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‘Reason’s Sympathy’ and its Foundations in Productive Imagination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2021

Benjamin Vilhauer
Benjamin Vilhauer*
Affiliation:
City College of New York
*
Email: bvilhauer@ccny.cuny.edu
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Abstract

This paper argues that Kant endorses a distinction between rational and natural sympathy, and it presents an interpretation of rational sympathy as a power of voluntary a posteriori productive imagination. In rational sympathy we draw on the imagination’s voluntary powers (a) to subjectively unify the contents of intuition, in order to imaginatively put ourselves in others’ places, and (b) to associate imagined intuitional contents with the concepts others use to convey their feelings, in such a way that those contents prompt feelings in us that are like their feelings.

Keywords

sympathyimaginationfirst personcommunicationaesthetic ideas

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Type
Article
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Kantian Review , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 455 - 474
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Kantian Review

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