1. Introduction
The aim of this paper, like most papers in this special issue, is to see whether and how Kant’s philosophy can speak to the social movements and doctrines—“isms”—being debated today. The “ism” that I will discuss is “anti-intellectualism.”
The term anti-intellectualism became popularized with the publication in 1963 of Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. According to Hofstadter, “the common strain that binds together the attitudes and ideas which I call anti-intellectual is a resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition constantly to minimize the value of that life” (Hofstadter, Reference Hofstadter1963, 7). Here, anti-intellectualism is an epistemic stance, since it is suspicious of and denigrates products of the intellect, but it is also a social stance since its resentment is aimed toward a certain class, in whom it perceives an attitude of superiority and exclusivity (see Hofstadter, Reference Hofstadter1963, 18–19). With the election of Donald Trump (who, along with other (anti-)educational policies, has ordered that the Department of Education be closedFootnote 1), there is renewed interest in understanding anti-intellectualism in American life.
I should note that, unlike many of the other isms discussed in this special issue, such as sexism or racism, about which I am unequivocal, I am ambivalent about condemning anti-intellectualism. Although I place a high value on the world of ideas, I am also often aware of the limitations of my own intellect, of how difficult it is to think well, and of how demoralizing it can be to feel that one’s intellect is inadequate. I can therefore understand how, rather than being drawn to the world of ideas—feeling a “thirst” for it, as Kant says—and being motivated to learn, one can feel frustrated by what seems incomprehensible and ashamed by one’s inability to think as one ought to, and as a consequence be inclined to disvalue ideas and those who seem to have easy access to them. In addition to understanding that anti-intellectualism can be a response to intellectual frustration, my ambivalence toward anti-intellectualism is also due to the connection between intellectualism and elitism. If intellectual activity and its conditions are something one is shut out from by an elite that looks down on the uneducated, then, it would seem, anti-intellectualism and suspicion of the world of ideas is merited. As a woman philosopher, I am sympathetic to this stance. The feeling of “not quite getting it” includes the suspicion that maybe I am not meant to; that the acquisition of this kind of knowledge is meant for someone else, and that ideas can be used to hold exclusionary social structures in place.
The connection between his intellectualism and elitism is apparent in Kant’s famous remark in his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime about Rousseau’s influence on him, often used to demonstrate Kant’s respect for the common man. Kant writes,
I, myself, am a researcher from inclination. I feel the entire thirst for cognition and the eager restlessness to go further in it as well as the satisfaction at every acquisition. There was a time when I believed that this alone could compose the honor of humankind and I despised the rabble who knows nothing. Rousseau has set me right. This blinding prejudice vanishes, I learn to honor human beings, and I would feel by far less useful than the common laborer if I did not believe that this consideration of everything else could impart value to all others in establishing the rights of humanity. (BEO 20: 44)
I always stumble over this passage. While Kant says that he now sees that (despite his own passion for intellectual pursuits) knowledge for its own sake is not the highest value and instead inquiry should be in the service of establishing the rights of humankind, he also indicates that the common laborer provides a standard of usefulness below which he would not want to see himself placed. From the perspective of the scholar, it seems, it is one thing to honor human beings and establish the rights of humankind. It is another to be a common laborer. And, in fact, in contrast to Rousseau, Kant does value the cultivated, philosophical intellect over the uncultured innocence of what he calls the common intellect (see Callanan, Reference Callanan2019).Footnote 2
A case could therefore be made that Kant, and his philosophy, are valid targets of anti-intellectualism. As many have pointed out, Kant’s discussion of culture is exclusionary, since he does not think that non-European people are capable of culture (ÜGTP 8:176; see McNulty, Reference McNulty2025). With elitist philosophers such as Kant, one could say it is no wonder that there is hostility toward intellectuals and higher education. However, most contemporary critiques of Kant’s cultural and racial elitism are not themselves anti-intellectual; they still value ideas and are themselves often highly intellectual, arguing, for example, for the liberatory potential of antiracist ideas.Footnote 3 Today, anti-intellectual critiques of Kant come from elsewhere.Footnote 4
I think it is possible that Kant’s intellectualism, by which I mean the value he places on ideas, understood in the Kantian sense as products of the intellect, and his cultural elitism can be separated. In what follows, I will discuss what I take to be Kant’s account of anti-intellectualism understood as an aversion to and a disvaluing of intellectual activity. While this is quite different from a broader sociological account that could explain the current distrust of scientists and opposition to the humanities, Kant’s discussion of our felt relation to our intellect nevertheless has something to offer for understanding how our relation to our own mental activity can be a source of displeasure and shame, and also the social effects of this feeling. Furthermore, I will argue, his discussion of aesthetic ideas can show how it is possible to overcome such anti-intellectualism.
