1. Introduction
In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant seems to suggest that the ‘artistic rule’ is the principle that determines how an artist ought to proceed in her creative productionFootnote 1 so that her product can elicit a proper aesthetic response in the observer.Footnote 2 For Kant, a proper aesthetic response consists of a feeling of pleasure occasioned with the free harmony of the faculties. The necessary condition of this harmony is that a genius's work exhibits the form of purposiveness. But if the meaning of an artistic rule is identified with the artwork's purposive form, then the rule of an artistic genius could not be differentiated from the rule of an artist with mere taste. Thus, the way in which an artist ought to proceed in order to elicit a proper aesthetic response in the observer is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the normative status of a genius's rule. Kant contends that in addition to its purposive form a genius's work must combine two qualities. First, it cannot be produced according to some determinate rule and, hence, ‘originality must be its primary characteristic’ (Kant 2000: 186; KU 5: 307–8). Second, ‘since there can also be original nonsense, its products must at the same time be models (Muster), i.e., exemplary (exemplarisch), hence, while not themselves the result of imitation (Nachahmung), they must yet serve others in that way, i.e., as a standard or a rule for judging’ (Kant 2000: 186–7; KU 5: 308). Although works of genius are not composed according to a determinate rule that can be taught, they serve as models in the formation of the taste of other artists, and give rise to a school of style or genre. Moreover, works of genius serve as an example to another genius of how he ought to proceed so that he is ‘thereby awakened to the feeling of his own originality, to exercise freedom from coercion in his art in such a way that the latter thereby itself acquires a new rule, by which the talent shows itself as exemplary’ (Kant 2000: 195–6; KU 5: 318). Put differently, works of genius are normative for his successor, in that they exhibit the principle of how his successor ought to proceed in order that his own work becomes an original achievement in relation to his own predecessor.
In this essay I will argue that the special normative status of a genius's rule, its exemplary originality, is explained by the fact that genius creates while a person of taste merely imitates. Creation, on Kant's view, unlike imitation, consists of a special unity of free human activity and nature, whereby ‘nature’ primarily signifies the IdeaFootnote 3 of nature's supersensible substrate. Therefore, ‘nature’ is not just another aspect of, but rather something that transcends, creative subjectivity.
Because for Kant creation is a unity of free human activity and nature, a genius's production, as I shall show in sections 2–4, is free insofar as it is mediated by judgement, but that it entails much stronger ontological commitments than is commonly acknowledged in Kant literature. That is to say that it presupposes something that goes beyond a genius's creative subjectivity through the notion of an order that is purposive for human faculties in general, and goes beyond the minimum required for knowledge and action to occur at all. Drawing on the results of sections 2–4, section 5 demonstrates that works of genius exhibit an originality of form that is not reducible to mere novelty. This is because, unlike the form of other human products, the form of the works of genius does not lend itself to systematization, and, hence, cannot be fully exhausted by the judgement of either its creator or its receiver. Finally, section 6 examines the significance of my account of a genius's creation for our understanding of genius's exemplarity, and more specifically, the relation of the precedent both to its predecessors and its successors. I contend with respect to its predecessors that the precedent presupposes a critical dialogue with its own tradition and, with respect to its successors, that the emergence of new precedents does not call into question the relevance and accomplishments of those from the past.
In the third Critique, Kant's discussion of the meaning of an artistic rule remains underdeveloped. However, in the background of his brief references to the artistic rule in the third Critique lie Kant's rich, unpublished, pre-Critical reflections and the notes of his lectures on anthropology, which are too often neglected in Kant's aesthetics. I shall attempt to trace Kant's detailed reflections on the rule of an artistic genius in the mid- and late 1770s in order to demonstrate that Kant gave considerable thought to this problem, and that his early reflections contribute significantly to our understanding of Kant's abstruse and brief references to this topic in the third Critique itself.Footnote 4
2. Spirit — a Genius's Productive Faculty
In the third Critique, Kant defines genius as the ‘inborn predisposition of the mind (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art’ (Kant 2000: 186; KU 5: 307). If Kant's definition of genius is approached etymologically, then doubts may be raised whether, on Kant's view, a genius's rule is at all normative. In its original meaning the Latin word ingenium denoted an overall set of one's capacities of character such as one's specific inclinations, talents, and dispositions. This meaning of the concept ‘genius’ was predominant in the aesthetics of French Classicism, where it denoted broadly a creation that is natural and original, in contrast to the one that is in accordance with cultivated taste. The English school took over the concept but they also gave it a more pronounced psychological and empirical meaning. The concept ‘genius’ for them denoted an individual endowed with superior mental faculties, a peculiar and independent cast of mind.Footnote 5 In An Essay on Genius (Gerard 1774), the Scottish philosopher Alexander Gerard advanced one of the most influential theories of genius at the time, which was broadly speaking based on the theory of association of ideas. That is to say that, for Gerard, genius consisted in the capacity to capture the connection among different, fleeting, associative trains of ideas in imagination.
While it may be plausible that Kant was influenced by some aspects of Gerard's theory,Footnote 6 he explicitly rejected its fundamentals: ‘Genius is not, as Gerard argues, a special power of the soul (if it were so, this power would have a special object). Instead, genius is a principle of enlivening of all other powers by means of Ideas of objects that one desires.’Footnote 7 Kant distances himself from the naturalist conception of genius also in the following note: ‘I do not search for physical causes of genius, e.g. imagination—memory. These causes are not in our powers. Instead, I search for the leading powers that give direction to that which is natural, that is, the formal principle.’Footnote 8 These notes offer us substantial evidence for concluding that one should not attribute a great significance to Kant's use of the word ingenium in his initial definition of genius. From what he says above, the rule exhibited in the works of genius is not the way one proceeds given her specific psychology. Rather, the rule is grounded on a ‘formal principle’ and represents the way one ought to proceed.
