Kant s view of the imagination is surrounded by one of the most salient and obscure discussions on his critical philosophy. Due to revisions and emendations and a seeming change in doctrine from the first to the third Critique, Kant s considered view of the imagination remains unclear. This collection of essays from Kant scholars illuminates the various treatments of imagination through its development in Kant s critical works. ".

In this paper I argue that, on Kant's view, the work of genius serves as a sensible exhibition of the Idea of the highest good. In other words, the work of genius serves as a special sign that the world is hospitable to our moral ends and that the realization of our moral vocation in such a world may indeed be possible. In the first part of the paper, I demonstrate that the purpose of the highest good is not to (...) strengthen our motivation to accept the moral law as binding for us but, rather, to strengthen our motivation to persist in our already existent moral dispositions. In the second part, I show that the works of genius exhibit the Idea of the highest good and, consequently, strengthen our hope in its realization. Drawing on the results of the second part, the third part of the paper demonstrates that beauty, of both art and nature, symbolizes morality in a more substantive sense than that suggested by Henry Allison's “formalistic” interpretation. Since, on my view, fine art in Kant serves as a sensible representation of an undetermined conceptual content, or the Idea of the highest good, the fourth part of the paper addresses the vexed question of whether Kant's account of fine art already anticipates the cognitive role later attributed to it by the German Idealists. (shrink)

The central thesis is that Kant's account of possible experience is actually an extension and development of an independent, prior theory of the possibility of perception. Since no school of Kant commentary acknowledges any such strict separation of problematics, its espousal poses the challenge of not simply refuting prevailing views but also defining a new alternative, i.e. a hitherto neglected body of doctrine not part of but premise to Kant's theory of experience. ;To meet this challenge, Kant's theory of the (...) transcendental ideality of space and time is considered. It is argued on the basis of texts drawn from the period of the Critiques that their transcendental ideality signified an imagination origin--not imagination as traditionally conceived, but a productive imagination in virtue of which space and time constitute acquired yet original representation. The second chapter considers Kant's theory of perception as the work of a synthesis of apprehension by imagination. I argue that this too has a formal, originally acquired representational content and so is able to serve as a bridge that links space and time a priori with appearances. I attempt also to place the Kantian theory of perception in context by relating it to the Humean, for the former turns out to be able to resolve a quandary which stymied Hume. Finally, I maintain that the Kant's theory of the mind's faculties, far from being in violation of his own claim that things in themselves are unknowable, is actually to be understood as an idea, or model, not intended to be regarded as something existing in itself. (shrink)