Abstract
The debate about Kantian conceptualism and nonconceptualism has completely overlooked the importance of Kant’s aesthetics. Heidemann shows how this debate can be significantly advanced by exploring Kant’s aesthetics, that is, the theory of judgements of taste and the doctrine of the aesthetic genius in Kant’s Third Critique. The analysis of judgements of taste demonstrates that nonconceptual mental content is a condition of the possibility of aesthetic experience. The subsequent discussion of the doctrine of the aesthetic genius reveals that aesthetic ideas must also be conceived in terms of nonconceptual mental content. Heidemann finally restricts Kant’s aesthetic nonconceptualism to the way aesthetic perceivers cognitively evaluate works of art, while he argues that the doctrine of the genius cannot count as a viable form of aesthetic nonconceptualism.
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Notes
- 1.
For such diverging interpretations see, for instance, the articles collected in Heidemann (2013a). A further difficulty is that some of those who argue for a conceptualist reading of Kant do so explicitly from a Hegelian point of view, most notably McDowell (cf. e.g. McDowell 2009). Hegelian readings are, of course, not immanent interpretations of Kant and make assumptions Kant does not share. On such assumptions see Engelhard (2007). See also Schulting, Chap. 10 in this volume.
- 2.
Kant’s writings on practical philosophy do not play any significant role in the debate, since ethics is not informative about the way humans cognise.
- 3.
To some degree Ginsborg (2006c) is an exception. Although she is not so much interested in the principal question of whether or not Kant is a nonconceptualist, which she covers in Ginsborg (2008), she interprets Kant’s theory of judgement of taste as a theory of perceptual truth-independent normativity. That is to say, perceptual normativity as expressed in judgements of taste is a condition of experience “making concepts available to us”, i.e. of “bringing the objects of experience under empirical concepts” (Ginsborg 2006c:406). Thus, Ginsborg (2006c:407–14, in particular) makes use of Kant’s theory in order to elaborate her own systematic account of experience and normativity. Her discussion of nonconceptualism is therefore not so much focused on Kant’s aesthetics itself. But this is what I shall do in this chapter.
- 4.
- 5.
Makkreel continues that judgements of taste “may presuppose already familiar empirical concepts, as when we refer back to prejudices of taste, or more general concepts, as when we orient our judgment to exemplary models” (2006:243). He writes further: “Moreover, they may project aesthetic ideas that disclose affinities with rational ideas and can in turn suggest new concepts. Since we grow up with logical as well as aesthetic prejudices, it is unlikely that we ever confront the world without any concepts. They may be inadequate concepts, or mere representational concepts as found through the logical reflection …. This means that the so-called nonconceptual judgment of taste, ‘This rose is beautiful’, and the more generic judgment, ‘This flower is beautiful’, use vague representational concepts rather than determining concepts with the defining marks of things” (Makkreel 2006:243). For a view similar to Makreel’s, see Ameriks (2003b:336). In general, Ameriks defends a “conceptualist” or “objectivist” interpretation of judgements of taste. Cf. Ameriks (2003b:338–43).
- 6.
Cf. Heidemann (2013b:1). Different definitions can of course be given. However, for the purpose of this chapter I take the above-mentioned definitions to be uncontroversial. In what follows, the somewhat standard division of nonconceptualism into state and content nonconceptualism will turn out to be useful. According to state nonconceptualism, mental states have nonconceptual content if the cogniser does not possess adequate concepts in order to specify this content. According to content nonconceptualism, the representational content in question is fundamentally different from conceptual content. I shall get back to that distinction in the following two sections. For a discussion of alternative definitions of (state and content) nonconceptualism, see Bermúdez and Cahen (2015).
- 7.
Cf. Heidemann (2002).
- 8.
In the Prolegomena Kant formulates this as follows: “The given intuition must be subsumed under a concept that determines the form of judging in general with respect to the intuition …; a concept of this kind is a pure a priori concept of the understanding, which does nothing but simply determine for an intuition the mode in general in which it can serve for judging” (Prol, 4:300).
- 9.
- 10.
Kant states that the judgement of taste is “one whose determining ground cannot be other than subjective”, i.e. a “feeling” (KU, 5:203).
- 11.
In what sense aesthetic evaluation implies categorial determination in a different way than as in logical cognitive judgements will be discussed in Sect. 6.3.
- 12.
Cf. Gunkel (2015).
- 13.
One might think that subjective and objective universality of cognition are two fundamentally distinct claims in kind. As we shall see in Sect. 6.3, subjective universality should not be conceived as “private” universality but as universality according to universally valid subjective cognitive faculties. Here, I do not address “universality” as it has been discussed in the literature on Kant’s aesthetics. For a critical discussion of various interpretations see Allison (2001:98–118).
- 14.
