Simon Gros

This paper examines Kant’s concept-less schematism in the Critique of Judgment and makes three key claims: 1) concept-less schematism is fully consistent with the schematism presented in the Critique of Pure Reason; 2) concept-less schematism refers to schematism that does not yield an empirical concept as its result; and 3) in light of 1) and 2), the imagination is free to synthesize the given manifold, leading to judgments of taste, without implying that the categories are entirely irrelevant or that these judgments are fully cognitive determinations. While most commentators interpret the freedom of the imagination as its independence from the understanding, it is argued here that this freedom is based on a non-determining use of the pure concepts of the understanding. The freedom of the aesthetic imagination consists in the temporal schematization of the categories without further determination of the empirical concept.

DOWNLOAD: (.pdf)