Red Kant: Aesthetics, Marxism and the Third Critique

Is Kant really the 'bourgeois' philosopher that his advocates and opponents take him to be?
In this bold and original re-thinking of Kant, Michael Wayne argues that with his aesthetic turn in the Third Critique, Kant broke significantly from the problematic philosophical structure of the Critique of Pure Reason. Through his philosophy of the aesthetic Kant begins to circumnavigate the dualities in his thought. In so doing he shows us today how the aesthetic is a powerful means for imagining our way past the apparent universality of contemporary capitalism.

Here is an unfamiliar Kant: his concepts of beauty and the sublime are reinterpreted as attempts to socialise the aesthetic while Wayne reconstructs the usually hidden genealogy between Kant and important Marxist concepts such as totality, dialectics, mediation and even production. In materialising Kant's philosophy, this book simultaneously offers a Marxist defence of creativity and imagination grounded in our power to think metaphorically and in Kant's concept of reflective judgment. Wayne also critiques aspects of Marxist cultural theory that have not accorded the aesthetic the relative autonomy and specificity which it is due.

Discussing such thinkers as Adorno, Bourdieu, Colletti, Eagleton, Lukács, Ranciére and others, Red Kant: Aesthetics, Marxism and the Third Critique presents a new reading of Kant's Third Critique that challenges Marxist and mainstream assessments of Kant alike.

“Red Kant: Aesthetics, Marxism, and the Third Critique, offers a cogent and valiant defense of the necessity for sophisticated thinking about aesthetics in our contemporary moment ... a valuable resource on the relationship between Kant's philosophy and Marxist critical theory. Red Kant reaffirms the radical political power of the aesthetic; and Wayne's reading of Kant goes a long way towards repairing this 'bourgeois' and 'idealist' philosopher's reputation. Such a project has been, I think, long overdue.” —Bakary Diaby, Sequiter

“Wayne’s book makes a provocative and substantial contribution to Marxist philosophy that should help to stimulate productive new approaches to the aesthetic dimension of radical politics and the deeper ground of critique in general.” -Bryan Smyth, University of Mississippi, Philosophy in Review