Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rodolphe Gasché is Eugenio Donato Professor of Comparative Literature at SUNY, Buffalo. His most recent book is Of Minimal Things: Studies on the Notion of Relation (Stanford, 1999).

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Aus dem Klappentext

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

THE IDEA OF FORM

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Acknowledgments.......................................ixIntroduction..........................................11. One Principle More.................................132. Transcendentality, in Play.........................423. On Mere Form.......................................604. Presenting the Maximum.............................895. Absolutely Great...................................1196. Interest and Disinterestedness.....................1557. The Arts, in the Nude..............................1798. Hypotyposis........................................202Notes.................................................221Bibliography..........................................247Index.................................................253

Chapter One

Among the abilities of the mind that form the Kantian faculties (Vermgen), the power of judgment (Urteilskraft) is a faculty of a very peculiar kind. In the First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, Kant writes that the power of judgment "is of such a special kind that it produces for itself no knowledge whatsoever, neither theoretical nor practical ... but merely constitutes the union [Verband] of the two other higher cognitive powers, the understanding and the reason." Its "function is simply to join [nur zum Verknpfen dient] the two" higher powers, and thus judgment is "in no wise [an] independent cognitive capacity" but one whose role is merely to "mediate between the two other faculties." From the very start, then, it would seem that, however important its function may be, the power of judgment is marked by a certain self-effacement, a subservience and a lack of independence. Now, insofar as the faculty is one of determining judgment-which holds "the capacity for subsumption of the particular under the universal"-no delineation could be more obvious: "it is merely a power of subsuming under concepts given from elsewhere." But what about judgment in its reflective mode? Indeed, it is this latter kind of judgment that the critical investigation of the power of judgment takes up in the Third Critique. Characteristically, Kant qualifies reflective judgment in telling terms as "merely" reflective judgment. Unlike determining judgment, this judgment has seemingly no cognitive contribution to make, and Kant's qualification would appear to deprive it of any autonomy whatsoever.

A glance at how Kant distinguishes the two kinds of judgment would seem only to confirm reflective judgment's secondary status. In the First Introduction to the Third Critique, we read: "The judgment can be regarded either as a mere capacity for reflecting on a given representation according to a certain principle, to produce a possible concept, or as a capacity for making determinate a basic concept by means of a given empirical representation. In the first case it is the reflective, in the second the determining judgment." The better-known definition of determining and reflective judgment, found in the Second (and final) Introduction, is more formulaic and considerably simplified; it is the version to which Kant resorts in the main body of the Third Critique and echoes in the Logic (1800). It runs as follows:

Judgment in general is the faculty of thinking the particular as contained under the universal. If the universal (the rule, the principle, the law) be given, the judgment which subsumes the particular under it (even if, as transcendental judgment, it furnishes, a priori, the conditions in conformity with which subsumption under that universal is alone possible) is determinant. But if only the particular be given for which the universal has to be found, the judgment is merely reflective.

Compared to determining (or determinant) judgment, which receives its law from the concepts that are given to it elsewhere and which accordingly subsumes the particular, the power of judgment called merely reflective has nothing definite to offer to the cognitive faculties, and thus appears to be an even less autonomous judgment. It is nothing more than a reflecting power, and seems to be doubly deprived of autonomy, in that it is not an independent cognitive capacity and even lacks the power of determining judgments to yield knowledge under the guidance of the understanding. Such "merely reflective" judgments, which include aesthetic and teleological judgments, would thus border on the insignificant. In consequence of such a reading, teleological judgment has more often than not received short shrift or been regarded as complete nonsense, and aesthetic judgment has been viewed by many of Kant's commentators as a contemplative, self-sufficient, or aestheticist approach to a domain characterized as disinterested, disengaged, nonserious, inconsequential, and merely playful-that is, the domain of art.

Unlike theoretical and practical reason, the power of judgment is not an independent cognitive power. As we have seen, its sole function consists rather in linking these independent powers. The special task incumbent upon reflective judgment is thoroughly distinct from determining judgment, in that it is not involved in cognition or in practical matters. But is it possible that, paradoxically, this task might require reflective judgment to manifest an autonomy not foreseeable on the basis of reflection's determining and cognitive achievements? In other words, could it be that the power of judgment is capable of joining the two other powers only on condition that it can muster a freedom of its own? Before looking into precisely what reflective judgment amounts to and achieves, or inquiring into the "merely" reflective quality of reflective judgment, let me first establish, as succinctly as possible, what Kant understands by determining judgments. Such a clarification is warranted because these judgments must be either cognitive or moral: in other words, they must be judgments that either contribute to our knowledge of the world and its objects or determine action according to the moral law. In either case, determining judgments are distinguished by an unmistakable priority and significance. In what follows, I will focus on determining judgment in the cognitive sense. Although these judgments perform the valuable function of making the world known to us, we must still investigate what they tell us about it. This amounts to asking what theoretical cognition in fact amounts to for Kant. According to the lapidary definition in the Third Critique, in determining judgments, empirical representations (or particulars) are subsumed under the general concepts of nature, that is, the categories of the understanding. Consequently, such understanding is "only" categorial, that is, concerns exclusively the constituting conformity of the laws of objectivity in general with the objects of experience. Indeed, the categories are only the necessary conditions of experience and, as a result, are constitutive only of objects of experience in general. In other words, determining cognition amounts to "nothing more" than the cognition of nature in general. It follows that in determining judgments, and in the cognition they bring about, much remains undetermined. This is evident throughout the Third Critique even though, in the section of the Critique of Pure Reason entitled "Analytics of...