Indeed, a central feature of Kant’s critical philosophy is that it is concerned with our relation to our intellect—its excesses and limits, pleasures and displeasures, and satisfactions and dissatisfactions. While Kant certainly values the activity of the intellect, he also famously argues for humility with regard to its use; we should recognize the limits of our cognition and not claim to have knowledge of what we cannot experience. Kant criticizes the “fanatic” who claims to have cognition of objects beyond the boundary of the sensible world. He writes that fanaticism is “a pious brazenness…occasioned by a certain pride and an altogether too great confidence in oneself to come closer to the heavenly natures and to elevate itself…above the usual and prescribed order” (BGSE 2:251) (see Zuckert, Reference Zuckert, Bruxvoort Lipscomb and Krueger2010). The critical philosophy is meant to correct this intellectual pride that overvalues our intellect’s ability to have theoretical cognition of ideas.
However, rather than discussing Kant’s criticism of fanaticism, which occurs when one’s claims to cognition go beyond the bounds of reason, this paper will focus on what Kant says about those cases in which one is trapped within the boundary of reason: in which one does not engage with ideas and is unable to access the world of the intellect. Just as the brazen fanatic feels an arrogant pride in a so-called knowledge beyond the bounds of experience, so, for Kant, the person who is unable to reflect feels an intellectual displeasure and shame with regard to their intellectual limitation. I will discuss Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment,Footnote 5 where he refers to a feeling of “displeasure” (Unlust) in judgment, the possibility of which, along with the feeling of pleasure, is constitutive of our power to judge. I will argue that for Kant this feeling of cognitive displeasure, which is a consciousness of a failure of judgment, can lead us to disvalue our intellect and turn away from intellectual life.
The fact that Kant’s CJ contains an account of how it feels to not judge well indicates that in this work he is concerned not with knowledge and failures to know, understood as epistemic mistakes and false judgments, but with the value of intellectual activity itself. Indeed, what is at issue in this text is not our ability to have empirical cognition of the ideas of reason, as in the first Critique. For Kant, a failure of such cognition is appropriate and nothing to be ashamed about. Rather, in CJ, Kant is concerned with our ability to have our own ideas in the first place. That is, our ability to engage in systematic reflection from a standpoint beyond the bounds of the empirical world. I will argue that for Kant, what enables us to value our intellectual activity is the aesthetic ideas we find in works of art and the pleasure we take in this activity, which we are thereby aware of as our own.
2. Pleasure and Displeasure in Judging
A central aim of CJ is to argue that our power of judgment has a transcendental principle that makes possible what Kant calls judgments of reflection. Reflective judgments result from reflecting on a given representation “for the sake of a concept that is thereby made possible” (KU 20:211). When confronted with something new, we reflect on this representation and seek a concept for it. Kant contrasts reflective judgments with determinative judgments, which determine an object according to a universal concept one already possesses (KU 20:211). For reflective judgment to be possible, we must presuppose that conceptualization of nature is possible in the first place and that a universal for a particular can be produced. We must therefore judge with the idea in mind that nature is organized as a system for our power of judgment. This requirement of reflective judgment is what Kant calls the transcendental principle of the power of judgment, which states that we must see objects in nature as purposive for our judgment (see KU 5:181).
In their pure form, reflective judgments are aesthetic judgments of beauty (and the sublime).Footnote 6 Judgments of beauty are pure reflective judgments, since they merely reflect on a representation for the sake of coming up with a universal concept without determining the representation according to any concept. Judgments of beauty are what reveal the special principle of the power of judgment (KU 20:245) because in such judgments our cognitive activity is free from the influence of any empirical concept. In such activity, the faculties of the imagination (which presents to the mind a form or image) and the understanding (which seeks a concept for it) are in a state of free play. The consciousness of the free play of our faculties is experienced as a feeling of pleasure, and this feeling is what constitutes the judgment of beauty.
Because the pleasure in judgment is in the play of our faculties as it reflects on the form of an object and is not a feeling caused by the sensation of an object, the pleasure of taste is a disinterested contemplative pleasure rather than a pleasure in an agreeable sensation. Kant writes that this pleasure is the feeling of “life.” By this he means that the activity of reflection in which we take pleasure is that which further promotes its own activity and that such activity is the natural end of our faculty of judgment. The pleasure of mere reflection is thus the feeling that the kind of mental activity in which we are engaging is right; it is what our cognitive faculties are meant to do.
The judgment of taste that results from the activity of pure reflection is also normative and makes a claim to the universality of the feeling of pleasure that one experiences in an object. This is because, as a disinterested pleasure in the mere reflection on an object, it includes the consciousness that it must be shared by others who also reflect on the object without any subjective interest. A judgment of taste is therefore my assertion of the universal validity of the pleasure that I take in the representation of an object. Moreover, Kant explains, the feeling of pleasure in a judgment of beauty is itself the pleasure in the universal nature of the judgment and its communicability (KU 5:218).
