76 theory
not depend on a metaphysical premise about “self-identical substances,” and
is nonetheless a form of conceptualization that we cannot opt out of when we
are engaged in judgment in action.
As before, to say that Kant’s point is valid for conceptualization but not
for experience would be to miss the way in which experiences and concepts
interpenetrate, the way in which they are synthesized. When I reason (say,
about the boiling water), Iexperiencemy successive thoughts as “mine.” Hume
is right in holding that this is not a sensory quality; there is no “impression”
of “my-ownness”; and Kant would emphasize this just as much as Hume. But
whereas Hume concludes that the self is anillusion, Kant sees that experience
transcends Humean “impressions.” Whereas for Hume, experiences are sheer
psychological surface, for Kant even the simplest perception links us to and
interanimates such deep ideas as the ideas of time, space, causality, and the
self. And this is something that Kant does not just claim, but that he argues
in detail, and with incomparable brilliance. That experience is intrinsicallydeep
is the heart of the Kantian conception. It is not something that was overthrown
by the collapse of Kant’s “synthetic apriori” and the metaphysics Kant tried to
base upon it.
Kant on Aesthetic Experience
I said above that Kant deepens the presentation of his views (and perhaps the
views themselves) in successive books, and, I should add, not only in books.
For example, a wonderful (and sadly neglected) discussion of what is right and
wrong in mysticism may be found scattered in Kant’s writing.^11 But no where
is this more true than inThe Critique of the Power of Judgment.
I cannot, of course, even sketch the complex and rewarding aesthetic the-
ory of thatCritique.Fortunately, that is not my goal. What I want to do is extract
one item from that complex discussion, although to do that I will have to say
a little about the ideas that surround it.^12 The item in question is the fascinating
notion of an “indeterminate concept.” When we experience a work of art, Kant
tells us, we experience it as escaping capture by “determinate concepts,” but
we do perceive it as—not being captured by, but evoking—a kind of concept,
an indeterminate concept, one which is deeply connected with what Kant calls
“the free play of the faculties” (imagination and reason, under the guidance of
the former).
Here I do have to interpret the aesthetic theory I said I wouldn’t discuss,
to the extent of warning my readers against two common misinterpretations.
The first, which I am indebted to Paul Guyer for pointing out, is the assump-
tion that when Kant speaks of “pure” aesthetic experience he is using “pure”
as a value-term. The reverse is the case; the art that Kant values and thinks we
should all value, Guyer has conclusively shown, is mixed, impure. “Pure aes-