Introduction: Lebensgefühl and Geistesgefühl in Kant's Critique of Judgment

It might come as something of a surprise for today’s readers to learn that of the three critical investigations undertaken by Immanuel Kant during the 1780s it was the Critique of Judgment that would have the broadest readership and the largest impact in Kant’s own lifetime. Virtually all of the leading lights of German idealism and Ramnticism-Schelling, Schiller, Schlegel, Hölderlin, and Hegel, to name but a few-found inspiration in Kant’s account of the power of judgment. Kant’s earlier investigation into the extent and limits of knowledge in hi Critique of Pure Reason, had, by contrast, left many readers cold. As Goethe famously put his response to it: “I found pleasure in the portal, but I dared not set foot in the labyrinth itself; sometimes my gift for poetry got in my way, sometimes common sense.” And as for Kant’s subsequent effort to think through the transcendental grounds for moral action, this too left many unconvinced.