S10-509-14-10-28-14

1. S10-509-14-10-28-14 • Schedule • Is Nov 8th, 6-8, an ok time for dinner? • From now to then, I would like to schedule conferences with each of you. If you do not mind meeting on the weekend (Nov 1 & 2), that will give us almost enough slots for serious conversations. • If you’d prefer to meet with me with your group, I’d be delighted with that too. • NOTE THE SCHEDULE. At this point, I will presume that you grasp a little better why I excluded writing papers on “theory,” ruled out “readings” of particular texts, and left it deliberately open about how you would proceed with reading whatever text or author you have selected. There is no paradigm here: you may decide that there is one paragraph, even one sentence, that is so provoking that you need to stretch out on it—or that whatever you thought were your reasons for picking the text or author you picked have become pickled. • You will also see that in the last week and a bit more, plus the time for the final exam, has been blocked out for in class presentations and conversations. This will be messy, but I think productive. • I’ll send out a blocked set of times to meet. Always a problem under the curse of the quarter system.

2. S10-509-14-10-28-14 Preliminary: Third critique first intro overview. I. Convergence on a Kantian tangle. The shortcomings of CPR include four major issues. a: the deductions: 1. how can imagination be represented, without either destroying the distinction between the a priori and the empirical component of cognition through concepts. (That requires the categories). 2. how can the original unity of the apperception be explained, with more than a hand wave and an acre of prose? If it is “original” the problem is to explain how it works in either technical or material terms. The latter would be psychological, feeding back into a.1. The former has no discernible representational medium of its own. b: the problem of judgment. Kant from his earliest logical writings had treated judgment as only the subsumption of the particular under the universal. Under that condition, the universal is presumed. So even if you succeed in a deduction of the categories, and can explain them as the sine qua non of logical tables of kinds of predications, you still have no way to handle the representation of universals. c: the problem of time. Kant recognizes that the “I think”, if an original unity, depends up memory, such that you can recall a representation so as to compare it with one later in time. Is one perception of the same object as a later one? d: a problem with the antinomies. If these arise from a priori IDEAS of reason, which are not concepts of objects, the argumentation by which you affirm or deny any of the four (is nature a cosmos, is there a necessary first being, is the will free, is the soul immortal ?) do not take into account the whole scope of a priori principles that are involved in our representations (and therefore, in our specific cognitions).

3. Again, Redescription of problems • Imagination: not transcendental nor an original unity: the problem here is that it is spontaneous. It is an action, not a psychological/physiological faculty like vision or hearing. It is, furthermore, technical. It includes, among other considerations, comparison, recognition, hypothesis formation, and awareness of change. Note that it is therefore inextricably connected to dynamism. Nature, and we ourselves, do not exhibit a static nature, but one in which development is essential. (Move forward to Aristotle, 5th c b) • A distinction, for the purposes of transcendental argument, a clarification of the difference between “objective” and “subjective” principles. (a caveat: I would (will) argue that this as a fundamental distinction, is almost entire bullshit, since it cannot be maintained. The logical difficulty is that an ‘object’ is such only to some possible ‘subject’. But that is another argument.) But here is why Kant needs it. Some arguments in critique (and transcendental philosophy proper) pertain to the generalizability of propositions concerning material objects and relations among them. So if we carefully restrict the idea of the “objective” to that, one can almost stay out of the swamp. Other arguments pertain to what is required for us to represent, conceptualize, and apply cognitive relations to experience. And these, Kant rightly sees, are the conditions of our own cognitive capacities, none of which allow for a direct inference or intuition about what is true, universal, or factual about nature. The snarly complication is that this also applies to our conceptions of our own nature. (i.e. “human nature” is not something we are given, but something we have to realize and accomplish. You are, at the start, a featherless biped with a lot of potential) • These two together change the ground conditions of the critiques, for both entail not just memory, but history, and mental spontenaeity Thus, while Kant is very much concerned to defend his distinction between the a priori and the empirical, and equally concerned to uphold the distinction between transcendental logic and the use of empirical examples, he is confronted with the tough problem of trying to explain how nature and thought alike are capable of change, and how are we able to comprend it? • The difficult density of the first introduction arises accordingly. He is working through these fundamental redescriptions in his recognition that the faculty of judgment is not restricted to subsuming the particular under the universal, but is a bridge from theoretical to practical philosophy, requiring a parallel division of the faculty of judgment itself, into reflecting and determining judgment. • ONE GLOBAL CONSEQUENCE is that it returns Kant to the necessary recognition that he, and his thinking, are historical, dynamic, and developmental. More specifically, it leaves him with a huge and largely buried dilemma that has vexed Western philosophy and metaphysics since Parmenides and Plato. What status do we accord to univerals? Here, expect Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Bacon, to mention only the big guys, to come back on stage. But the stage itself is imaginative literature.

