Intellectual intuition and aesthetic intuition, from Kant to Hölderlin

Abstract

This paper is designed to investigate how true itwould be to sustain that a steady line links Kant and Hölderlin which shows that the intellectual intuition concept is the genesis of the aesthetic intuition concept. Such an investigation is to start by delving into what Kant meant by intellectual intuition in an attempt to demonstrate how this notion is interdicted in the scope of speculative pure reason, except that, in the reflecting sphere, the experience of an aesthetic idea seemed to be possible even as anantecedent to the former. Fichte therefore comes out in this line as the philosopher who fully restored intellectual intuition to its theoretical legitimacy. This turnaround could not go overlooked by poet Friedrich Hölderlin particularly, who, as a philosopher, did not think that this new fundament instituted by Fichte was sufficient as a first step into philosophic conscience. Sure enough, Hölderlin advocates that this very first step is an aesthetic intuition that, because it first emerges as a true inquiry into Being, it antecedes the former in relation to the unity of the very first experience. Considering that, this paper focuses on the boundaries that separated Philosophy and Art over the 18th and 19th centuries in Germany using a guiding thread taken from the notions of intellectual intuition and aesthetic intuition.