1. The freedom of the imagination: a puzzle

For Kant, what distinguishes judgements of beauty from judgements of agreeableness is that the pleasure that grounds the former is a pleasure in our state of mind and its universal communicability as we reflect on the form of an object. We think that any judging subject ought to feel as we do in the face of beauty. Kant repeatedly characterizes the state of mind that grounds a judgement of beauty as a feeling of the ‘free play’ (sometimes simply the ‘play’) of the faculties of imagination and understanding (CJ, 5: 217, 222, 228, 238). He further characterizes this free play in terms of ‘the animation of both faculties (the imagination and the understanding) to an activity that is indeterminate but yet, through the stimulus of the given representation, in unison’ and as a ‘facilitated play of both powers of the mind (imagination and understanding), enlivened through mutual agreement’ (CJ, 5: 219).

Kant contrasts the free relation of the faculties in the experience of beauty to the constrained relation of the faculties in cognition. In cognition, ‘the agreement of the two powers of the mind is lawful, under the constraint of determinate concepts’ (CJ, 5: 296, emphasis in the original). In particular, ‘the imagination is under the constraint of the understanding and is subject to being adequate to its concept’ (CJ, 5: 316–17). But Kant repeatedly emphasizes that in the experience of beauty the imagination is free, although in such a way that its activity nevertheless accords with the ‘lawfulness’ of the understanding (CJ, 5: 240–1, 287, 297). At one point, he describes the imagination itself as ‘at play’ in the apprehension of the object (CJ, 5: 244). And in another, he writes that the ‘imagination is as it were at play in the observation of the shape’ of a beautiful object (CJ, 5: 230).

But what does it mean for the imagination to be at play (or as it were at play) in the apprehension of an object? This question becomes especially pressing if we turn to Kant’s discussion in the General Remark. After emphasizing that the freedom of the imagination in a judgement of taste must be the freedom of the productive, rather than reproductive, imagination, Kant acknowledges that ‘in the apprehension of a given object of the senses’ the imagination ‘is of course bound to a determinate form of this object and to this extent has no free play (as in invention)’ (CJ, 5: 240). On the one hand, this should strike us as obvious. Judgements of beauty are made in response to objects that we perceive; we are given these objects, we do not make them.Footnote ⁸ But, on the other hand, this claim gives rise to a puzzle. How can the imagination be free in the experience of natural beauty if it is bound to the determinate form of the object it apprehends?

Before I turn to my own solution to this puzzle, according to which the free play of the faculties can be understood in terms of the freedom of attention, I want to consider two main lines of interpretation that are specifically focused on the freedom of the imagination.Footnote ⁹ As I see it, an adequate interpretation of the free play of the faculties should be able to explain the sense in which the imagination is simultaneously (1) free and self-active in the experience of beauty and (2) bound to the given form of the object. As these constraints can seem to pull us in opposite directions, it is not surprising that the some of the main interpretations of the freedom of the imagination have been able to accommodate one of these only at the expense of the other.

2. The freedom of the imagination as the freedom of attention

We can best explain the free play of the faculties in the experience of natural beauty in terms of the freedom of attention.Footnote ¹⁸ In aesthetic reflection on the form of an object, the judging subject actively attends to the object, but attention is not guided by any particular cognitive interest in the object, as it would be in object recognition or logical reflection in order to form a concept. Instead, the subject is free to attend to further details of the object’s form than those she would need to attend to for cognitive purposes and is free to relate these details to each other in a manner that is different from the way she would for conceptual purposes, as contributing to the particular form of the object, rather than to the common features it shares with others.

Although it is the judging subject who directs her attention, the details to which she attends and the way that she attends to them can be said to express interests that are internal to the faculties. The imagination has an interest in the manifoldness of an object’s form, while the understanding has an interest in the unity, regularity and symmetry of forms. Beautiful objects are those whose forms combine the kind of rich detail that can sustain the imagination in its synthesis of the manifold with the regularity of form that is a general requirement of the understanding.

