TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Introduction
II. Definitions
III. Why Rethink Affinity?
IV. Nishida and the Unity of Experience
V. Affinity, Sensibility and Expression
VI. Conclusion
This is the first of five installments, and contains section I.
I. Introduction
While the philosophy of Immanuel Kant deals nowhere explicitly with the concept of creativity, nevertheless he emphasizes its pervasive influence on our cognition throughout his writings. Indeed, in the third Critique, Kant deals in considerable detail with the topics of imagination, artistic expression, and genius, laying the foundations for many of the aesthetic categories that we have inherited since the 18th century. Even more importantly, the first Critique provided the hermeneutic possibility of formulating how sensibility and affinity are related in creative expression.
In this essay, I explore the thought that expressivity has its foundation in the faculty of sensibility. As starting point for my exposition, I depart from a question I raised in an earlier essay[i] but left unanswered there due to space constraints. In the context of discussing the functioning of the imagination, I raised two questions. First, what agency has the imagination if it is wedged in between the faculties of sensibility and understanding? I called this the Question of Imaginative Action. And second, if we succeed in formulating an answer to that question, how does this help in understanding the productive role of the imagination and how does its creative potential unfold? I called this the Question of Generative Capacity.
At this point, a related issue might be raised, namely whether and how the Kantian concept of affinity could be revisited in order to further illuminate the answers to both questions. But what exactly is the issue that requires illumination? If we engage in imagining future courses of action for a given or imaginatively posed problem, then representations produced in the course of the reasoning process must have a certain affinity among them. But how does one conceptualize this type of affinity, given the fact that Kant himself is not too forthcoming about it? One can conceive that the demand for affinity among mental representations is reasonable, but this intuition is not very informative if left undeveloped.
In the earlier essay I mentioned above, I argued that the faculty of the imagination is intimately engaged in a free play around a given notion, differentiating its contents into multiple alternatives and variations. Heuristic thought utilizes these variations in conceiving new or counterfactual options and/or alternative futures. They are expressions of facts or perspectives that were formerly imperceptible, hidden or only allusively present. I hold that the coherence and/or value of such scenarios depends on an extended form of Kantian affinity.
This coupling of affinity and expressivity might seem a curious starting point, but my reading of the notion of affinity extends the scope of the original notion, fulling taking advantage of the interpretive possibilities that Kant alludes to in his work but left open for further development.
My approach to the notion of expressivity also coincides with a seismic shift in reading Kant: namely, the shift towards what Robert Hanna calls the sensibility first approach to Kant’s theoretical and practical philosophy,[ii] and also towards my own earlier efforts in this direction,[iii] by combining a broadly Kantian account of cognition with the extensive literature on artistic creation and design processes. This seismic shift also coincides with a commitment to what Hanna has called Kantian non-conceptualism.[iv]
NOTES
[i] O. Paans , “The Expanse of Thought: Kantian Imagination, Différance, and Creativity,”Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy 4 (2019): 85-98, available online at URL = https://www.cckp.space/single-post/2019/06/17/cskp4-2019-the-expanse-of-thought-kantian-imagination-différance-and-creativity.
[ii] See, e.g., R. Hanna “Sensibility First: How to Interpret Kant’s Theoretical and Practical Philosophy,” Estudos Kantianos 9 (2021): forthcoming, available online in preview HERE.
[iii] See O. Paans, “The Imaginative Spectrum: Kantian Imagination and Non-Conceptual/Conceptual Interactions,” Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy 5 (2020): 95–115, available online at URL = <https://www.cckp.space/single-post/2020/06/15/CSKP5-2020-The-Imaginative-Spectrum-Kantian-Imagination-and-Non-ConceptualConceptual-Interactions>.
[iv] See, e.g., R. Hanna, “Kant and Nonconceptual Content,” European Journal of Philosophy 13 (2005): 247-290; R. Hanna, “Kantian Non-Conceptualism,” Philosophical Studies 137 (2008): 41-64; R. Hanna, “Beyond the Myth of the Myth: A Kantian Theory of Non-Conceptual Content,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 19 (2011): 321–396; R. Hanna, Cognition, Content, and the A Priori: A Study in the Philosophy of Mind and Knowledge (THE RATIONAL HUMAN CONDITION, Vol. 5) (New York: Nova Science, 2018), esp. chs. 2-3, available online in preview HERE; R. Hanna, “The Essential Non-Conceptuality of the Imagination,” Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy 5 (2020): 53-72, available online at URL = <https://www.cckp.space/single-post/2020/06/15/CSKP5-2020-The-Essential-Non-Conceptuality-of-the-Imagination>; and O. Paans, “Opening Up Towards the Non-Conceptual: From Kantian Judgment to Creative Oscillation,” Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy 5 (2020): 116-131, available online at URL = <https://www.cckp.space/single-post/2020/06/15/cskp5-2020-opening-up-towards-the-non-conceptual-from-kantian-judgment-to-creative-oscill>.
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