If one wishes to capture more adequately Kant's conception of genius, it would be helpful to examine the word he uses parallel to the neuter das Genie, derived from the Latin word ingenium, that is, the word der Genius, derived from the Latin word genius, which denotes an unknown spirit (daimōn).Footnote 9
Kant suggests that ‘spirit’ is a genius’s ‘productive faculty’ (Kant 2000: 191; KU 5: 313), an originating source of a genius’s inspiration. Spirit, writes Kant, is an ‘animating principle in the mind’ and, furthermore, ‘that … by which this principle animates the soul, the material which it uses for this purpose, is that which purposively sets the mental powers into motion, i.e., into a play that is self-maintaining and even strengthens the powers to that end’ (Kant 2000: 192; KU 5: 313). According to Kant, a genius's cognitive faculties, imagination, and understanding, must relate to each other in a free harmony, so that her work would be capable of eliciting the same free harmony of the faculties in the observer and, thus, be judged as beautiful universally.Footnote 10 Spirit then is instrumental for occasioning the artist's free harmony of the faculties. But if the explanation of a genius's productive faculty were reduced to the necessary condition for evoking a proper aesthetic response in the observer, then it would not be possible to differentiate a genius's ‘productive faculty’ from an artist who proceeds by mere taste. The work of the latter just as the work of the former can elicit a free harmony of the faculties in the observer and stand the test of aesthetic judgement.
On Kant's view, however, the artist who proceeds by taste alone proceeds by imitation. She learns how to give her work a purposive form through a slow and painstaking process of holding her work up and judging it against the already existing rules manifested in the works of superior masters, or geniuses. That is to say, the artist who imitates retrospectively attempts to capture some essential aspect of the rule manifested in the works of a genius. In imitation, thus, ‘the rule (Regel) must be abstracted from the deed, i.e., from the product, against which others may test their own talent’ (Kant 2000: 188; KU 5: 309). A genius, on the other hand, does not learn through imitation how to give her work a purposive form. Rather, a genius creates, which, for Kant, is to say that ‘nature gives the rule (Regel)’ to the work of a genius (KU 5: 307). In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant also refers to the moral law as ‘given, as it were, as a fact of reason’ (Kant 1996: 177; KpV 5: 47). That is to say that the moral law ‘may be called a fact of reason because one cannot reason it out from antecedent data of reason’ (Kant 1996: 164; KpV 5: 31).Footnote 11 Similarly, a genius's rule is ‘given’ to her insofar as it cannot be derived from any antecedently existing rules. However, while all human beings insofar as they are rational are capable of a ‘moral insight’, a genius's ‘insight’ is given to some select individuals by ‘nature’.Footnote 12 This is to say that a genius's imagination, her sensible nature, somehow places itself spontaneously in the state of free harmony with the understanding. Because a genius's nature, her sensibility, is spontaneously commensurate with a genius's cognitive capacities, the ‘animating principle’ of a genius's cognitive faculties, i.e. a genius's spirit, can rightly be identified with the principle of nature's purposiveness.Footnote 13
Because works of genius are produced in accordance with the principle of nature's purposiveness, they, unlike other products of art, do not embody the conscious intent of an artist and, hence, do not exhibit purposiveness with respect to the concept of an object. Instead, works of genius, like beauties of nature, exhibit purposiveness without a purpose, or free purposiveness. Thus, the work of an artist who produces by mere taste looks inevitably more studied, but its purposive form is not identical to the one of an artefact, that is, purposiveness with the purpose, or purposiveness with respect to the concept of an object. Rather, the work of taste meets some minimal requirements for standing the test of aesthetic judgement because, on Kant's view, such a work exhibits ‘the form of the presentation of a concept (die Form der Darstellung eines Begriffs) by which the latter is universally communicated’ (Kant 2000: 191; KU 5: 312). In other words, the work of, for example, a minor Renaissance artist, painting in the style of Giotto (‘maniera giottesca’), would meet some minimal requirements for standing the test of aesthetic judgement because it captures the principle of nature's purposiveness, ‘the concept’, exhibited in Giotto's work at least with respect to its form. That is to say that the artist captures the style or genre of Giotto's work, or Giotto's rule in its appearance. According to Kant, the work of this artist would not animate the viewer's cognitive powers to the same extent as Giotto's work, the work of a genius, because the latter exhibits the principle of nature's purposiveness, not only with respect to its form but also with respect to the concept's ‘material’, or its content (Kant 2000: 192; KU 5: 313).Footnote 14
But what does Kant mean by the ‘content’ of a genius's principle of creation, the principle of nature's purposiveness? To think of a genius's sensible nature, or nature in its appearance, as spontaneously commensurate with a genius's cognitive capacities entails a thought of an underlying source of this order, an understanding unlike ours. In other words, on Kant's view, a genius's imagination is receptive to something more than her individual finite being and is also instrumental for conforming this transcendent content to the laws of human understanding.Footnote 15 Thus, the ‘content’ of a genius's principle of creation, the principle of nature's purposiveness, is nature in its transcendent sense, or nature's supersensible substrate.Footnote 16
Kant has already made explicit the connection between a genius's spirit and nature's supersensible substrate in the Pillau lectures on anthropology, written in Winter Semester 1777–8:Footnote 17
Spirit is also the enlivening of the faculties by the Idea … The Idea does not have a meaning of a concept. One can have concepts independent of an Idea. The development of a whole science belongs to an Idea. The Idea is the business of the understanding but not through abstraction because these are then concepts. [Idea] is the principle of the rules. There is a double unity: a distributive and a collective unity. The Idea concerns always the unity of the manifold as a whole. The Idea contains the principle of the manifold as a whole. (VAP 25: 782)
While concepts of the understanding unify the manifold given in experience by serving as a condition of the possibility of the objects of experience, thereby achieving a ‘distributive’ unity, the ‘Idea’ in the above passage is the condition of the possibility for thinking nature as a ‘whole’, thereby accomplishing a ‘collective’ unity (VAP 25: 782). This ‘collective’ unity, however, is not reason's Idea of the world, or the cosmological Idea. The latter is the Idea of the totality of appearances, or the totality of discursively engendered representations. The ‘collective unity’ in the above passage I take to be a precursor to what later, in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, is to become nature in its systematic unity, or the representation of nature that contingently conforms to the conditions of our comprehension. Thus, the ‘Idea’ in the above passage is the precursor of the principle of nature's purposiveness which entails the thought of an unlimited understanding analogous to ours which is the underlying source of this order.Footnote 18
I turn now to show that because a genius’s action is the result of her receptiveness to nature's supersensible substrate, her production is in some aspects analogous to the production of an intuitive, non-human understanding Kant discusses in §77 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment. However, I will also argue that, because a genius's action is ultimately purposive, i.e. rule-governed, it must also be mediated by judgement and as such it remains within the boundaries of a limited, human understanding.
