Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

[animus] see also affect, body, feeling, identity, life, pleasure, reflection, soul, subjectGemüt is a key term in Kant's philosophy and is variously translated as ‘mind’, ‘mental state’ and ‘soul’, even though these translations fail to do justice to the term's significance. It does not mean ‘mind’ or ‘soul’ in the Cartesian sense of a thinking substance, but denotes instead a corporeal awareness of sensation and self-affection. Indeed, at one point in CPR he explicitly distinguishes Gemüt and Seele (A 22/B 37), a distinction expounded in Zu Sömmering über das Organ der Seele (To Sömmering, Concerning the Organ of the Soul, 1796) in terms of the ‘capacity to effect the unity of empirical apperception (animus) but not its substance (anima)’ (1796c, p. 256). Gemüt does not designate a substance (whether material or ideal) but is the position or place of the Gemütskräfte (the Gemüt’s powers) of sensibility, imagination, understanding and reason.Kant's use of Gemüt remains close to the meaning the term possessed in medieval philosophy and mysticism, where it referred to the ‘stable disposition of the soul which conditions the exercise of all its faculties’ (Gilson, 1955, pp. 444, 758). This contrasts with Leibniz's restriction of the term to mean ‘feeling’ as opposed to understanding (Leibniz, 1976, p. 428). For Kant ‘the Gemüt is all life (the life-principle itself), and its hindrance ... log in or subscribe to read full text