Kant's Aesthetics, The Concept Of Freedom

This dissertation is concerned that how to realize the harmony of sense and rantion and the freedom that subject get from the harmony through art .Kantian aesthetics is the major object expatiated, Hegel, Schiller and Herbert Marcuse's related thought is discussed as well.The thesis includes two chapters:Chapters 1:The unison of sense and rantion of Kantian aesthetics. Section lanalyzes the relation between sense and rantion of Kantian philosophy.In the Middle Ages,the subject's cognition and conduct should accord with The God's apocalypse and church, it's surrogate in the world,so the subject had no freedom. After the Middle Ages, religion was replaced by reason. Rationalist thouhgt the subject should exert his sense positively and initiatively, guide his cognition with ration,take his action accordding to rational judgement, and find his freedom through ration. After The Renaissance,the Rationalism and the Empiricism ,both rational in a broad sense, had the same trend,and Germany Idealitic Philosophy accentuated the issue of ration and freedom more clearly. Kant,who initiated the Germany Idealistic Philosophy,said in "What is Enlightenment"the Enlightenment awakened people to exert their reason independently, and not defer to the authority and doctrine. The rationalism protested by Kant certainly emancipates people from the oppression and obscurantism of religion,but emphasizing ration too much necessarily induces the opression of sense,so sense is not free and ration isn't free because of it's disharmony with sense either. In Kantin philosophy system, sense and rantion are disharmonious,so Kant harmonized them in his aesthetics. The second section analyzes the free play between undersdanding and imagination in the progress of aethetical judgement.In kantian epistemology,udersdanding regulates perception and imagination,so perceptual metal must be stipulated by concept of undersdanding in a certain way. Such regulation makes both sides unfree.But in the progress of aesthetical judgement,on one side, undersdanding doesn't regulate imagination with definite concept,so imagination can function freely,on the other side, undersdanding still regulating aesthetical judgement to some extent,imagination doesn't eliminate undersdanding and dominate aesthetical judgement independently,so aesthetical judgement has universality and inevitability as scientific judgement though without the function of definite concept. In Kantian ethnics,sensual desire and morality are opposing,and subject is required to unconditionally obey morality and opress sensual desire,so feels anguished and unfree. But accordding to the definition of loftiness of Kantian aesthetics ,the feeling of loftiness transfers from pain to delight. At first, faculty of perception frustrated or sensual existence threatened, subject felt painful,then morality is excitated to overcome all the difficulties and make subject feel comfortable.It's patent that sensual desire and morality are harmonious here.The fourth section analyzes the harmony of noumenon and phenomenon through art.The noumenon of morality and the phenomenon dominated by concept of cause and result and sensual desire are not related in Kantian philosophy system,and subject has to exist in the splitted world .Though Kant tried to relate these two sides with the concept "The Highest Good" ,but such relation is depedent on belief,so is not practical. In his aesthetics, Kant harmonized those two sides in another way with "Concept of beauty" "genius" and proposition"beauty is symbol of morality",bringing the noumenon present in the phenomenon.The series of harmonization of sense and ration of Kantian aesthetics all accentuate ration,and the intention of the harmonization is making beauty a transition leading subject from sensual desire to morality. Reckoning ration the origin of human's real freedom ,he did not focus in the harmony of sense and ration, but still reavealed a direction of exploration for the successors.Chapter 2: Schiller,Hegel and Herbert Marcuse's inheritance and development of Kantian aesthetics. Section 1 analyzes Schiller's inheritance of Kantian aesthetics.Accordding to Schiller's thought, subject has sense drive and form drive simultaneously which respectively represents subject's sensual and rational aspect, active and passive aspect.Those two are always in conflict,and only the third drive, play drive can harmonize them.The object of play drive is live image,a kind of aesthetical phenomenon,which is composed of perceptual metal and rational form, the visualization of subject's freedom and harmony. Section 2 analyzes Hegel's inheritance and development of Kantian aesthetics .Hegel thinked "Beauty was the perceptual manifestation of idea."His philosophy analyzes the progress of Idea's self-cognization,in another word,it's transition from reason to perceptual existence then back to reason,and the beauty of art is the most harmonious stage of perception and Idea.Both having inherited Kantian thought, Schiller and Hegel treated beauty and art a trasition between sense and ration,and took reason the final origin of subject's freedom,so it's dominant of the harmony.Their development of Kantian thought lies in tranfering the Subjective Idealism of Kantian aesthetics to Objective Idealism,and reckoning the union of sense and snsibility objective. Schiller's aesthetics is between Subjective Idealism and Objective Idealism,while Hegel finished the trasition with his Objective Idealism.The third section dissertates the modification of Kantian aesthetics by Herbert Marcuse.Germany Idealistic Aesthetics united sense and ration on condition that ration is dominant,which distinctly exhibits the feature of rationalism age.In the post-industry age,critical reason degenerates into scentifical reason, and the scientific way of thinking becomes the only justified way. Prevalent in the society(including social economic and politic system), scentifical reason penetrats every aspect of every individual's life and brings them totally to be enslaved to rational order so become a passive gear of the rational system and totally lose initiative, creativity and completeness.Herbert Marcuse required the emphsis of sense,and the realization of subject's freedom through the difference between sense and reality. Sense called by Marcuse is not the one destructive in Freud's sense,but something conforming to morality and harmonious with production of material,so what he required is some new sense harmonizing sense and ration.Freud thinks there is no real union of sense and ration,while have inherited the thought of Kant, Marcuse considered art can realize the harmony and the harmony of art can change the realistic inharmony.The Marcuse's development of predecessors lies in two aspects:the first is analyzing the same issue from another perspective with the development of the times, he insisted the harmony of sense and ration dominated by sense,changing the emphysis of ration of the predecessors;the second is he was more concered with social practice and the reality of aesthetic Utopia. Accordding to Kantian thought ,the harmony of sense and ration is subjective,while Schiller,Hegel reckoned it's objectively present in aesthetic manifestation,but they didn't totally transcend the domain of art and beauty and were not attentative to realistic harmony and freedom, getting immersed in aesthetic Utopia.While always attentative to social system and so on ,Marcuse examined the reality of aesthetic utopia.He doubtted if beauty and art can indepently liberate human,but he couldn't find better way,so finaly came back to the starting point.