The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgement by John H.

Zammito
Review by: Robert Wicks
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 643-644
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
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Book Reviews
"mesostic" on the analogy of "acrostic." Another
poet, Ron Silliman, composed a prose poem (Tant-
ing) employing the Fibonacci series of numbers to
generate recurrent paragraphs. (In the Fibonacci
series each new numberis the sum of the preceding
two, hence: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,etc.). Another instance is
Louis Zukofsky, who in 1974 drew up an outline for
80 Flowers, which would be a collection of line songs
of 5-word lines: "40 words to each poem growing
out of and condensing my previous books," and
would refer to "only those flowers I have actually
seen and whatever botany I can learn in 10 years"
(p. 146). There are many more examples of such "ar-
tifice"-all of them discussed with economy, grace,
and insight by Perloff, and many of them less remote
from the image-word antithesis postulated by her.
However, these examples illustratebest, I think, the
nature of the "artifice" Perloff finds in post 1960s
literature.It involves a play of arbitrarinessthat some
might consider capricious or even whimsical, remi-
niscent of the hermetic games of the Quattrocentoor
even of late Medieval Cabbalism. These word con-
structions are arbitraryin the strong sense that they
are neithergoverned nor generatedby Fregeanrefer-
ential functions, by Austinian communicative func-
tions, nor even by a post-Saussurean"play of opposi-
tions." The compositional frames instantiate an
arbitrarinessdeliberately drained of linguisticality
throughthe frustrationof linguistic and logical form.
One might expect Perloff to argue that poetry has
taken on these propertiesbecause it is now language
itself that is the representandum,and in order to be
represented(on the Aristotelianprincipleof transfor-
mational mimesis cited above) it must be trans-
formed-as it is by these arbitrarynumerological
techniques of composition. However, she maintains
insteadthe view thatpoetrymust take the world as its
representandum.The special contemporarycase in
the United States is that the world is first or imme-
diately known in the mass media: "given our media
culture, the pretence that this mass culture does not
exist, that life goes on as it always has for the sensi-
tive individual-a series of sunsets and love affairs
and social disappointments [all "images" in her
sense]-just will not work. ... If American poets
today are unlikely to write passionate love poems or
odes to skylarks... it is not because people don't fall
in love, ... but because the electronic network that
governs communicationprovides us with the sense
that others-too many others-are feeling the same
way. ... Given such 'events' ... the poet turns, not
surprisingly, to a form of artifice that is bound
to strike certain readers as hermetic and elitist"
(pp. 202-203).
Perloff's survey of post 1960s poetry is betterthan
this ratherlame reiterationof the avant-gardisteargu-
ment. It will inform and instructanyone interestedin
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
643
the subject.However, as a formerstudentof Marshall
McLuhan,I cannot refrainfrom objecting to the sup-
pression of his name and work in this study. (He
appearsonly as an adjective,and as cited by Cage.) It
also needs to be said that the general ethos of the
study is far less up-to-datethan it supposes. Cleanth
Brooks, for example, explained the need for his ver-
sion of "artifice"-irony-by reference to "the
depletion and corruptionof the very language itself,
by advertising and by the mass-produced arts of
radio, the moving picture,and pulp fiction. The mod-
em poet has the task of rehabilitatinga tired and
drained language" ("Irony as a Principle of Struc-
ture," 1949). Brooks was echoing T.S. Eliot's charac-
terizationof the poet's duty to "purifythe dialect of
the tribe";and he, in turn,was echoing Wordsworth's
call for poets to write in "a selection of language
really used by men." Of course, repetitiondoes not
invalidatea principle,and Perloff applies the Roman-
tic principles of defamiliarization and renovation
with verve, grace, and insight to a new and intract-
able, even rebarbative,set of texts and practices.
LEON SURETTE
Departmentof English
University of Western Ontario
ZAMMITO, JOHN H. The Genesis of Kant's Cri-
tique of Judgement.University of Chicago Press,
1992, 479 pp., $65.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.
JohnZammito's engaging explorationof the intellec-
tual history surroundingKant's Critiqueof Judgment
offers a penetratingreadingof the third Critiqueas a
work primarily concerned with the human being's
final destiny. With a masterful command of Kant's
corpus, Zammito carefully distills Kant's various
revisions of the Critique of Judgment into three
phases: (1) Kant's discovery in mid-1787 of a tran-
scendental groundingfor judgments of beauty, (2) a
"cognitive turn" in early 1789, defined by an atten-
tion to reflective judgment,and (3) an "ethicalturn"
in late 1789, markedby an interpretationof aesthetics
and naturalteleology as expressive of an ideal human
fate.
With constant attention to the comprehensive
vision expressed by Kant's three Critiques, Zam-
mito's study includes a discerningphilological anal-
ysis of Kant's "Critiqueof Aesthetic Judgment"in
additionto extensive discussions of both the Panthe-
ism Controversy and the major advances in eigh-
teenth-century biology-episodes which crucially
influenced Kant's "Critique of Teleological Judg-
ment." By interpretingthe third Critique in strong
conjunction with Kant's Anthropology, Zammito
shows how these philosophic and scientific debates,
644
in conjunctionwith issues raisedby Kant's aesthetics
concerning art and morality, nourish Kant's para-
mount concern with the reconciliationbetween natu-
ral necessity and human freedom.