Although the main focus of Kant’s CJ is on those judgments whose determining ground is the feeling of pleasure (Lust), namely, judgments of the beautiful (and the sublime), it is important to note that Kant writes that the principle of the power of judgment is constitutive of both our feeling of pleasure and displeasure (Lust und Unlust) in judging (see KU 5:196–197). In the very first section of the CJ, Kant writes that in a judgment of taste “the representation is related entirely to the subject, indeed to the feeling of life, under the name of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure” (KU 5:204 my italics), and Kant frequently pairs “pleasure” with its alternate, “displeasure,” in his discussion.
But whereas Kant has a lot to say about what is involved in the pleasure that constitutes a judgment of taste, he does not make explicit what he means by “displeasure” in judging. To my knowledge, there has been very little discussion of the feeling of displeasure in the CJ. Most of the commentators who note Kant’s references to “pleasure or displeasure” in judging do so in the context of debating whether Kant has an account of a pure judgment of ugliness that would be the negative or opposite of his account of pure judgments of beauty. What makes it hard to resolve that debate is that in the CJ Kant never mentions a pure judgment of ugliness. Ugliness aside, however, Kant certainly does refer to displeasure in judging. And, while I will discuss the debate about ugliness below, my focus will be on Kant’s account of cognitive displeasure, the possibility of which he clearly considers to be constitutive of reflective judgment. It is such cognitive displeasure that, I will argue, is for Kant a form of anti-intellectualism.
In order to understand what Kant can mean by the feeling of displeasure in reflective judgment, I will review what Kant says about the feeling of pleasure to which it is opposed. As noted above, Kant describes the pleasure of taste as a feeling of “life” and of the animation of the cognitive faculties. Yet, the feeling of pleasure is not simply a passive receptivity to our cognitive activity. It is rather a pleasure that we reflectively and actively “take” in it (see, e.g., Zuckert, Reference Zuckert2002, 240). We take pleasure in this activity since it is the consciousness that it is the “right” activity of our human cognitive faculties. It is their natural end and purpose to judge according to the principle of reflective judgment, which is the transcendental principle of judgment. Kant describes this purposive activity as “the state of mind in the free play of the imagination and the understanding (so far as they agree with each other as is requisite for a cognition in general)” (KU 5:281). Because this feeling of rightness is the feeling that the conditions for “cognition in general” have been satisfied, it is also what grounds the claim to the universality of the pleasure. Kant says that, in contrast to the pleasure in the agreeable or the morally good, the pleasure in taste is a kind of approval or favoring (Gunst) (KU 5:210); we approve of our reflective activity because we are aware that this is the right way to judge.
Given this account of the pleasure of pure judgments of reflection as the feeling of the purposive activity of our cognitive faculties, we can say that for Kant the feeling of displeasure in judging must be the consciousness that our cognitive faculties are not acting purposively and as they ought. Here, it is important to note that Kant’s word for displeasure, Unlust, does not mean pain, but rather a lack of pleasure; an unwillingness, aversion, or disinclination. We feel cognitive Unlust, I suggest, when our cognitive faculties are not motivated or inspired to engage in the activity of reflection. Still, if the displeasure in judging is to be on a par with the a priori feeling of pleasure in judging according to the principle of the power of judgment, then it cannot be a merely disagreeable sensation but must itself be the consciousness of the disengagement of our cognitive faculties and their failure to judge according to the transcendental principle of judgment. Just as the feeling of pleasure in judgment is a necessary feeling of the rightness of the activity of the cognitive faculties in judging, the feeling of displeasure must be a necessary feeling of the wrongness of one’s cognitive activity. This wrongness is not the wrongness of a false judgment, but of our cognitive activity itself; of not judging the right way (see KU 5:242).
Section 10 of the CJ is one of the few places where Kant explicates the feeling of displeasure. He writes,
The consciousness of the causality of a representation with respect to the state of the subject for maintaining it in that state can here designate in general what is called pleasure; in contrast to which displeasure is that representation that contains the ground for determining the state of representations to their opposite (hindering or getting rid of them (abzuhalten oder wegzuschaffen)). (KU 5:220)
When Kant writes that the feeling of pleasure is the consciousness of “the causality of a representation with respect to the state of a subject for maintaining it in that state,” he is referring to the purposive form of the representation. This form is one that engages the mind in the reflective activity that is proper to the faculty of judgment. We take pleasure in reflecting on this form and thus remain in this state. Judging such a purposive form constitutes a judgment of beauty.
