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Cinzia Ferrini
Final Draft – SEMINAR “Maritime Culture and Imagination”
Academia Europaea – Sections for Literary and Theatrical Studies, Philosophy, Musicology and Art
History – University of Bergen Sept. 11. 2012

Kant on the Sea: between Imagination and Thought

In the Transcendental deduction of pure concept of understanding (1787) Kant defines imagination
(Einbildungskraft) as the faculty (Vermögen/ facultas) of representing an object (Gegenstand) even
without its presence in sense-intuition (B 151). It is our mental figurative capacity of producing
representations of objects even out of the material presented by real nature. More precisely, Kant
distinguishes between productive and reproductive imagination. The latter subjectively rules, on
empirical grounds, the distinctive reproduction of representations, by selecting the way in which
they combine together. Reproductive imagination typically functions as the active faculty of the
synthesis of the different perceptions contained in every phenomena or appearance which brings the
manifold of intuition into an image, without which we would have merely unruly heaps of
representations (A 121). In the first edition, Kant stressed how senses merely afford us impressions
and in no way put them together. To associate perceptions and to produce images of objects
requires a function of the synthesis of the impressions which is more than their mere receptivity (A
120): it is their unified apprehension in an empirical consciousness, for if I were not conscious of
the representations, they would not exist for me. All empirical consciousness, however, in order to
constitute a collective unity of states of consciousness, must have a necessary relation to the
consciousness of myself, a single self-consciousness or I: for Kant, the Ego is the first and synthetic
principle of our thinking in general. Kant names the representation ‘I’ the ‘transcendental
consciousness’ or the ‘original appeception’ in so far as it precedes all particular experience. The
unity of apperception in relation to the synthesis of the imagination is the understanding (A119). In
the second ed. Kant focuses on the use of the understanding in empirical thought drawing on the
imagination (Laywine 2006, 75-7). The understanding contains categories, pure a priori intellectual
concepts, which in turn contain the necessary unity of the pure transcendental synthesis of the
imagination in regard to all possible appearances. Though there are problems with this line of
argument (Guyer 2010:132 ff.) Kant is supposed to prove that the empirical synthesis of
apprehension must necessarily be in agreement with the transcendental, intellectual synthesis of
apperception, insofar as both, the empirical and the transcendental, are grounded in one and the
same mental processing (spontaneity of thought: B162). Kant makes the example of drawing the
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figure of a house. The house stands before me as a manifold given empirically in space. My
sensible intuition is turned into perception through reproductive imagination which select the way
in which the representations combine together, bringing the manifold into an image which I can
ouline (B162). This is the case of an image that I can exhibit in concreto. At the basis of the
synthesis of the apprehension accompanied by the I, however, there is the structure of the house,
that is, a form, or the empirical general concept of the house, and at the basis of our sensible
intuition of the manifold as the different elements of a house, there must be a rule to determine our
sensible intuition in accordance with that empirical concept. This is a rule of the synthesis of the
imagination with regard to pure, not empirical, shapes in space, which is not restricted to any image
that experience presents to me (A141/B180). Here imagination is productive, not reproductive,
trascendental, not empirical. At the transcendental level only productive imagination can play a role
and explain the possibility of an a priori human cognition of experience (B 152) because, as
determining and not merely reproducing and associating representations, it can determine the form
of sense a priori, in accordance with the categories of the pure understanding. In this case,
imagination no longer produces images for individual intuition through the empirical synthesis of
apprehension, but rather schemas (so as to specify the shape-in-general of a four-footed animal for
the concept of a dog) for universal concepts of the understanding which are not restricted to any
single empirical shape (A 140-1/B179-80). Thus, a schema is a rule of the figurative synthesis of
the imagination for determining our intuition in accordance with a certain concept that exists only in
thought. This synthesis speciosa, proper to the transcendental level, provides the categories, as a
priori intellectual forms, with the possibility of corresponding sensible intuition and therefore
content and significance within the limits of our possible experience. It “is an effect (Wirkung) of