3. A Genius's Creation: Between an Unlimited, Divine and a Limited, Human Understanding
In §77 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant gives an account of a cognitive faculty, an intuitive understanding, that is, unlike our own human understanding, non-discursive. Our human discursive understanding is defined by its dependence on given sensible data, the manifoldness of the given empirical intuition, which it subsequently subsumes under an abstract ‘analytic universal’, i.e. a concept. An intuitive understanding, intellectus archetypus, generates its own content from a ‘synthetic universal’ and, therefore, avoids the contingency of fit between a particular and a universal which is typical of a discursive intellect. Kant's contrast here between the intuitive divine intellect and the discursive human intellect has a ‘limiting function’: to underscore the specificities of our human understanding and to limit reason in its transcendent pretensions.
In §77, Kant's reference to the intuitive intellect has also a ‘regulative function’:Footnote 19 the Idea of the intuitive intellect is necessary for the representation by a discursive intellect of a unique whole-to-parts relationship that is typical for organisms. On Kant's view, we do not represent an organism only as a purpose or end, but as a ‘natural end’ (Kant 2000: 242; KU 5: 370). If we were to represent organisms only as purposes, then we would not be able to distinguish a whole-to-parts relationship that pertains to a mechanism from a unique whole-to-parts relationship that pertains to an organism. In a mechanism, a watch for example, the relation of the parts, its wheels and springs, must be thought a product of a concept of the whole, to wit, as a purpose of an intelligent cause. Thus, the whole, that is, the property of this watch, the regularity of its functioning, is considered an effect of its constitutive parts, that is, is explicable in terms of the properties and function of its constitutive parts. However, the whole is also the cause of its constitutive parts insofar as the parts of this watch ‘are there’ because the regularity of its functioning requires that a certain part, a wheel with some specific properties, be placed in a such a manner that it produces a motion in a certain spring so that all the parts together with their individual functions and properties can contribute to the regular functioning of the entire watch.Footnote 20 The whole of an organism, its regularity, cannot be explained in terms of the motion of its independently existing material parts. The parts of an organism depend for their existence on one another, so that an organism both produces and is produced by its own parts and is, therefore, ‘cause and effect of itself’ (Kant 2000: 243; KU 5: 371). Thus, for example, the leaves are products (effects) of a tree, its growth, and they also produce (are the cause) of the tree insofar as they are instrumental for the nourishment and the preservation of the entire organism (Kant 2000: 244; KU 5: 372). In the example of organisms, the Idea of the well ordered whole ‘determine[s] the form and combination of all the parts: not as a cause—for then it would be a product of art—but as a ground’ (Kant 2000: 245; KU 5: 373). Put differently, in the example of organisms, the Idea of a well ordered whole is not temporally prior, as some external intentional cause, to the combination of its parts but is rather metaphysically prior, as a ground, to the combination of its parts.
According to Kant, the principle of this ‘original organization’ displayed by organisms remains ‘inscrutable’ to our limited human understanding (Kant 2000: 292; KU 5: 424). Thus, ‘the concept of a thing as a natural end is excessive for the determining power of judgement’ (Kant 2000: 267; KU 5: 396). That is to say that because our human understanding is limited to mechanical explanations (either explaining the whole in terms of the fundamental powers of matter, or as a mechanism determined by some external purpose), organisms remain for us underdetermined and, therefore, from the perspective of our discursive understanding, merely contingent. A problem arises here because organisms, as the products of nature, must be thought as lawful and the relation of their parts as necessary in that sense. Thus, we represent organisms relative to the specific nature of our cognitive capacities as if they were a product, an end, of an understanding unlike ours, an archetypal understanding, or an intellectus archetypus.Footnote 21
A genius's product displays the same unique whole-to-parts relationship as the one displayed by organisms.Footnote 22 For example, the holistic unity of Titian's Danaë cannot be explicated in terms of its constitutive parts. That is to say that the representations of a drapery, nude, servant, shower of gold, and dog are not sufficient to render the painting beautiful just as the function of feathers, a pair of wings, legs, eyes, and a beak is not sufficient to explicate the function of a bird. Furthermore, these figurative representations in Titian's Danaë together with its other aesthetic properties, such as different colours and lines, are nothing when considered independently of the whole. In other words, they have no aesthetic relevance when considered independently of the holistic unity of the painting, just as a pair of wings is not a unit that can function independently of the whole, the organism of the bird. Therefore, for a genius, the Idea of a well ordered whole is not temporally prior to the combination of its parts (as some external intentional cause is to an artefact) but, rather, its totality is metaphysically prior, as a ground, to the composing parts.Footnote 23 Hence, the principle of organization of a genius's work of art is equally inscrutable to the human understanding as the principle of organization displayed by organisms.Footnote 24 Because a genius's intellect is ultimately a human and not a divine intellect, and therefore the transcendent content cannot be transparent to her cognitive capacities, Kant suggests that genius proceeds in her production unconsciously, that is, she ‘cannot … describe or indicate scientifically how it brings its product into being’ (Kant 2000: 187; KU 5: 308).Footnote 25 If a genius were able to represent the Idea of the well ordered whole prior to her combining the parts, then she would be capable of summarizing what constitutes her rule and would be able to state what is required to do correctly what she does antecedently to her creating the work of art. But because the precept of her production becomes determinate, at least in part, only in the moment of its realization, that is, it becomes specifiable once it is exhibited in a concrete work of art, she proceeds unconsciously.Footnote 26
Although the rule of a genius's production is not formulable, it does not determine a genius's action blindly, i.e. a genius knows when, with respect to her work, she gets things right or wrong. I now turn to show that, although a genius's production is unconscious because it presupposes a unique whole-to-parts process, it is also conscious insofar as it results in judgement.Footnote 27
While a purpose, determinate rule, an image of a well-ordered whole, is not given to genius prior to her production, the rule that is given to her antecedently to her creative process is the purposive harmony of her cognitive faculties. Thus, a genius's ‘insight’ of an indeterminate principle results in a judgement although it is not reached through a judgement.Footnote 28 In order to understand better how a genius's ‘insight’ amounts to a judgement, it is helpful to consider Kant's account of judgement in the first Critique: ‘If the understanding in general is explained as the faculty of rules, then the power of judgment is the faculty of subsuming under rules, i.e., of determining whether something stands under a given rule (casus datae legis) or not’ (Kant 1998: 268; CPR A132/B171). Thus, a genius's creative process amounts to a series of evaluative acts in which a genius judges which particulars (e.g. colours, symbols, or notes in the case of a musical composition) she should choose and how they should be combined so that her choice and combination of these particulars meets the epistemic standard of the purposive arrangement of her cognitive capacities and their consequent feeling of pleasure. Thus, for example, Titian knows he wishes to paint a nude but no one, himself included, knows precisely in advance the steps that are necessary for the successful completion of the project. He, however, does not proceed automatically. Titian may try, for example, several different tones of the colour red until he finally arrives at the very and only one that fits his precept and when he does he will recognize it as such. This means that, although for Kant genius is not a person of mere taste, his creation presupposes taste. This is because taste for Kant more generally is ‘a faculty for judging’ (Kant 2000: 191; KU 5: 313), that is, an ability to determine whether one's choice and combination of particulars can be subsumed under the principle of purposiveness and in the end elicit a proper aesthetic response in the observer. Unlike the person of mere taste, genius does not subsume his choice and combination of particulars under already existing rules, that is, under the principle of purposiveness manifested in the works of superior masters. Instead, he subsumes the particulars under the rule of his cognitive faculties, that is, the purposive harmony of his cognitive faculties.
