseau 136 – 8; see also music; rhetoric artist 10 – 11, 57; see also genius attunement (Stimmung) 63, 73 – 4, 80, 84 – 5, 94n9, 114 – 15, 152n8, 152n12, 153n16, 153n20, 161, 171 – 6; see also disposition; Gemütsstimmung audience 9 – 10, 29, 99, 137, 214; Aristotle and disposing the audience

228 Index 109 – 10, 112 – 14; crowd of spectators 16 – 17; see also receptivity autonomy: moral autonomy 3 – 4, 98; productive imagination (see imagination); see also judgment (reflective judgment) Beaufret, Jean 46 beauty (beautiful): Hume and Rousseau 124 – 9; judgments of beauty (taste) 7, 34 – 5, 56 – 7, 60 – 3, 141 – 8, 160 – 70, 188, 192, 205; relation to aesthetics 6 – 14, 22, 121, 139, 157, 178 (see also taste (model for empirical judgment)); symbol for morality 58, 64 Befindlichkeit 204; see also moods begleiten (accompanying, escorting) 173 – 4 Begriff, begreifen 46, 48 – 9; see also concept bewirken (effectuating, causing) 173 – 4 binding 38 – 9, 40 – 51 passim blame see normativity body 95n18, 120, 193 – 5, 197 – 8, 209n20; see also hand Boyle, Matthew 94n16, 117n10 Brandom, Robert 34 Cannon, Joseph 174 categories 56, 82, 167; transcendental underdetermination 102 – 3 Cavell, Stanley 80 censuring see normativity cognition 31, 117n9; aesthetic judgment as condition 8 – 9, 31 – 7, 62, 86 – 8, 95n28, 99 – 100, 108, 111 – 12, 149 – 50, 154n21, 168 – 78 (see also orientation); see also empirical cognition; intentionality; judgment (empirical judgment) commitments (orientational feelings as) 200 – 3 common sense see sensus communis aestheticus communication: communication of affect (see quarrels; Rousseau); Kantian theory of communication 71 – 2, 72, 89 – 92, 98 – 101, 111, 155n34, 171 (see also quarrels); see also rhetoriccomprehension; understanding concept: Begriff, begreifen 46, 48 – 9, 52; empirical concept 56, 102 – 7, 168 – 70; indeterminate concept (concept in general) 58 – 65; pure

concepts (see categories); synthesizing sense manifold (see binding; holding); twofold meaning 49, 55 – 9, 63 (see also ambiguity); see also understanding (Vermögen der Begriffe) conceptualism 37, 48 – 9, 53, 55, 94n14, 118n18; see also non-conceptualism conceptual marks (Merkmale), intensional attributes 54 – 5, 81, 158, 191, 193, 209n16 conjointness views 43 – 5 consensus 132, 136, 149; see also sensus communis aestheticus context (Zusammenhang) 90, 105 – 12, 193 – 4, 206; see also holism contextualist view 28 conviction (Überzeugung) 153n13 Copernican turn 31, 150 – 1, 167, 176, 179, 194 Crowther, Paul 66n2, 67n28, 80 deduction: Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments 14, 58, 63, 143, 154n25, 159, 169, 171; Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding 34, 43 – 4, 56, 102 defeasibility 12, 23, 62, 79 – 83, 94n17, 95n24, 103 – 5, 176; productive imagination 36, 85 demands of reason 19, 120, 144, 148 – 9; regulative principles 188 – 9,  205 Dennet, Daniel 80 Derrida, Jacques 74, 93n2, 94n9, 153n20 Dewey, John 13 diathesis (διάθεσις) see disposition discerning, discernment: discriminating 39 – 40, 43 – 5, 48 – 9, 64 – 5, 67n15 discourse see communication; quarrel discursivity 42, 47 – 8, 101, 109 – 10, 119, 121, 125, 149 – 51, 165, 176, 187 – 8, 191 – 2, 200 – 1, 209n16; see also concept, understanding (the faculty of, Vermögen der Begriffe); affective frames of mind 112 – 16 (see also mood); dispute disposition, diathesis, διάθεσις 12, 19 – 20, 80, 88, 97 – 100, 108 – 11, 150 – 1; Gemütsdisposition, Gemütsstimmung, Laune 85, 113 – 15, 153n16, 172, 175 – 6, 204; Hume 131, 153n16; objective order

