Kant and the Power of Imagination (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Kant and the Power of Imagination Daniel Guevara Jane Kneller. Kant and the Power of Imagination. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. viii + 172. Cloth, $91.00. Kant and the Power of the Imagination discusses some neglected literature from the early German Romantic period—one major text that Kneller discusses was not published (except partially in 1901) until the manuscript, lost for decades, resurfaced at an auction in New York in the 1960s. Kneller argues that this unduly neglected literature makes a productive and illuminating contribution to Kant’s program in the three Critiques. More particularly, she argues that it contributes to our understanding of the true philosophical potential of the role of the imagination in Kant’s theory, especially as he works the theory out in the third Critique. She makes her case in a slim volume, so she is necessarily selective. Her argument that Kant is closer to the early German Romantics (especially the extraordinary poet/philosopher Novalis) than is generally thought leans heavily, for example, on certain passages from the third Critique. On her interpretation, the first and second Critiques tend to give the imagination a second-class role (or worse) as a mental power. But there are crucial passages in the third Critique that seem to elevate the role of the imagination, by, for example, giving it the special power of exhibiting concretely certain ideals of pure reason. Thus one of the main results of Kneller’s reading, for Kant’s critical program, is that the imagination can provide a kind of intuitive content for the otherwise empty and problematic ideals of pure reason, such as that of the highest good in Kant’s practical philosophy. The content that the imagination can provide here is a feeling that the highest good is possible. The imagination contributes this felt content through judgments of beauty and sublimity: both types of judgment involve a feeling that indicates a kind of transcendence and purpose in otherwise purposeless and immanent nature, and thus a basis for our meaningfully striving to bring about the highest good in this world. This, the author argues, is an improvement on Kant’s official view that a kind of faith in God and immortality is needed in order for us to be motivated to strive for the highest good by the otherwise empty postulates of pure practical reason. It also bridges the chasm between feeling and reason commonly thought to exist in Kant’s philosophy of cognition, and serves likewise as a bridge to the Romantic emphasis on feeling in cognition. The literature selected for discussion from the early German Romantics is very interesting and suggestive, and made this reader want to see more. And Kneller’s book itself, in its interpretation of certain key passages from the third Critique, and of the selections from the Romantics, is interesting and suggestive, too. But the book tries to cover too much: among other things, it tries to cover (i) the view of the imagination in the three Critiques, (ii) the texts from the early Romantics struggling with and responding to the implications (as they saw them) of Kant’s Critiques, (iii) the relationship of these early responses to Fichte, and (iv) a wide range of other issues, including poetry’s relationship to philosophy. Kneller’s writing is clear and elegant and makes one wish, therefore, that she had concentrated her abilities on just one of the many topics she addresses. This would have allowed opportunity for greater attention to more or less purely philosophical issues, and for a more sympathetic treatment of the work of, e.g., Onora O’Neill and Christine Korsgaard. She opposes their view that theoretical reason is somehow subordinate to practical reason: [End Page 629] dependent upon the moral law as a law of autonomy. Kneller must oppose this view because she takes the third Critique to imply that there is no account of the unity of theoretical and practical reason. There is only, instead, a mediated connection in the exercise of the power of judgment, through its free play of the imagination and associated feelings. O’Neill and Korsgaard have produced “powerful and influential” theories, as Kneller herself...