To develop this interpretation, it will help to begin with a quick look at Kant’s more general account of attention. In the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, which contains Kant’s most extended treatment of attention, he defines attention as ‘the faculty of apprehending given representations’ (Anth, 7: 138). Attention plays a fundamental role in cognition, because it is through attention that we bring representations to consciousness. Kant, following Leibniz, holds that most of our sensible representations are obscure, that is, they are below the level of consciousness (Anth, 7: 135). We can indirectly conclude that we have these representations because they are parts of that which we perceive. For example, if I perceive someone’s face from a distance, Kant thinks I can conclude that I represent the parts of the face, even if I cannot clearly make them out. He suggests that at any given moment, we are only conscious of a small subset of the representations that are available to us. We become conscious of representations through attention (along with abstraction): ‘the endeavor to become conscious of one’s representations is either the paying attention to (attentio) or the turning away from an idea of which I am conscious (abstractio) (Anth, 7: 131). Although Kant distinguishes attention and abstraction, he elsewhere notes that these two operations go hand in hand: ‘I cannot attend to a representation without abstracting from the other [representations] or making them obscure’ (Anth-Mr, 25: 1239).

Kant further suggests that attention not only brings representations to consciousness, but also is responsible for making perceptual representations more distinct. In the Blomberg Logic – lecture notes from the early 1770s – he claims that ‘we achieve distinctness in intuition through more attention per synthesin’ (Log-Bl, 24: 42). A clear representation is one of which we are conscious, while distinctness is a matter of our consciousness of the partial representations that make up that representation, e.g. I can have a clear but indistinct representation of someone’s face, as in Kant’s example above from the Anthropology. This representation becomes distinct when I can make out the partial representations that belong to this representation (eyes, nose, mouth, etc.). We thus make intuitions more distinct through attention, that is, selecting further aspects of an object on which to focus in order to incorporate (synthesize) these into our perceptual representation of the object. By contrast, we achieve more distinctness in conceptual representations through analysis (Log-Bl, 24: 42).

Recall that in cognition the imagination is ‘under the constraint of the understanding and is subject to being adequate to its concept’ (CJ, 5: 316–17). One of the ways we can understand this constraint is in terms of how perceptual attention is guided by cognitive interest (that is, by the goals of object recognition or concept formation). When we recognize and hence determine objects under concepts (and not just perceptually discriminate and track particulars), we do so by recognizing general properties.Footnote ¹⁹ The imagination selects for synthesis those representations from the available manifold that serve as identifying marks of the object.Footnote ²⁰ Most of the time this kind of identification is quick and momentary. Attention only selects a few features of the object for perceptual recognition. Of course, when recognition is difficult or we lack specific concepts, we must attend carefully to an object in order to determine what it is. But even in this case, our conceptual repertoire will guide our attention to the object, as we search for identifying and distinguishing marks. Here we see why attention and abstraction go together: to attend to certain aspects of the object, I must abstract from others.Footnote ²¹ If I am trying to classify the tree before me, I might attend carefully to the shape of one of its leaves but abstract from the particular pattern of striations on the leaf.

The joint operations of attention and abstraction are also involved in aesthetic reflection on the form of an object, but what we attend to (and abstract from) is different in this case (cf. Zinkin Reference Zinkin2012). To begin, it is not geared toward object recognition or concept formation. Indeed, as Paul Guyer (Reference Guyer and Kukla2006) argues, in most experiences of beauty, we already have a concept of the object we find beautiful and this concept figures in our mental state. We know that the object is a shell, an insect or a flower (to borrow some of Kant’s standard examples of beautiful objects). We also have various concepts of the parts and properties of these objects. As I see it, these concepts figure in our awareness of the unity of our actions as we attend to the parts of the object and relate them together. It is precisely this awareness that allows us to offer descriptions to other judging subjects of how they should attend to an object we find beautiful.

