Freedom of Imagination and the “Autonomy of Taste”

Abstract

AbstractThe final chapter examines whether Kant’s views on freedom of imagination in his aesthetics (in the Critique of the Power of Judgment) fit into his systematic doctrine of freedom. Kant’s account of the free imagination seems to disrupt his canonical account of freedom as a law-governed rational faculty, since he insists that imaginative freedom is a freedom from rational laws or concepts. The chapter shows that we can nevertheless regard freedom of imagination as a distinctive species of Kant’s generic notion of transcendental freedom. Like freedom of will and freedom of thought, imaginative freedom requires independence from determination by foreign natural causes. And, while our aesthetic activity must not be determined by intellectual laws and concepts, it is still loosely, indeterminately governed by such laws and concepts; hence it does not collapse into an arbitrary liberty of indifference. This interpretation is congenial to various core tenets of Kant’s aesthetics, especially to his view that aesthetic ideas play a central role in our creation and reception of beauty. The account of imaginative freedom developed here further explains how Kant’s aesthetics connects with his transcendental idealism, specifically with his claim that aesthetic ideas are grounded in our super-sensible faculties. The chapter concludes by suggesting that, with some leeway, we can regard our freedom of aesthetic imagination as exhibiting a special form of autonomy, the “autonomy of taste.”