Index  229 (see taxis; mode); orientation as disposition 111 – 12; Rousseau 136 – 7 dispute (disputieren) 119 – 20, 148 – 50; disputieren in the Critique of Judgment 139 – 43; genesis of term 145 – 8; Hume and regular argument 128 – 30, 140; see also conviction Dummheit (stupidity) 103 – 6 economy 17 – 18, 67n35; see also money emotion 2, 12 – 13, 88, 113 – 14, 120, 150m 151n1; fear 19, 113, 202 – 3; movemens de l’ame, sentimens (sentiment) 136 – 7 (see also Schwung); as orientational 202 – 4; see also affect; mood; pathē Empfänglichkeit 15, 20, 77, 89 Empfindung, Empfindlichkeit 15, 20, 74 – 7, 89 – 91, 209n19; sensation at base of aesthetic judgment 170 – 7; see also feeling; sensation empirical cognition 1, 33, 36 – 7, 154n21, 186; see also intentionality empirical concepts see concept empirical gap 56, 68n55, 102 – 6, 149, 181n28, 195 empirical judgment see judgment empirical space see space enharmonics 79 – 80 Ercolini, Gina 98 ethics (morality): antinomy of taste 57 – 60, 64, 69n58; feeling of respect in moral judgments 83, 159, 180n3; relation to aesthetics 1 – 3, 19 – 23, 86, 98 – 100, 107, 116, 123 – 4, 133, 205 Evans, Gareth 39, 45 examples, exemplarity 99, 116n4 expression: aesthetic expression 71, 74, 91, 134, 137, 139; linguistic expression (see communication) externalism 158 – 64, 173 – 4; extra esentialia 81 – 2; see also two-stage views Falk, Barrie 168, 176, 183n62, 202 – 6, 211n28 familiarity (bekannt) 110 – 12, 187, 194 – 201, 205 – 6, 210n24 fear see emotion feeling (Gefühl): communicability of 135 – 8, 150 (see also quarrel); contrasted with intuition 192 – 7; contrasted with sensation (Empfindung) 75, 87 – 8, 186; demands upon 14, 18 – 23, 120, 144, 149; disclosive

nature 31, 111 – 14, 165, 167ff., 179, 185 – 6, 197 – 207 (see also internalism; orientation); feeling of respect 83, 180n3; meaning of 2, 87 – 8, 120, 209n19; nature of aesthetics 8, 11 – 12, 35, 84 – 5, 88 – 9, 99 – 100, 124, 144, 146, 158 – 65, 186; need of reason 188 – 9; as negative or placeholder term 88, 95n27, 118n22, 182n37, 190 – 1; see also aesthetic; affect; disposition; emotion; manner; mood; pathē; Schwärmerei; sensus communis felt discrimination, felt judgment, feeling of difference (Unterscheidungsvermögen durchs Gefühl) 89, 111 – 12, 159, 185, 188, 190, 194, 196, 200, 206, 210n24, 211n28 Fenves, Peter 93n3, 96n29 Ferrarin, Alfredo 208n9, 209 – 10n20 finding 213 – 15 frame of mind see disposition Gasché, Rodolphe 46, 98, 174 Gefühl see feeling Gehrke, Pat 98 Gemüt (Gemütsdisposition, Gemütsstimmung, Gemütszustand) 84 – 5, 114, 152n8, 153n16, 153n20, 155n33, 171, 174 – 5, 182n49 genius 33, 57, 152n10, 175; génie 132, 137 Geschwätz, schwatzen 117n8, 140 – 2 gesture 71 – 2, 92, 132 – 5, 139, 153n19 Ginsborg, Hannah 49, 68n42, 68n51, 163 – 4, 182n36, 210n26 Goodnman, Nelson 13, 95n20 Grassi, Ernesto 98 Guyer, Paul 62, 94n10, 151n1, 154n21, 154n20, 180n2, 180n3, 180n9, 182n35 hand: left- and right-handedness 190 – 3 (see also incongruent counterparts); perception as taking to hand 46 – 8, 53 (see also touching); see also holding harmony (of the mental faculties) 63, 87, 103 – 4, 161 – 2, 170, 175, 177 Hegel, G.W.F 30 – 1, 38 – 40, 45, 66n8, 69n60, 152n6 Heidegger, Martin 13, 67n32, 74, 94n9, 152n8, 183n62, 204, 206, 208n6, 210n24, 211n33