the understanding on sensibility and its first application … to objects of the intuition that is possible
for us. As figurative, it is distinct from the intellectual synthesis without any imagination merely
through the understanding” (B 152). From this quotation we appreciate how the power of
imagination serves as the means through which the understanding at first unifies the manifold of
sense intuition. At the same time, however, no hierarchy is fixed: care is taken to assign to
imagination a distinctive place, to assure its margin of operative autonomy in respect to the
understanding, as a different module of the same spontaneity of thought.
But then we may ask ourselves, what happens when imagination, which for itself has no proper
direction, it is a “blind” function of the soul ((A78/B103), engages its figurative power neither
empirically, associating representations and bringing them into images, nor transcendentally, for the
“understanding (of perceptions)” (A311/B367) on behalf of a priori empirical knowledge, but
rather in a speculative way, on behalf of metaphysical cognitions which strive to attain the
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unconditioned completeness of the ideas of reason independently of all experience? (see Lord
2011: 46 ff.)
Kant introduces pure reason as the highest unity of thinking and the supreme faculty of cognition,
concerned solely with totality in the synthesis of conditions for any given conditioned (A396). He
distinguishes it from the understanding as faculty of rules, calling reason the faculty of the unity of
the rules of understanding under principles (A 302/B 359). At the same time, however, Kant defines
the rational domain as the seat of transcendental semblance (Schein: illusion in Guyer’s tr,): A
298/B355. Later in the text, in the First Chapter of the Second Book of the Transcendental Dialectic
on the paralogisms of pure reason, Kant deals with examples of falsity and dogmatic semblances
which have their ground in the nature of human reason and involve an unavoidable, although not
insoluble, illusion (Illusion: A341/B399). Speaking of the dispute about the doctrine of the soul,
about the nature of our thinking being and its conjunction with the corporeal world, Kant makes the
point that any (true) assertion would properly be grounded on principles and universal concepts of
thinking nature in general, though instead it turns out to be the illgrounded extension of one single
and individual representation, ‘I am’, farther that any possible experience could reach (A405).
At the outset, we saw that Kant defines the representative power of imagination as not intrinsically
dependent upon the empirical presence of the object under consideration. In an interesting and often
neglected passage of the 1781 edition, regarding the paralogism of the soul, Kant refers to products
of imagination which enter the realm of fictions presenting dogmatic semblances and “imagined”
(eingebildete) sciences, which only a severe criticism – which maps and delimits the speculative
cognition of reason – can keep under control. The figurative activity of productive imagination,
potentially independent from any empirical constraint, matches reason’s claims to elevate itself
entirely above all learning from experience. Therefore, only through rigorous criticism can
imagination loose its deceiving speculative effect as the trap into which theoretical reason
necessarily fall, “making us think that we are capable of knowing beyond the limits of possible
experience” (Lord 2011: 46). Moreover, this passage characterizes the “imagined” science (an
allegedly true doctrine of soul) not only in terms of everyone’s presumption to know something
about objects for which no human being has any concept, but also in term of making one’s own
representation into objects (seine eigene Vorstellung zu Gegenstanden macht), as if Kant was
pointing to an individualistic and reified use of the power of imagination replacing empirical
references. What is even more interesting is that Kant employs a maritime metaphor to visualize his
quest for a rigorous criticism to free us from the captivating illusions of ungrounded metaphysical
doctrines.
TEXT 1
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Nothing but the sobriety of a strict but just criticism can liberate us from these dogmatic semblances
[…] and limit all our speculative claims merely to the field of possible experience, not by stale
mockery at attempts that have so often failed, or by pious sighing over the limits of our reason, but
by means of a completer determination of reason’s boundaries according to secure principles, which
with the greatest reliability fastens its nihil ulterius on those Pillars of Hercules that nature has
erected, so that the voyage of our reason may proceed only as far as the continuous coastline of
experiences reaches, a coastline that we cannot leave without venturing out into a shoreless ocean,
which, among always deceptive prospects, forces us in the end to abandon as hopeless all our
troublesome and tedious efforts. (A 395/396)

