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Kant classifies Fine Art into three categories, namely, speech, the formative arts, and the play of the sensations. This division has its origins in Hylomorphism and Kantian Critical Philosophy: we can see distinctions between both the appetites and the understanding /reason and we also encounter sensations and speech animated by the power of the imagination. We can also see the operation of key distinctions between thought and intuition, form and matter, sensibility and understanding/judgement. Kant takes up the contribution symbolism makes to works of genius, claiming that it indirectly involves the presentation of a concept. Symbolic representation occurred for Freud in the dream work where the manifest sensible content of the images on the dream screen relate to something instinctual. The dream, in other words is a compromise formation, a vicissitude of an instinct, in which the imagination and the emotions play key roles. The latent content, then, is the arché or principle guiding the production of the dream images. Symbolism as Paul Ricoeur points out occurs in three realms, the cosmic, the oneiric (dreams and myths) and the reflective in which “symbols are objects of interpretation because they are intended to refer to some underlying latent content which must be revealed (Aletheia). Kant is exploring this last realm in his discussion of sublime inscriptions on Temple statues but also in his discussion of the significance of Transcendental Analogy. This raises the possibility of the establishment of a school of hermeneutics based on Hylomorphic ad Critical Philosophy which acknowledges the roles of the emotions and the power of the imagination but also sees no dialectical opposition between these powers and the powers of understanding and reason. Such an approach would seek to reflect upon the sole of symbolic reasoning in myth and the arts in general but especially in relation to those ideas of reason for which there can be no sensible representation, e.g. The Supreme Being. Freud is an interesting figure in this debate because he has claimed that some aspects of religion are related to fantasy and “illusion”. The question that needs to be investigated here is whether this line of thinking applies to the Transcendental Analogy which sees a “symbolic” relation between the love of a father for his children and the love of God for humanity. For Freud our childish fears and wishes are fundamentally illusory, fundamentally pathological. We need that is to dare to use our rationality in relation to certain forms of anthropomorphising of the gods (a Kantian position).,
The Will, Kant argues, has formative power, a very different power to that of the motive mechanical power of machines. In the case of a circle drawn in the sand, this phenomenon is a consequence of the operation of the power of the will which we are unlikely to confuse with the forces of the wind or the water on a beach if we are confronted with such a circle. This circle is a product of human psuché, to be distinguished from a footprint of an animal in the sand. Kants Philosophical Psychology/Anthropology was largely rejected by the Psychologists of the 19th and 20th centuries, who sought to construct stimulus response theories related either to sensations or behaviour. Formative powers and processes presuppose teleological judgement which assumes a form of life-like causality analogous to the powers and processes operating in human action. The life flowing through the blade of grass or animal could never as such be observed but is rather in a sense assumed to exist in virtue of the category of living forms these living phenomena belong to. We are here in the territory of the discussion of the role of final causes in contexts of explanation/justification: one of the four causes forming Aristotle’s Theory of Change. Kant insists that the opposing assumption, namely that living phenomena be explained in terms of blind mechanistic efficient causes may well allow us to conduct empirical investigations based on observations and simple experimentation alone, but such investigations would not be able to provide us with the totality of conditions for these phenomena, would not, that is, provides us with the way in which the principle of the whole governs the parts of these phenomena. Nevertheless, Kant does not subscribe to the view that such a state of affairs proves the objective existence of the causality of final causes (Critique of Judgement Part II Page 41). We must, rather, Kant argues, use the idea of final cause subjectively presupposing both a life-principle and a first principle/idea of God (the intellectual cause of the world) conceived of in terms of a being whose reality we infer within the bounds of reason. With these presuppositions we might then be able to acquire insight into the essence of a blade of grass and other more complex forms of psuché. Principles relate to the possibility of things when they are conceptual and are in accord with the categories.
Kant has the following to say concerning the faculty of human understanding:
“Human understanding cannot avoid the necessity of drawing a distinction between the possibility and the actuality of things. The reason for this lies in our own selves and the nature of our cognitive faculties. For were it not that two entirely heterogeneous factors, understanding for conceptions and sensuous intuitions for the corresponding objects, are required for the exercise of these faculties, there would be no such distinction between the possible and the actual. This means that if our understanding were intuitive, it would have no objects but such as are actual. Conceptions which are merely directed toward the possibility of an object, and sensuous intuitions, which give us something and do not yet thereby let us cognise it as an object, would both cease to exist. Now the whole distinction which we draw between the merely possible rests upon the fact that possibility signifies the position of the representation of a thing in its immediate self-existence apart from this conception. Accordingly, the distinction of possible from actual things is one that is merely valid subjectively for human understanding. It arises from the fact that even if something does not exist, we may yet always give it a place in our thoughts, or if there is something of which we have no conception we may nevertheless imagine it as given.” (Page 56 )
This passage is interesting from many different points of view. It is the ground for the explanations we have been given for a categorical distinction between is-statements and ought-statements. When, for example human actions are viewed conceptually in a moral context giving rise to moral judgements, the idea of freedom and the categorical imperative are importantly involved. Perhaps it is important to note in the context of this discussion that one of the primary functions of language is to speak or write about objects in their absence, e.g. action outcomes that are intended but have yet to actualise. The later work of Wittgenstein explored the multifarious functions of language-games embedded in a matrix of forms of life and instincts. Aristotle, we know, linked the actualisation process to judgements about possibilities or to use his term, potentialities.