At first glance, representing or cognising something without concepts, i.e. representing or cognising it nonconceptually, on the one hand, and representing or cognising nonconceptual content, on the other, does not amount to the same thing. Representing or cognising something without concepts is a state of mind that by definition does not involve concepts, while representing or cognising nonconceptual content can. For instance, assuming the fine-grainedness argument (cf. e.g. Evans 1982:229; for a discussion of the argument see Bermúdez and Cahen 2015) is correct, my perception of a fine-grained colour shade is intrinsically nonconceptual such that my corresponding state of mind is intrinsically nonconceptual too. However, I can give a conceptual description of the criteria by means of which nonconceptual as opposed to conceptual content can be identified, that is, cognised.
- 15.
The German reads Erklärung des Schönen. I have amended the translation from “definition of the beautiful” to “explication of the beautiful” because “definition” suggests that there is a clear-cut conceptual determination of the beautiful, which, according to Kant, is not the case.
- 16.
Cf. Heidemann (2012:50–6).
- 17.
One might object that the intentional and represented object of an aesthetic state is the object of aesthetic predication. Hence, in the judgement “This flower is beautiful” the evaluating subject refers the predicate “beautiful” to the flower it perceives. In a sense this is true, since a judgement of taste is a (singular) judgement of perception. As we shall see, however, in his aesthetics Kant takes the perceiving, evaluating subject and the aesthetic state it is in as basis instead of the perceived, evaluated object.
- 18.
Cf. KU, 5:214. Objective universality in terms of theoretical cognition, of course, implies the conception of the transcendental unity of apperception as developed in the Transcendental Deduction of the First Critique. See Heidemann (forthcoming).
- 19.
Cf. the Jäsche Logic: “Every concept, as partial concept, is contained in the representation of things; as ground of cognition, i.e., as mark, these things are contained under it. In the former respect every concept has a content, in the other an extension.” In the note to this passage Kant adds that the “universality or universal validity of a concept does not rest on the fact that the concept is a partial concept, but rather on the fact that it is a ground of cognition” (Log, 9:95). Thus if we cognise x because we are in possession of the concept of x, this cognition is (logically) universal. As we have seen, this is not the case with aesthetic cognition.
- 20.
In the Deduction of the Judgement of Taste Kant makes basically the same point in his claim that “no objective principle of taste is possible”: “By a principle of taste would be understood a fundamental proposition under the condition of which one could subsume the concept of an object and then by means of an inference conclude that it is beautiful. But that is absolutely impossible. For I must be sensitive of the pleasure immediately in the representation of it, and I cannot be talked into it by means of any proofs. Thus although critics, as Hume says, can reason more plausibly than cooks, they still suffer the same fate as them. They cannot expect a determining ground for their judgment from proofs, but only from the reflection of the subject on his own state (of pleasure or displeasure), rejecting all precepts and rules” (KU, 5:285–6).
- 21.
“There can be no objective rule of taste that would determine what is beautiful through concepts. For every judgment from this source is aesthetic, i.e., its determining ground is the feeling of the subject and not a concept of an object” (KU, 5:231). I cannot discuss here the “free play” of “imagination” and “understanding” in detail. On this issue, see Guyer (2009), who provides a critical overview of recent publications on this point.
- 22.
In the Fourth Moment Kant argues that the beautiful is necessarily connected with satisfaction. The kind of necessity he has in mind here is not “objective necessity” but “exemplary” necessity: “Since an aesthetic judgment is not an objective and cognitive judgment, this necessity cannot be derived from determinate concepts, and is therefore not apodictic”, it is “subjective necessity”. In that sense, “the judgment of taste ascribes assent to everyone, and whoever declares something to be beautiful wishes that everyone should approve of the object in question and similarly declare it to be beautiful”. The presupposition of this ascription is for Kant the “common sense” (cf. KU, 5:237–8).
- 23.
“The judgment is also called aesthetic precisely because its determining ground is not a concept but the feeling (of inner sense) of that union in the play of the powers of the mind, insofar as they can only be sensed” (KU, 5:228; cf. KU, 5:229–31).
- 24.
This does not imply that, for Kant, every artist is a genius since there are artists who imitate or copy the work of the aesthetic genius.
- 25.
Kantian nonconceptualism is therefore not independent of transcendental idealism since the latter theory determines what kind of nonconceptual mental content cognisers such as ourselves can at all represent. Concerning the intrinsic connection between nonconceptualism and transcendental idealism, compare Tomaszewska (2014:104–25).
- 26.
Elsewhere I have shown that this is clearly Kant’s view and why this view includes direct (empirical) realism (cf. Heidemann 1998:56–85). However, as Schulting (2015b:575–80) points out, nonconceptual intuition must not be conceived merely as a product of synthesis speciosa, since all synthesis is conceptually informed.
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Heidemann, D.H. (2016). Kant’s Aesthetic Nonconceptualism. In: Schulting, D. (eds) Kantian Nonconceptualism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53517-7_6
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