Kant's Fantasy.

This article examines Immanuel Kant's concept of fantasy (Phantasie) as an involuntary, obscure, and pleasurable imaginative activity, primarily discussed in his anthropological writings, where he critiques and discourages it as psychologically and morally risky. The author reconstructs Kant's account, distinguishing fantasy's lawless freedom from the "free lawfulness" of imagination in aesthetic judgment, and challenges Kant's negative view by arguing that certain modernist artworks—such as Michael Snow's film *Wavelength* and Virginia Woolf's *To the Lighthouse*—positively invite fantasy, making it a legitimate and valuable part of aesthetic experience. While fantasy remains private, idiosyncratic, and normatively ambiguous, these works create space for unstructured imaginative engagement that differs from Kantian free play yet contributes meaningfully to aesthetic appreciation. The article also notes Kant's problematic gendered and racialized characterizations of fantasy and concludes that fantasy's ambivalence is integral to its nature and value.