Imagination in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason

Epilogue: From the Critique of Practical Reason to the Critique of Judgment

e p i l o g u e From the Critique of Practical Reason to the Critique of Judgment Both in its Dialectic and in its Methodology, the Critique of Pure Reason provided a clear textual path to the Critique of Practical Reason. In the Dialectic, the early “denial of knowledge to make room for belief ” was no mere personal renunciation and af¤rmation. Rather, it was shown to have its roots in the nature and limits of reason itself. Further, the ever-present but more obscure and deeper path through the Critique of Pure Reason, the path of synthesis-producing and image-making imagination, showed itself to also be of ¤rst importance in this transition. Section 3 of the Discipline of Pure Reason, as treated in the Introduction above, ascribes an expressly creative power to imagination, an ascription that at least nears an af¤rmation of imagination’s power (under the guidance of reason) to bring the practical realm itself into being (A769–70, B797–98). The Third Antinomy proved the logical possibility of the idea of freedom, keystone (Schlußstein) not only of the Critique of Practical Reason but also of reason’s whole systematic edi¤ce. The Canon of Pure Reason concluded with the (somewhat playfully) apologetic claim that the sole achievement of pure reason in opening up prospects beyond the realm of experience consists of two articles of belief , the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. Imagination generated both the extension of the category of causality such that the Third Antinomy arose and ultimately showed that free will and natural necessity were not contradictory to one another, i.e., that they could a least be thought together. Also, the extensions of the categories of substance and community to the ideas of the soul (immortality ) and God (existence) proved thinkable, though it remained for the Critique of Practical Reason to exhibit the proper place of these elements in the systematic edi¤ce of reason, namely as postulates of pure practical reason. The Critique of Practical Reason seemed to provide an insurmountable obstacle to the disclosure of the ever-present but more obscure and deeper path of imagination, if such a path existed at all. Kant himself appeared to have denied imagination such a role. However, I pay myself the compliment of not only having overcome this mistaken view, but also of having exposed the pre-eminence of imagination as the driver of practical reason. I believe the interpretation offered in this book is entirely faithful to Kant’s doctrine of synthesis, which is the engine of all three critiques. However, the Critique of Practical Reason does not provide a transition to the Critique of Judgment that is nearly as smooth either textually or substantively as the one from the Critique of Pure Reason to the practical critique. There are, to be sure, some indications. Leibniz ’s favored insect (V, 160, 285), discussed above, provides one. The brief description of imagination (V, 160), also discussed above, provides another. But nothing in the second critique comes close to providing the extensiveness and richness of argumentation or the far-reaching philosophizing that would allow for an authoritative transition to the third. Those scholars who see the Critique of Judgment as almost an afterthought to the ¤rst two critiques would seem to have some evidence on their side. Kant’s December 1787 letter to Reinhold, after he has completed the Critique of Practical Reason but before its actual publication, appears to lend at least some support to this view. The following is excerpted from that letter: My inner conviction grows, as I discover in working on different topics , that not only does my system remain self-consistent but also, when 132 Imagination in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason sometimes I cannot see the right way to investigate a certain subject, I¤nd that I need only look back at the general picture of the elements of knowledge, and of the mental powers pertaining to them, in order to discover elucidations that I had not expected. I am now at work on a critique of taste, and I have discovered a kind of a priori principle different from those heretofore observed. For there are three faculties of the mind: the faculty of cognition, the faculty of feeling pleasure and displeasure, and the faculty of desire. In the Critique of Pure (theoretical ) Reason, I found a priori...