This passage was omitted in the second edition of 1787. Note however how the ocean lures us on by
deceitful promises and is the proper seat of illusions for the voyagers of reason because it is
shoreless. Here Kant states that without remaining in sight of the coastline, which represents
instruction from experience, our thought remains without any reliable orientation, get lost and is
forced to renounce to its journey, deceived about the right way to go. It is worth noting that Kant
does not appeal to the external supreme authority of God’s illumination and providence to help us
in a shoreless ocean: the voyage of exploration turns out in the end to be an hopeless effort. Note
also how he compares orientation in thought with geographical and spatial venturing (O’Neal
2011). Moreover, the reference to the Pillars of Hercules, here evoked as boundaries imposed by
blind natural necessity, carries no collective invitation to transgress them to increase our
knowledge. By contrast, such bold forging ahead was the spirit ofBacon’s 1620 Instauratio Magna,
where just below the ship in the foreground passing through the pillars of Hercules there is the
motto: multi pertransibunt at augebitur scientia (many will pass through and knowledge will be
increased: Kant posted a passage from the Instauratio Magna’s Preface on the verso of the
frontispiece of his second edition).
______________________________________________________________________________
TEXT 2
Bacon frontespiece
________________________________________________________________________________
Bacon’s phrase modifies a sentence from the Book of the prophet Daniel (12, 4: pertransibunt
plurimi et multiplex erit scientia) in line withthe motto plus ultra on the pillars designed in the
Spanish coat of the Emperor Charles V. Contrary to Bacon and Charles V, Kant does not seem to
encourage ignoring the ancient warning nec plus ultra, and go further beyond. But does Kant’s
efforts to map and delimit the powers of reason really put an end to any ‘adventure’ of reason? If
the theoretical illusions of reason according to the wishes of metaphysics to reach beyond the
boundaries of all possible experience are supported by the fantasies of imagination and are
unavoidable, can any experience instruct us to find our way through them?
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This is exactly the pragmatic task Kant ascribed to his lectures on Physical Geography, which he
regularly offered for 40 years, from 1756 to 1796. Informing students about the advantages of
following his course, he explained:
TEXT 3
It is not to be taken as a small advantage, that the gullible admiration of the caretakers of unending
extravagant lucubrations (unendlicher Hirngespinste) has made way for a cautious examination,
through which we are in a position to acquire sure knowledge from credible witnesses, without the
danger of erring in a world of fables (Ak 2: 3)

As one commentator recently wrote, if it contains a careful, reliable, scientifically tested and
controlled account of natural causality, physical geography “can teach students to exercise their
judgment and critically distinguish between a true account of the world and fairy tales, not only
those brought forth by religion, but also by thouse brought forth through ungrounded metaphysics”
(H. Wilson 2011: 165).
Kant never physically left Koenigsberg, but mentally he certainly was a great traveller. We have
studies (Adickes, Stark) on his command of the relevant contemporary geographical literature and
on his keeping himself up to date with the most recent publications. We know he read all his main
sources in German translation (Stark 2011: note 5, 98), including a host of accounts of voyages
around the world (e.g. Hawkesworth (ger, tr. 1774), de Bougainville (Ger. Tr. 1772), Forster (Ger.
tr. 1778-80), likely Phipps (Germ. Tr. 1777) etc.).
Keeping this in mind, let’s return to the first Critique. Before the passage on the pillars of Hercules
quoted above, cancelled in 1787, we have a longer text, which also mentions unalterable natural
boundaries – this time the coastline of an island – and a vast and stormy ocean as the proper seat of
illusions, which ensnares the voyager of reason in a hopeless and fruitless venturing. It is placed in
Ch. III of the transcendental doctrine of the power of judgment, in the opening section “On the
ground of the distinction of all objects in general into phenomena and noumena”. This passage
remained unaltered in the second edition and reads:
TEXT 4 (A 236/B295)
We have now not only traveled through the land of pure understanding, and carefully inspected
each part of it, but we have also surveyed it, and determined the place for each thing in it. This land,
however, is an island, and enclosed in unalterable boundaries by nature itself. It is the land of truth
(a seductive name), surrounded by a broad and stormy ocean, the proper seat of semblance
(Schein), where many a fog bank and rapidly melting iceberg misrepresents (lügt) new lands and,
ceaselessly deceiving (täuscht) with empty hopes the voyager looking around for new discoveries,
entwine him in adventures from which he can never escape and yet also never bring to an end.

