Sense and Supersensibility: Kantian Aesthetics in Lamarckian Evolutionary Theory

This article argues for recognition of aesthetics' constitutive agency in shaping Western epistemic traditions by examining the previously unexplored similarities between Immanuel Kant's theory of aesthetics found in The Critique of Judgment (1790) and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's evolutionary theory of "soft inheritance" elaborated in Zoological Philosophy (1809). Not only does each respective theory transgress traditions of empiricism and rationalism by foregrounding the dynamic interplay of both sensory perception and reason in the upward development of a more complex and refined state of rationality, but both theories also raise questions concerning the limits of sensory perception and reason in arriving at claims toward the teleological ends of Nature.