Symbol and Exhibition

Plato's likening of the Good to the sun is an example of what Kant calls the exhibition of an Aesthetic idea. In Kant's System, an idea in itself is purely intellectual and without any empirical manifestation. An Aesthetic idea is an analogy that supplies the intellectual idea with an empirical image, often to help develop the latter, e. g. his analogy helps Plato explicate the notion that Knowledge is possible only through its illumination by the Good. Furthermore, Kant calls an Aesthetic idea a 'Symbol'. However, it would be erroneous to characterize a Symbol as functioning as a representation. For, a representation implies the pre-existence of what it represents, whereas a Symbol is an original presentation, e. g. Plato's Symbol does not report a pre-existing relation between the Good and the sun, it creates it. Thus, Kant insists on the term 'exhibition' to characterize the function of a Symbol, even briefly alluding to the inappropriateness of a synonym of 'exhibition', 'demonstration', to characterize, as it commonly does, a proof, and suggesting that 'expounding' would be more accurate. So, Peirce's use of 'Symbol' diverges significantly from Kant's, insofar as it serves a representative function. In contrast, Cassirer's notion 'Symbolic Form' is Kantian, though his contention that Symbol-making is strictly an Artistic process, i. e. occurs only in Artistic activity, is puzzling, in the light of e. g. Plato's imagery.