Displeasure in judging, in contrast, is the consciousness that something is counterpurposive for our cognitive activity. We want to discontinue this activity. Rather than “animating” both the faculties of the imagination and the understanding in the intellectual activity that belongs to cognition in general, a counterpurposive representation leaves it feeling dull and dead. In contrast to the feeling of “favor” or approval in our cognitive activity, our consciousness of this idleness is the feeling of disfavor and disapproval. We feel a cognitive embarrassmentFootnote 7 and shame; we are aware of what the principle of purposiveness requires as the norm for good judgment, namely, that we ought to reflectively consider a representation according to the idea of a systematic unity and hence as something that can be thought under a concept, but we have failed to do so. We are blocked. This discomfort with one’s own intellect makes us averse to reflective judgment.Footnote 8
Kant describes this discomfort with one’s own judging as a kind of “moodiness” in a passage where he discusses someone who does not judge beautiful art according to its purposive form but rather (perhaps as a result of an inability to judge beauty) only through its charm or emotion:
In all beautiful art what is essential consists in the form, which is purposive for observation and judging, where the pleasure is at the same time culture and disposes the spirit to ideas…(and does not consist) in the matter of the sensation (the charm or the emotion) where it is aimed merely at enjoyment, which leaves behind it nothing in the idea, and makes the spirit dull, the object by and by loathsome, and the mind, because it is aware that its disposition is contrapurposive in the judgment of reason, dissatisfied (unzufrieden) with itself and moody. (KU 5:326)
In this passage, Kant contrasts the form of a beautiful work of art and its matter. The form of the beautiful work is what is essential to it, and the pleasure that we take in this form is “at the same time culture” and disposes the spirit to ideas (here Kant has in mind moral ideas). The matter of a beautiful work, in contrast, is what in the artwork affects our senses, its charm or emotional content, and is aimed merely at enjoyment.
The “moody judge” of a work of art who responds just to the charm of the work finds that their spirit is dull and feels dissatisfied with themselves because they are aware that “in the judgment of reason” their disposition is found to be contrapurposive to the proper aims of judgment. While the judger feels pleasure in the sensible charm of the representation, they are aware that this is not a pleasure of pure reflection and that their cognitive activity runs “counter” to the principle of purposiveness since they are not reflectively engaging with the form of the representation. Feeling that their cognitive state is wrong, they feel dissatisfied and moody, and, I suggest, cognitive shame. As Kant notes later in the section quoted above, like someone on a downward spiral, a person who is diverted by charm away from arts that are combined with ideas “increasingly needs (such diversions) the more one uses them to banish the mind’s dissatisfaction with itself, by which one makes oneself ever more useless and dissatisfied with oneself” (KU 5:326).
This is an apt description of the mentality of someone who is not able to make right what they feel to be wrong about themselves and about which they are ashamed. In the case where one is frustrated with one’s own intellectual activity, one seeks cover in whatever means is available to them in their already low state, just as someone who is ashamed by a wrong action tries to cover for it with excuses and rationalizations.
3. What Has Gone Wrong?
What has gone wrong? Why might someone fail to engage in the pure form of reflection that is required by the transcendental principle of judgment? What kind of representation, in virtue of its form,Footnote 9 could it be that “contains the ground for determining the state of representations to their opposite (hindering them or getting rid of them)”? Here, the literature on the possibility of judgments of ugliness can help to hone in on the source of the cognitive “wrongness” that makes us feel displeasure in our cognitive activity.Footnote 10 Scholars such as Paul Guyer have argued that for Kant a pure judgment of ugliness is not possible. Guyer reminds us that for Kant a judgment of taste is due to the pleasure we feel when the imagination and the understanding are in a state of harmonious free play “so far as they agree with each other as is requisite for a cognition in general” (KU 5:218). He argues that, if, as some scholars have suggested, a judgment of ugliness is what occurs when our mental faculties are in a state of disharmony, this would imply that judgments of ugliness cannot be cognitive judgments at all. But surely some cognition is required in order to judge that an object is ugly. Guyer writes, “we cannot be conscious of an object without some form of harmony between the understanding and the imagination…A state of sheer disharmony is not consistent with the transcendental unity of apperception…” (Guyer, Reference Guyer2005, 147).
