"Arts, Faculty of"@en . "English, Department of"@en . "DSpace"@en . "UBCV"@en . "Forst, Graham Nicol"@en . "2011-03-31T20:45:56Z"@en . "1970"@en . "Doctor of Philosophy - PhD"@en . "University of British Columbia"@en . "The purpose of this study is to provide philosophical insight into the goals and achievement of the English Romantic poets by illustrating\r\nthe relation between their understanding of the mind as generative of experience and the concepts of human freedom and creativity formally deduced by Kant in his Transcendental Idealism. \r\nPrimarily, this relation is defined in terms of Kant's claim in the Critique of Judgment that the aesthetic function \"mediates between\" or \"reconciles\" the polarized realms of man and nature. But because the Critique of Judgment has been traditionally accepted as a mere afterthought for Kant, the force of this claim has been greatly underestimated. As a consequence, the full extent of the relation between\r\nKantian and Romantic thought has not been appreciated. Therefore, I have introduced this study with a general survey of Kant's \"Critical\" teaching, designed primarily to examine the significance of Kant's claim for the aesthetic function, while at the same time outlining the philosophical background against which my main thesis is to be developed. Special attention is paid here to those aspects of Kant's system which most clearly define the terms of his own break from the dogmatic philosophies\r\nof his eighteenth-century predecessors, and which appear to relate most closely to Romantic thought: the deduction of the Productive Imagination and the consequent refutation of associationism; the necessity to distinguish between Verstand (Understanding) and Vernunft (Reason); the interpretation of man as self-legislating in the moral sphere, and the discussion of the origin and vital function of the sense of beauty and artistic creativity.\r\nIn the second and more important part of this study, much of what is demanded in Kant by the sheer necessity of philosophical thought is shown to be present in English Romantic poetry as achievement and act. First, I demonstrate that the English Romantics were engaged in the same kind of inward-turning quest for certainty and permanence which led Kant to reject the dogmatic rationalism of the Enlightenment in favour of the \"revolutionary\" thesis that criteria of truth, goodness, and beauty are grounded not in \"outward forms,\" but in the forms of human consciousness themselves. Second, I show how this reversal of the terms of naive empiricism leads the Romantics\" into the same dualism of fact and value which emerges from Kant's critical investigation of human reason. Third, I show how the Romantics, like Kant, regarded this dualism as overcome in the aesthetic sphere, through the sensually \"liberating\" agency of beauty in art, and beauty or sublimity in nature.\r\nIn this section my concern is not so much with the actual presence in Romantic literature of Kantian or Kant-like ideas, as with describing how Transcendentalist concepts \"became constitutive\" of Romantic poetry in terms of myth and symbol, and why such ideas were necessary for the \"release\" of poetry from eighteenth-century concepts.\r\nThus, by respecting throughout the difference both in purpose and means between poetry and philosophy, Kant's theories and Romantic practise reveal themselves as complementary rather than antithetic modes of response to the spiritual and intellectual climate they shared."@en . "https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/33157?expand=metadata"@en . "KANT'S \"COPERNICAN REVOLUTION\" IN PHILOSOPHY AND THE ROMANTIC\"REVOLUTION*IN ENGLISH LITERATURE by GRAHAM NICOL FORST B.A., University of B r i t i s h Columbia, 1962 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN THE REQUIREMENTS DOCTOR OF PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF FOR THE DEGREE OF PHILOSOPHY in the.Department of Engli sh We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA September, 1970 In presenting th is thes is in pa r t i a l fu l f i lment o f the requirements for an advanced degree at the Univers i ty of B r i t i s h Columbia, I agree that the L ibrary sha l l make it f r ee l y ava i lab le for reference and study. I fur ther agree that permission for extensive copying of th is thes is for scho lar ly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by h is representat ives. It is understood that copying or pub l i ca t ion of th is thesis fo r f inanc ia l gain sha l l not be allowed without my writ ten permission. Department of The Univers i ty of B r i t i s h Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada Date \u00C2\u00A3?V I, / j?4 S u p e r v i s o r : Dr. V i c t o r Hopwood \"KANT'S 'COPERNICAN