the depths and shallows of experience 77thetic experience” in Kant’s sense is concerned only with form; but to value,
say, a painting which moves us both on account of its subject matter and its
formal properties, or a novel or a poem, is to respond not only to the “purely
aesthetic” features in this technical sense, but to theinterplayof description,
valuation, and purely formal experience.^13 The second misunderstanding is
that it is only “the concept of beauty” that Kant has in mind by the term
“indeterminate concept.”
To illustrate what I believe Kant actually had in mind, think of a painting
by Vermeer (pick your favorite!). It is not indescribable; a great deal about it
can be described. The notorious Vermeer-forger, Van Meegeren, could un-
doubtedly have given a precise (determinate) description of a great many fea-
tures of this painting or of Vermeer paintings in general. But the description,
although it might teach us a lot, and even add to our appreciation of such a
painting, would not answer the question: “Why is this painting so beautiful?”
Indeed, as Van Meegeren’s rather unpleasant forgeries testify, a painting could
satisfy this “determinate” description andnot be beautiful. What Kant, inter-
estingly, says about the discussion of works of art is not that it is impossible
to describe what it is that strikes us as beautiful (which it would be, if the only
alternatives were either to apply to them determinate concepts of the kind a
Van Meegeren—or an art historian—might offer, or to apply thesingleinde-
terminate concept “beautiful”). What he says is that the aesthetic ideas that are
the content of works of artistic genius evoke so much thought that language
cannot fully attain them or make them intelligible.^14 (He also says that we add
to a determinate concept “a representation of the imagination that belongs to
its presentation, but which...aesthetically enlarges the concept itself in an
unbounded way).^15 In short, certain concepts seek—and manage—less tofinish
a discussion or answer a determinate question, as to further provoke both
thought and imagination and to raise an unbounded number of further ques-
tions. And these are the concepts we need and have to use to talk meaningfully
about art.
What connects the notion of an indeterminate concept with my topic of
experience is that it is precisely in the context of discussing how weperceive
works of art in which Kant invokes this notion. Indeterminate concepts are not
purely intellectual concepts; they require both asensiblesubject matter and the
application of an active imagination. That perception is fused with conceptual
content is something we learned fromThe Critique of Pure Reason; that some
of the perceptions we value most are fused withindeterminate, open-ended,
conceptual content, content in which imagination and reason cooperate under
the leadership of imagination, is something we learn fromThe Critique of the
Power of Judgment.
The notion of an indeterminate concept, understood in this way, naturally
extends to moral notions. If Kant does not use it in the area of morals, it is
because, I think, of a desire to keep morality rigorous and transparent. But