230 Index Herder, J.G. 151n2 higher-level property 78, 92, 95n20, 168 – 9, 182n35 Hölderlin, Friedrich 39, 67n15, 74, 88 – 9, 153n20 holding 36, 40, 45 – 9, 53, 64 – 5; see also hand holism 90, 110, 118n20 Hove, Thomas 98 Hume, David 38, 50, 95n28, 181n11, 205; irregular arguments (aesthetic disputes) 127 – 31; quarrel with Rousseau 121 – 7, 149 – 50 humor 177 – 8; see also jokes hypotyposis 66n8, 98 – 9, 116n4 identity thesis 164; see also internalism idle chatter see Geschwätz imagination (productive imagination) aesthetic judgment 86 – 8, 161, 170 – 7; Ausbildung 51 – 5; as binding 38 – 9; conjoint with concepts 43 – 5; as discerning 39 – 40; Einbildungskraft, einbilden 46 – 7, 50 – 1; element of experience 33 – 7; form of concept in general 55 – 63; orientation 201 – 5; as prior to concepts 42 – 4; see also schematism; spontaneity incongruent counterparts 191 – 2, 200, 209n16, 210n21 indeterminate concept see concept indexicality 193 – 5 insults 202, 206 – 7 intensional attributes see conceptual marks intentionality 1, 8 – 9, 26, 36 – 7, 72 – 4, 92 – 3, 150, 179; see also empirical cognition internalism 99 – 100, 157 – 60, 163 – 4; neglect of internal objectivism 164 – 7; philosophical ground for internal objectivity 177 – 8; textual case for internal objectivism 167 – 77 intuition: additional structuring (see tone); condition of objectivity 189, 209n19; relation to conceptual capacity 42 – 6, 49 – 50, 52 – 4, 56, 59, 61 – 4, 100 – 7, 110, 167, 169, 171; role in communication (see gesture); spatial form 190 – 3; see also defeasibility; symbol intuition thesis 192 irregular arguments (aesthetic disputes) 127 – 31, 152n4

Jacobi, Friedrich H. 187 – 8, 209n19 jokes 215; see also prank (Spaβ) judgment: (aesthetic) reflective judgment 56, 150, 162, 167, 170 – 1, 174, 176, 186, 188, 205 (see also beauty; taste); deficiencies (see stupidity); empirical judgment 35 – 7, 102 – 7, 110 – 11, 162, 165 (see also defeasibility); mediation between concept and intuition 33 – 4, 71 – 2, 103 – 4; see also schematism Kantian (meaning of term) 29 – 30 Kant’s Works: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View 35, 68n43, 78 – 80, 98, 104, 115, 154n22; Anthropology Lectures 145 – 7, 154n26; Concerning Sensory Illusion and Poetic Fiction 154n22, 19, 83; Critique of Practical Reason (second Critique) 19, 21, 83; Critique of Pure Reason (first Critique) 6 – 7, 11, 28, 30, 33 – 4, 39, 41 – 8, 56 – 7, 61, 72, 82 – 3, 75, 101 – 5, 111, 141, 146 – 7, 165 – 7, 171, 176, 186 – 8, 192, 201, 209n16, 209n19; Differentiation of Directions in Space 191 – 5; Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals 21; Inaugural Dissertation 191 – 2; Jäsche Logic 49, 82, 86, 140, 153n13; Lectures on Logic 81 – 2, 208n4; Lectures on Metaphysics 51 – 2, 147 – 8, 154n27; Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science 191; Metaphysics of Morals 20; Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics 30, 191 – 2; On a recently prominent tone of superiority in philosophy 86; Reflections 145; What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking? 89, 110 – 12, 118n19, 185 – 200 passim Kivy, Peter 93n5 Körner, Christian Gottfried 74 language see communication; discursivity; music; Rousseau (Essay on the Origin of Languages) Laune (launisch) 85 – 6, 95n23, 113 – 15, 153n16, 183n59; see also disposition; mood lesser question see schematism (affective schematism) Longuenesse, Béatrice 48 – 9, 52 – 3, 164, 180n9, 180n10