4. Implied: a return to fundamental questions of logic and metaphysics • The problem is not epistemological, and Kant’s project is not the creation of a new theory of knowledge. It is, strictly, a critique of our cognitive powers, and the main issue of transcendental logic is that we are constrained to use only the powers we actually have. If you deny this, you remove yourself from consideration as a human being for whom autonomy is possible.

5. More immediate: a bringing together of the theoretical and the practical—only possible via the aesthetic. • It takes Kant a huge effort to arrive at these fundamental and simple insights. • 1. The power of judgment can be regarded either as a mere faculty for reflecting on a given representation, in accordance with a certain principle, for the sake of a concept that is thereby made possible, or as a faculty for determining an underlying concept through a given empirical representation. In the first case it is the reflecting, in the second case the determining power of judgment . P. 15, first intro. Kindle 1333 • 2. Thus the power of judgment itself makes the technique of nature into the principle of its reflection a priori, without however being able to explain this or determine it more precisely or having for this end an objective determining ground for the general concepts of nature (from a cognition of things in themselves), 44b but only in order to be able to reflect in accordance with its own subjective law, in accordance with its need, 45c but at the same time in accord with laws of nature in general. P 17 First intro Kindle 1349 • 3. By a formal technique of nature, I understand its purposiveness in intuition; by its real technique, however, I understand its purposiveness in accordance with concepts. The first provides purposive shapes108d for the power of judgment, i.e., the form in the representation of which imagination and understanding agree mutually and of themselves for the possibility of a concept. The second signifies the concept of things as ends of nature, i.e., as such that their internal possibility presupposes an end, hence a concept which, as a condition, grounds the causality of their generation. The power of judgment itself can provide and construct purposive forms of intuition a priori if, namely, it invents such forms for apprehension as are suitable for the presentation of a concept. P. 33 first intro, kindle 1651 • 4, Now since the concept of an object insofar as it at the same time contains the ground of the reality of this object is called an end, and the correspondence of a thing with that constitution of things that is possible only in accordance with ends is called the purposiveness of its form, thus the principle of the power of judgment in regard to the form of things in nature under empirical laws in general is the purposiveness of nature in its multiplicity. I.e., nature is represented through this concept as if an understanding contained the ground of the unity of the manifold of its empirical laws. P 68, 2nd intro, kindle 2587

6. Therefore . . . • If you have only read the analytic of the beautiful and the analytical of the sublime, you have not read Kant’s Critique of Judgment. • If you think that is what the critique of Judgment is about, you have completely misunderstood it. • It seeks, and finds, the a priori principle of the reflective judgment in the concept of purposiveness, and treats it comprehensively as the a priori principle of intelligibility for the human subject. • More directly: if we cannot arrive at purposiveness, we simply cannot reduce the contents of sensible intuition, or the cognitive particulars of understanding, to something comprehensible. WE require purposiveness, as the confirmation of the intelligible. • The second part, the critique of teleological judgment is not an add-on for whoever: it is the very heart of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, and it returns philosophy to the inaugural questions of the relation between the visible and the intelligible, to the problem of universals, and the deepest perplexities of reasoning. • You might now get a little more of a glimpse as to why it is I inflicted that long lecture about Plato and Aristotle. If you don’t know them, no wonder a lot of Kant remains murky. • Sections 1-9: a practical demonstration for why it is that the analysis of the beautiful, particularly in art, provides the only practical venue where you can, with your own faculties, examine in operation REFLECTIVE JUDGMENT itself. Everywhere else, it is already contaminated by our perceptions, not critically examined, our desires, our presuppositions,our crotchets, all the idols of the mind that Francis Bacon sought to expose, such that we never arrive at the examination of how reflecting judgment actually works.

