Abstract

The study explores how Kant's critical philosophy enables us to develop new ideas and find original, exemplary aesthetic forms. Theoretical productivity is a subjective process of change over time that affects beliefs and the way they are held to be true. On the one hand, Kant's intellectual production is determined by universal cognitive capacities, on the other hand it is informed by empirical, historical experience. The development of innovative thought and original aesthetic forms is based on an intertwining of productive imagining, productive self-thinking and orienting design. With Kant, theoretical productivity can be understood as both determinable and open-ended intellectual activity. Both cases necessarily presuppose theoretical freedom.