Index  231 Makkreel, Rudolf 51, 68n55, 69n60, 187, 208n9 manifold 40 – 2 manner: form of experience 49, 64, 137, 214 – 15; Manier, modus aestheticus 85 – 8, 118n26, 172; philosophical method 27 – 8; tone 92 – 3; see also disposition; Laune; tone deafness Matherne, Samantha 67n33, 93n5, 96n29 McCormick, Samuel 98 McDowell, John 38, 67n18, 117n10, 118n20, 179, 185, 206 McLear, Colin 67n19, 117n9 melody 134, 137 Melville, Henry 68n36 Mendelssohn, Moses 187 meta-aesthetics 157, 162 – 6 meta-experiential views (vs. protoexperiential views) 187 – 8 metaphysics: constraint on aesthetic judgment 166; orientation in thinking 186 – 90, 209n19; supersensible substrate (see antinomy of taste) method: methodology 26 – 30, 120 – 1; modus logicus 85 – 6, 88, 172; Philosophical Aestheticism 8 – 9 mode (modus) 81 – 8; modality 81 – 4, 87; modus aestheticus 85 – 9, 172 (see also manner); modus logicus (see method) modification 11, 81, 83 – 5 modulation 71 – 5, 81, 83 – 5, 87 – 92,  138 momentum see Schwung money 47 – 8, 67n35 mood 12, 23, 26, 88, 91, 136 – 7, 150, 153n20, 172, 175 – 6, 182n49; Heidegger 13, 74, 152n8, 183n62, 204; see also attunement (Stimmung); Laune morals, morality see ethics Mulhall, Stephen 95n20, 183n62 multicognitive views 62, 176 music (Tonkunst): musical nature of language 73 – 4, 89 – 93, 122, 134 – 9; perception of music 78 – 80, 83, 92, 168; see also modulation; tone Nietzsche, Friedrich 152n11 Noë, Alva 47, 67n12 non-conceptualism 37, 94n14, 117n9, 117n12, 181n23, 209n16 (see also

two-unity views); non-discursivity of aesthetic judgments 95n27, 118n22, 164 – 5, 167, 182n37, 190 – 3, 200 – 1, 209n16 normativity: aesthetic discourse 119 – 21, 130, 135 – 6, 143 – 9, 151; aesthetic judgments 163 – 4, 168; affectivity-receptivity 5, 13 – 23, 105, 125, 176; finding 214 – 15; Nuzzo, Angelica 208n9, 209n20; orientation 192, 194, 201, 203 objective: case for 167 – 7; disposition of objects 108 – 13; disputing 139 – 40, 153n13 (see also dispute); finding 214 – 15; manner of presentation 85 – 7; meaning of 160 – 4; neglect of 165 – 6; objectivism objective sensation 75 – 6 (see also internalism); orientational judgments 185, 192 – 7, 201 – 5; see also cognition; normativity oratory, ars oratoria see rhetoric orientation 27 – 8, 31, 64, 89, 107, 110 – 12, 114, 117n12, 151; aesthetics as revelatory of 13, 22 – 3, 136; ambiguous figures 79 – 80; as a commitment 200 – 7; in empirical space 194 – 7; non-conceptual 190 – 2; in pure space 192 – 4; symbol of the world 197 – 200 (see also familiar; symbol); in thinking 187 – 90 (see also metaphysics); What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking? 118n19, 185 – 200 passim; see also disposition; manner; tone Pantheismusstreit see Spinoza Controversy paradiastole 105 – 8 passion 3, 133 – 4; see also affect passivity: affectivity 2 – 9, 88, 120, 163; being struck 121 – 5; creativity 10 – 11; imagination 42 – 3, 47 – 8, 53, 65; normative 16 – 17; role of pleasure in taste 173 – 6; spectatorship, reception 9 – 10, 14 – 16 pathē, pathos 12, 13, 100, 112 – 15, 152n8; see also affect perception (perceive): compared to reception 14 – 21; literal meaning of term 4 – 6, 45 – 7; see also imagination (productive imagination) persuasion 99, 112, 116n1, 126; (Überredung) 153n13 phenomenology 6 – 7