REVOLUTION' IN PHILOSOPHY AND THE ROMANTIC 'REVOLUTION' IN ENGLISH LITERATURE\" ABSTRACT The purpose of t h i s study i s to provide p h i l o s o p h i c a l i n s i g h t i n t o the goals and achievement of the E n g l i s h Romantic poets by i l l u s -t r a t i n g the r e l a t i o n between t h e i r understanding o f the mind as generative of experience and the concepts of human freedom and c r e a t i v i t y f o r m a l l y deduced by Kant i n h i s Transcendental Idealism. . P r i m a r i l y , t h i s r e l a t i o n i s defined i n terms o f Kant's c l a i m i n the C r i t i q u e o f Judgment that the a e s t h e t i c f u n c t i o n \"mediates between\" or \" r e c o n c i l e s \" the p o l a r i z e d realms of man and nature. But because the C r i t i q u e o f Judgment has been t r a d i t i o n a l l y accepted as a mere af t e r t h o u g h t f o r Kant, the f o r c e of t h i s c l a i m has been g r e a t l y underestimated. As a consequence, the f u l l extent of the r e l a t i o n be-tween Kantian and Romantic thought has not been ap p r e c i a t e d . T h e r e f o r e , I have introduced t h i s study with a general survey of Kant's \" C r i t i c a l \" t e a c h i n g , designed p r i m a r i l y to examine the s i g n i f i c a n c e o f Kant's c l a i m f o r the a e s t h e t i c f u n c t i o n , while a t the same time o u t l i n i n g the p h i l o s o p h i c a l background a g a i n s t which my main t h e s i s i s to be developed. S p e c i a l a t t e n t i o n i s paid here to those aspects o f Kant's system which most c l e a r l y d e f i n e the terms of h i s own break from the dogmatic p h i l o s -ophies of h i s eighteenth-century predecessors, and which appear to r e l a t e most c l o s e l y to Romantic thought: the deduction of the Productive Imagination and the consequent r e f u t a t i o n of a s s o c i a t i o n i s m ; the i i necessity to d i s t i n g u i s h between Verstand (Understanding) and Vernunft (Reason); the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of man as s e l f - l e g i s l a t i n g in the moral sphere, and the discussion of the o r i g i n and v i t a l function of the sense of beauty and a r t i s t i c c r e a t i v i t y . In the second and more important part of t h i s study, much of what i s demanded in Kant by the sheer necessity of philosophical thought i s shown to be present in English Romantic poetry as achievement and act. F i r s t , I demonstrate that the English Romantics were engaged in the same kind of inward-turning quest f o r certainty and permanence which led Kant to r e j e c t the dogmatic rationalism of the Enlightenment in favour of the \"revolutionary\" thesis that c r i t e r i a of truth, goodness, and beauty are grounded not in \"outward forms,\" but in the forms of human consciousness themselves. Second, I show how th i s reversal of the terms of naive empiricism leads the Romantics\" into the same dualism of f a c t and value which emerges from Kant's c r i t i c a l investigation of human reason. Third, I show how the Romantics, l i k e Kant, regarded t h i s dualism as overcome in the aesthetic sphere, through the sensually \" l i b e r a t i n g \" agency of beauty in a r t , and beauty or sublimity in nature. In t h i s section my concern i s not so much with the actual presence in Romantic l i t e r a t u r e of Kantian or Kant-like ideas, as with describing how Transcendentalist concepts \"became co n s t i t u t i v e \" of Romantic poetry in terms of myth and symbol, and why such ideas were necessary f o r the \"release\" of poetry from eighteenth-century concepts. Thus, by respecting throughout the difference both in purpose and means between poetry and philosophy, Kant's theories and Romantic practise reveal themselves as complementary rather than a n t i t h e t i c modes of response to the s p i r i t u a l and i n t e l l e c t u a l climate they shared. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION . . 1 PART ONE: KANT'S \"COPERNICAN REVOLUTION\" Chapter . I. THE BACKGROUND OF THE REVOLUTION 11 II. THE TRANSFORMATIONAL NATURE OF HUMAN INTELLIGENCE ... 15 The \"Transcendental Aesthetic\" ..... 17 The \"Transcendental Analytic\" 20 The \"Transcendental D i a l e c t i c \" 26 III. REASON IN PRACTISE: KANT'S ETHICAL SYSTEM 33 IV. THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT: ART AS MEDIATOR BETWEEN SENSE AND MORAL IDEAS Beauty as a \"Necessary Condition of Human Being\" . . 