7. The form of purposiveness for the 3rd critique . . . • Is the clarification of an analytical reading practice that extends to sensation, understanding, imaginative spontaneity, natural science, and all constructions of intelligible discourse. • HOW are you reading? • What have you been taught to do, for what reasons? • Do you have anything more than a starved and schematic apprehension of what the authors (and experiences) to which you spontaneously return are actually doing?

8. The key points in a of Beautiful • The problem of “taste”, or the revenge of Charlie the Tuna. Every term, common in the belle-lettristic English (and French) tradition, has already be redefined in the two introductions. The first clarification is that a judgment of taste is an instance of reflective judgment, and it does NOT mean what Hume or British associationists or philosophers of sentiment mean by it. I would argue that Kant got that largely out of his system after 1767 or so, with an utterly silly set of reflections on the beautiful and the sublime. Alas, Guyer isn’t much help on this. It pertains to cases where practical purposiveness (either for writing a sermon or buying groceries or decorating the living room) is not applicable for it has no immediately discernible sensible end. So when Kant says in the first moment that the judgment of taste is aesthetic, don’t assume that “aesthetic” means what you have always thought it meant: pleasant, to me; attractive, decorative, etc. That’s exactly what he is ruling out. See p.

9. From first introduction p37-38 • If what is to be found is merely the ground for the explanation of that which happens, then this can be either an empirical principle, or an a priori principle, or even a composite of the two, as one can see in physical-mechanical explanations of events in the corporeal world , 20: 237 which find their principles in part in the general (rational) science of nature, and partly in those sciences which contain the empirical laws of motion. 26 Something similar takes place when one seeks for psychological grounds of explanation for what goes on in our mind, only with this difference that, as far as I am aware, the principles for this are all empirical, with only one exception, namely the law of the continuity of all changes (since time, which has only one dimension, is the formal condition of inner intuition), which is the a priori ground of these perceptions, but which is virtually useless for the sake of explanation, since the general theory of time, unlike the pure theory of space (geometry), does not yield sufficient material for an entire science. • So if the concern were to explain how that which we call taste first arose among human beings, why it was these objects rather than others that occupied them and brought about the judgment on beauty under these or those circumstances of place and society, by what causes it could have grown into a luxury, and so on, then the principles for such an explanation would have to be sought for the most part in psychology (by which is always meant in such a case empirical psychology). Thus the moralists 120a require the psychologists to explain the strange phenomenon of miserliness , which places an absolute value on the mere possession of the means for well-being (or some other aim) but with the resolve never to make use of them , or of the desire for honor, which believes that this is found in mere reputation without any further aim, so that they can direct their precepts , not to the moral laws themselves, but to the removal of hindrances that oppose their influence; though one must admit that the situation of psychological explanations is quite pitiable compared to that of physical explanations, that they are endlessly hypothetical and that for three different grounds of explanation it is very easy to think up a fourth, equally plausible one, and that hence there is a host of so-called psychologists of this sort, who know how to propose causes for every affection or movement of the mind aroused by plays, poetic representations, and objects of nature and even call their wit philosophy, who yet fail to give a glimpse of even the ability let alone knowledge of how to explain scientifically the most common natural event in the corporeal world. To make psychological observations (as Burke does in his book on the beautiful and the sublime), 27 and thus to gather material for rules of experience that will be systematically connected in the future, without yet seeking to comprehend them, 121b is certainly the only true obligation of empirical psychology, which only with difficulty could ever lay claim to the rank of a philosophical science.