232 Index Philosophical Aestheticism 8 – 9, 13 pleasure: judgments of taste 11 – 12, 35, 95n24, 146; relation to aesthetic judgment 158 – 66; role of feeling in judgment 167 – 77, 201; subjective 83 – 4, 111, 141, 186, 205 pole star (Polaris) 108, 110, 190, 194, 196 – 7, 200, 205, 210n26 position: diathesis 80, 108; orientation 193, 196 – 7; positioning 15 – 16, 53; Stelle, Stellung 46, 198 – 9, 206 Poulakos, John 98 praise see normativity prank (Spaβ) 110, 194 predicates: affects in the place of 168 – 70; determinate concepts 59 priority thesis 164 prolepsis see teleological order property (ownership) 17 – 18, 39, 47 – 8, 67n35; see also higher-level property proto-experiential views (vs. metaexperiential) 187 – 8 purposiveness: object of aesthetic judgment 159 – 64; whole-part form 166 quarrel, quarreling (Streit, streiten): in the Critique of Judgment 139 – 45; genesis of term 145 – 8; philosophical significance 119 – 21, 149 – 51; quarrel between Hume and Rousseau 121 – 7; sensus communis 148 – 9; see also irregular arguments; persuasion Quintilian 107 Ramus, Peter 106 reception, receptivity 9 – 10, 14 – 21, 89, 117n12, 151; deficiencies of 20, 77 – 9, 168 – 9; see also Empfänglichkeit reflective judgment see judgment regulative principles see demands of reason religion 19 – 22, 122 – 30,  187 representation 41 – 2, 150; and concepts 49; quasi-representational, para-representational 136; visual paradigm 46 – 7 responsibility 3 – 5, 15 – 22, 85, 109, 113, 120 – 1, 141 – 2, 152n5, 213 – 15 rhetoric 13, 80, 135, 153n13; Aristotle on 99 – 101, 152n8; disposition (diathesis) 108 – 10; Kantian scholarship on 98 – 100; Kant’s criticism of 97 – 8, 140 – 1; role of

pathē (affects) in judgment 112 – 15; subtext of Kant’s theory of judgment 100 – 8, 113 – 16 room see space Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 20, 73, 88 – 9, 95n18; Essay on the Origins of Languages 130 – 5; influence on Kant 138 – 9, 151n2, 154n20, 154n21; philosophical importance of theory of music 136 – 8; quarrel with Hume 121 – 7, 149 – 50 Rush, Fred 62, 95n24 Russell’s Principle 39 Savile, Anthony 173 Schellekens, Elisabeth 180n7 schematism 33, 34, 56, 72, 101, 167, 208n13; affective schematism 170 – 2 Schiller, Friedrich 74 Schopenhauer, Arthur 190 Schwärmerei 86, 187 – 8, 209n19 schwatzen see Geschwätz Schwung (momentum, movement) 153n17, 175 – 8, 183n50 Searle, John 210n22 secondary qualities 74 – 7, 167 – 8 Sedgwick, Sally 69n60 Sellars, Wilfrid 30, 53 – 7, 61, 65, 72, 152n6, 210n26 semantics 45, 90, 106, 138, 166 sensation: element of communication 71 – 4, 87 – 92, 138 – 9; modifications of subject 83 – 4; sensation at base of aesthetic judgment 170 – 7; sense impingement 38, 45, 50 – 3, 65, 71 – 2, 74 – 81, 117n9, 123 – 5, 146 (see also Empfindung); see also feeling sensus communis aestheticus (common sense) 18 – 19, 91, 93, 95n27, 130 – 2, 144, 148 – 51, 171 – 2; see also consensus sentiment see emotion Skinner, Quentin 117n15 space: empirical space (Zimmer) 194 – 7, 200 – 1; incongruent counterparts 190 – 2, 210n21; intuition thesis 192 – 3; pure form of intuition 56, 101 – 2; pure space room (Raum) 193 – 4, 209n20 speech 71, 92, 101, 109, 112, 121 – 2, 191, 213; Rousseau on spoken language 131 – 9; see also quarrel (Streit, streiten) Spinoza controversy (Pantheismusstreit) 185 – 9