However, and central to my interpretation, the overarching goal of aesthetic attention, as it were, is to appreciate the particular interrelation of the parts of an object in forming an aesthetic whole, which involves a different way of attending to the parts of an object and their interrelation. By ‘aesthetic whole’ I have in mind something like Rachel Zuckert’s whole formalism, according to which ‘the beautiful object is … (represented as) unified and individuated not as an exemplar of a kind, or under a conceptual description, but only as the subject (currently) find its properties reciprocally to contrast and complement one another’ (Reference Zuckert2006, 261; see also Gorodeisky Reference Gorodeisky2011: 426). Strictly speaking, the unified images of objects that the imagination produces in perception, where it is guided by concepts of the understanding, are also aesthetic wholes. We can nevertheless distinguish between the way that we relate the parts of an object to each other conceptually in object recognition versus the way that we can relate the parts of an object together independently of any concepts under which the object falls.

To appreciate this difference, consider Kant’s example of the botanist, who ‘pays no attention’ to her concept of the purpose of a flower (i.e. the reproductive role it plays in the life cycle of the plant), when she appreciates it aesthetically (CJ, 5: 229). In recognizing the flower as a flower (e.g. a lily), the botanist must attend to the spatial arrangement and number of its parts (e.g. pistils, stamen, petals, sepal, etc.). If the botanist were to produce a scientific illustration or diagram of the flower, she would produce an image that draws attention to these parts and their interrelation. This aesthetic whole is geared toward logical comprehension. Compare this to the way that she might attend to the delicate curl of the lily’s petals or the pattern of its multiple bright freckles when she appreciates it aesthetically. Consider, too, the kind of image she might draw if she were trying to capture the unique features of this particular flower (rather than trying to convey general and identifying information). This image would not violate or contradict the one she produces for logical purposes, but it is one that is distinctively aesthetic, reflecting the unique features of this object.

As I see it, central to appreciating an object as an aesthetic whole in this latter sense is attention to the details of the object’s form that go beyond what is required for conceptual recognition.Footnote ²² In aesthetic reflection, the subject is free to attend to these details of the object, thus making her perception of the object more distinct through attention.

Kant suggests something along these lines in his discussion of aesthetic ideas, in which he distinguishes the cognitive versus the free aesthetic use of the imagination as follows:

As this passage indicates, Kant conceives of the freedom of the imagination as providing ‘extensive undeveloped material’ that goes beyond what belongs to the concept. In the context of aesthetic ideas, this includes the many rich associations we might have with an object that go beyond what is contained in the concept of it. But we can extend this to perception, where the ‘undeveloped material’ that the imagination provides consists in further details of an object’s form, details which are made available through increased attention as the imagination synthesizes the manifold of intuition. And, in the case of aesthetic reflection, we do not attend to these further details with the aim of forming a more a specific concept, but simply to relish the way they contribute to the aesthetic unity of the object.

3. An objection: is the imagination really free?

I have characterized the freedom of the imagination in terms of the freedom to attend to details of an object’s form that go beyond those required for object recognition and to attend to their holistic interrelation in forming an aesthetic unity. One might object, however, that the free and active exercise of attention is always guided by the understanding and hence cannot be attributed to the imagination. There are two related reasons for this worry. The first stems from Kant’s remark in the first Critique that the synthesis of apprehension that the imagination exercises in perception is ‘one and the same spontaneity’ as that which is exercised by the understanding in intellectual synthesis (B162n.). This suggests that the freedom of the imagination is not distinct from that of the understanding. Second, Kant distinguishes between involuntary and voluntary attention and often aligns the latter with the understanding. Let us briefly review this distinction in order to more precisely state the objection.

For Kant, acts that happen involuntarily belong to sensibility – in this case we are affected by objects and are thus passive – while acts that happen voluntarily depend on the higher faculty of cognition, through which we affect ourselves in being ‘the author of [our] representations’ (L-Met, 28: 237–9). Because involuntary attention only requires sensibility, Kant allows that animals can exercise this kind of attention even though they lack inner sense (L-Met, 28: 79–80). Humans, of course, exercise attention voluntarily, but as sensible beings our attention can also be involuntary. In the Anthropology, for example, Kant describes the way that the senses can ‘force’ a representation on the subject (Anth, 7: 131). When sensations reach a certain intensity (e.g. bright lights or loud noises or speech), our attention (Aufmerksamkeit) is directed away from objects and to our own sense organs (Anth, 7: 157). And in the Critique of the Power of Judgement, Kant describes the way that the charms of an object (i.e. the sensations of colours or tones that we find gratifying) ‘repeatedly attract[] attention, where the mind is passive’ (CJ, 5: 222).