As Guyer notes, it would seem that for Kant either the cognitive faculties are set up harmoniously for cognition in general, in which case there would be pleasure in this cognitive state, or the faculties are not set up for cognition, in which case there is no cognition at all and hence no opportunity for “displeasure in cognition.” However, in contrast to Guyer, I think it is possible for there to be some form of cognition which nevertheless is a source of displeasure. In her paper in reply to Guyer, Alix Cohen notes that it is possible for the cognitive faculties to be in a state of cognitive harmony, and thus for there to be “cognition in general,” but for there still to be an aesthetic “disharmony” of the faculties, what she calls a “foul play” between the faculties and hence a feeling of displeasure that can allow for the possibility of pure ugliness (Cohen, Reference Cohen2013, 203–205). I find Cohen’s distinction between the harmony of the faculties for cognition and the play of the faculties for the feeling of pleasure in cognition to be useful for my purpose, which is to show what goes wrong when, even though our faculties are in harmony and there is cognition, we still feel cognitively stuck and experience cognitive displeasure. In my view, rather than Cohen’s “foul play,” or aesthetic “disharmony,” I think it is possible for the cognitive faculties to be in what I would call a state of “non-play” or inertia, but to still be in a state of harmony. Whether or not such “non-play” of the faculties is constitutive of a judgment of ugliness, it is my view that this state of “non-play” can at least account for the possibility of a cognitive displeasure.Footnote 11
As I noted above, the “faculties” at issue here are the faculty of the understanding and the faculty of the imagination. The faculty of the understanding is the faculty of concepts, the universal rules that we use in identifying some kind of object. The faculty of the imagination is that by which we produce a possible form in intuition, an “image” or schema of a concept through which the concept can be applied to given sensible representations. Now, the activity of the imagination in producing a schema can either be determined by a concept of the understanding, in which case it is what Kant calls “reproductive,” or it can be free and imaginatively come up with schemas on its own, without a concept. In this case the imagination has what Kant calls a “free lawfulness”; it is, Kant writes, “productive and self-active (as the authoress of voluntary forms of possible intuitions)” (KU 5:240). In the first case in which the understanding makes a cognitive judgment of an object by applying a concept to it through a schema, the judgment is a determinative judgment. In the latter case, where the imagination is free and productive, it is a reflective judgment of beauty in which the imagination and the understanding are in a state of free play. Rather than being determined by the concept of the understanding, in a judgment of beauty, the roles are reversed and “the understanding is in the service of the imagination and not vice versa” (KU 5:242). As I understand it, in this case, the productive imagination prompts the understanding with possible forms of intuition by getting it to come up with concepts that can accommodate these forms. The imagination thus “stretches” the understanding by making it consider possible borderline cases and counterexamples.Footnote 12
Kant writes that this productive activity of the imagination, while free, is still lawful; it is “lawful without a law.” The imagination has “a subjective correspondence…to the understanding without an objective one” (KU 5:241). The imagination is lawful in its subjective correspondence with the understanding since it has as its goal some form of conceptualization. With its free schematizing activity, it is still constrained by the general form of the understanding, which is to be the faculty of universal rules. However, in a judgment of taste it is the imagination that prompts reflection on the concepts of given representations to see them in a different light, perhaps shifting their boundaries, or fine-tuning their content, by coming up with “possible intuitions” (KU 5:240) to which they can be compared. The play of the imagination and the understanding is thus a form of cognitive engagement. The imagination suggests schemas to the understanding, providing hypothetical possibilities, and the understanding responds by expanding its concepts or further delimiting them. To use a classic example, the imagination can make the suggestion to consider Juliet as the sun. And the understanding can then expand its concept of Juliet (and also the sun) and see, yes, she is the sun. She is the center of Romeo’s world.
In this way, the free play of the imagination and the understanding involves a kind of intelligence. It is the intelligence in which the free choice of a form of intuition, or a schema, by the imagination and the response of the understanding prompt the purposive cognitive activity of our intellect within the lawful constraints of a systematic form such that the mind is animated. The pleasure that we feel in a pure judgment of taste is thus the pleasure in the approval and appreciation of this pure form of intellectual activity which we recognize is in accord with the principle of our power of judgment.
Now that we can see how the pleasure in a pure judgment of taste is due not only to the “harmony” of the faculties which is necessary for all cognition, but, more specifically, to the “free play” of the faculties, we can see how one can feel displeasure when the faculties, while in harmony, are, however, not in a state of free play. This state of “non-play” occurs when the faculties are in a harmonious state; they agree with one another for cognition in general and the imagination is free, but it is free only in a negative sense in which nothing restrains its capacity to come up with forms of possible intuitions. It is not, however, free in a positive sense—it lacks what can be called the material conditions that would enable it to come up with “forms of possible intuitions” (5:240). It has no material (here understood not as sensible material but formal cognitive material) that can inspire its activity.Footnote 13 Hence, the imagination is inert. Although it is in harmony with the understanding, the space between the imagination and the understanding is too narrow.
Rather than coming up on its own with a particular form of intuition as a possibility for the understanding to consider, in the case of a displeasurable judgment of taste, what the imagination can provide to the understanding are only very generalized and generic forms of an object. Without the proposal of some particular intuition by the imagination that inspires reflection, there is nothing to engage the mental faculties with each other and, instead, they remain inert and lifeless.Footnote 14 For example, if the image that the imagination comes up with is that of a smiley face—a circle with two dots, or the outline of a flower with five symmetrical petals, this does not give the understanding any opportunity to stretch its concepts in the service of the imagination. There is not much material for interpretation and reflection. The schema is too close to the concept.
In these cases, we feel displeasure in judging because there is no space for reflection on possible forms of intuition. What the imagination presents to the understanding is already very general, and the understanding is not given enough material for play. There is thus a failure of the imagination to produce an intuition that can engage the cognitive faculties in a “free and indeterminately purposive entertainment” of its powers (KU 5:243). As a result, we feel cognitively dead and, furthermore, displeasure and shame with regard to our inability to engage in what we are aware ought to be lively cognitive activity, but for which we have no inspiration.Footnote 15 This feeling of displeasure (Unlust) is itself the resistance to intellectual activity, for which one is aware that one lacks the resources to engage in cognitive play.
