Kant and the Promise of Rhetoric. Scott R. Stroud
This is Kant’s notion of “hypotyposis,” or the vivid presentation of a concept that ordinarily escapes our ability to understand it empirically. Second, I examine Kant’s account of rhetoric and how it differs from the sorts of art (e.g., poetry) that are said to be able to produce edifying effects. What I argue is that Kant’s reading of rhetoric is not wholly or simply negative; he leaves conceptual room for a positive use of communicative means of interacting with other humans. Third, to exemplify the textual basis for such a recovery of rhetoric in Kant, I argue that the status of fine art isn’t as clearly superior to rhetoric as many read it. In the third Critique Kant even foregrounded reasons to question whether poetry and fine art were ultimately productive of the free play of our mental faculties, thus undercutting a vital part to his reading of art as an experiential symbol of moral importance. The way to save poetry lies in the orientations of those producing and receiving it. If we can recover poetry, why can’t we redeem rhetoric in a similar way? This is the new experiment in which this book engages when trying to reconstruct the sense of educative rhetoric buried in Kant’s various texts.
The Experiential Value of the Beautiful
The experience of the beautiful, or what Kant discusses as the “judgment of taste,” the experiences we have in light of scenes of natural beauty or works of fine art concerns those moments when we are captivated by some object or scene and foreground a disinterested attention that transcends our personal (and specific) interests. There is a pleasure, but not the sort of pleasure that accompanies looking at a new car listed at a bargain price. It is a disinterested pleasure in the mere experience of that object or scene. The experience is also connected with a sense of its universal nature—we expect others to similarly judge this object. This idea of the aesthetic is a vital topic in Kant’s third Critique. There are many specific questions and interpretive challenges associated with understanding what exactly Kant meant with his judgment of taste. Many have analyzed this rich topic before, and it is integral to understanding Kant’s aesthetics.2 Here I sidestep the aesthetic questions that can be posed concerning this work and instead focus on one aspect useful in the quest to understand the place of rhetoric in Kant’s philosophy. One such part is the value that the type of unique, reflective experience signified by the judgment of taste holds in relation to Kant’s moral system. This moral system becomes increasingly prominent in this rereading of Kant on rhetoric, but what one sees in the third Critique is the move to connect the experience of the beautiful closely to the moral qualities of disinterestedness, universality, a certain lack of purposiveness, and necessity. The judgment of taste is a subjective judgment (it concerns an object’s effect on me), yet it is a judgment that comes with the expectation that all similar beings would feel the same reflective universality.
Why might Kant extol the free play of the faculties experienced in the judgment of taste or in the specific experience created by the fine arts? The experience of beauty for Kant is linked to the idea of moral improvement in a variety of ways.3 Here I focus on the experiential ways beauty is linked to morality, since such an experiential aspect is vital in my later attempts to connect rhetorical activity to moral improvement. In section 59 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant describes the role that the beautiful can play in indirectly representing an important aspect of our capacities as rational agents. Giving an alternate account from the analysis in section 29 of the intellectual interest in the beautiful, Kant argues in section 59 that the beautiful can cultivate a subject’s awareness of moral value.4 In addition to all the other effects of the judgment of taste on an individual, this section argues that it serves as a symbol of the beautiful and, as such, aids in the subject’s awareness of the possibility of moral action in the world. Kant begins this section of the third Critique by highlighting the only way our concepts can be shown to be real—through the provision of some sort of intuition of them. In regard to empirical concepts, such intuitions are “examples”; whereas if they are pure concepts of the understanding, they are “schemata” (5:351). Our concept of “cup” is shown to be real through and by those objects we point out with that concept in the physical world. The ideas of reason (such as God, freedom, and human immortality), however, can never be given adequate intuitions in the realm of experience. They are not the kind of objects we see in everyday life. They can be presented, however, in what Kant labels a “hypotyposis [Hypotypose]” (5:351) or a presentation (Darstellung) of a concept as sensible through means other than the giving of a corresponding empirical intuition. In schematic presentation, a corresponding intuition of a concept of the faculty of understanding is given a priori, or before any given experience. The other option for a presentation that goes beyond mere empirical instantiation in intuition (in experience, in other words) is presentation through symbolic means. In this case, the power of judgment provides a rule concerning the form of the reflection between object and concept similar to that of schematization but eschews utilizing the intuition itself as a representative token of the concept (5:351). In this way, a concept of reason can be presented by intuition but not directly in intuition; one does not “see” freedom or one’s moral vocation, but one can experience something analogous to it in one’s reflective experience of a presentation of it through sensible means (such as narrative).
The symbols involved in hypotyposis utilize analogy to exhibit a specific concept that has no corresponding intuition. The power of judgment first applies a concept to the physical object at hand and then applies a rule of reflection concerning that object to the conceptual object that lacks representation. Take for instance the analogy Kant draws between the hand mill and the tyrannical state. The idea of such a state is represented in Kant’s hand mill analogy by drawing on the rule of similar causality. While Kant is not explicit about the content of this analogy, Kirk Pillow finds that Kant is drawing attention to how both the hand mill and the despot mangle anything that is fed to them—in the former, substance, and in the latter, the freedom of human subjects.5 The actual concept is not contained within the presentation, but is merely the rule or symbol for reflection of the subject. The hand mill functions as a symbol for the causality of the despotic state, instantiating reflection concerning the similar operation of each in its respective domain. The symbol serves as a presentation of a concept that has no direct representation, thereby allowing the individual subject to grasp the reality of the concept in question.
Why does Kant claim that the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good in section 59 of his Critique of the Power of Judgment? The experience of the beautiful involves the presentation of several central features of moral experience. It is not identical to moral experience, but it is so similar in its form and operation (its “rule of causality”) that Kant finds it to be a valuable symbol of the moral experience (which seems to lack a pure and clearly identifiable phenomenal representation). Kant even labels the experience of beauty as a type of duty we expect of others, a claim that may cause some misinterpretations unless tempered by his moral philosophy. Kant surely cannot be talking about a duty to experience the beautiful, as he clearly leaves any such duty out of his moral writings (such as the Groundwork). Instead, he posits in later works such as the Metaphysics of Morals that respect for natural and animal beauty is an indirect duty to one’s self. Kant, unlike Friedrich Schiller, does not claim that taste is a necessary and sufficient condition for moral worth; Kant sees the symbolic presentation of beauty as an instrument for the development of rational control over one’s inclinations and the attainment of moral virtue. Kant’s argument in section 59 stems from the fact that the symbol of morality, the beautiful, is experientially available to all humans because their faculties are all similar in arrangement and can be naturally “activated” in free play by beautiful objects. What is demanded of everyone is the inherent claim within a judgment of taste—it demands the assent of all rational subjects sharing the same mental faculties (CJ 5:353).
It is in this judgment of taste (i.e., of the beautiful) that subjects gain a symbolic presentation of their moral vocation as a free being. Kant points out that in this experience, “the mind is at the same time aware of a certain ennoblement and elevation above the mere receptivity for a pleasure from sensible impressions, and also esteems the value of others in accordance with a similar maxim of their power of judgment.” The experience of the beautiful highlights the capacity of the agent to be separate from mere sensibility in terms of pleasure, which Kant links to an agent’s ability to be causally moved by nonsensuous reasons