If—unlike those artists who possess mere taste, that is, those who learn how to give their work of art a purposive form by struggling to make the rule of a genius artist retrospectively intelligible—a genius already knows how to express the activity of her imagination in a way that would elicit a proper aesthetic response in the observer, then it remains puzzling that Kant speaks of a possible ‘conflict’ between taste and genius, and suggests that it is always prudent to sacrifice the latter for the sake of the former (Kant 2000: 197; KU 5: 319). Unfortunately, Kant is not always consistent in his use of the term ‘genius’ and at places the term refers only to a genius's rich imagination. Thus, where Kant speaks of a potential ‘conflict’ between a genius's imagination and her judgement, or of a genius's need of taste as ‘the discipline (or corrective) of genius’, which ‘clipping its wing’ makes it ‘well behaved or polished’ (Kant 2000: 197; KU 5: 319), he may have in mind his conception of an ‘exalted’, schwärmerische Genie.Footnote 29 The inspiration characteristic of the latter is analogous to Kant's conception of the intellectual intuition he discusses in detail in §76 of the third Critique, that is, a conception of an intuition that knows no distinction between spontaneity and receptivity and, therefore, no distinction between that which is merely thought in a concept (i.e. that which is merely possible) and that which is intuited (i.e. that which is actual). Hence, this type of an immediate and non-sensible intuition implies theoretical knowledge of particular features of reality in itself—of which human beings, according to Kant, limited by their own receptivity, are not capable. This is the reason why Kant describes ‘exaltation’ in the third Critique as ‘a delusion of being able to see something beyond all bounds of sensibility’ (Kant 2000: 156; KU 5: 275).Footnote 30
But Kant also contends that the judgement of a genius who knows how to find the proper expression for her imagination's rich content so that her work could stand the test of aesthetic judgement requires practice and skill:
although the understanding is clearly capable of being instructed and equipped through rules, the power of judgment is a special talent … A physician …, a judge, or a statesman, can have many fine pathological, juridical, or political rules in his head, of which he can even be a thorough teacher, and yet can easily stumble in their application, either because he is lacking in the natural power of judgment (though not in understanding), and to be sure understands the universal in abstracto but cannot distinguish whether the case in concreto belongs under it, or also because he has not received adequate training for this judgment through examples and actual business. (Kant 1998: 268; CPR A133/B172)
I wish to suggest that Kant's claim in the above passage equally applies to a genius's judgement. A genius's judgement—that is, her capacity to correctly identify and combine the particulars that meet the normative standards of her cognitive capacities—may remain very abstract and her natural gift can be further refined and improved through practice and adequate schooling. This is also the reason why Kant suggests that taste as the further exercise of a genius's judgement ‘gives genius guidance as to where and how far it should extend itself if it is to remain purposive’ (Kant 2000: 197; KU 5: 319; my emphasis). In other words, unless genius maintains and practices through education her already existent capacity of creating in accordance with a principle of nature's purposiveness, her inspiration can easily degenerate into an inspiration of an exalted, schwärmerische Genie.
The fact that, according to Kant, a genius’s production consists in both a passive, intuitive and an active, evaluative aspect has implications for the conception of a genius's autonomy, and it is to this issue that I now turn.
4. A Genius's Autonomy
The secondary literature on Kant has thus far emphasized the autonomy of a genius as a ‘giver of rules’. Peter Kivy, for example, contrasts Kant's conception of genius as a ‘giver of a rule’, ‘the genius as possessor of the law’, and ‘the genius of action and power’ with the Platonic conception of genius according to which a genius is ‘possessed by the god’, ‘the passive genius to whom creation was a “happening”, a “seizure”, different from a pathological affliction only in that it had a fortunate outcome in the work of art’.Footnote 31 Paul Guyer suggests that, on Kant's view, genius is subjected to two competing demands: the ‘demands for individual autonomy’ and ‘social agreement in the creation and reception of art’.Footnote 32 By the former Guyer understands a genius's individual action because she creates in accordance with only those principles that are freely chosen by her. By the latter Guyer understands epistemological constraints imposed on a genius's creativity in order for her work to have a universally communicable purposive form. While Kivy draws a sharp contrast between a genius's individual autonomy and an ontological reality which transcends her autonomy, Guyer draws a sharp contrast between a genius's individual autonomy and the rest of society. The contrasts drawn by the aforementioned commentators imply strong dichotomies because, for both, the meaning of a genius's autonomy is exhausted by her individuality. Indeed, Kant describes the artist's creative act as the act of freedom: ‘By right, only production through freedom, i.e., through a capacity for choice that grounds its actions in reason, should be called art’ (Kant 2000: 182; KU 5: 303). A genius's freedom is manifested in her act of judgement, that is, in her choice and the combination of particulars that she subsumes under an indeterminate universal. But although genius's products are expressions of her individual autonomy, a genius creates by necessity insofar as her moment of inspiration, or ‘insight’, is not reached through judgement, as is empirical knowledge of things, but rather is something that results in judgement. From here it follows that in addition to the active, conscious, rule-giving element of genius, Kant also associates with the spirit of genius a passive, unconscious, and receptive element. In his Reflexionen Kant describes this element as follows: ‘One does not know this peculiar spirit oneself, and one does not have the movements of this spirit in one's possession.’Footnote 33 In other words, a genius has no choice but to express the very idea that inspires her.
