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The Notion of Form in Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment

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The Notion of Form in Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment This dissertation has been 65-13,286 microfilmed exactly as received UEHLING, Jr., Theodore Edward, 1935- THE NOTION OF FORM IN KANT'S CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1965 Philosophy University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Copyright by Theodore Edward Uehling, 1966 THE NOTION OP FORM IN KANT'S CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University Theodore Edward Uehling, Jr., B.A The Ohio State University 1965 Approved by A d v i s e r J Department of Philosophy PREFACE This dissertation is the result of investigations into Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment begun in the summer of i960. I am especially grateful to Professor John P. Anton of the State University of New York at Buffalo who first suggested to me the crucial importance of the notion of form in Kant’s aesthetics. Our discussions, not only about Kant but about aesthetics in general have, I hope, borne some fruit in this essay, although I am not confident that Professor Anton would find it possible to agree with everything that is in it. Portions of chapter four vrere read in February, 1963 » before a Philosophy Department Colloquium at the Ohio State University. I am grateful to the faculty members and as­ sistants of the Department of Philosophy for their criti­ cisms and helpful suggestions. I am also grateful to Dr. David Campbell of the Uni­ versity of Minnesota, Morris, who read and criticized my translations in chapter tvro and to Mr. Donald W. Spring, Chairman of the Humanities Division at the University of Minnesota, Morris, whose concern during the academic year 1963-6^ expedited the completion of this essay. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Acknowledgments are due to the following for permis­ sion to quote: Harvard University Press for passages from Robert Paul Wolff's Kant's Theory of Mental Activity. The Macmillan Company for passages from H.J. Paton's Kant's Metaphysic of Experience. The Macmillan Company Ltd., St. Martin's Press, Inc., for passages from Norman Kemp-Smith's translation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Oxford University Press, Inc., for passages from J.C. Meredith's translation of Kant's Critique of Judg- ment. iii VITA July 31, 1935 Born - Scranton, Pennsylvania 195^-1957 United States Air Force 1959 B.A., The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 1960-1963 Teaching Assistant, Department of Philo­ sophy, The Ohio State University, Colum­ bus, Ohio I963-I965 • • Instructor in Philosophy, University of Minnesota, Morris, Minnesota FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Philosophy Studies in the History of Philosophy. Professors Norman Kretzman and Marvin Fox Studies in Metaphysics. Professors Everett J. Nelson and Virgil Hinshaw Studies in Epistemology. Professors Virgil Hinshaw and Herbert Hochberg Studies in Logic. Professors Steven F. Barker and Everett J. Nelson Studies in Ethics. Professors Herbert Hochberg and Carl Ginet Studies in Aesthetics. Professors Morris Weitz and John P . Anton Studies in Kant. Professors John P. Anton, Marvin Fox, Norman Kretzman and Everett J. Nelson iv TABLE OP CONTENTS Page PREFACE .................................................. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ....................................... iii VITA .................................................. iv Chapter I. INTRODUCTION ............................... 1 II. THE NOTION OP FORM i PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION ............................... 8 III. FORM, IMAGINATION AND UNDERSTANDING ..... 33 IV. THE NOTION OF FORM AND THINGS-IN- T H E M S 3 L V E S ............................... 92 V. FORM AND KANT'S THEORY OF ART ...........124 VI. CONCLUSION .................. 144 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................... 150 v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The first half of Kant’s Critique of Judgment has long been looked upon as setting some of the most crucial problems and questions in philosophical aes­ thetics. Margolis, for example, writes: Aesthetics, as a discipline, begins approxi­ mately with Kant's Critique of Judgment. It was Kant . who gave a sense of philo­ sophical importance to aesthetics and set certain of its central questions.1 Ren£ Wellek points out that Kant "must be consid­ ered the first philosopher who clearly and definitely established the peculiarity and autonomy of the aesthetic realm."2 Wellek even goes so far as to say: "One may look upon the whole history of general aesthetics after Kant as a series of discussions, repudiations, and developments of Kant’s thoughts."3 Hegel, in a well-known passage, re­ marks that in Kant’s considerations about form in the 1Philosophy Looks at the Arts, ed. Joseph Margolis (New York: Scribner's, 1962), pp. 5-6• 2Ren£ Wellek, "Aesthetics and Criticism," The Philos­ ophy of Kant and Our Modern World, ed. Charles Hendel (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1957)» P» 67. 