While involuntary attention is a function of sensibility, Kant specifically links the voluntary exercise of attention to the free power of choice and thus to the will insofar as it is determined by reason. In notes from the 1770s, he claims that ‘attention and abstraction, as the two formal capacities of our mind, are only … useful for us, if they are under the free power of choice, so that involuntary attentiveness and abstraction produce much harm’ (Anth-F, 25: 488). There are several passages where Kant links voluntary attention to the understanding. In the B-Deduction, for example, he writes that it is through acts of attention that the faculty of understanding ‘determines the inner sense … to the inner intuition that corresponds’ to its intellectual synthesis (B156–7n.). And in the Jäsche Logic, Kant is reported to have remarked that more difficult cognitive tasks require a ‘higher degree of attention’ and ‘thus a greater application of the power of understanding’ (9: 55).

The worry, then, is that an appeal to attention cannot explain the sense in which the imagination is free and self-active in aesthetic experience if the voluntary exercise of attention in perception is guided by the understanding (or reason). Why, in other words, should we attribute the freedom of attention to the imagination and not just to the understanding?

In response to this objection, I want to emphasize that it is the rational agent who directs her attention in aesthetic experience. Voluntary attention, as Kant notes, is an act of the free power of choice. Of course, this is also true of the voluntary attention we exercise in cognition. The reason we can attribute freedom of attention to the imagination in aesthetic experience is because, even though the understanding is involved in active attention, the agent allows interests that are internal to the faculty of imagination to take priority in her attention to the object.Footnote ²³ Central to this response is the claim that (a) although the imagination is constrained by the understanding in cognition, it is also a distinct faculty from the understanding, which, as such, has its own internal interestsFootnote ²⁴ and (b) in aesthetic reflection we allow these interests to take priority in our perception of objects.Footnote ²⁵

I take it that, for Kant, the interests that are internal to a faculty stem from its function (and the conditions for properly exercising this function). The function of the imagination is to ‘compose[] the manifold of intuition’ while the function of the understanding is to supply ‘the unity of the concept that unifies the representations’ (CJ, 5: 217). In the General Remark, Kant discusses the different perceptual interests that arise from these different functions. The understanding has an interest in the regularity (and especially the symmetry) of an object’s form, because, as he explains, ‘the regularity that leads to the concept of an object is of course the indispensable condition of grasping the object in a single representation and determining the manifold in its form’ (CJ, 5: 242). Kant further explains that the understanding takes pleasure in the regularity of an object’s form, precisely because (a) this regularity is a condition of conceptual determination, (b) the determination of objects by concepts is an end of the understanding and (c) attaining any end is combined with satisfaction (CJ, 5: 242). But while the understanding has an interest in the regularity (especially symmetry) of an object’s form, Kant emphasizes that too much regularity is displeasing to the imagination and he gives several examples – Baroque furniture, the English taste in gardens and the variety of flora in the Sumatran jungle – that suggest that the imagination has an interest in intricacy of detail, irregularity and variety, all of which can be classified under a general interest in the manifoldness of an object’s form (CJ, 5: 242–3).

This interest in manifoldness reflects the function of the imagination, namely, composing the manifold of intuition. In his discussion of the sublime, Kant in fact identifies two actions that the imagination performs to compose the manifold of intuition: apprehension, or the taking-in of the manifold, which ‘can go to infinity’, and comprehension, which requires unifying the manifold together into a single intuition and which is thus subject to limitations in terms of how much detail can be incorporated into one’s image of the object (CJ, 5: 252). The experience of mathematical sublimity occurs when the imagination confronts a magnitude that it cannot comprehend in a single intuition (e.g. when trying to take in the magnitude of the Pyramids all at once). Because the imagination fails in this case to perform its proper function, the subject initially feels displeasure (CJ, 5: 259). The important point for our present purposes is that this discussion shows that the imagination has an interest in maximizing the manifoldness it can incorporate into a single image of an object, which, when satisfied, produces a distinctive pleasure.

