Heautonomy: Kant on Reflective Judgment and Systematicity

Abstract

In his richly suggestive essay "Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy", Cavell writes that Kant's treatment of aesthetic judgment is "as elsewhere, deeper and obscurer" than Hume's:Universal agreement, or as [Kant] also calls it, the "harmony of sentiment" or "a common sense of mankind," makes its appearance in the Critique of Judgment not as an empirical problem ... but as an a priori requirement setting the (transcendental) conditions under which such judgments as we call aesthetic could be made überhaupt. Kant begins by saying that aesthetic judgment is not "theoretical," not "logical," not "objective," but one "whose determining ground can be no other than subjective" (KU § § 7-8) (Cavell: 1976, 88).Cavell goes on to propose that Kant's account of aesthetic judgment may be usefully seen to model or parallel the sort of claims made by philosophers such as Austin and Wittgenstein about "what we (would) say". In particular, Cavell is concerned to try to make sense of the idea that such claims "are at least as close to what Kant calls aesthetical judgments as they are to ordinary empirical hypotheses"; in both these sorts of judgments the first person plural "we" functions "still [as the] first person," despite making a kind of "a priori" claim (Cavell: 1976, 94, 96). Cavell writes, Kant seems to be saying that apart from a certain spirit in which we make judgments we could have no concepts of the sort we think of as aesthetic.[Note: Another way of describing this assumption or demand, this thing of speaking with a universal voice, of judging "not merely for himself, but for all men," Kant also describes as "[speaking] of beauty as if it were a property of things." Only "as if" because it cannot be an ordinary property of things: its presence or absence cannot be established in the way ordinary properties are; that is, they cannot be established publicly, and we don't know (there aren't any) causal conditions, or usable rules, for producing, or altering, or erasing, or increasing this "property".] (Cavell: 1976, 89) Cavell's analogy between Kant's account of aesthetic judgment and the claims of Austin and Wittgenstein not only gives a novel conception of recent philosophical methods; it also suggests a novel way of construing Kant's overall intent in the Third Critique. In this paper I offer an interpretation of that work inspired by, and intended to expand upon, Cavell's suggestion that the notion of a subjective yet non-psychological a priori is central to Kant's Brought to you by | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Authenticated Download Date | 7/4/15 7:18 AM

Practical judgment as reflective judgment: On moral salience and Kantian particularist universalism

“…In considering the role reflective judgment plays in practical reasoning, it is helpful to take on board a suggestion made in the literature on Kantian theoretical cognition, where the interdependence of reflective and determining judgment has been acknowledged for some time (Bell, 1987; Guyer, 1990; Floyd, 1998; Allison, 2001, p. 20; Ginsborg, 2015). As Longuenesse notes, Kant is careful to characterize the aesthetic and teleological judgments that comprise the focus of the third Critique as “ merely [ bloß, nur ] reflective judgments.” 18 This usage suggests that both determining and reflective judgments have a reflective aspect, but only reflective judgments are just reflective: “The peculiar feature of aesthetic and teleological judgments is not that they are reflective judgments ( for every judgment on empirical objects as such is reflective ); it is rather that they are merely reflective judgments, judgments in which reflection can never arrive at conceptual determination ” (Longuenesse, 2001, p. 163).…”

A New Image of Humanity? A Transcendental in the Making

“…But it is precisely in aesthetic judgments that the universal to which the individual «thing», event or action is traced is what Kant calls a common sense or common feeling, a Gemeinsinn. And such a feeling escapes the problem of infinite regress in that it is «self-applicable» (Floyd [1998]: 195] or «self-congruent» (Ferrara [2008]). Yet, if such Gemeinsinn can only be felt (it is a Sinn, a sense as in "making sense", and it is a feeling, a Gefühl), it is at the same time a product of our cognitive faculties united in a «free schematism», where it is not a determined concept that is schematically exhibited but the same indeterminate legality or normativity of the whole intellect.…”

“…NATURAL OR ARTIFICIAL? But if, on the basis of the «heautonomy» (Kant [1790]: V, 5:186; Floyd [1998]) of this aesthetic principle, the Kantian perspective allows us to understand why it is possible and necessary to renegotiate, plastically but not in a mere arbitrary way, the sensitive, cognitive and ethical grammar of different cultures, is this principle to be considered in turn natural or artificial? Or is it A New Image of Humanity?…”

Kant on Empirical Knowledge and Induction in the Two Introductions to the Critique of the Power of Judgment

“…As we will see, Kant's vindication of inductive inference is stronger than Guyer suspects, although, as Floyd and Allison readily admit, it does not amount to a straightforward refutation of Hume's worries concerning the uniformity of nature.² It will turn out that Kant's considerations concerning empirical concepts, empirical laws and inductive inference in the introductions to the third Critique are particularly interesting from the standpoint of contemporary theory of knowl-edge³: While these considerations are clearly motivated by certain needs of Kant's critical system, Kant's positive arguments in these parts of the third Cri- It seems to me that Kant's account is a straightforward solution to another problem of induction, namely to Nelson Goodman's so-called "new riddle of induction", and that Kant's solution to this problem is very similar to Goodman's own. Floyd (1998 and2003) points out certain similarities between Kant's and Goodman's positions concerning induction but does not directly touch the issue of the new riddle of induction. See also Ginsborg (1990, 191-192), who connects Kant's account to Goodman's discussion of the "grue"-predicate.…”