Interpreting Kant's conception of a genius's autonomy as a conception of autonomy that is exhausted by a genius's individuality implies that a genius is the sole author of the rules of her work of art. A similar conception of autonomy has recently become popular in interpretations of Kant's practical philosophy. Some interpreters of Kant's practical philosophy identify Kant's conception of human dignity—that is, the idea of a ‘rational being, who obeys no law other than that which he himself at the same time gives (gibt)’ (Kant 1996: 84; GMS 4: 434)—with ‘moral constructivism’. The latter I take to be the philosophical position which holds that the objective validity of our norms cannot be explained outside of our rational activities. Along these lines, commentators have argued that, on Kant's view, ‘values are not discovered by intuition to be “out there” in the world … values are created by human beings … constructed by a procedure of making laws for ourselves’.Footnote 34 Thus, on the constructivist view, Kant's notion of autonomy as self-legislation is the notion of the autonomy of an agent who is the author or the producer of the moral law and not the autonomy of an agent whose will legislates a law that is part of the reality which precedes our belief and constructions.Footnote 35 But according to Kant, a moral agent is a legislator and not the author of the moral law. This does not imply that for Kant God is the author of the moral law. On Kant's view, the moral law is not a positive law; positive laws, such as civic laws, have specific authors. The moral law has an author of obligation, or a legislator who declares a correspondence of the law or principle with her will and connects sanctions with her observance of the law.Footnote 36 I wish to suggest that the same applies to the notion of a genius's autonomy. Just as a moral agent, through practical judgement, declares that her particular actions are bound by the categorical imperative, a genius declares a correspondence of some combination of particulars with the free harmony of her cognitive faculties. But neither a genius, nor a moral agent, is the author, or producer, of the rule that she declares to be normative for her actions.
A question thus remains: if a genius's production consists in the subsumption of particulars under a given principle of which she is not the author and which, in its content, implies nature's supersensible substrate, then how is it possible for different works of genius to express different ideas and, moreover, display originality? I turn now to a closer examination of how my, above defended, understanding of Kant's account of creative production can help throw some light on Kant's claim that the works of genius must be original.
5. Originality of a Genius's Product
In contemporary discussions of Kant's aesthetics much attention is paid to the originality of genius. Some commentators interpret Kant's discussion of a genius's originality by appealing to a freedom of a genius's imagination that stands in harmony with the understanding without being constrained by determinate concepts. According to Peter Kivy, ‘originality … follows, on Kant's view, directly from his definition of beauty as being without a concept, and genius, therefore, the producer of beauty, as not susceptible to methodization’.Footnote 37 Paul Guyer argues that, for Kant,
artistic beauty must be both produced by rational human activity and not produced in accordance with a visible rule, so Kant construes it as the product of nature working through the medium of a human being to produce something that is not visibly rule-governed but yet is itself a rule for the pleasure of all … truly successful art must always possess … originality because the successful work of art can never appear to have been produced in accordance with a rule but must always strike us with an element of contingency, or novelty.Footnote 38
Indeed, the textual evidence found in the third Critique supports the views of the aforementioned authors:
to express what is unnamable in the mental state in the case of a certain representation and to make it universally communicable, whether the expression consist in language, or painting, or in plastic art—that requires a faculty for apprehending the rapidly passing play of the imagination and unifying it into a concept (which for that very reason is original and at the same time discloses a new rule, which could not have been deduced from any antecedent principles or examples), which can be communicated without the constraint of rules. (Kant 2000: 195; KU 5: 317)
While a genius has the capacity to structure the wealth of her imagination purposively (‘unifying it into a concept’) in a way that presupposes a complex conceptual activity, this capacity excludes the possibility that her imagination be determined by a specific concept.Footnote 39 Thus, although genius subsumes particulars under a given principle, this principle is indeterminate and, hence, allows for freedom of a genius's individual imagination and the possibility that, depending on the content of a genius's imagination, different works of art express different ideas.
However, in what follows, my aim is to supplement the above explanations of a genius's originality by moving beyond the claim that a genius's rule is original because it is produced in accord with an indeterminate, as opposed to a determinate, precept. This is because most of our uses of concepts are rather indeterminate, that is, they do not have a definite, fully specifiable, rule that determines how a concept should be illustrated.Footnote 40 But the genius's rule, the principle of nature's purposiveness, which implies the Idea of nature's supersensible substrate, is not indeterminate in the way some other concepts are. It is something that, given the special limits of our human cognitive capacities, is in principle beyond any finite determination. If one accounts for a genius's originality only in reference to a genius's indeterminate precept, without taking into account that this indeterminacy is related to the Idea of nature's supersensible substrate, then one will not be able to account for a distinction between a genius's originality and mere novelty.Footnote 41 In light of my preceding discussion of a genius's production, I shall argue that a genius's work is original not due to just any indeterminacy, but to the one that is specific to the archetypal nature of its precept.Footnote 42 This is the reason why, as we shall see, on Kant's view, it is possible to account for the fact that certain works of art that we take to be classical and familiar will always appear original.
The view according to which a genius's work is original because of the indeterminacy specific to the archetypal nature of its precept evokes Kant's attribution of originality to organisms in the Critique of Teleological Judgment:
In the separation and new composition of this raw material there is to be found an originality of the capacity for separation and formation in this sort of natural being that remains infinitely remote from all art when it attempts to reconstitute such a product of the vegetable kingdom from the elements that it obtains by its decomposition or from the material that nature provides for its nourishment. (Kant 2000: 243; KU 5: 371; my emphasis)
Originality of a genius's work should be understood in analogy to that of an organism. As demonstrated earlier, because our understanding must proceed discursively from a universal to a particular by the mediation of concepts, representations exhibited in a genius's work remain, like the one of an organic unity, underdetermined. That is to say that because the organizing principle of both the works of genius and of organisms implies nature's supersensible substrate and as such remains inscrutable to our limited human understanding, the consideration of some parts of an organism, or some aspects of a work of art, is never sufficient to explicate the whole. In this way they, both an organism and a work of genius, must strike the observer from the perspective of her limited cognitive capacities, her discursive understanding, as contingent and original.
