Literary and Philosophical Essays: French, German and Italian
Kant · en
But that the pure form should be capable of it, and that there is in
general a pure form for sensuous man, is that, I maintain, which
should be rendered possible by the aesthetic disposition of the
soul. Truth is not a thing which can be received from without like
reality or the visible existence of objects. It is the thinking
force, in his own liberty and activity, which produces it, and it is
just this liberty proper to it, this liberty which we seek in vain
in sensuous man. The sensuous man is already determined physically,
and thenceforth he has no longer his free determinability; he must
necessarily first enter into possession of this lost determinability
before he can exchange the passive against an active determination.
Therefore, in order to recover it, he must either lose the passive
determination that he had, or he should enclose already in Himself
the active determination to which he should pass. If he confined
himself to lose passive determination, he would at the same time
lose with it the possibility of an active determination, because
thought needs a body, and form can only be realised through matter.
He must therefore contain already in himself the active
determination that he may be at once both actively and passively
determined, that is to say, he becomes necessarily aesthetic.
Consequently, by the aesthetic disposition of the soul the proper
activity of reason is already revealed in the sphere of
sensuousness, the power of sense is already broken within its own
boundaries, and the ennobling of physical man carried far enough,
for spiritual man has only to develop himself according to the laws
of liberty. The transition from an aesthetic state to a logical and
moral state (from the beautiful to truth and duty) is then
infinitely more easy than the transition from the physical state to
the aesthetic state (from life pure and blind to form). This
transition man can effectuate alone by his liberty, whilst he has
only to enter into possession of himself not to give it himself; but
to separate the elements of his nature, and not to enlarge it.
Having attained to the aesthetic disposition, man will give to his
judgments and to his actions a universal value as soon as he desires
it This passage from brute nature to beauty, in which an entirely
new faculty would awaken in him, nature would render easier, and his
will has no power over a disposition which, we know, itself gives
birth to the will. To bring the aesthetic man to profound views, to
elevated sentiments, he requires nothing more than important
occasions; to obtain the same thing from the sensuous man, his
nature must at first be changed. To make of the former a hero, a
sage, it is often only necessary to meet with a sublime situation,
which exercises upon the faculty of the will the more immediate
action; for the second, it must first be transplanted under another
sky.