Time And Aesthetics - Analysis Of Kant's Transcendental Imagination Problem

"Transcendental imagination" is an important concept in Kant's critique philosophy system. It is a kind of perceptual intuition ability, which plays a fundamental role in both fields of cognition and aesthetic. In the field of cognition, the transcendental imagination with synthetic uniting ability will endow the unity of the categories of understanding with a priori form of intuition (time), so that a kind of objectivity, linear, one-dimensional concept of time becomes possible; in the aesthetic field, imagination with active and creative ability mobilizes understanding and plays with it freely, and coordinates with reason actively, forming a non-purpose of the aesthetic art. Because imagination plays a fundamental role in the connection of sense and understanding (even reason), which makes us see the possibility of a priori association of time with aesthetic, this association reveals the aesthetic time. The aesthetic tine will be different with the aforementioned objective, one-dimensional time. In different modes of time, the existence of human being will be revealed in different ways. In the aesthetic time, the person is in the current appreciation and enjoyment, but also carrying with the aesthetic experience of the past, to pursue the aesthetic ideal of the future. Failing to realize the aesthetic ideal notion, in tune affects the current appreciation sentiment. Time goes constantly from past and present to future forward (the pursuit of purposiveness) and constantly back to present (without purpose), showing a circulating mode of time with abundant implication, the existence of human being beyond the traditional concept of time and causal chains of experience will become rich, joyful, and full of possibilities. In this process, transcendental imagination motivating and coordinating with various abilities plays a fundamental role, which can not be separated from the free nature of the imagination itself. After studying on the priori way imagination operates, despite its own operation way gives the imagination synthetic unit, and ability to free play, it is not unconstrained, but in rational constraint, and fit to reason, Kant therefore named it as "a tool of reason". In this way, from the perspective of the transcendental imagination, we can see human's freedom is limited, the human itself has limitation. And it is the constant breakthrough of the limits, and constantly self transcendence, the human being can gain its own infinite and transcendent. So in the aesthetic activities where transcendental imagination is constantly going after ideas of reason, and a key moment appears when human existence will obtain multiple sides of it. The primordial situation transcendental imagination to build makes the whole existence within multiple levels possible.This paper is divided into four main parts, the first part mainly discusses Kant's theory of time in the cognition field, analysis time as perceptual intuition and concept schema has a deep-seated association with transcendental imagination, transcendental imagination is the "self consciousness" of pure time and has basic status as the primordial time. The second part focuses on the analysis of the transcendental imagination in the field of aesthetics, which respectively analyzes the four moments of beauty and the sublime of mathematics and dynamic, where the mode of operation of the transcendental imagination plays a fundamental role. In different fields, transcendental imagination's operations are not completely same, but both have the synthetic unit, which will recognize the problem of time from the cognition field into the aesthetic field. So the third part focuses on the interpretation of the aesthetic time, that is, the relationship between the aesthetic time and the transcendental imagination. Time in multiple modes reveals the multiple modes of human existence. So the fourth part focuses on the analysis of the transcendental imagination of different operation modes reveals the existence of multiple levels, and the multiple levels are integrated into a whole existence in the primordial situation of the presence of transcendental imagination.