Index  233 spontaneity: autonomy 2, 10, 88; imagination 34, 36, 41 – 4, 56, 60, 66n7, 86; judgment 72, 83 Stelle, Stellung see position Stimme see voice Stimmung see attunement Stoics 113, 203 Strawson, P. F. 30, 50, 53 – 6 Streit, streiten see quarrel strike, striking 124 – 5; perception as being struck 4 – 5, 14 – 15 Stroud, Scott 98 – 9, 117n5 stupidity see Dummheit subjective: condition for objectivity 30 – 1, 87, 111 – 12, 167 – 73, 178 – 9; demands upon subjective state 18 – 19, 91, 142 – 3 (see also quarrel); disposition 85, 108 – 10; feeling as 6, 12, 20 – 1, 75; judgments of taste 35, 62, 119 – 20, 159, 162 – 4; meaning of term 160 – 2, 180n7, 194, 208n11; modification 83 – 5; subjectivist readings 204 – 7; see also orientation supersensible substrate see metaphysics symbol, symbolization 64; logical structure of 198 – 9; orientation as an aesthetic manner of symbolization 200 – 7 synopsis 43 – 4 synthesis 39, 41, 48; as opposed to synopsis 43 – 4; productive imagination 53 – 4; see also begreifen; binding taste: judgments of taste (see beauty (judgment of beauty)); as model for empirical judgment 170 – 5; normativity of taste 13 – 14, 18 – 19, 214 – 15; relation to aesthetics 6, 11; sense of taste 47, 78 – 9; “Standard of Taste” 129 – 31; see also antinomy of taste; quarrel taxis [τάξις] 106, 108, 114; see also disposition teleogogical (whole-part) order 52 – 3, 68n50, 181n28 Thoreau, Henry David 1 Tolley, Clinton 43, 68n51

tone: enharmonics (ambiguous figures) 79 – 81; etymology 73; as a form 76 – 8; intentionality 72 – 4, 92 – 3, 147; relation to affectivity 90 – 1; role in language 89 – 92, 114, 131 – 9; as a sensation 74 – 5; see also accent; attunement; secondary quality tone deafness 77 – 8, 168 – 9 Tonkunst see music touch 46 – 7, 95n18 transcendental underdetermination 102 – 3; see also empirical gap trivilaity objection 48 – 50 two-stage (two-step) views 51, 69n60, 180n9, 205; priority thesis 164; see also externalism two-unity views 42 – 3 understanding (the faculty of, Vermögen der Begriffe): faculty of rules 191 (see also discursivity); power of concepts 62 – 3; relation to imagination 33 – 5, 42 – 5, 53, 56, 61, 83, 87 – 8, 101, 104, 126, 161, 165, 167, 170 – 7,  186 Unterscheidungsvermögen see Felt Judgment victimization (passivity as) 3 – 5, 127 vision: as paradigm for perception 46 – 7; visual communication 132 – 7; see also gesture voice (voix) 131 – 7; Stimme 153n20 Vorstellung, vorstellen (compared to “representation”) 46 Walsh, W.H. 53 Westphal, Kenneth 38, 45 whoaing (warning) 135 – 6 Wiggins, David 177 – 9 willkürlich (arbitrary, discretionary, free) 36, 83, 85 – 6, 88 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 79 – 80, 127, 165, 208n14 Wood, Allen 154n26 wooing (petition, seduction) 135 – 6 Writing (written language) 131 – 5 Zuckert, Rachel 164, 181n28