>If pleasure is connected with the mere apprehension of the form of an object of intuition without a relation of this to a concept for a determinate cognition, then the representation is thereby related not to the object, but solely to the subject, and the pleasure can express nothing but its suitability to the cognitive faculties that are in play in the reflecting power of judgment, insofar as they are in play, and thus merely a subjective formal purposiveness of the object. For that apprehension of forms in the imagination can never take place without the reflecting power of judgment, even if unintentionally, at least comparing them to its faculty for relating intuitions to concepts.
>Now if in this comparison the imagination (as the faculty of a priori intuitions) is unintentionally brought into accord with the understanding, as the faculty of concepts, through a given representation and a feeling of pleasure is thereby aroused, then the object must be regarded as purposive for the reflecting power of judgment.
What did he mean by this?
Nice novel there OP.
What do you mean by "mean" OP?
>>7820864
First off, that's not a picture of Kant - it's Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi.
>>7820864
>>7824041
Secondly, you simply won't understand what Kant is trying to say unless you have some grasp of the basic terminology he's using.
What individual words do you understand from the above excerpts? Please describe the meanings you associate with them.
>>7824056
Don't listen to this guy.Kant's terminology is...creative, to say the least. He'll define things just as a way to set-up what follows,while immediately dropping the definition. Other times he will co-opt other peoples language just to abuse the pre-existing meaning.
Basically, don't worry about the meaning, figure out how it all fits together. Any attempt to put meaning to the words is projecting onto an empty form
>>7824041
As far as I can see, the portrait is thought to be either Kant or Jacobi. Do you have any source on who it is?
>>7822491
What?
>>7824939
Kant can be inconsistent with how he uses terms, based on the translations I've read - but it's a huge exaggeration to say that the reader doesn't have to be concerned with terminology; Kant's claims and arguments often rely on very precise concepts, with subtle but far-reaching distinctions from other concepts, and understanding his technicalities is crucial for just the kind of contextual reading you suggest. How is the reader supposed to see how terms, arguments, and meta-arguments all fit together, without starting with a basic grasp of the very words constituting it all? Such a grasp doesn't have to be inflexible - you're right that meanings shouldn't be eisegetically projected onto Kant's terms, but that kind of reading isn't implied by what I said; the reader can instead work with the definitions Kant himself puts forward/adapts, and can consult secondary scholarly sources.
Personally, I found that Kant's density of style required me frequently to break sentences down, thinking for a while about one indivudal term in its richness and intricacy before thinking about the next, then thinking about how these technical meanings relate to one another in order to undrstand the sentence as a whole. If I just dove into the text and more passively waited for Kant's meanings to gradually dawn on me over the course of hundreds of pages, I probably would have undrstood far less, and would have been much more mistaken about what I thought I did understand.
>>7824959
You might be right. The only source I can find now is this one, which I wouldn't be able to read if I had it in front of me: "Das Geistige Deutschland im Bildnis: Das Jahrhundert Goethes," by Paul Ortwin Rave.
As per Gallery Two from this site: http://digilib.bu.edu/nafs/gallery.html
>>7825187
No,no, you are not listening. They are not precise, that is the point. Fichte mocks it, and Hegel does it for the same reason. You do not understand them, because they are not supposed to be understood. The overall point behind this is that people reach for certainty, causing them to follow their reason into illusion.
>>7825407
> They are not precise, that is the point.
> You do not understand them, because they are not supposed to be understood.
What terms specifically do you have in mind?
> The overall point behind this is that people reach for certainty, causing them to follow their reason into illusion.
Are you saying that Kant's general strategy is to intentionally use words vaguely and/or inconsistently, in order to make the reader draw illusory conclusions (even though he attempts to *dispel* illusions in the dialectical sections of his critiques)?
