Kant’s logic of the pathological: Aesthetics and politics

Abstract

The guiding thread of this thematic dossier devoted to ‘Kant’s Logic of the Pathological: Aesthetics and Politics’ invites one to follow and examine a subtle web of imperfect analogies that produce an inter-expressive relationship between an aesthetic community and a political community. The underlying assumption proposes that the creative or poietic Logos of the community encloses and discloses several layers of Pathos, namely ‘the most violent inclination of all,’ that is to say, the passion of freedom. Indeed, paragraph 82 of the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View focuses ‘On the inclination to freedom as a passion,’ describing the ‘natural human being’ (Naturmensch) as inhabitant of a Hobbesian scenario in which the natural concept of justice entails a reciprocal claim to freedom, and hence a state of continuous warfare (AA 7: 268-269). As naturally obscure and primordially common representations, the idea of freedom and the idea of justice (and right) merge originally together, whereas all limitation or constraint or hindrance imposed on freedom constitutes the very essence of injustice. Consequently, Kant endorses the firstness of pathos in the genesis of both personhood and sociability, reconnecting the history of psyche and polis. Now, the aesthetic genius can be considered as the most perfectibility towards truth and beauty, validated by the sensus communis, the judgment of taste, shared by a community. This is why in her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy H. Arendt locates aesthetics at the heart of politics, through the communality and communicability of taste, the togetherness of feeling and judging the beautiful. Unsurprisingly enough, the powers of imagination are nurtured by the intimate commercium that binds together the praxis of inventing, judging and feeling, and thus the formative efficacy of imagination plays a central role in interweaving the texture of political life. Probably the most paradigmatic case of the psycho-political efficacy of pathos resides in the Kantian portrayal of the affect of enthusiasm shared by the spectator of the French Revolution (see Conflict of Faculties, 2nd Part, §. 6; AA 7: 85-86). This disinterested enthusiasm testifies, according to Kant, to a universal moral community that transcends the borders of States and enjoys every progressive movement towards the fulfilment of republicanism and peace.