Abstract

I propose in this paper an interpretation of Kant’s fascinating notion of “aesthetic ideas”. I contend that aesthetic ideas, in spite of Kant’s way of explicating them in those terms, are not mirror images, sensible counterparts or translations of intellectual or rational ideas. Rather, they have independent life. They present what cannot be available by any other means and thereby make a poem a unique, singular, insubstitutable individual. This reading of the notion can shed a different light on Kant’s view that a poem should look like nature. If we focus on Kant’s description of “genius” as a source of aesthetic ideas, this seemingly mysterious concept begins to make a nuanced sense: concepts of genius and aesthetic ideas are what I call “medium-centric” notions. To write a poem is to play upon the medium and discover aesthetic ideas; a poet who can achieve this is or has genius.