stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

faculty of knowledge itself? Kant’s famous reply is that only understanding legislates in the
faculty of knowledge or in the speculative interest of reason” (KCP 10). It is the understanding
that imposes concepts onto objects. But that is not all. That the understanding imposes concepts
onto objects also means that it determines the functions of the other faculties understood as
representations. Deleuze develops this point in “The Idea of Genesis in Kant’s Aesthetics.” “So,
in the Critique of Pure Reason, the understanding disposes completely determinate a priori
concepts for a speculative purpose; it applies its concepts to objects (phenomena) which are
necessarily subject to it; and it induces the other faculties (imagination and reason) to carry out
this or that function, with the aim of understanding, and in relation to the objects of
understanding” (DI 57).Specifically, the understanding determines the imagination to
schematize: “the imagination does not schematize of its own accord, simply because it is free to
do so. It schematizes only to the extent that the understanding determines it, induces it to do so.
It schematizes only for speculative purpose, in accordance with the determinate concepts of the
understanding, when the understanding itself plays the role of the legislator” (DI 58). On the
other hand, the understanding determines reason to look for a middle term: “reason reasons only
for a speculative purpose, in so far as the understanding determines it to do so, that is, induces it
to look for a middle term so it may attribute one of its concepts to the objects governed by the
understanding” (DI 59). In this way the understanding harmonizes the faculty of knowledge in
the interest of reason. “So it is that the faculties enter into harmonious relations or proportions
according to the faculty that legislates for this or that purpose” (DI 58). Deleuze calls such a
harmony common sense. “It is the understanding which legislates and which judges, but under
the understanding the imagination synthesizes and schematizes, reason reasons and symbolizes,
in such a way that knowledge has a maximum unity. Now, any accord of the faculties between
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