Please note that Schein, semblance, is referred to the shapes of fog banks and broken icebergs,
which are misleading for their merely apparent similarity with coastlines and mountains, and the
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use of the verb täuschen (to deceive). Note that this is not a matter of optical illusions, nor of
distinguishing, among phenomena, between veridical and illusory appearances. Rather, as is
conveyed by the verb lügen, the issue at stake is to take the appearances for what they represent in
the voyager’s eye, it is a matter of reliability in knowing the external world, which involves
accomplished judgment.
In a footnote (note 9:732), the editors of the Cambridge Edition of Kant’s Works present this
passage as an example of Kant’s “geographical imagery”, pointing to a parallel note written by
Kant a decade before the publication of the first Critique (refl. 4458, in Kant’s gesammelte
Schriften, Bd. XVII (Berlin, De Gruyter 1926). Kant’s handschriftlicher Nachlass. Bd IV.
Metaphysik.). Indeed, already in 1772, in order to express his critical approach to Metaphysics,
Kant had used an iconographic technique and the geographical vocabulary of exploring, mapping
and locating with reference to a maritime landscape: the “unknown land” of metaphysics was
situated in the “hemisphere” of pure reason. Kant claimed to have been able to outline the “island of
Knowledge” and to localise where it was connected by bridges to the country of Experience or
where it was separated from it by a profound sea. To my view, the iconographic parallelism to the
later text is rather loose: the island of knowledge is not the island of truth, and the sea counts as an
unbridgeable gap not as a seat of illusion. What is more, Kant’s geographic imagery does not
account for what looks quite distinctive here: the description of a maritime scene of semblance in
terms of “fog banks and rapidly melting icebergs” which misrepresent new lands and deceiving the
traveller who is looking around for new discoveries. A more thorough attempt, exegesis and strong
claim has been made in 1980 by a French scholar, Michèle Le Dœuff. Her book, Recherches sul
l’imaginaire philosophique, was translated into English in 1989 with the title The philosophical
imaginary and reprinted in 2002. Her view is that the metaphor elaborated by Kant in the first
Critique is copied (soit copiée) from Francis Bacon’s In Temporis Partus Maximus. This reading
has been endorsed and publicized by Eduardo Mendieta’s contribution on Kant’s geography, in
2011.
However, a closer examination of this alleged source (originally indicated by Le Dœuff’s in French
translation) reveals that Bacon’s image appears in a work entitled The Masculine Birth of Time
(Temporis Partus Masculus, ca. 1603) and that the Latin original significantly differs from the free
rendering of the text on which rests Le Dœuff ‘s claim.. In particular, what is missing is the image
of the ocean as seat of illusion and of the pure understanding as island of truth. Bacon’s program is
to emend and purify human understanding from native and inherent supertitions, deceiving fictions,
social and cultural prejudices also due to traditional authorities (idols), which alter and twist the
sound relation between mind and things of the senses. Bacon makes people aware of the
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persistence, despite the outlook of his modern age, of mental “errors”. He present them as obstacles,
damage or injuries to the progressive advancement of learning. He renders this metaphorically, with
the image of truth as an island lapped by an immense sea. Its shores are still showing wrecks due to
the persistent ‘blustering’ of idols (the Latin word for “wind” also means fable).
______________________________________________________________________________
TEXT 5
Le Doeuff 1980: 19
En fait, si des conditions et des projets politiques n’avaient pas mis un terme à ces voyages
mentaux, bien d’autres rivages de l’erreur auraient été visités par ces marins. Car l’île de la vérité
est entourée par un puissant océan dans lequel bien des intelligences iront encore faire
naufrage dans le tempête de l’illusion

Le Doeuff 2002: 9
Indeed, if political conditions and projects had not put an end to these mental trips, these mariners
would have touched on many another shore of error. For the island of truth is surrounded by a
mighty ocean in which many an intelligence will drown in storms of illusion

B. Farrington’s standard tr. of “The Masculine Birth of Time” in The Philosophy of Francis Bacon,
Chicago, UCP 1964: 60-72
In fact, had not political conditions and prospects put an end to these mental voyages, many another
coast of error would have been visited by those mariners. For the island of truth is lapped by a
mighty ocean in which many intellects will still be wrecked by the gales of illusion. (69)

