Aesthetic Ideas, Rationality, and Art in Kant An Interpretation of Aesthetic Ideas---As a Counterpart of Rational Ideas---In Kant's 'Critique of Judgment', by Way of Analysis of Rational Ideas in Theoretical, Practical, and Teleological Employments of Rea

In the dissertation, I argue that the rationality of the aesthetic ideas in Kant's Critique Of Judgment --- a virtually non-existent but surely a natural theme in the scholarship on Kant's aesthetics --- consists in their subjective schematism of the idea of the totality of beauty.;I analyze rational ideas in all four of the branches --- knowledge, morality, teleology, beauty --- of Kant's critical philosophy of reason, as they are discussed in the Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment. I show that reason's reflection generates all of its ideas in all of its realms by following the same logic of metaphysical seeking of absolute completeness, by means of a double striving toward the unconditioned ground and the unconditioned totality of all that is conditioned. Based on this analysis, and the insight that the work of reason is the same in all of reason's realms, I develop an original thesis that aesthetic ideas in Kant are subjective schemata for the realization of the idea of the unconditioned totality of all beauty (critically interpreted as complete subjective harmony of the subject's soul or mind). As such, aesthetic ideas are patterns invented by genius's imagination that generate aesthetic constellations of concepts, images, and affects according to the principle of beauty --- as means to the actualization of totality of beauty. In addition to the systematic strand of the work of reason, which involves a reconstruction of all three Critiques, the interpretation in question is rigorously grounded in Sections 43, 44, 46, and, especially, 49, 51, and 53 of the Critique of Judgment (sections on fine art, genius, aesthetic ideas, and the division of fine arts).;Methodologically, I interpret Kant metaphysically (emphasizing rationality's striving toward absolute unconditioned completeness) rather than epistemologically (emphasizing rationality's structure of transcendental conditions of universal validity). I follow Kant's own commitment to autonomy in each of reason's spheres --- in contrast to the dominant interpretations by Kant's commentators who maintain that aesthetic ideas are either a means to beauty's symbolization of morality or to enhancement of knowledge cognition. And, substantively, I argue that the two essential characteristics of aesthetic ideas that Kant himself states --- that they are a counterpart of rational ideas and that they strive toward the maximum --- are strong proof that the aesthetic ideas are subjective schemata for the realization of the idea of the unconditioned totality of beauty.;The outline of my argument follows the order and content of the chapters in the dissertation. The introduction highlights Kant's dualism of thinking and sensing, the consequent need for a mediating schematism, and the production of ideas generated by reason's metaphysical interest in absolute completeness, as that interest is mediated by reason's critical interest in determining the limits to and employment of the metaphysical interest in each domain (theoretical, practical, aesthetic) according to the nature of each particular domain. The first chapter analyzes psychological, cosmological, and theological ideas of theoretical reason. The second chapter explicates freedom, morality, and the highest good, as the ideas of practical reason. The third chapter discusses teleological ideas of the ground of purposiveness of and final purpose of nature. Finally, the fourth, and main, chapter analyzes the ideas of the ground of beauty, totality of beauty, and the aesthetic ideas --- as ideas of reason concerning the aesthetic. Lastly, the conclusion brings together all of the parts of the dissertation under the result and the thesis of the undertaken interpretation therein --- namely, that aesthetic ideas are subjective schemata for realization of the idea of the totality of beauty.