This experience of cognitive disappointment can be found in someone who says, without explanation, that they “do not like” a work of art, but what they are really expressing is their discomfort with their inability to follow what they suppose is some aesthetic norm in judging, which makes them resist engaging with the work further. What they mean is that they do not even know how to go about appreciating the work. For Kant, I am arguing, the dismissal of that with which we cannot cognitively engage—this anti-intellectualism—has its source in the inability of our productive imagination to produce those forms that enable us to engage in cognitive play and make pure judgments of reflection. Another palpable example of such cognitive disappointment is the experience of not getting a joke, such as a joke that plays with a double meaning of a word. Here, one lacks the imaginative resources to see the nuance in the punch line. What is displeasureable is not that the punch line itself clashes disharmoniously with our cognitive powers, but rather our consciousness of our cognitive failure to meet the standard of reflection required for the appreciation of the joke. In such situations, one is disinclined to participate in such society.
4. Lack of Community
In the previous sections, I argued that the feeling of displeasure in judgments of taste is due to the consciousness of the failure of our faculties to engage in the free play required for reflective judgment. But this displeasure is not simply the consciousness of a cognitive failure. It is also the feeling of being isolated from the rest of humanity.
As we have seen, for Kant, the pleasure in judgments of taste is due to the consciousness that, by virtue of their harmonious play, our cognitive faculties are acting as they ought to. But this consciousness of the rightness of our cognitive activity is also a consciousness of its universal validity. As Hannah Gisnborg has argued, for Kant, when the mind is in such a state of free play we take it to be exemplary of human cognition in general (Ginsborg, Reference Ginsborg2014, 46). Moreover, as exemplary, we take our mental state to be universally communicable, and we take pleasure in this communicability. The pleasure in a judgment of taste is therefore not simply in the free play of the faculties and the rightness of our mental activity. It is also at the same time the consciousness of the communicability of this subjective pleasure. To judge something to be beautiful is thus to be conscious that one is a member of the community of rational human beings who, one expects, will also take pleasure in this object and hence that one’s feeling of pleasure will be shared.
Displeasure in reflective judgment is therefore the consciousness of the incommunicability of one’s mental state and hence the feeling of isolation. It is the consciousness that not only are my cognitive faculties idle and that I am not judging as a rational human being ought to judge, but also that such cognitive idleness isolates me from the community of rational judgers. Although, as I discussed above, I am aware that my cognitive state, which, as harmonious, satisfies the conditions of cognition in general, and is in this sense universal and communicable with regard to the determinative judgments of objects of experience, I am also aware that my inability to engage in the free play of the faculties constitutes a failure with regard to a cognitive norm of the communicability of taste. I am thus unable to communicate my inner subjective state. I lack what Kant calls the “capacity to communicate one’s inmost self universally,” and I am cut off from “the sociability that is appropriate to humankind” (5:356). I am unable to communicate my inmost self, not because it is too idiosyncratic, but rather because I lack the imaginative resources to express what is universal about what is internal to my particular self.Footnote 16 Or perhaps I consider nothing in my idle cognition to be worthy of the reflection of others or even myself.
In such cases, failure to judge according to the principle of reflective judgment is a source of displeasure and embarrassment. As a moody judger of taste, I might try to cover for my inability to judge the purposive form of an object and my failure to communicate my inmost self by superficial chatter. However, similar to the feeling of not getting a joke, I will be aware that I am alienated from a shared humanity. Again, the displeasure of judgment is not the consciousness of making a false judgment. Rather it is the feeling that something is wrong with my judging; I am not judging along with others as I ought to. If one feels shut out from the world of ideas and unable to access them, one will, like the moody judger of taste, turn away from and disparage the intellectual world.
5. Remedy: Aesthetic Ideas
I have argued that for Kant the feeling of displeasure in a judgment is the consciousness of the wrongness of our idle cognitive activity. Just as the pleasure in the play of the activity of our cognitive faculties “strengthens and reproduces itself” (KU 5:222) as it maintains its state, displeasure in judging leaves us averse to such cognitive activity and constitutes a disvaluing of the intellect as the source of this cognitive discontent.
As I mentioned in the introduction, the person who feels displeasure in taste is the opposite of the brazen fanatic who believes that they have knowledge of supersensible objects. Rather than being super-intellectual, they are unreflective and sub-intellectual. They are unable to come up with imaginative possibilities that would enable the play of the cognitive faculties. (These cognitive types can also be two sides of the same coin. The person who cannot reflect can easily become the fanatic, who claims to have knowledge of the supersensible, but is unwilling or unable to do the hard reflective work required of philosophy, what Kant describes as the “herculean labor of self-knowledge from below upwards” (VT 8:390).)
