Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-mnl9s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-27T14:00:41.391Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 12 - Ethically Speaking, or “Freedom” in Context: Poetics, Critical Economy, and Kant’s Invention of the “Category” of the “Possible”

from Part III - Kant and Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2025

Claudia Brodsky
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
Get access

Summary

This chapter explores the basis of the unique status and effectivity that Kant accords literary representation in the Third Critique in comparison to the basis of those actions he defines as “moral” in the Second Critique. Whereas Kant’s descriptions of the singular power of literature focus on the poet’s ability not merely to represent the natural world but to “use nature as schema[ta]” for the representation the “supersensible,” his account of moral action rests on the apparently mundane “ground” of what he calls the “the possible.” Yet the content of that account demonstrates its own remarkable condition: That any subject’s “recognition” of the “capacity” to act in “freedom” from the purely mechanical causality of the natural world can itself only be made apparent in words, a series of specifically verbal actions, all resulting in the expressed “acknowledgement” that such “free,” “moral” action is indeed “possible.” Kant’s new critical economy of our intellectual capacities thus makes of “the possible” a new, radically counterintuitive category dependent not upon a theoretical division between noumenon and phenomenon but upon the real, practical distinction between the verbal and the phenomenal. Finally, the chapter compares Kant’s description of “what the poets do” and his own specifically verbal realization of the critical moral category of the possible with Schleiermacher’s understanding of the “unity” of language with thinking and resulting equation of “critique” with “literary interpretation.”

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Basterra, Gabriela. The Subject of Freedom. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. Reflections. Ed. Demetz, Peter. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1978.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. Selected Writings, 4 vols. Ed. Jennings, M.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996, Vol. 1.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. “Über Sprache überhaupt und die Sprache der Menschen.” In Gesammelte Schriften, Benjamin, Walter. 7 Bde; 14 Teilbde. Hrsg. R. Tiedemann and H. Schweppenhäuser. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989, Bd. 2.1.Google Scholar
Brodsky, Claudia. “Architecture and Architectonics: ‘The Art of Reason’ in Kant’s Critique.” In Canon: Thematic Studies in Architecture, ed. Mäkelä, Taisto. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1986, Vol. 3.Google Scholar
Brodsky, Claudia. “Architecture in the Discourse of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Nietzsche.” In Nietzsche and an “Architecture of Our Minds,” ed. Wohlfarth, Irving and Kostka, Alexandre, The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities. Issues and Debates. Los Angeles: Getty Center, 1999.Google Scholar
Brodsky, Claudia. “Architecture in Kant and Heidegger: The ‘Building’ of Critique and the ‘House of Being.’” In Recht und Frieden in Kant, Claudia Brodsky. 6 Bde. Hrsg. V. Rohden, R. Terra, G. A. de Almeida, and M. Ruffling. Berlin: de Gruyter Verlag, 2008, Vol. 5.Google Scholar
Brodsky, Claudia. The Imposition of Form: Studies in Narrative Representation and Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Burke, Kenneth. “What Are the Signs of What? A Theory of Entitlement.” Anthropological Linguistics 4.6 (1962), 123.Google Scholar
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Political Thought of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. White, R. J.. Oxford: Foxcroft Press, 1936.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. L’écriture et la différence. Paris: Seuil, 1967.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “The Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority.’” In Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, Jacques Derrida. New York: Routledge, 1992.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Problème de la genèse dans la philosophie de Husserl. Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 1990; orig. ENS diplôme thesis, 1953–1954.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Humanities.” In The Structuralist Controversy, ed. Macksey, Richard and Donato, Eugene. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. Werkausgabe. 12 Bde. Hrsg. Wilhelm Weischedel. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974.Google Scholar
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. Hermeneutik und Kritik. Hrsg. Manfred Frank. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977.Google Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge-org.demo.remotlog.com is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×