In order to throw some further light on the question of how representations in a genius's work remain underdetermined from the perspective of our discursive understanding, that is, how considerations of some aspects of a work of art are never sufficient to explicate the whole, it is necessary for us to analyse Kant's notion of an aesthetic Idea.
Kant argues that aesthetic Ideas are sensible ‘counterparts’ (Kant 2000: 192; KU 5: 314) of rational Ideas. That is to say that there is a structural parallel between aesthetic and rational Ideas.Footnote 43 According to Kant, in order that there be knowledge in the proper sense of this term, two elements are necessary: the concepts of the understanding and a corresponding intuition that is structured according to the rules contained in the concepts. Both the Ideas of reason and aesthetic Ideas cannot yield knowledge. Rational Ideas cannot yield knowledge because they do not have a corresponding intuition and aesthetic Ideas because they are an intuition, or a ‘representation of the imagination that occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e., [determinate] concept, to be adequate to it, which, consequently, no language fully attains or can make intelligible’ (Kant 2000: 192; KU 5: 314).Footnote 44 In addition to the negative there is also a positive aspect of the structural parallel between rational and aesthetic Ideas, namely, they both strive towards something that lies beyond the bounds of experience. (Kant 2000: 192; KU 5: 314). This is the reason why the meaning of aesthetic Ideas is always marked by an ‘excess’, that is, material that cannot be sufficiently well expressed in words because it can never be adequately captured by concepts.Footnote 45
In order to understand better this richness of imagination that can never be adequately captured by concepts, we must briefly explicate Kant's notion of ‘aesthetic attributes’ (Kant 2000: 193; KU 5: 315), which comprise an aesthetic Idea. Kant suggests that the function of aesthetic attributes of an object is best understood when contrasted with the function of logical attributes. Logical attributes serve the purpose of determining or specifying a concept. For example, logical attributes of the concept ‘Jupiter's eagle’ would be those determinate concepts that specify this concept so that it can be associated with a particular individual object: the colour of its feathers, the size of its claws, the size and shape of its wings, etc. But the visual or verbal image of Jupiter's eagle with lightning in its claws that the poet compares to sublimity and majesty of creation invites the reader to move beyond the ordinary representation of an eagle.Footnote 46 Neither does the image stand for a sensuous representation of the rational Idea ‘God Jupiter’. Instead, the image of an eagle with lightning in its claws functions as an aesthetic attribute of the object that falls under the concept ‘God Jupiter’. This is because the image prompts the imagination to associate the given representation of an eagle with many different concepts—for example, ‘omniscience’, ‘omnipotence’, ‘vengeance’, ‘human fear and finitude’, etc.—which indirectly, or symbolically, represent the content of the concept ‘God Jupiter’. The entire aesthetic experience of the image in the poem can never be adequately put into words, that is, expressed in terms of determinate concepts. The aesthetic object retains its purposive form if its images do not prompt the imagination to associate just any concepts with the representation of the artwork. Under these conditions the image may receive a number of plausible interpretations: but this purposive form is also free because none of these interpretations individually, nor all of them collectively, can exhaust the meaning of this image.Footnote 47
The meaning of originality of a genius's production is lost on us if Kant's conception of aesthetic Idea is confused for a richer version of the empiricist conception of association of ideas. On Kivy's view, Kant introduced his notion of an aesthetic Idea as a rejection of Alexander Gerard's theory of association of ideas. For Gerard, a genius is an individual with a propensity for experiencing an associative train of ideas and with the ability to embody those trains of ideas in an art object that can then excite a similar association of ideas in others. Kivy rightly argues that Kant's theory of aesthetic Ideas is his explicit rejection of Gerard's psychological mechanism of the association of ideas, which was incompatible with Kant's notion of freedom. Indeed, aesthetic Ideas are products of productive imagination, governed by an a priori principle, and not products of reproductive imagination, governed by the empirical rule of association.Footnote 48 Unlike the two types of productive imagination Kant discusses in the first Critique, the productive imagination at work in aesthetic Ideas neither produces geometrical objects in pure intuition, nor schemata of the categories as the transcendental power of imagination does in the figurative synthesis.Footnote 49 The specific accomplishment of the productive power of imagination is that it produces a new and original organization of the material already given to it in intuition, and yet it does so neither through experience nor through the concepts of the understanding (Kant 2000: 192; KU 5: 314). Kant further argues that ‘in this we feel our freedom from the law of association (which applies to the empirical use of that faculty), in accordance with which material can certainly be lent to us by nature, but the latter can be transformed by us into something entirely different, namely into that which steps beyond nature’ (Kant 2000: 192; KU 5: 314).Footnote 50
Even so, Kivy's interpretation of Kant's rejection of Gerard does not sufficiently distance Kant's conception of an aesthetic Idea from Gerard's notion of the association of ideas. According to Kivy, Kant rejected Gerard's association of ideas ‘as soon as he introduced his own’.Footnote 51 That is to say that, on Kivy's view, Kant's account of aesthetic Ideas starts with a psychological mechanism that, unlike Gerard's which ends in a concept determined by words, ‘becomes that rich and ineffable train of thought that imparts “spirit” to the work, and gives us intimations of what “surpasses nature” ’.Footnote 52 But for Kivy, an aesthetic Idea does not ‘surpass’ nature in a way that an aspiration to sensibly exhibit an archetype ‘surpasses’ the ectype. That is to say that, according to Kivy, an aesthetic Idea gives us a semblance of our freedom from the law of association, but, on his view, Kant's conception of an aesthetic Idea remains just a richer version of Gerard's association of ideas and as such it can never aspire towards a sensible representation of the supersensible. I take Kivy's view to be confusing Kant's notion of Idea (Idee) as an archetype in Plato's sense and Kant's notion of representation (Vorstellung). In the contemporary Anglophone literature, the latter is the meaning most commonly associated with the term ‘idea’ as a sort of mental representation. Arguing for an explanation of aesthetic Ideas as a richer version of association of ideas does not capture the sense of inexhaustiveness and originality that pertains to the sensible exhibition of an archetype. On the former interpretation, it would be possible to ‘correct’ the inexhaustiveness of aesthetic Ideas by improving our mental faculties in a way that they could capture this rich train of thought. On the latter interpretation, however, it is in the nature of an aesthetic Idea as a sensible exhibition of an archetype that it remains impossible to our limited human understanding to conceptually capture its ‘absolute whole’.
