The Terror of Possibility: A Re-evaluation and Reconception of the Sublime Aesthetic (original) (raw)

The Aestheticity of the Sublime 1

Nora Schleich, 2021

In this paper, I wish to show that it is particularly the aestheticity of the sublime that plays the crucial role for the sublime’s characteristic feature—namely, instigating the subject’s consciousness of its own pure rational capacity. This unique aesthetic experience concerns the human subject’s mental disposition of the mind according to a unique specific character: the interplay between sensible and natural determination, and the predisposition to spontaneity and autonomy, is palpable as a unique kind of feeling. The state of the mind during the contemplation of the natural object, as well as the subject’s relation to its intelligibility, are crucial in aesthetic experience. As regards the purity of the aesthetic moment, reason, a commanding and objectifying faculty, is to be excluded as being responsible for the occurrence of the sublime. Instead, wemust concentrate on the faculty that is in charge of processing the manifold of sensible impressions: the faculty of imagination.

NOTES ON THE AESTHETIC CONCEPT SUBLIME

The aesthetic concept of sublime, as Kant formulated from Burke, seems to overcome itself aesthetic, in that the Form stops fulfill major role in the experiment. It is then a transcendental and cognitive experience, in which the imagination in free play of faculties, builds a possible meaning and this activity reveals the dimension of human freedom.

The role of imagination in the sublime

Kant: Making Reason Intuitive, 2007

In the aesthetic texts of Friedrich Schiller, undoubtedly one of the most perceptive readers of Immanuel Kant, we come across the first traces of a reception of Kant's theory of the sublime which tends to completely bypass its critical and transcendental texture. This resulted in the formulation of the conditions for a metaphysical appropriation of the relevant Kantian analyses. By understanding the feeling of the sublime [Erhabenes] as an elevation [Erhebung] above the limit of sensibility, this appropriation prepares the ground for a dialectic sublation [Aufhebung] of the limit at issue. Especially in his essays on the sublime, Schiller categorically detaches himself from the formal and subjective character of the Kantian approach, while at the same time he transfers the feeling of the sublime, which, in Kant, is caused mainly by natural phenomena, to the sphere of art. This allows him to define as sublime not only the subject's feelings but also the objects that appear to cause them. But if the feeling Kantian distinction between the mathematically and the dynamically sublime is rejected as minimally enlightening: "But because the concepts dynamically and mathematically can shed no light on whether the sphere of the sublime is exhausted through this classification, for this reason I have given preference to the classification into theoretically and practically sublime." 1 What is remarkable in this case is that Schiller concentrates exclusively on the dynamically sublime, which he names practically sublime and also "the sublime of praxis," 2 because here the comparison between the subject and the natural phenomena that threaten its biological hypostasis activates practical Reason. Indeed, in his theory on art and tragedy, the German dramatist completely ignores the mathematically sublime, which he renames theoretically sublime. But this should not surprise us. Schiller studied the phenomenon of the sublime mainly from the standpoint of one who was interested in the conditions that govern the process of artistic creation. 3 From the point of view of the artist, sublime nature as the object of the mathematically sublime is simply a metaphor for the absolutely unique sublime object that exists in the universe, i.e., moral law, the sublimity [Erhabenheit] of which acquires a sensible form through the hero of the bourgeois drama. But this is possible because the sublimity of the hero finds its ideal expression in its moral integrity, which remains intact, even after his fall. This is also the source of the peculiar passion which characterizes bourgeois dramas, since it is through them that "the mechanism for the elimination of social evils" 4 is vividly illustrated. This mechanism consists of the symbolic salvage of the hero's moral dignity, even at the instant of his tragic destruction. However, Schiller's main objection concerns Kant's attempt to differentiate the sublime from the beautiful. At first sight, he seems to wish to preserve the Kantian distinction: "Without the beautiful there would be a continuous dispute between our natural determination and our rational determination… Without the sublime, beauty would make us forget our dignity." 5 Soon, however, it is revealed that, in essence, he is aiming at a fusion of these two aesthetic categories: "Only when the sublime comes 1

The Sublime and its Connection to Spirituality in Modern and Postmodern Philosophy and Visual Arts

Sophia Philosophical Review, 2017

This article reviews the notion of the sublime as it is regarded in a few of the most influential texts in Western philosophy. Modern sublime that is elaborated in the works of Edmund Burke and Kant is influenced by the ancient text Peri Hypsous. Later, Lyotard takes up the sublime to interpret Modern and Postmodern visual art. The sublime is necessarily linked to art. It is the notion that presents existential (spiritual) questions such as existence of God and meaning of human life. Art has been the realm where such questions are tackled. Sublime is the artistic way to spirituality, and works of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko display that.

The Transcendental Sublime in Contemporary Art

The Transcendental Sublime in Contemporary Art, 2015

In Robert Rosenblum’s book "Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko", Rosenblum traces a continuing tradition in art from the 18th century to the 1960s, which centres upon the term ‘sublime’. In the past many artists (amongst them Caspar David Friedrich, Turner, Wassily Kandinsky, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman) and theorists (amongst them Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Francois Lyotard) have explored the transcendental nature of the sublime in art. Today we live in an age that prides itself on the loss of illusion. Ideas of transcendence in art are often seen as sentimental and viewed with skepticism. The word sublime seems to be stripped down to “the shock of the new” (often centered on horror). This essay explores how the transcendental sublime is situated in contemporary art. The ‘transcendental sublime’ will here refer to how looking at a work of art can enable one to be transported, going beyond the given limits to a place of accessing one’s spiritual side.

The Sublime Conditions of Contemporary Art

Deleuze's relationship to Kant is intricate and fundamental, given that Deleuze develops his transcendental philosophy of difference in large part out of Kant's work. In doing so he utilises the moment of the sublime from the third Critique as the genetic model for the irruption of the faculties beyond their capture within common sense. In this sense, the sublime offers the model not only for transcendental genesis but also for aesthetic experience unleashed from any conditions of possibility. As a result, sensation in both its wider and more specifically artistic senses (senses that become increasingly entwined in Deleuze's work) will explode the clichés of human perception, and continually reinvent the history of art without recourse to representation. In tracing Deleuze's 'aesthetics' from Kant we are therefore returned to the viciously anti-human (and Nietzschean) trajectory of Deleuze's work, while simultaneously being forced to address the extent of its remaining Idealism. Both of these elements play an important part in relation to Deleuze's 'modernism', and to the discussion of his possible relevance to contemporary artistic practices.

The Aesthetic Category of the Sublime as a

The aesthetic category of the sublime, as expounded by Western discourse, is built upon the precultural experience of awe and the idea of greatness derived from that experience� Accordingly, it may be treated as a potentially universal category that comes in several cultural variants� The aim of this study is to present a methodology in which the material sublime is used to systematise and analyse a variety of literary techniques that constitute the persuasive force of Sanskrit grand narratives (itihāsas, purāṇas, and mahākāvyas)� The model of the material sublime described here is meant to be compared and supplemented with elements of Sanskrit literary theory�

Towards a Theory of the Sublime and Aesthetic Awe

The Sublime Reader (ch. 37), 2019

This paper sketches my theory of the sublime and aesthetic awe. The chapter is found in the first comprehensive, historical anthology containing representative readings on the sublime: The Sublime Reader (Bloomsbury, 2019)