Hinging on a metaphysical examination of the concept of newness and Paul Guyer’s notion of the temporally extended self, this article analyzes what it means that we are a temporally extended being that is fashioned in time, which is none other than a transcendental object = newness, and argues that (fashioned) bodies can be things in themselves and mere phenomena simultaneously. Kant’s doctrine of self-positing assists us in decoding how the subject obtains an embodied experience while a thing in itself, (...) as well as how both a non-empirical affection and an empirical affection are at play, casually affecting the subject. By looking into how double affection is in operation, this article aims to broaden our understanding of Kant’s theory of self-consciousness. (shrink)

By probing into how desire is involved in fashion phenomena, this article illuminates Willkür in tandem with desire. It first analyzes how the higher and lower faculties of desire, spelled out by Immanuel Kant, play a role in fashion, unveiling how fashion as a form of social relations exists in concert with the higher faculty of desire, which has a close connection with Willkür. This article maintains that the arbitrary choice manifested in and through fashion is illustrative of Willkür, on (...) the grounds that it results from a self-conscious deliberation, demonstrating the ‘reflective distance’ from our incentives. Christine M. Korsgaard’s elucidation of the relationship between ‘reflective distance’ and self-consciousness helps formulate this argument. However, this article also discusses the foibles of Korsgaard’s reading of Kant, in particular in the area of theory of action. By doing so, this article argues that reason is not the only factor with which we make choices and take actions within the bounds of which freedom is secured, and that fashion allows us to comprehend not only how the power of choice, independent from necessitation by sensible impulses, exercises its freedom, but also how personal autonomy is related to Kant’s negative concept of freedom. (shrink)

By probing into how desire is involved in fashion phenomena, this article illuminates Willkür in tandem with desire. It first analyzes how the higher and lower faculties of desire, spelled out by I...

By probing into how desire is involved in fashion phenomena, this article illuminates Willkür in tandem with desire. It first analyzes how the higher and lower faculties of desire, spelled out by I...

Fashion is an important source for shedding light on modern aesthetic experience. Not only does fashion represent concrete aesthetic quality that reveals the spirit of the times, but it also epitomizes the social relations in liaison with the aesthetic taste of the times. This essay discusses the relationship between Georg Simmel’s sociological aesthetics and Hegel’s dialectics, demonstrates fashion as a domain in which subject-object relations are operative, and shows how fashion hypostatizes the dialectical relations between mind and body and between (...) the individual and the collective while connecting subject and object. (shrink)