A Positive Account of the Concept of Free Play

Abstract

In the previous chapter I examined the main contemporary interpretations of the notion of free harmony and pointed out their inadequacies. My aim in the present chapter is to propose a different interpretation of the concept of free harmony; an interpretation that allows the possibility of free disharmony, without violating Kant’s thesis of the necessity of a harmonious relation between imagination and understanding for cognition. Furthermore, the account I propose is consistent with universal validity, not merely for judgments of beauty, but also for judgments of ugliness. The proposal is that free harmony should be understood as a harmony between free imagination and understanding in reflection upon cognition. I will argue that the distinction between the harmony necessary for determinate judgments, and harmony required for judgments of taste is derived from the distinction between the two different activities performed by the imagination (and which refers to Kant’s distinction between determining and reflective judgments). In determining judgments, the imagination is rule-governed (organizes sensible manifold in order to fit with the existing concept) and therefore not free. However, in judgments of taste it is free imagination that is in harmony with the understanding. Free imagination is constitutive for the kind of judgments that Kant describes as reflective judgments, among which the judgment of taste is a species, but which is also present in empirical concept acquisition.