10. 39-40 • If, however, a judgment gives itself out to be universally valid and therefore asserts a claim to necessity, then, whether this professed necessity rests on concepts of the object a priori or on subjective conditions for concepts, which ground them a priori, it would be absurd, if one concedes to such a judgment a claim of this sort, to justify it by explaining the origin of the judgment psychologically. For one would thereby be acting contrary to one’s own intention, and if the attempted explanation were completely successful it would prove that the judgment could make absolutely no claim to necessity, precisely because its empirical origin can be demonstrated. Now aesthetic judgments of reflection (which we shall subsequently analyze under the name of judgments of taste) are of the kind mentioned above. They lay claim to necessity and say, not that everyone does so judge – that would make their explanation a task for empirical psychology – but that everyone ought to so judge, which is as much as to say that they have an a priori principle for themselves. If the relation to such a principle were not contained in such judgments, even though they 122a lay claim to necessity, then one would have to assume that one can assert that a judgment ought to be universally valid because, as observation proves, it is universally valid, and, vice versa, that it follows from the fact that everyone does judge in a certain way that he too ought so to judge, which is an obvious absurdity. Now it is of course a difficulty in aesthetic judgments of reflection that they cannot in any way be grounded on concepts and therefore cannot be derived from any determinate principle, since they would otherwise be logical; the subjective representation of purposiveness, however, should not in any way be a concept of an end. But still the relation to an a priori principle can and must be present where the judgment lays claim to necessity, and it is only such a claim and its possibility that is at issue here, for it is precisely that which causes a critique of reason to search for the principle which does ground it even though itis indeterminate – and it can also succeed in finding such a principle and recognizing it as one that does ground the judgment subjectively and a priori, even though it can never provide a determinate concept of the object.

11. Next . . . • Disinterested • Not identified with other satisfactions—perfection, personal, moral, etc. All are intererest. • 6: the object of a universal satsifactions • 7If it hinges on an interest, it is ineligible • 8. it is subjective: (that is, the a priori principle does not pertain to any property of quality of the object. This has only to do with your judgment.)

12. 9. The key (note that it is usually abbreviated or left out entirely in anthologies.) • 9 p. 101. Does the pleasure precede the judgment of taste or does it follow it? • By this account, virtually everything you have been taught about the “aesthetic” is on the wrong side of the question. The answer is simple: it invariably follows. And the judgment of taste (recall, it presupposes universality) comes first, meaning you have to understand the purposiveness of the case before you are even close to the aesthetic.

13. Crucial passage, p. 102-103 • Now if the determining ground of the judgment on this universal communicability of the representation is to be conceived of merely subjectively, namely without a concept of the object, it can be nothing other than the state of mind that is encountered in the relation of the powers of representation to each other insofar as they relate a given representation to cognition in general. The powers of cognition that are set into play by this representation are hereby in a free play, since no determinate concept restricts them to a particular rule of cognition. 21 Thus the state of mind in this representation must be that of afeeling of the free play of the powers of representation in a given representation for a cognition in general. Now there belongs to a representation by which an object is given, in order for there to be cognition of it in general, imagination for the composition of the manifold of intuition and understanding for the unity of the concept that unifies the representations. 51e This state of a free play of the faculties of cognition with a representation through which an object is given must be able to be universally communicated, because cognition, as a determination of the object with which given representations (in whatever subject it may be) should agree, is the only kind of representation that is valid for everyone. 22 The subjective universal communicability of the kind of representation in a judgment of taste, since it is supposed to occur without presupposing a determinate concept, can be nothing other than the state of mind in the free play of the imagination and the understanding (so far as they agree with as each other as is requisite for a cognition in general): for we are conscious that this subjective relation suited to cognition in general must be valid for everyone and consequently universally communicable, just as any determinate cognition is, which still always rests on that relation as its subjective condition.