40 The \"Four Moments\" of the \"Critique of Aesthetical Judgment\" 43 The Feeling of the Sublime 48 Genius 52 Beauty as a Symbol of the Morally Good 56 PART TWO: KANT'S \"COPERNICAN REVOLUTION\" AND ENGLISH ROMANTICISM V. KANT'S \"TRANSCENDENTAL\" METHOD AND THE QUEST FOR PERMANENCE IN ROMANTIC THOUGHT 62 VI. SENSATIONALISM IN ROMANTIC THOUGHT \"One-Fold Vision\" 71 Beyond Space and Time 83 iv Chapter VII. THE VERSTAND, THE VERNUNFT, AND THE BOUNDS OF INTELLECT IN ROMANTIC THOUGHT 91 The \"False Secondary Power\" 93 The Vernunft and the Status of the Metaphysical Ideas in Romantic Thought 103 VIII. FROM \"PRACTICAL REASON\" TO THE ETHICS OF LOVE 120 IX. THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT AND ROMANTIC POETICS . Function: Art as Mediator Between Man and Nature 139 Effect: \"Liberating the Sensuous\" 149 \".Immediate Pleasure\" 151 Beauty, Sublimity, and the \"Free Play\" of the Faculties 165 Source: The Genesis of A r t i s t i c C r e a t i v i t y LawfulIness Without Law 184 Kant's Einbildungsk'raft and the Romantic \"Imagination\" 192 SELECTED LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED 213 v INTRODUCTION Many eminent c r i t i c s and historians have regarded German Idealism and English Romanticism as presenting similar kinds of responses to the dogmatic rationalism of the Enlightenment. A.C. Bradley, for example, often spoke of these movements as sharing a \"community of s p i r i t , \" ^ and he saw the poetry of Wordsworth as an imaginative expression of the same mind which, in his day, produced in Germany great philosophies. His poetic experience, his i n t u i t i o n s , his single thoughts, even his large views, correspond in a s t r i k i n g way, sometimes in a s t a r t l i n g way, with ideas methodically developed'by Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer.2 Si m i l a r l y , G.A. Borgese described Kant's revolutionary insights as \"the most authoritative signposts on the road to the real synthesis and re-h a b i l i t a t i o n of romanticism,\"3 and Samuel Monk, in his c l a s s i c book on The Sublime, takes Kant's philosophy and the art of the Romantics as \"symptoms of a changed point of view\" and holds that there i s a general s i m i l a r i t y between the point of view of the Critique of Judgment and the Prelude; and that the Prelude d i f f e r s from the Essay on Man in a manner vaguely analogous to the way in which the Critique of Pure Reason d i f f e r s from An_ Essay on Human Understanding.4 ^\"English Poetry and German Philosophy in the Age of Wordsworth,\" in A Miscellany (London, 1931), 107. ^Oxford Lectures on Poetry (London, 1914), 129-30. 3\"Romanticism,\" Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1937). 4Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1960, 5. 1 2 And John Crowe Ransom writes that When we plunge into the f i r s t - r a t e sequence of poets which includes Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, we at once gather the impression that they are purposeful, dedicated, even programmatic, to a degree hardly equalled by another set of individual poets l i v i n g in a single age. They had a common preoccupation with a certain understanding of poetry, and they had got i t partly from the l i t e r a r y c r i t i c s , but more and more i t tended to go back to Kant, or to those c r i t i c s who had assimilated t h e i r own view to Kant's.^ But in spite of the uni v e r s a l i t y of this b e l i e f in an i n t e l l e c t u a l kinship between Kant and the Romantics, or between Transcendental Idealism and Romanticism generally, surprisingly l i t t l e scholarly e f f o r t has been expended in probing into the nature and extent of this r e l a t i o n -ship. Undoubtedly, part of the problem l i e s in the famous o b l i q u i t y of Kant's s t y l e , which makes his ideas available only to the most resolute and patient readers: even Schopenhauer was known to have lamented over Kant's \"symmetrical architectronic amusements.\" Also, the old dispute between Socrates and Ion survives, s p l i t t i n g teachers of philosophy from those of l i t e r a t u r e i n the senseless haggle over who holds the patent on \"Truth.\" And now we have that bete noire of modern education, academic s p e c i a l i z a t i o n , a l l but stopping communication between the various d i s c i p l i n e s in the modern university, causing i t to resemble, in Theodore Roszak's words, \"nothing so much as that highly refined, all-purpose brothel Jean Genet describes in his play The Balcony. The Concrete Universal: Observations on the Understanding of Poetry,\" in Poems and Essays (New York, 1955), 161. c Cited by J.H. Bernard, in the Introduction to his translation of Kant's Critique of Judgment (New York, 1951), xiv. This edition cited hereafter as C_ of_ J_. 7The Dissenting Academy (New York, 1967), 12. 