Interpreting originality of a genius's production as dependent upon the archetypal nature of a genius's precept offers a solution to what in contemporary literature is known as the ‘paradox of genius’. Timothy Gould contends that
If we are in a position to follow the work, to see the sense it makes, then it may happen that its sense competes with its originality. If such works make advances on what is familiar and gain new ground, their very success makes the new ground familiar. The very fact that the works of genius must, as Kant says, be exemplary, leading the way for others, suggests why the works of genius must leave open the routes of comprehension which compromise the very element of genius.Footnote 53
The ‘paradox of genius’, however, emerges only if the normativity of a genius's rule is understood as Gould understands it, that is, as a ‘work of original sense as extending our available resources for making sense — claiming new territory and supplying new materials for sense’.Footnote 54 In other words, if the archetypal nature of a genius's work is not taken into account and, instead, originality is interpreted as a manner of saying things in a way they have not been said before, that is, as a form of novelty, then the very understanding and appreciation of such a work will make its once original expression natural and commonplace. But if the originality of a genius's work is approached from the perspective of its archetypal nature, then the ‘paradox of genius’ is dispelled as a pseudo-problem. The works of Giotto and Masaccio became a standard for emulation and gave rise to new painting genres but, due to their archetypal nature, they cannot lose their originality and they continue to be a constant and inexhaustive inspiration of many contemporary figurative painters.
6. Exemplarity of a Genius's Product
Kant argues that works of genius further distinguish themselves from works of a mere imitator, or a person of taste, in that they are ‘exemplary (exemplarisch)’ (Kant 2000: 186; KU 5: 308) and serve others ‘as a standard or a rule for judging’ (Kant 2000: 187; KU 5: 308). In other words, they serve as models either in the formation of the taste of other artists and give rise to a school of style, or genre, or they serve as a standard to other geniuses in that they exhibit the principle of how other geniuses ought to proceed in order that their own work become an original achievement in relation to their own predecessors. In the former case, the artist engages in the act of ‘imitation (Nachahmung)’ (Kant 2000: 163; KU 5: 282), and in the latter case in the act of ‘following (Nachfolge)’ (Kant 2000: 164; KU 5: 283). Imitation is not a blind, mechanical replication of the pattern of composition, or ‘copying (Nachmachen)’. Imitation, rather, presupposes an active judgement.Footnote 55 Although an artist's imitation (Nachahmung) may lead him to test his own talent through the exercise of his own judgement, his product could never serve as exemplary because it remains always in the manner or a school of the predecessor.
In contrast, a genius's following (Nachfolge) of an exemplary model of another genius yields a new exemplary model for future generations:
Genius is the exemplary originality (musterhafte Originalität) of the natural endowment of a subject for the free use of his cognitive faculties. In this way the product of a genius (in respect of that in it which is to be ascribed to genius, not to possible learning or schooling) is an example, not for imitation (Nachahmung) (for then that which is genius in it and constitutes the spirit of the work would be lost), but for emulation (Nachfolge) by another genius, who is thereby awakened to the feeling of his own originality, to exercise freedom from coercion in his art in such a way that the latter thereby itself acquires a new rule, by which the talent shows itself as exemplary (musterhaft). (Kant 2000: 195–6; KU 5: 318)
The original spirit of a predecessor can only be appropriately captured if it inspires a spirit of genius in a successor. Kant is unfortunately reticent with respect to how this process occurs: ‘How this is possible is difficult to explain. The ideas of the artist arouse similar ideas in his apprentice if nature has equipped him with a similar proportion of mental powers’ (Kant 2000: 188; KU 5: 309). Martin Gammon has suggested that Kant's notion of ‘following’ is best illuminated when approached within the context of Kant's problematic notion of moral exemplarity.Footnote 56 Kant warns that one must not take an ‘example (Beispiel)’ of virtue to be a ‘pattern (Muster)’ for action. In other words, a moral example serves only as an indication of the practicability of the moral rules required of a virtuous character but not as a source of these rules.Footnote 57 The rules are in the archetype (Urbild) of a virtuous character in our reason. Taking virtue to be a matter of imitation of examples implies that virtue is subject to empirical conditions. Thus, examples of virtue should not be a subject of imitation (Nachahmung) but a subject of following (Nachfolge). The moral agent is inspired by an example of virtue, but the example reorients the agent to the archetype of virtue ‘within’, i.e., the Idea of virtue in her reason. Similarly, in the aesthetic context, a genius in a critical appropriation of the spirit of her predecessor arrives at her own exemplary expression of the archetype.
Moreover, according to Kant, one does not require examples of virtuous individuals in order to aspire towards virtue. The actual instances of moral virtue are rather aids for the promotion of virtue to the extent that they strengthen one's persistence in one's already existent moral disposition because one sees that it is possible to accomplish that which one knows one ought to do. Just as examples of virtue are aids in the realization of the moral good in the world, works of genius are aids in the realization of one's own original production. But the kind of assistance offered by the examples of genius is different from the one of psychological motivation provided by the examples of virtue. While a moral Idea, such as the Idea of virtue, can be defined and is universally shared by all rational creatures, a genius's principle of creation is an indeterminate concept that cannot be defined and is not in possession of every rational individual but only those who ‘nature has equipped … with a similar proportion of mental powers’ (Kant 2000: 188; KU 5: 309) as other geniuses. The artist can know determinately what she was after only after the project is completed. Thus, one attempting to create and, hence, realize an archetype without being exposed to the actual examples, that is, already realized archetypes in works of other geniuses, runs the risk of creating an ‘original nonsense’ (Kant 2000: 186; KU 5: 308). This is also the reason why, on Kant's view, the relation of a precedent to its predecessors must be such that the overall evolvement of the precedent is never independent of the developing continuity of her own tradition:
Imitation is an unassuming and safe step of a genius. This path of imitation that a genius undertakes is his judgment of the attempts of others that traveled the same path. There could not exist a single great master who did not imitate other masters, and no invention that could not be seen in relation to others preceding it and to which this one is similar. Everything stands within the laws of continuity, and that which has been entirely torn away from this continuity, leaving a gap between it and its predecessors, belongs to the world of empty figments of the brain (Hirngespinste).Footnote 58
Therefore, in the domain of creative production Kant encourages ‘humbleness’ which is ‘related to the rules’,Footnote 59 or in other words, looking at the actual realizations of the creative principle, the original rule, in the works of other geniuses.Footnote 60
The following example from art history will illustrate to what extent a genius who follows prior models ‘places herself above the rules and gives laws’Footnote 61 and to what extent these new laws develop through a genius's critical dialogue with her tradition.
