Kant's Multiplicity

Because of the transcendental emphasis of his critical works, Immanuel Kant has been criticised for not being able to accommodate the notion of multiplicity. This paper outlines a complex argument designed as a means to the rescue of Kant from this repudiation. To this end, the paper proposes a new, strong reading of the doctrine of aesthetic ideas that unveils the idiosyncratic play of the mental powers, constituted of two separate acts, that equips one to intuit an unnameable mark that evades both empirical apprehension and logical comprehension. By analogy with the two types of cognition, stipulated in the Stufenleiter (and elsewhere), I shall suggest that the two distinct kinds of a feeling of pleasure, stirred up by the generation of an aesthetic idea, add an overlooked, aesthetic element that renders Kant a philosopher of multiplicit

The aesthetic in Kant’s culture of the mind

Submission note: A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Department of Politics and Philosophy, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce, La Trobe University, Victoria.The principal aim of this project is to carefully elucidate a niche and role of aesthetic artistic Bildung in Kant’s educational architectonic. The cultivation of taste, on the face of it, prepares a Kantian agent for morality. However, would our understanding of this order change, if first, Kant’s theory of artistic expression were interpreted in a more inclusive fashion and, second, if we were to seriously consider Kant’s proposition at KdU 5: 356 that genuine taste presupposes the development of moral ideas and moral feeling? The proposed project fills this lacuna and, in doing so, I gradually explore the aesthetic element in Kant’s culture of the mind