Abstract

This chapter presents a short biography of Immanuel Kant. It then reviews his particular thoughts on musical philosophy. Kant was born on April 22, 1724 in Königsberg. He never married and died in his house on February 12, 1804. He placed the theory of cognition at the beginning of his critical transcendental philosophy, in Critique of Pure Reason. His theory of art was pointed toward identifying the place that the judgment of beautiful objects in nature and art occupies in his system of transcendental philosophy. Kant accorded to music the status of a fine art, whose works engage the cognitive powers in a state of free play. Critique of Judgment occupied a unique position in regard to the reception of Kantian transcendental philosophy. The basis for an understanding of the semiotic character of absolute music was provided by Kant's transcendental philosophy and his cognitivist aesthetics.