Of course, in cognition, the imagination’s interest in producing images is subordinated to the understanding’s interest in conceptualization. As we have already seen, this means that the way attention is guided in synthesis is geared toward concept formation and object recognition (which means we often must abstract from details of an object that might otherwise interest the imagination). In aesthetic reflection, by contrast, we freely explore the rich details of an object’s form and thus the interests of the imagination can be expressed independently of particular cognitive interests.

What I am suggesting in response to the objection, then, is that although active attention is attributable to the rational agent (and involves both the imagination and the understanding), the fact that the agent allows the interests of the imagination to guide her attention in aesthetic reflection means that we can attribute the freedom of attention to the imagination (and not just the understanding). And while the actions of the faculty of imagination in human beings are shaped by the rational capacities of the human being, and thus the way that one synthesizes and composes the manifold of intuition is guided by the understanding and its concepts, the imagination has its own interest in composing rich images, an interest that is sometimes expressed independently of any role this faculty plays in cognition. This is clear, I take it, from Kant’s discussion of the need for taste to temper genius, precisely because the imagination of the artistic genius, left to its own devices, that is, ‘in its lawless freedom’, will produce rich images that are ‘nothing but nonsense’ (CJ, 5: 319).

The claim that we let the interests of the imagination guide attention reflects an important aspect of many encounters with the beauty of nature. We often describe being struck by the beauty of an object. Beautiful objects grab our attention. This would suggest that attention is involuntary, but that is not the full story. Even if our initial attention might be involuntary, aesthetic reflection ultimately involves the voluntary exercise of attention; it is, after all, an exercise of our agency. We actively direct our attention to the details of the object that have caught our eye, but in doing so, we let our imaginations guide our attention to the object as we continue to attend to the details of the object’s form and continue to find further details to incorporate into our perception of the object. This brings us to another important aspect of the experience of beauty. Although we sometimes describe being ‘struck by’ beauty, the appreciation of beauty ultimately requires active and sustained attention to an object.

4. Free play, free harmony and the pleasure of beauty

Thus far, I have argued that we can understand the freedom of the imagination in aesthetic experience in terms of the freedom of attention, where interests that are internal to the imagination take priority in our active attention to an object. But it is important to note that the experience of beauty does not merely involve free play of the imagination, but also a free harmony of the faculties.

In cognition, the imagination harmonizes with the understanding; however, this is a case of constrained or unfree harmony, because the imagination is under the ‘constraint’ of the understanding in providing intuitions for concepts.Footnote ²⁶ In the experience of beauty, by contrast, the imagination is not under the constraint of the understanding. It is, as I have argued, free to perceptually attend to the form of objects, and especially their rich details, independently of any cognitive interest. In this way, the imagination is free from the understanding (even as the understanding serves the imagination as the subject attends to the object). But the imagination can, even in this free state, nevertheless harmonize with the understanding. This happens, I take it, when the particular interrelation of the rich details of an object’s form is not only pleasing to the imagination, but also displays the kind of order and regularity that pleases the understanding, in the sense that it seems to us as if this particular interrelation could only have come about as a product of design. The order and regularity in this case is not that which enables us to recognize the object as an instance of a general kind, but the order and regularity of its unique properties.Footnote ²⁷

Importantly, Kant holds that, for an object to be beautiful, its form cannot violate the understanding’s interests. Just as too much regularity violates the imagination’s interests, too much detail and irregularity (however much it might be pleasing to the imagination) becomes ‘grotesque’ (CJ, 5: 242). As I have already noted, Kant observes in his discussion of fine art that the imagination, left to pursue its own interests entirely independently of the understanding, produces rich images that are nevertheless ‘nothing but nonsense’ (CJ, 5: 319). There is thus a certain tension between the internal interests of the faculties of imagination and understanding. But certain objects are such that our faculties are in harmony when freely attending to their forms – they have enough detail and intricacy to entertain the imagination and enough regularity to still please the understanding. The pleasure of the beautiful is thus the pleasure of the contingent agreement of the faculties, which can only come about when the subject has first set aside any cognitive (or practical) interest in the object and has let her imagination freely explore it.