Form and Colour in Kant's and Fichte's Theory of Beauty

Form and Colour in Kant’s and Fichte’s Theory of Beauty*

Giorgia Cecchinato

»Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange beginn? Distinctly we see the difference of the colours, but where exactly does the one first belendingly enter into the other?« H. Melville, Billy Bud, Sailor

In his works,* Fichte does not devote much attention to the traditional themes in aesthetics.1 One of the few places where one can find a wide

* Kant’s writings are cited from Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, ed. Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences and its successors (Berlin, later Berlin and New York: Reimer, later de Gruyter, 1900-), abbreviated as »AA«, followed by Roman and Arabic numerals indicating volume and page of the academy edition and of the english translation respectively. I refer to the English translation by W.S. Pluhar: I. Kant, Critique of Judgment, Indianapolis, 1987. Fichte’s works are cited from the historical- critical edition of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, abbreviated as »GA«, followed by Roman numerals indicating the series and Arabic numerals indicating volume and page numbers respectively. The English translation is mine. I would like to thank Lara Ostaric and Isabella Ferron for their assistance. 1 A pioneer in the study of Fichte’s Aesthetics was L. Pareyson, with his work L’e s t e t - ica dell’idealismo tedesco, Torino, 1950. The part regarding Fichte is now edited by the Istituto italiano per gli studi filosofici in L. Pareyson, L’ Estetica di Fichte, cura di C. Amadio, Milano, 1997. The interest in this question has been recently revived. See M. Ramos, F. Oncina, Introducción a J. G. Fichte, Filosofía y estética, Universidad de Valencia, Valencia 1998; I. Radrizzani, Von der Ästhetik der Urteilskraft zur Asthetik der Einbildungskraft, oder von der kopernicanischen Revolution in der Ästhetik bei Fichte, »Der transzendental-philosophische Zugang zur Wirklichkeit«, Hrsg. von E. Fuchs, M. Ivaldo, G. Moretto, 2001, pp.341–359; C. Piché, The Place of Aesthetics in Fichte’s Early System, in D. Breazeale und T. Rockmore (Ed. by), New Essays on Fich- 64 Giorgia Cecchinato ranging discussion of Beauty and Sublime is his Practical Philosophy. This manuscript, together with the Own Meditations on Elementary Philosophy, represents the most important writing of the period preceding Fichte’s academic activities in Jena. The Practical Philosophy is the continuation of the Own Meditations. This two writings build a unitary work about the system of the transcendental philosophy, which consists on two parts, the theoretical and the practical one. These two parts represent Fichte’s written meditation, in which he develops his own system in a constant con- frontation with his contemporaries Kant, Reinhold and Schultze.2 With respect to the concept of Beauty, Fichte not only takes up the core problems which Kant considers in the Critique of Judgement, but he also follows the structure and terminology of Kant’s third Critique. Despite this apparent accordance with Kant’s Critique of Judgment, the systematic context of Fichte’s reflections on beauty is very different from Kant’s. Hence, their reflections differ in meaning and significance. The goal of this paper is to compare Kant’s concept of form and colour in the Critique of Judgment to the one of Fichte in his Practical Philosophy. The analysis of these two elements in their systematic function will show how Fichte, following in Kant’s footsteps, starts on a new, original path.3

te’s later Jena »Wissenschaftslehre«, Evanston, Illinois, 2002, pp.299 310. At the last International Fichtes Congress, »J.G. Fichte: Das Spaetwerk (1810–1814) und das Le- benswerk«, organised by the »Internationalen Johann-Gottlieb-Fichte-Gesellschaft e.V«, held in München in 2003, there were three contributions testifying this in- creasing interest: P. Lohmann, Der Stellenwert des Kuenstlers in der Philosophie J.G. Fichtes; P. Österreich, Fichte und die Kunst, and my contribution, G. Cecchinato, Fi- chtes Aesthetik, forthcoming in the procedings of the congress. See also H. Traub, Urphantasie, wahre Kreation und absolute Beschreibung. Transzendentale Struktur- elemente für die Grundlegung einer Philosophie der Kunst in zweiten Vortrag der »Wissenschaftslehre« von 1804, forthcoming in the proceedings of the international conference »Fichte et la Doctrine de la Sceince 1804« held in 2004 in Poitiers. 2 For a detailed discussion of the chronology of the philosophical context and significance of this manuscript, see the Vorwort of R. Lauth in GA, II, 3, pp.3–19. 3 The reader should not forget that a comparison takes here place between a finished and published and a highly complex and structured work, namely the Critique of Judgement, the Practical Philosophy, which is an unpublished effort to develop a system and, hence, is a written reflection that reveals some uncertainties. A comparison between two so different kinds of writing is legitimated by the fact that Fichte explicitly relates his own work to Kant’s.