The works of Francis Bacon (ed. by Spedding et al), Vol. VII: 27

Ac nisi temporum politiae et provisus ejusmodi ingeniorum peregrinationibus adversiores
extitissent, multae etiam aliae errorum orae fuissent peragratae. Immensum enim pelagus veritatis
insulam circumluit; et supersunt adhuc novae ventorum idolorum injuriae et disjectiones

My English tr.
And if political governance and the views of the future would not have been so adverse to the
wanderings of the minds, then many other shores of error would have been visited. Indeed an
immense sea encircles the island of truth; and even now new injuries and disruptions occur by
the blustering of the idols
____________________________________________________________

I do hope I have now properly prepared you for a convincing alternative, which draws from the
maritime culture of the XVIII century. As mentioned, maritime culture was familiar to Kant as
material for his lectures on physical geography. I wish to draw your attention to a page from Georg
Forster’s Voyage towards the South Pole and Round the World in the years 1772-75 with Cap.
Cook. Forster originally published the text in English (1777) and then translated it into his native
German in 1778-1780, with some variants. Being a naturalist, he could well offer that kind of
expertise and training in objective verification of empirical data, which matched the requirement of
sure knowledge from reliable testimony advocated by Kant for the content of his lectures on
Physical Geography. Moreover, Forster was methodologically alert to approach nature
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scientifically, that is, with a previously designed plan, his Leitfaden in Kant’s sense or “thread of
Ariadne” through the “labyrinth of human knowledge”. In his Lectures on Geography Kant warned
that “there is more to knowledge of the world than just seeing the world” (Ak. Aus. 9: 157) and that
“through travel one can broaden one’s knowledge of the external world, but this is of little use if
one has not already received a certain preliminary exercise through instruction” (ib. 158). In a
similar vein, in the Preface to his book, Forster criticizes the contradictions in the accounts of
different travelers, criticizes the presentation of a simple collection or a confused heap of disjointed,
accidental facts from all parts of the world “which no art could reunite into a whole”, and do not
increase knowledge (Forster 1777: 9). In this respect, he was a perfect example of the
Enlightenment’s “fear of the fragility of the scientific facts” as Lorraine Daston has put it (2001:
116) . Finally, he points to the regulative use of general consequences deduced from the
combination of different facts, in order to orient oneself in observation and research:
TEXT 6
Forster 1777/(1778-80): 9-10
1) Without being competent judges, they [the different travellers] have assumed a few
circumstances as facts; and wresting even those to suit their own systems, have built a
superstructure which pleases at a distance, but upon nearer examination partakes of the illusive
nature of a dream (wie ein Traum mit falschen Erscheinungen betrügen)

2) Beside this, two travellers seldom saw the same object in the same manner and each reported the
fact differently according to his sensation, and his peculiar mode of thinking.

3)It was therefore requisite that he[the traveller] should have penetration sufficient (Scharfsinn
genug) to combine (zu verbinden) different facts, and to form general views (allgemeine
Folgerungen) from thence, which might in some measure guide him to new discoveries, and point
out the proper objects of further investigation. This was the idea (Mit solchen Begriffen) with which
I embarked…
____________________________________________________________
Can Forster also provide the pragmatic tools for venturing out on the shoreless, illusory sea of
theoretical reason being able to discern semblances from truth, and thus becoming certain whether
there is anything to hope for in it? Please consider the following page related to the quest to certify
the discovery of Cape Circumcision. In his second voyage, Cook had been instructed to travel to the
unexplored part of the Southern hemisphere to find out whether it was just an immense extension of
water or contained another continent (and, if so, to take possession of it for the maritime power of
Britain). Years before, on January 1st, 1739, Bouvet de Lozier had spotted a land area south of the
44 parallel and called it Cape Circumcision. He was unable to land because of dense fog but he
believed it was a promontory of the Terrae Australis. The geographer to the French King, Philippe
Buache de la Neuville used Bouvet’s discovery to promote his own speculative theory of balance
about the existence of a Southern Continent as massive as the Asiatic continent. Cook had to find
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the Cape again and determine whether it was part of the hypothetical new land. Here is Forster’s
account of a page of history of deceptive hopes and endless efforts to rediscover Bouvet’s land and
discover a new Antartic mainland.:
________________________________________________________________________
TEXT 7