One of the book's predominantclaims is thatKant's
"rivalrywith Herderis the most importantcontextual
background"for the thirdCritique(p. 188). Zammito
portraysthis rivalry as a classic embodiment of the
quarrelbetween "Stormand Stress" and "Enlighten-
ment" philosophies, where Kant fights "to defend
reason against Schwdrmerei [blind emotional pas-
sion]" (p. 12) and to undermineHerder's"dogmatic"
hylozoism. At almost every stage of the third Cri-
tique'sdevelopment,Zammitofinds Kant responding
to Herder.
In one instance, Zammitoclaims that "Kant's hos-
tility to Sturm und Drang is the decisive context in
which one must read ... his whole treatmentof genius"
(p. 137). Against this background,Kant's theory of
genius overflows with irony: his claim that "if an
author'sproductis due to his genius, he himself does
not know how he has come by the ideas for it" (? 46)
becomes a poke at the leadersof "Stormand Stress,"
since it implies that the "leaders"of this new move-
ment are in no position to communicate what they
know. Now Kant may have spiced his theory of
genius with a touch of irony, but there is far more
involved: Kant doubtlessly respected the genius's
capacity to illustratefigurativelythe rationalideas of
God, the soul, creation, hell, and eternity. Since
Kant's more substantialtask was to account for the
creative genius of individualssuch as Dante, Milton,
Shakespeare,and Michelangelo,Zammito's stress on
Kant's antagonism towards Herder, in this setting,
draws his interpretation away from the central
concerns.
In relation to Herder,Zammito characterizesKant
as a defender of reason who attempts to provide
rationalgroundsfor science, morality and aesthetics.
It is worthremembering,though,thatas a representa-
tive of the German Enlightenment, Moses Men-
delssohn's confidence in human reason far outshone
Kant's. Indeed, in orderto appreciateKant's cautious
commitment to Enlightenmentideals, one need only
compare Kant's views to those of his predecessor,
Crusius, a defender of Pietistic views against Wolf-
fian rationalism.Kant echoed Crusius's denial of the
legitimacy of the ontological argumentand also con-
sistently licensed faith in Scriptureby limiting the
scope of humanknowledge. Zammito'sexposition of
Kant's antagonismtowardsHerdertends to overlook
that Kant's religious interests tempered his
enthusiasmfor the Enlightenment.
A most valuable feature of Zammito's study is its
disclosure of Kant's suppressed urge towards meta-
physical speculation:by 1790, Kantappearedto be on
the brink of violating the strictureson metaphysical
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The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism
speculation set by his Critique of Pure Reason. Al-
thoughKant's metaphysicaltendenciesremaindebat-
able, Zammito convincingly shows how Kant's later
thought contained the seeds of GermanIdealism. In
this regard, he highlights Kant's belief in reason's
systematicityand teleological activity, along with the
idea that "artoffers symbolic access to the ultimate"
(p. 288), laterto be advancedby Schelling and Hegel.
Though innovative, Zammito's two interpretative
motifs-(1) the influence of Herder on Kant's Cri-
tique of Judgment and (2) Kant's developing ten-
dency towards metaphysical theorizing in that
Critique-remain difficult to squarewith each other.
To accentuate Kant's ongoing dispute with Herder,
Zammito portraysKant as a defender of reason and
"a good son of the Enlightenment"(p. 139);to unveil
Kant as a buddingmetaphysician,Zammitopresents
Kant as a philosopherwho extols the less rationally-
determinablerealms of art and naturalteleology over
the mathematicalprecision of theoretical reason, as
pathways to what lies beyond possible experience.
The above considerations notwithstanding,Zam-
mito's very readable volume is well worth a close
examination. It not only offers rich historical detail
along with widespread references to the extensive
secondary literatureon Kant, but also provides an
excellent guide to the complicatednetwork of issues
underlyingthe Critique of Judgment.Zammito con-
cludes that "the thirdCritiquefinds its decisive con-
cerns neither in questions of beauty nor in questions
of empiricalbiology, but ratherin the ultimateques-
tions of the place of man in the orderof the world-
his freedom and his destiny" (p. 342). For all those
interestedin how Kant's aesthetics blends into these
broader themes, Zammito's first-rate study will be
most fulfilling.
ROBERT WICKS
Departmentof Philosophy
University of Arizona
MCFEE, GRAHAM. UnderstandingDance. New
York: Routledge, 1992, viii + 344 pp., $23.50
paper.
In this very ambitious volume, intended as an intro-
ductory textbook, Graham McFee proposes to ex-
plain what it is to understanddance and why dance is
valuable. This is one of very few comprehensive
studies of dance by a serious philosopher, and he
explores a wide range of important philosophical
issues, from the identity of works of art in dance to
the nature of critical reasoning. He is motivated, in
part, by "the need for rigor in dance studies" (p. 1),
for which there is a crying need. McFee devotes
much of the book to laying detailed philosophical