3 But in spite of the narrowly sectarian attitudes which character-ize modern scholarship in the humanities, there i s a great deal to be gained in placing philosophy and l i t e r a t u r e side by side as we seek understanding of the nature of man's response to his environment. For the world of the poet and the philosopher are not of gold and of brass (placed in either order)--or even iron--but of f e r equally valuable and equally comprehensive modes of interpreting the difference between appearance and r e a l i t y ; what has been and i s , and what might be and ought to be; of f i x i n g the l i m i t s of possible insight, or of determining the meaning or f i n a l cause of human existence. As L e s l i e Stephen said; The l o f t i e s t poet and the l o f t i e s t philosopher deal with the same subject-matter, the great problems of the world and human l i f e , though one pres-ents the symbolism and the other unravels the l o g i c a l connection of the abstract conceptions.8 In other words, much of what can be c a l l e d \"true\" of our experience can be cast and communicated in propositions. But these are not the \"truths\" which are communicated through the \"non-discursive forms\" of ar t , forms which express \"things inaccessible to language\" and whose recognition \"broadens our epistemology to the point of including not only the semantics of science, but a serious philosophy of a r t . \" 9 ^Hours in a Library, as cited by John Muirhead, Coleridge as Philosopher \"[London, 1930), 256. Hereafter referred to as Muirhead. 9Suzanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (New York, 1958), 224. Compare Eliseo Vivas: \"If i t i s true that art both discovers and creates informed substance, theories of meaning based on the analysis of signs as these function in ordinary discourse and in the language of science are incapable of doing j u s t i c e to the manner in which the a r t i s t i c symbol reveals that which the a r t i s t has to say ...\" (Creation and Discovery [Chicago, 1955], x v i i i ) . 4 The idea that poetry and philosophy present not opposing but complementary modes of response to experience has special import for the rel a t i o n between Transcendental Idealism and English Romanticism. For while the same forces were at work in both Germany and England, they received a far more conscious direction in Germany, where there was \"an effluence of philosophical genius as unmistakable and almost as profuse as the effluence of imagination here.\" 1 0 But in England, the movement developed i n s t i n c t i v e l y and spontaneously, a circumstance which has no bearing, of course, on the standards of Romantic a r t , but which does require us to look beyond England in order to discover the philosophical foundations of i t s assumptions.^ But at the same time, Romanticism complements the Transcendental philosophy by presenting as achievement and act what i s demanded in the l a t t e r by the necessity of philosophical thought. 1 2 Whereas both Kant I UA.C. Bradley, \"English Poetry and German Philosophy . . . ,\" 109. ^Bradley attributes this situation to \"a c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of the English or Anglo-Saxon mind\": \"When the English mind i s in flood and approaching or reaching i t s high-tide ... i t breaks into poetry; and i t s greatest poetry appears at such times. But i t s most famous philoso-phy does not. Locke and Berkeley and Hume appear when the tide i s on the ebb, or the temperature a t r i f l e subnormal, and when the poetry shows less of creative power and l y r i c a l passion and comes somewhat nearer to prose. . . . The matter, the ideas, of these philosophers do not s t r i k e us as corresponding with those pictures of the world that are painted by our most imaginative poets\" ( i b i d . , 111-12). Less venturous about indulg-ing in such stereotypes, L e s l i e Stephen wrote that \"We are not s u f f i c i e n t l y acquainted with the laws which regulate the appearance of unique genius to say why Kant should not have been an Englishman\" (History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century [New York, 1962], I, 50). As Max Deutschbein says in Das Wesen des Romantischen, \"The German and English Romantics are perfect counterparts: the Germans are primarily th e o r e t i c a l , while the English brought these t h e o r e t i c a l l y established principles to f r u i t i o n in th e i r poetry\" (Cothen, 1921, v i i ; my trans.). Margaret Sherwood makes the same point when she says that \"England, lacking, as usual, a philosophy, had, as usual, a conduct, and the forces 5 and the Romantics were \"mental t r a v e l l e r s , \" inspired partly by Rousseau and partly by the strength of th e i r own convictions to \"deny knowledge\" 13 and \"make room for f a i t h , \" Kant was obliged by the very premises and method of his Transcendental^ 4 philosophy to l i m i t himself to demon-strating