Forster 1777 (1778-80): 102-3

The latitude we were now in, was that in which Captain Lozier Bouvet had place his pretended
discovery of Cape Circumcision, and our longitude was only a few degrees to the eastward of it: the
general expectation of seeing land, was therefore very great […] every one was eager to be the
first to announce the land. We had already had several false alarms from the fallacious
conformation of fog banks, or that of islands of ice half hid in snow storms (die trügliche
Gestalt der Nebelbänke, oder der in Schneegestöber gehüllten Eisinseln), and our consort, the
Adventure, had repeatedly made the signals for seeing land, deceived by such appearances (und
die Adventure …ward durch solche Täuschungen oft verleitet uns Signale zu geben, dass die Land
sähe); but now, the imagination (Einbildungskraft) warmed with the idea of M. Bouvet’s
discovery, one of our lieutenants […] acquainted the captain that he plainly saw the land […]We
saw an immense field of flat ice before us, broken into small pieces on the edges, a vast number
of islands of ice of all shapes and sizes rose beyond it as far as the eye could reach, and some of the
most distant considerably raised by the hazy vapours which lay on the horizon, had indeed some
appearance of mountains (und sahen wirklichen Bergen ähnlich). Several of our officers
persisted in the opinion that they had seen land, till Capt. Cook, about two years and two
months afterwards (in February 1775) […] sailed over the same spot and found neither land nor
even ice there at that time…,We passed through quantities of broken ice […] and saw another
extensive ice-field, beyond which several of our people still persisted in seeing land, taking fog-
banks for land (so wie das vorige im Grunde aus nichts als Nebelbanken bestand).
Note that [in the Germ. Transl. Before “several of our officers” (“viele unsrer Officiere”) we read
Dieser Anblick war so täuschend, dass]
Note the expression trügliche Gestalt for the fog banks and the icebergs, the use of verb täuschen,
for the description of the Antartic Ocean (but the same would hold for the Artic, as in the case of
Martens or Phipps’s description of the Spitzbergen) as a seat of illusion.
TEXT 8 – C. J. Phipps, A voyage towards the north pole undertaken by his majesty’s command
1773 (London 1774); // Reise nach dem Nordpol (Bern 1777)

It was not long before we saw something on the bow, part black and part covered with snow, which
from the appearance we took to be islands (1777: Wir hielten, es dem Ansehen nach für Inseln) and
thought that we had not stood far enough out; I hauled up immediately to the NNW and was soon
undeceived, finding it to be ice (1777: wurde aber bald meinen Irrthum gewahr, indem es sich fand,
dass es Eis war) m which we could not clear upon that tack