Paul Ricoeur claimed that we human forms of psuche engage in a world in which our desires are not transparent, indeed may even be intentionally disguised. This fact together with the fact that the way in which we use language too, may be a consequence of being bewitched by this language, makes it obvious that our actions sometimes require interpretation if we are to fully understand them. Here too, we can see a relation of manifest content to latent content similar to that which we encounter in Freudian psychoanalytic interpretations. The inscription of the statue located at the Temple of Isis suggests that, if God is identified with Logos or language, the name of God can only hint at what is designated by this idea of reason. Kant, urges us, in the name of Critical Philosophy to refrain from giving the noumenal entity of this metaphysical being any concrete characteristics simply because we have no intuitional contact with this form of Being.
Joseph Campbell, too urges us in the context of his criticisms of the universal pretensions of mythology to refrain from universalising the concrete characterisations of local gods and deities. He points to the manifold historical conflicts that have arisen when one community claims that their divinity is the only true divinity. For Campbell, of course it is the power of the imagination that needs to generate the universal mythology he is in search of—a mythology for our time, as he calls it. But whilst he seriously considers the Cinematic production of Star Wars as an aesthetic candidate presenting a modernist mythology, it is clear that this production may not meet the rational criteria of a number of scientific or artistic disciplines. Science fiction, of course can explore a number of human concerns meaningfully and the production “Star Wars” is about exploring the frontiers of Space, but this for the Enlightenment Philosopher Kant and the Ancient Greeks is not the final frontier. The final frontier for a human Being must be something requiring a number of self-reflective powers that are important for culture-creation. Our Philosophical journey, then, is an inner journey which views inner phenomena as related to a latent substrate capable of causing awe and wonder in us. We do not need to construct an elaborate space vehicle for such a journey: techné is replaced by the epistemé used by rational animals capable of discourse searching, not for experiences, but the conditions of all experience. Space and Time as a priori conditions are a part of the totality of conditions of experience but in knowledge contexts it is the categories of the understanding and the principles of reason which play decisive roles in our various knowledge related activities.
In this realm of the sciences, we encounter various theories, which analyse and synthesise concepts, propositions and arguments into a whole with logical characteristics. Philosophy of course is an important contributor to the Canon of the Sciences because of its critical view of materialistic and dualistic assumptions. Both Kant and Aristotle shared a concern for rejecting these types of assumptions which divide an object up into parts that cannot be reconciled and subsumed under first principles. Kant, we know, was particularly concerned to synthesise the respective positions of empiricism and rationalism in his Critical Philosophy which was inspired by both Hume and Rousseau. The Ancients view of Metaphysics, Logic, Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics of Aristotle were also significant influences in Kants later Critical Philosophy.
Kant both sought to differentiate phenomena and principles from different regions of Being/Reality that Historically had been confused with one another or neglected for different reasons. He was more cautious about the status of Aristotle’s final causes in his explanatory references to cause and reason, believing, for example, that we cannot know for certain the reach of mechanical/efficient explanations because of the limitation of the scope of our faculties of understanding and reason. Kant was clear however that there was a place for teleological explanation in our, so long as we acknowledge the “Subjective” nature of tis kind of explanation/justification:
“We may apply to a thing which we have to estimate as a physical end, that is to an organised being, all the laws of mechanical generation known or yet to be discovered, we may even hope to make good progress in such researches, but we can never get rid of the appeal to a completely different source of generation for the possibility of a product of this kind, namely that of a causality by ends. It is utterly impossible for human reason, or for any finite reason resembling ours, however much it may surpass it in degree to hope to understand the generation of even a blade of grass from mere mechanical powers….it is absolutely impossible for us to obtain any explanation at the hand of nature itself to account for any synthesis displaying finality.” (Pages 66-67)
By “organised beings” Kant means psuché, forms of life, such as a blade of grass, animals and human forms of psuché which Aristotle defined in terms of “rational animal capable of discourse”, but he also continues to insist that the type of judgement we employ as a consequence of our investigations into the essences of such organised beings is a reflective type of judgement rather than the more typical kind of determinant judgement which is typical in the arena of mechanical processes and causes. Reflective judgements contain a priori principles and must therefore fall into the domain of what Kant refers to as “The Method of Critical Investigations”. This method is particularly important in relation to explanations/justifications of psychological phenomena in the realm of the study of human psuché. One Aristotelian principle in this realm recommends that when we divide an organised being into its parts in order to understand the essence of the whole being, those parts must be conceived of in terms of the a priori principle of the whole. This might in fact also be an underlying principle of Kantian Critical Philosophy which tasks reason with perspicuously representing the totality of conditions for phenomena. Amongst the totality of conditions for explanations/justifications pertaining to the human form of psuché will undoubtedly be found reference to the system of organs, limbs and functional parts of the body such as fingers toes, joints etc.
Joseph Campbell, to some extent, embraces Aristotelian Hylomorphism when he claims that the imagination, emotions and perhaps even consciousness itself originate in the conflict of these organs with one another. Perhaps one might elaborate upon this and suggest that Consciousness and feelings such as the feeling of pleasure may also originate from the “harmony” of the organs (including, of course, the brain). Beginning from the apriori idea of the whole of human psuché, given, for example, by Aristotle’s essence specifying definition: rational animal capable of discourse, the method employed in contexts of explanation/justification is that of a judicial tribunal where phenomena are interrogated by a theory composed of categorical judgements. Such an interrogation will take the form of questioning whether such phenomena can be subsumed under apriori laws or principles. Part of this context will contain large scale questions relating to:
“the genesis of that great family of living things” (Page 79)