Does a genius produce his artworks like an apple tree, its apples?

• Virginia Figueiredo ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

     Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

     Brasil

     
• Localización: Con-textos Kantianos: International Journal of Philosophy, ISSN-e 2386-7655, Nº. 15, 2022, págs. 272-286
• Idioma: español
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Resumen

  • This article addresses two issues: the first is the philosopher's fear of a lawless freedom of nature. I quote Deleuze and Guattari, who explain our terror before chaos and the consequent call for help and protection. My hypothesis was that this threat of chaos has affected also the enlightened mind of Kant. Facing the possibility of chaos, the objective Kant did not exactly fear delusion and madness, which affect only fragile subjectivities, but was terrified with the chance that nature does not behave regularly, i.e., that knowledge becomes impossible. The second issue is a harder and more difficult question, and it is related to the modern artist’s (or genius) anguish. It is a technical or an artistical complaint. He/She finds no more given rules to create his/her artworks. Differently from the philosopher, the genius fears the silence and the absolute muteness of nature. I try to deal with these two issues by taking into account Kant’s concept of purposiveness of nature as a regulative principle. I realize that, although this sufficed to calm down the philosopher’s anxiety, it proved to be insufficient to guide the artist. The delusion and madness that threaten the genius are deeper and more extreme than those of the philosopher. In order to treat the artist’s pain, without having to abandon the connection between art and nature, that constitutes one of the most fruitful reading keys of Kant’s Aesthetics, I resort to other ideas I found reading Lacoue-Labarthe and Hannah Arendt.

• Referencias bibliográficas
  • Abrams, M. H. (1971), The mirror and the lamp: romantic theory and the critical tradition, Oxford University Press, USA.
  • Allison, H. (2001). “Fine arts and Genius”, en Kant’s Theory of Taste. A reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Cambridge University...
  • Arendt, H. (2000). “What is freedom?”, en The portable Hannah Arendt, Transl. & ed. P. Baehr, NY: Penguin Books, USA.
  • Beaufret, J. ( 1986?). “Physis et Tekhné”, Aletheia, no 1-2.
  • Benjamin, W. (1999). O conceito de crítica de arte no romantismo alemão, Tradução de Márcio Seligmann-Silva, 2a ed., Iluminuras, Brasil.
  • Chateau, J.-Y. (1981), Avant-propos, en Guillermit, L., Critique de la faculté de juger esthétique, Editions Pédagogie Moderne, France. Crawford,...
  • Danto, A. (1997), After the end of art, Princeton University Press, USA.
  • De Duve, T. (1999), Kant after Duchamp, MIT Press, USA.
  • Deleuze, G. (1963), “L’idée de genèse dans l’esthétique de Kant”, Revue d’Esthétique, no. 3, pp. 131-132.
  • Deleuze, G., Guattari, F. (1994), What is philosophy?, Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, Columbia University Press, USA.
  • Goethe, J. W. (1983), Ecrits sur l’art, Translated by J. M. Schaeffer, Ed. Klincksieck, France.
  • Hölderlin, F., Beaufret, J. (2008), Observações sobre Édipo e Antígona, Translated by Pedro Süssekind, Edited by Roberto Machado, Ed. Jorge...
  • Kant, I. (1998). Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Critique of pure reason, Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, Cambridge University Press,...
  • Kant, I. (2000). Kritik der Urteilskraft (KdU). Critique of the Power of Judgment (CPJ) P. Edited by Guyer, Translated by Matthews, The Cambridge...
  • Kant, I. (2007), “Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht”. “Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim”,...
  • Schiller, F. (1954). On the aesthetic education of man, Translated Reginald Snell, Yale University Press, USA.
  • Suzuki, M. (1998), O gênio romântico, Iluminuras, Brasil.