What Immanuel Kant Would Say About Fashion: The Metaphysics of the Pursuit of the Self by Way of Fashion

Abstract

With recourse to Immanuel Kant, the pursuance of something new, the conceptual side of fashion, can be reckoned as part of the metaphysical domain arrived at by a synthetic a priori judgement, and as an incessant attempt to seek one’s self. Kant’s schematism provides a theoretical foundation to dissect fashion as an a priori concept of the understanding and as a phenomenal a posteriori appearance, thereby demonstrating the difference between the conceptual and the material of fashion. Kant’s transcendental aesthetic clarifies how our intuitions of time and space lead us to comprehend the metaphysical concept of fashion. By grappling with critical attributes in fashion, one can also tackle some of the most complex philosophical conundrums, that is, how noumenon and thing-in-itself are different and how synthetic a priori cognition is possible in our empirical life.