3ibld., p. 77. 1 Critique of Judgment we find "the first reasonable thing said about beauty."^ There is some rather general agree­ ment, then, that the Critique of Judgment holds a rather important place in the history of aesthetics. The agreement on this point does not extend to the interpretations which the Critique has fostered. On the contrary, there is a full panorama of views concerning the meaning of the central notions in Kant's aesthetic theory, as well as the import of the theory as a whole. This panorama of views arises, I think, from four main sources. Moreover, what I think are some errors in inter­ pretation arise from one or more of the same four sources. First, there is the difficulty of various readings in the three editions of the Critique of Judgment published during Kant's lifetime (1790, 1?93» 1799)* One variation in reading, appearing only in the 1799 edition, concerning Kant's views toward the physical theory of light and sound advanced by Euler, is crucial enough to receive consider­ able attention in the sequel. Second, and related to the first, is the general availability of two English translations of the Critique of Judgment (J.H. Bernard's and J.C. Meredith's). Variations in these two translations are sufficient in ^G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans. E.S. Haldane and F.H. Simson (New York* Humanities Press, 1963), III. 469. scope to render divergent meaning at some places. In this essay I have made use of both English translations as well as VorlSnder's German edition (Hamburgs Felix Meiner, 192*0 and Hartenstein*s edition (Leipzig: Modes und Baumann, 1839). Third, many writers have approached the Critique of Judgment with a set of presuppositions extensive enough to prohibit a fair interpretation or criticism of Kant's mean­ ing. Croce's comments in his Aesthetic are, I think, a case in point. Now I do not mean to say that Kant's aesthetics should always be approached, regardless of the purpose of the author, without any presuppositions. But I do assert that in so far as one is concerned with an an analytical exposition of meaning, presuppositions should be reduced to the minimum. I hope that in this essay my own presup­ positions have been so reduced. I have no philosophical axe to grind; my foremost concern is to find out what Kant meant. Fourth, the Critique of Judgment ought not be looked at in isolation from the other Critiques. The first half of the Critique of Judgment is not limited to Kant's aes­ thetics but involves the extension and, at times, the modi­ fication of issues raised in the earlier Critiques. For ex­ ample, Kant did not exhaust the notion of the imagination in the Critique of Pure Reason. He has a great deal to say about this notion in his analysis of the apprehension of the form of an object. Other examples are the notions of judgment and the thing-in-itself. The question of the re­ lationship of judgment to understanding and reason receives considerable attention in the Critique of Judgment. Some illumination is shed as well upon the very troublesome thing-in-itself. I suggest, then, that to succeed in any exegesis of the Critique of Judgment, it is necessary to consider it in its reciprocal relationship with the two earlier Critiques. I think that in order to understand and appreciate Kant's aesthetics it is necessary to realize a considerable scope of these relationships. We cannot iso­ late Kant's aesthetics from his theoretical or practical philosophy nor can we isolate the theoretical or practical from the aesthetic. In sum, then, this exegesis will pro­ ceed by considering the Critique of Judgment as part of the Critical Philosophy and not as an isolated statement in aesthetics (or in anything else). There are, of course, many relationships which exist among the Critiques. It is far beyond the scope of this essay to investigate all or even the most significant part of them. Rather, I intend to concentrate primarily upon one notion of great importance in Kant's aesthetics, the notion of "form." I hope to show the development of this notion within the Critical Philosophy and its meaning and role within the first half of the Critique of Judgment. With the investigation and elucidation of this notion seems to me to lie the solution to many of the perplexing difficulties and paradoxes of the Third Critique, Indirectly, the notion of "form** sheds considerable light upon one bother­ some notion in the earlier Critiques, the notion of the thing-in-itself. Moreover, the notion of "form" is central in Kant’s discussions of purposiveness without purpose and the place of the faculties of imagination and understand­ ing in the analysis of the judgment of taste. In what sense or senses pleasure in aesthetic contemplation is derived from the perception of the harmony of the imagination and the understanding in the apprehension of the form of an object is a key question in Kant's aesthetics and within the Critical Philosophy.
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