14. The aesthetic normal idea 117. • But there are two elements involved here: first, the aesthetic normal idea, which is an individual intuition (of the imagination) that represents the standard for judging 111a it as a thing belonging to a particular species of animal; second, the idea of reason, which makes the ends of humanity insofar as they cannot be sensibly represented into the principle for the judging 112b of its figure, through which, as their effect in appearance, the former are revealed. The normal idea must take its elements for the figure of an animal of a particular species from experience; but the greatest purposiveness in the construction of the figure, which would be suitable as a universal standard for the aesthetic judging 113c of every individual of this species, the image which has as it were intentionally grounded the technique of nature, to which only the species as a whole but not any separate individual is adequate, lies merely in the idea of the one who does the judging, 114d which, however, with its proportions, can be represented fully in concreto as an aesthetic idea in a model image. In order to make it somewhat comprehensible how this happens (for who can entirely unlock its secret from nature?), we shall attempt a psychological explanation. It should be noted that the imagination does not only know how to recall for us occasionally signs of concepts, even after a long time, in a way that is entirely incomprehensible to us; it also knows how to reproduce the image and shape of an object out of an immense number of objects of different kinds, or even of one and the same kind; indeed, when the mind is set on making comparisons, it even knows how, by all accounts actually if not consciously, 115e as it were to superimpose one image on another and by means of the congruence of several of the same kind to arrive at a mean that can serve them all as a common measure .

15. Common sense §20, p 121 • If judgments of taste (like cognitive judgments) had a determinate objective principle, then someone who made them in accordance with the latter would lay claim to the unconditioned necessity of his judgment. If they had no principle at all, like those of mere sensory taste, then one would never even have a thought of their necessity. They must thus have a subjective principle, which determines what pleases or displeases only through feeling and not through concepts, but yet with universal validity. Such a principle, however, could only be regarded as a common sense, which is essentially different from the common understanding that is sometimes also called common sense (sensus communis), 47 since the latter judges not by feeling but always by concepts, although commonly only in the form of 128a obscurely represented principles. Thus only under the presupposition that there is a common sense (by which , however, we do not mean any external sense but rather the effect of the free play of our cognitive powers), only under the presupposition of such a common sense, I say, can the judgment of taste be made.

16. Transition to sublime, and taste as sensus communis, § 40 • P172-175. I can’t get it all here, but here’s an essential paragraph. • The following maxims of the common human understanding do not belong here, to be sure, as parts of the critique of taste, but can nevertheless serve to elucidate its fundamental principles. They are the following: 1. To think for oneself; 2. To think in the position of everyone else; 3. Always to think in accord with oneself. 13 The first is the maxim of the unprejudiced way of thinking, the second of the broad-minded way, the third that of the consistent way. The first is the maxim of a reason that is never passive. The tendency toward the latter, hence toward heteronomy of reason, is called prejudice; and the greatest prejudice of all is that of representing reason as if it were not subject to the rules of nature on which the understanding grounds it by means of its own essential law: 202c i.e., superstition. Liberation from superstition is called enlightenment, 4* since, although this designation is also applied to liberation from prejudices in general, it is superstition above all ( in sensu eminenti) that deserves to be called a prejudice, since the blindness to which superstition leads, which indeed it even demands as an obligation, is what makes most evident the need to be led by others, hence the condition of a passive reason. 14 As far as the second maxim of the way of thinking is concerned, we are accustomed to calling someone limited (narrow-minded, in contrast to broad-minded) whose talents do not suffice for any great employment (especially if it is intensive). But the issue here is not the faculty of cognition, but the way of thinking needed to make a purposive use of it, which, however small the scope and degree of a person’s natural endowment may be, nevertheless reveals a man of a broad-minded way of thinking if he sets himself apart from the subjective private conditions of the judgment, within which so many others are as if bracketed, and reflects on his own judgment from a universal standpoint (which he can only determine by putting himself into the standpoint of others). The third maxim, namely that of the consistent way of thinking, is the most difficult to achieve, and can only by achieved through the combination of the first two and after frequent observance of them has made them automatic. One can say that the first of these maxims is that maxim of the understanding, the second that of the power of judgment, the third that of reason. – [cf here: Orientation in Thinking”]