_________________________________________________
Note also the different attitude of Forster, a more detached observer because he was not
professionally involved in Cook’s mission, in contrast to the eagerness of the crew to announce
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land. Forster records how deceptively may appear the shapes of fog-banks and icebergs, though his
skilled and instructed judgment does not take those appearances to represent coastline or mountains.
Moreover, he is aware of the overwhelming power of imagination on the senses when fired by
mental presumptions. To conclude, I contend that reference to maritime culture is the proper source
of Kant’s metaphor of the sea in the first Critique, which is neither the invention of his own
geographical imaginary, nor a copy from Bacon, nor even a repetition of his own earlier similie. To
draw upon the maritime culture of his age had the essential significance to train the mind of one
who judges critically. Critical training means learning to check one’s own aspiration against the test
bench of sensed and shared experience to achieve sure and sensate knowledge, it means fostering
self-knowledge, studying the nature (laws, extension, limits) of our reason, “by which reason may
secure its rightful claims while dismissing all its groundless pretensions” (A xi), eventually, it
means to learn prudence to orient ourselves in thought pragmatically. If I am right, if the shade of
the officer of the ‘Adventure’ –the tender of the flagship ‘Resolution’ –casts light on Kant’s
metaphor of the ocean as seat of illusion for speculative reason and dogmatic metaphysics, then we
must consider how to have one’s own imagination (Einbildungskraft) excited by an idea (of
Bouvet’s discovery), and to fall into the trap of presuming seeing what one hopes, deceived by a
natural scene fantastically arranged by nature’s free play of shapes and colors, functions as a
warning and a lesson within the economy itself of the first Critique. Here there are my final
remarks.
First: Kant does not mean to renounce to all sort of “adventure” of reason. To renounce would mean
just to censure, not to criticize reason on the basis of demonstrated principles. Second: it proves that
theoretical reason’s claims excite the ‘blind’ power of productive imagination, bearing on
perception and the external sense, and, in turn, it demonstrates that productive imagination gives to
speculative ideas the illusion of finding an adequate, corresponding sensible intuition, and thus to
know. Third: it shows that only isolated speculative adventures of reason are hopeless, and that it is
necessary to check and control rational claims through instruction by experience, using ideas in a
regulative way and testing them pragmatically, as Cook did in respect to his officer’s claim. Fourth:
the demonstration of the negative, fictitious role of imagination in supporting the illusions of
dogmatic metaphysics, allows Kant to ground on critical principles the positive counterpart of
imagination that “occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate
thought, i.e. concept, to be adequate to it.” A domain where imagination constructively works
nourishing poetic and artistic production with aesthetic ideas which as such do not claim empirical
existence.
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Kant knew that the search for the new land never came to an end, that Cook and others, such as his
associate Capt. Furneaux, searched for Cap Circumcision extensively without success and that the
imagined continent was not found. Ironically enough, Kant could not know (he died in 1804) that
apparently Cook disproved the false claim of his officer only because Bouvet had incorrectly
charted the land (placing it about 23 degrees too far east, as it appears in the 1741 map of the South
Pole by Covens and Mortier).
Only in 1808 it was rediscovered by Capt. Lindsay who realized that Cape Circumcision was not
attached to a greater southern mainland but it was an island. In 1822 it was sighted again by the
American whaling Capt. Morrell who called it Bouvet Island, which now belongs to Norway.
____________________________________________________________________________
FOR DISCUSSION
Note that the negative, fictitious follow-up on knowledge of the power of imagination when it
serves what theoretical reason pretends, has its positive counterpart into what, in the 1790
Critique of Judgment, Kant calls ‘aesthetic ideas’. By an aesthetic idea, Kant means “that
representation of imagination that occasions much thinking though without it being possible
for any determinate thought, i.e. concept, to be adequate to it, …One readily sees that it is the
counterpart (pendant) of an idea of reason, which is, conversely, a concept to which no
intuition (representation of the imagination) can be adequate” (KU, V: 314). In the aesthetic
domain, imagination constructively works nourishing poetic and artistic production with
ideas which do not claim empirical existence. However, still within the frame of the aesthetic
power of judgment, imagination faces natural objects that exceed any sensible standard.
Among them, there is the sea in its measureless vastity and tremendous power: “the dark and
ranging sea” (KU, §26: 526), “the boundless ocean set into a rage” (§28: 261). It goes without
saying that romantic painters have a clear lineage in the aesthetic agenda set by Kant. Suffice
here to mention that the sea was a source of ispiration insofar as it expressed both the power
or the majestic and misterious beauty of nature and the insignificance of humankind, often
producing dramatic canvas paintings of storms and shipwrecks (see for example the romantic
dutch artists: Johannes Schotel –Dordrecht 1808-Dresden 1865). In Kant, these
representations of the sea baffle any comprehension, lead the concept of nature to a
supersensible substratum and us to recognize our physical powerlessness; at the same time,
however, they reveal in us a capacity for judging ourselves as independent and superior to
nature, insofar as we found in our own faculty of reason another nonsensible – spiritual –
standard (261-2) Kant writes: “Thus nature is here called sublime merely because it raises the
imagination to the point of presenting those cases in which the mind can make palpable to
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itself the sublimity of its own vocation even over nature” (KU: §28: 262). (This raising of
spiritual, religious or moral vocation of the humans is well expressed in Caspar David
Friedrich “Monk by the Sea” (ca 1809))
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SCHOTEL & CASPAR FRIEDRICH
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