ABSTRACT
In the West, intuitions of the ultimate so characteristic of Asian thought have met with a sharp measure of skepticism, famously instantiated in Sigmund Freud’s suspicion of any “oceanic feeling”. Freud viewed this as a failure to advance from an infantile state. But Kant was hardly guilty of infantile thinking, and, as I demonstrate in this chapter, his Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) explores such intuitions richly under the notions of the “sublime”, the “supersensible substrate”, and “spirit”. While he retained his scruples about demonstrative knowledge of these metaphysical ideas, it was clear that he thought they were crucial for humankind and a requirement of reason itself. The Appendix, by Robert R. Clewis, makes several criticisms, to which I respond in a series of endnotes. Chief among his concerns is that Kant’s own text emphasizes the practical far more than the spiritual (or even mystical) overtones that I highlight. Granting this point, I note that, although what I focus on might be only a secondary emphasis in Kant’s text, such an emphasis nevertheless is there.
