Abstract

The main focus of this chapter is on the role that the imagination plays in Kant’s theory of the sublime. Although commentators tend to describe the imagination’s contribution in wholly negative terms, I defend a positive interpretation of what the imagination does in relation to the sublime. More specifically, I argue that the imagination is expanded and empowered in judgments of the sublime insofar as it treats objects in nature as a symbolic exhibition of what in us is properly sublime, viz., our vocation as free and moral agents. I show that insofar as Kant connects this vocation to our freedom, the imagination contributes to Kant’s overall efforts in the third _Critique_ to explain how the “great chasm” between nature and freedom can be overcome, helping us regard nature as a symbol of our freedom and sublimity within.