Students of Kant’s critical philosophy know his remedy for fanaticism. A critique of pure reason can prevent fanaticism by demonstrating the boundary of sensibility within which legitimate knowledge is possible (see Howard, Reference Howard2022). What, then, is Kant’s remedy for someone who cannot judge according to the principle of judgment and go beyond what is empirically given by coming up with their own possible intuitions that enable them to have their own ideas and reflective standpoint (even if these cannot be objects of cognition)? As we have seen, for Kant, the source of displeasure and aversion to judging is the failure of the productive imagination to come up with forms of possible intuition that will inspire cognitive play. I suggest that just as the critical philosophy corrects for hyper-intellectualism and fanaticism by showing that any empirical knowledge of an idea is really an illusion, it can correct for sub-intellectualism by showing how it is possible to “open up” (KU 5:35) the mind so that it can gain access to the intellectual world of ideas.
Just as the arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason are meant to deprive speculative reason of its “pretentions to extravagant insights” and deny knowledge of God, freedom, and immortality, in order to make room for faith in these ideas (Bxxx), so does Kant argue in the CJ that it is possible, through art, to enable sensibility to imagine forms of possible intuition and to come up with ideas, namely, aesthetic ideas. Without such ideas, our reflective judgment will remain idle and disinclined to engage in the activity of the intellect.
An aesthetic idea is what is expressed in a work of art through the talent of genius. Kant contrasts aesthetic ideas with ideas of reason. An idea of reason is “a concept to which no intuition (representation of the imagination) can be adequate” (KU 5:314). Because we can never have an empirical intuition of an idea of reason it cannot be an object of possible experience and we cannot have cognition of it. An aesthetic idea, by contrast, “is a representation of the imagination that occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e. concept to be adequate to it…” (KU 5:314). An aesthetic idea, therefore, starts from below, from within the boundaries of sensibility, with sensible material from the imagination. Kant writes that by adding a representation to a concept, the imagination “enlarge(s) the concept itself in an unbounded way” (KU 5:315). Through such imaginative activity, I suggest, we can gain access to the world of the intellect and to ideas. Moreover, because aesthetic ideas are aesthetic, and hence are a source of a subjective feeling of pleasure in our cognitive activity, we are aware of these ideas as our own. And, furthermore, our pleasure in our cognitive activity as we reflect on an aesthetic idea makes us appreciate and value our own intellect.
I will make my point by means of an example. For Kant, it is in poetry that the faculty of aesthetic ideas fully reveals itself. Emily Dickenson’s poem, “Because I Could not Stop for Death,” begins:
Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The Carriage held but just Ourselves -
And Immortality. (Dickenson, Reference Dickenson2005)
Here, our concept of death, literally, the end of life, is enlarged by the image of a suitor. We now have an image of death as something “kindly,” something I might meet while out on a busy walk. Here, the aesthetic idea enlarges the concept in an “unbounded way.” And this is not just because there are potentially endless associations that can arise from the image, but also because it is an image rather than a concept and hence itself has no clear, bounded, analysis.
According to Kant, aesthetic ideas animate the mind by “opening up for it the prospect of an immeasurable field of related representations” (KU 5:315). Kant describes this animation as one in which the mental powers are set in motion, “i.e. into a play that is self-maintaining and even strengthens the powers to that end” (KU 5:314). For the person who has a limited imagination and who is stuck, for example, someone who can only think of death as the cessation of life, while also being aware that there is a norm of judgment that requires systematic reflection on what is given in experience in order to arrive at concepts for them, aesthetic ideas are what can enable their imagination to be productive rather than simply reproductive, and hence to engage in the activity of reflection as is required by the principle of judgment. This person can now see death in a different light. What is needed for the imagination to be free in this way is not simply a lack of restraint. This would just give it negative freedom. It must also be provided with the material that would enable it to enlarge its concepts.
Kant writes.