The visual art of the Renaissance was guided by the principle of combination of forms in a plane, while the Baroque in the seventeenth century dropped this principle in favour of a recessional type of composition. In other words, the Renaissance art accomplished perspective and spatial depth through a horizontal composition in order to communicate repose, harmony, and explicitness as its central ideals. The Baroque, on the other hand, accomplished perspective and spatial depth by placing some figures in the foreground and some parts of the composition in the background so that the eye is constantly forced to make dynamic recessional relations. This is how the Baroque embodied the ideals of movement and drama. Thus, for example, we can see how Tiepolo's Last Supper shows original innovations of recessional Baroque style developed in dialogue with Leonardo's Last Supper, which is a great example of the Renaissance plane style. With respect to iconography the two works are the same. Even with respect to some formal aspects, such as the parallelism of the table, the two works are very similar. But the figures in Tiepolo's work no longer unite in the plane: some are placed in the foreground and some in the background while the figure of Christ is a central figure in, and cannot be detached from, these two dynamic groups. Hence, the painting suggests a dynamic movement that was completely absent from Leonardo's work.Footnote 62 Thus, Leonardo's Last Supper represents to Tiepolo how he ought to proceed, but in such a way that instead of articulating this rule in a form of a concrete precept, Tiepolo was inspired to create his own original.
The issue of exemplarity, however, may not only be considered with respect to the relation of the precedent to its predecessors, but also with respect to the relation of the precedent to its successors. In other words, one can consider how the emergence of new geniuses, new artistic schools and genres, reflects on the exemplary status of the precedent. Kant contends that ‘one does not actually contradict (wiedersprechen) the spirit [of one's predecessors], and yet one refutes (wiederlegen) it’.Footnote 63 In other words, Tiepolo ‘refutes the spirit’ of Leonardo in that the success of Tiepolo's work is measured by the rule of his Baroque style and not the rule of Leonardo's Renaissance style. Tiepolo ‘does not actually contradict’ Leonardo in that the emergence of his new artistic school does not call into question the exemplary originality of Leonardo's work. Thus, on Kant's view, a genius's production presupposes a multiplicity of coexisting schools or genres with their own distinct standards of excellence.Footnote 64
7. Conclusion
In this essay, I have shown that on Kant's view the ‘artistic rule’ presupposes both a free human activity and receptivity to nature's supersensible substrate which transcends creative subjectivity. On this interpretation, a genius's rule is the result of both an act of judgement and a unique intuition for which the Idea of a well-ordered whole is metaphysically prior to the combination of its parts. I have further shown how this interpretation of a genius's rule in Kant throws new light on Kant's conception of a genius's originality and exemplarity. With respect to the former, I have demonstrated that because the organizing principle of the works of genius remains inscrutable to our limited human understanding, a work of genius appears to the observer's limited cognitive capacities as undetermined and, hence, as contingent and original. With respect to the latter, I have shown how for Kant a genius must evolve within the context of her own tradition and how this ‘humbleness’ of a genius still allows for a multiplicity of coexisting schools or genres with their own distinct standards of excellence.
Furthermore, my above interpretation of a genius's rule in Kant—the interpretation which entails stronger ontological commitments than is commonly acknowledged in Kant literature—offers further resources for explaining the influence of Kant's conception of genius on post-Kantian philosophers.Footnote 65 But notwithstanding the influence of Kant's account of genius on the post-Kantian philosophers, I also wish to differentiate at the end—more sharply than this has been done by some of his readers—Kant's account from some dialectical accounts of artistic production that followed after him. There exists a tendency in current literature to interpret the relation between a precedent and a successor in Kant as one in which the relevance of the precedent is preserved only to the extent that one acknowledges that the precedent was special in its own time as the new genius is now. In other words, the works of predecessors remain relevant in the wake of the emergence of new artistic schools to the extent that they were exemplary in the past and not to the extent that they will also continue to be exemplary in the future.Footnote 66
But, according to Kant, the progressive dialectic that applies to science does not apply to art. In fact, the natural scientists have an advantage over artistic geniuses:
In their very talent for ever advancing greater perfection of cognition and all the utility that depends on it, and likewise in the education of others for the acquisition of the same knowledge, lies the great advantage of such people over those who have the honor of being called geniuses: since for the latter art somewhere comes to a halt, because a limit is set for it beyond which it cannot go, which presumably has also long since been reached and cannot be extended any more. (Kant 2000: 188; KU 5: 309)
The passage above may be suggestive of Kant's unjustified preference for the classical art of antiquity.Footnote 67 Thus, his claim that the limit of art ‘has also long since been reached and cannot be extended any more’ can be interpreted as implying that the height of artistic genius has already been reached in antiquity and whatever comes subsequently can at best be equivalent to it but cannot exceed it in greatness. But the passage also suggests that, unlike science, art does not aim towards determinate cognition and hence that progress does not apply to art as it applies to science, so that establishing a new genre could be an improvement, a new and better solution to the problems posed by the works of predecessors. In other words, on Kant's view, the emergence of new geniuses, as shown above, does not call into question the relevance and accomplishments of those from the past. For Kant, works of genius, due to the archetypal and indeterminate nature of their rule, will continue to serve at any point in history, regardless of the emergence of new schools, as an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the generations to come.
Abbreviations
The following primary texts, abbreviations, and translations have been used.