the p o s s i b i l i t y of moral, aesthetic and \" r e l i g i o u s \" experiences, while the Romantics c h a r a c t e r i s t i c a l l y probed beyond theory to get at the experience i t s e l f , and to present i t concretely to sense in a system of symbols. But perhaps the most important reason for studying English Romanticism against the background of Transcendental Idealism i s the fact that Kant's C r i t i c a l philosophy places such an extremely strong emphasis on the role of the creative a r t i s t . For in Kant's scheme, the aesthetic dimension, which i s defined by the \"free play\" of Imagination and Understanding, contains prin c i p l e s v a l i d for the realms of both fact and value, or sensuousness and morality; those \"two worlds\" of conscious-ness which became separated in the process of f i x i n g the l i m i t s of becoming apparent in Germany in ideas, conceptions, manifested themselves here in imaginative 1iterature,--al1 the richer, perhaps, because the c r i t i c a l sense halted behind the creative\" (Undercurrents of Influence in English Romantic Poetry [Cambridge, Mass, 1934J, 22). See also the a r t i c l e by D.G. James, \"Kant's Influence on Wordsworth and Coleridge,\" in The Listener, XLIV (August 31, 1950), 311-12. JImmanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York, 1 9 t f ) , 29. Hereafter referred to as C_ of PR. 14 I follow Kant's own d i s t i n c t i o n in my use of the d i s t i n c t i o n between \"Transcendental\" and \"transcendent,\" the former sign i f y i n g that which is a precondition of experience, and the l a t t e r , that which tran-scends experience. See C_ of P_R, 59. (Coleridge also made this d i s t i n c -tion: see below, p. 64). The word \"Transcendental\" has been cap i t a l i z e d throughout, to mark this special use, as has the word \" C r i t i c a l , \" when i t i s used in Kant's sense, as a synonym for Transcendental ( i . e . , as deriving from \"Cr i t i q u e \" ) . 6 discursive knowledge, or, in Romantic terms, of the \" f a l l \" into the aware-ness of Self. And in \"mediating\" between these \"two worlds,\" the aesthetic function emerges in Kant \"not merely as a t h i r d dimension and faculty of the mind, but as i t s center, the medium through which nature becomes susceptible to freedom, necessity to autonomy.\"^ Such, I believe, i s the foundation on which the Romantics, either knowingly or unknowingly, based t h e i r understanding of the material and function of poetry, a foundation which provides Transcendental sanctions f o r a l l but thei r most extreme claims for the power of creative Imagination. Kant's aesthetic i s not commonly regarded as having any exceptional a f f i n i t i e s with Romantic poetics, much less as providing grounds f o r c a l l i n g Kant \"the most radical and ultimate spokesman for poetry that we have had\" (Ransom, op. c i t . , 169). For the most part, this indifference towards the Critique of Judgment i s due to the tendency to regard the work merely as part of Kant's architectonic, or worse, as merely an afterthought f o r Kant; an attitude which does not do f u l l j u s t i c e to the great scope and o r i g i n a l i t y of the work, and which t o t a l l y disregards Kant's own statement that i t s i g n i f i e s the culmination of his \"whole c r i t i c a l endeavour,\" and provides \"a means of combining the two parts of philosophy into a whole\" (C_ of J_, 8, 12). Consequently, the f i r s t part of this study i s given over to a br i e f exegesis of Kant's C r i t i c a l philosophy, directed s p e c i f i c a l l y towards establishing the ^Herbert Marcuse, Eros and C i v i l i z a t i o n (New York, 1961), 159. 7 c e n t r a l i t y of his aesthetic theory. Here, although I am greatly indebted to Norman Kemp Smith's masterly Commentary to Kant's'Critique of Pure Reason'16 i n a v e avoided coming into competition with Kant's many great commentators by selecting only such trends and insights of the three cr i t i q u e s as have a p a r t i c u l a r bearing on Romantic thought. Consequently, Kant's l a s t c r i t i q u e , which contains his aesthetic theory, receives more emphasis than the f i r s t two c r i t i q u e s combined; his moral philosophy is given only a b r i e f summary, and my exegesis of the Critique of Pure Reason centers mainly on Kant's \" p o s i t i v e \" ^ teaching, on his reasons for distinguishing between Verstand and Vernunft, and on his Transcen-dental deduction of the \"Productive Imagination.\"^ Also, although Kant's philosophy breaks with both the Rati o n a l i s t and the Empiricist t r a d i t i o n s , I have focussed on his relationship with 162nd ed., rev. and enlarg., New York, 1962. Hereafter cited as \"Commentary.\" 17|