The mental powers, then, whose union (in a certain relation) constitute genius, are imagination and the understanding. Only in the use of the imagination for cognition, the imagination is under the constraint of the understanding…in an aesthetic respect, however, the imagination is free to provide, beyond that concord with the concept, unsought extensive undeveloped material for the understanding, of which the latter took no regard in its concept, but which it applies, not so much objectively, for cognition, as subjectively, for the animation of the cognitive powers, and thus also indirectly to cognitions. (KU 5:316–317)
In the case of the person who is blocked and unable to use their imagination to come up with possible forms of intuition, they can be inspired by the aesthetic ideas produced by genius. These works of art provide the cognitive material conditions—“extensive undeveloped material”—that inspire the productive use of the imagination in the judger of the work of art. By being presented with an aesthetic idea, the components of which one already has experience, one gains access to material for use in one’s own imaginative activity. The genius of “Because I Could not Stop for Death…” is that it provokes in me my own associations and thereby feeds my imagination. And indeed, this is the role of genius, not only to come up with original ideas but to come up with ideas that, while new, are also “models” (KU 5:308) that can be communicated to others, since it gives them material imaginatively to produce their own intuitions. In the example above, although the productivity of my imagination has as its necessary condition Dickenson’s poem, what I imagine when reading it is freely produced by me.Footnote 17 What distinguishes an aesthetic idea produced by a genius from a joke that I do not get is that the work of genius is able to communicate to the humanity in me and inspire my own imagination, rather than exclude me.Footnote 18
On Kant’s account, aesthetic ideas are a remedy for anti-intellectualism. Indeed, Kant was well aware that reflective judgment needs cultivation and material support. He writes, “there is no use of our powers at all, however free it might be and even of reason…which if every subject always had to begin from the raw predisposition of his own nature would not fall into mistaken attempts” (KU 5:283). The way to cultivate pure reflective judgment, the faculty of taste, is by means of examples. Kant writes,
Among all the faculties and talents, taste is precisely the one which, because its judgment is not determinable by means of concepts and precepts, is most in need of the examples of what in the progress of culture has longest enjoyed approval if it is not quickly to fall back into an uncivilized (ungeschlacht) state and sink back into the crudity of first attempts. (KU 5:284)
This passage occurs in the context of Kant’s discussion of the autonomy of taste. In order to make an autonomous judgment of taste it is not enough that one’s taste not be influenced by others, as in Kant’s example of “the young poet” “who does not let himself be dissuaded from his conviction that his poem is beautiful” (KU 5:282). Such a stubborn young poet is like the close-minded anti-intellectual who, facing criticism, prides themselves on their intellectual isolation and considers this to constitute their freedom. Instead, Kant argues, a judgment of taste has to be made in accordance with the principle of taste, which is what makes it possible that the pleasure in the judgment is universally communicable. The examples that Kant has in mind in the passage above can be taken to be those works of genius, whose capacity to communicate a shared humanity is what ensures their enduring approval.Footnote 19
It is important to note that learning how to make a judgement of taste by making use of the work of others does not mean that one’s judgment is not autonomous. The imaginative intuitions that one produces are still one’s own since they are produced by one’s own spontaneous imaginative activity. Even if a poem I read is written by someone else, my consciousness of the aesthetic idea that it expresses—my idea of this idea—is an object of my own reflection. And certainly, the pleasure in the reflection is my own. No one else can maintain the play of my cognitive faculties, but me.
Kant writes,
The imagination (as a productive cognitive faculty) is, namely, very powerful in creating, as it were, another nature, out of the material which the real one gives it. We entertain ourselves with it when experience seems too mundane to us…In this we feel our freedom from the law of association…in accordance with which material can certainly be lent to us by nature, but the later can be transformed by us into something entirely different, namely into that which steps beyond nature. (KU 5:314)
Aesthetic ideas that inspire the productive imagination enable us to appreciate our own intellect as what makes our lives more entertaining and give us a sense of freedom from the laws of the empirical world. By enabling our imagination to transform the material given to it by nature into something beyond nature, aesthetic ideas open up to us the world of ideas as objects for our own reflection and thus “dispose the spirit to (moral) ideas.” (KU 5:326). It is by virtue of having such ideas that we can go beyond the bounds of the empirical world and entertain possibilities for shaping it anew according to moral and scientific ideas.Footnote 20
6. Conclusion
In this paper, I have provided an account of Kant’s treatment of anti-intellectualism in the CJ. Kant argues that there is an a priori principle of the power of judgment and that when we judge according to this principle, we feel pleasure in the free play of our cognitive faculties and their universal communicability. But when we fail to judge according to this principle, we feel cognitive displeasure in the inadequacy of our cognitive faculties. This displeasure is also a feeling of isolation and thus is a social effect of the failure to reflect. The remedy for this failure is exposure to the aesthetic ideas contained in works of art. By engaging with aesthetic ideas, our own imagination becomes productive and can engage in the cognitive play required by the principle of the power of judgment. By engaging in such play, we feel pleasure in our own intellectual activity and value it.
One result of this discussion is insight into how Kant’s CJ contributes to his entire intellectualist project. Much commentary on aesthetic ideas focuses on the relationship between aesthetic ideas and moral ideas (e.g., Chignell, Reference Chignell2007; Geiger, Reference Geiger2021; Matherne, Reference Matherne2013). On my view, however, the role of aesthetic ideas is to open up space for our cognitive faculties to go beyond the bounds of what is sensibly given, to engage in cognitive play, and to be self-conscious of their value. Moreover, by reflecting on aesthetic ideas we are aware that we are in charge of our own intellectual activity and equally as capable of pure reflection as others and thus feel at home in the community of other reflective beings, what Kant calls that aspect of humanity that is a “universal feeling of participation” (KU 5:355).
In conclusion, Kant can help us to see that anti-intellectualism has its source in an environment in which the conditions for a productive imagination are absent. To the extent that there is less support for the arts, there will be less opportunity for people to exercise their productive imagination and, I suspect, more anti-intellectual sentiment.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Jochen Bojanowski, Sidney Dement, Robert Guay, Jordan Pasco, Helga Varden, Rachel Zukert, two anonymous reviewers, and the participants at the Kant and the Isms Conference for their invaluable comments.
Melissa Zinkin is a Professor of Philosophy at Binghamton University. Her research areas are in Kant and the Philosophy of Art.
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