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The analysis of the Sublime

The analysis of the Sublime. Seminar “Kant: Critique of the Power of Judgment” University of Iceland Session 8 3/10/2007 Text: Critique of the Aesthtical Power of Judgment (23-29) Claus Beisbart. References third Critique: Guyer/Matthews. The Sublime.

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The analysis of the Sublime

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  1. The analysis of the Sublime Seminar “Kant: Critique of the Power of Judgment” University of Iceland Session 8 3/10/2007 Text: Critique of the Aesthtical Power of Judgment (23-29) Claus Beisbart References third Critique: Guyer/Matthews

  2. The Sublime from Latin: sublimis, sub limine: from under the limit; lofty Kant uses: “erhaben”, which is etymologically related to “heben” (“to lift up, to put higher”)

  3. Works on the Sublime (I) (pseudo-)Longinus, On the Sublime (1st century AD?) English translation: William Smith, 1739 Shaftesbury, John Dennis, Joseph Addison, around 1700 (visit Alps and describe their impressions) Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757

  4. Works on the Sublime (II) Immanuel Kant, Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen (Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime), 1764 Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment Friedrich Schiller, Vom Erhabenen (Of the Sublime) 1793 Friedrich Schilller, Ueber das Erhabene. Zur weiteren Ausführung einiger Kantischer Ideen (On the Sublime: Towards the Further Elaboration of Some Kantian Ideas), 1801 Hegel, Lectures on Aesthetics

  5. Burke on the Sublime “WHATEVER is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.” (I.7) “When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are, delightful, as we every day experience.” (ib.) 1757

  6. Burke's puzzle “But if the sublime is built on terror, or some passion like it, which has pain for its object, it is previously proper to inquire how any species of delight can be derived from a cause so apparently contrary to it.” (IV.5)

  7. Burke's solution (I) “How Pain Can be a Cause of Delight [...] Now, as a due exercise is essential to the coarse muscular parts of the constitution, and that without this rousing they would become languid and diseased, the very same rule holds with regard to those finer parts we have mentioned; to have them in proper order, they must be shaken and worked to a proper degree.” (IV.6)

  8. Burke's solution (II) “AS common labour, which is a mode of pain, is the exercise of the grosser, a mode of terror is the exercise of the finer parts of the system; [...] In all these cases, if the pain and terror are so modified as not to be actually noxious; if the pain is not carried to violence, and the terror is not conversant about the present destruction of the person, as these emotions clear the parts, whether fine or gross, of a dangerous and troublesome encumbrance, they are capable of producing delight; not pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquillity tinged with terror; which, as it belongs to self-preservation, is one of the strongest of all the passions. Its object is the sublime. “ (IV.7)

  9. Kant on Burke “General Remark [...]”, after par. 29, pp. 158 f. Burke: physiological exposition Kant: transcendental exposition.

  10. Kant's contribution distinction: the mathematically Sublime and the dynamically Sublime A priori intersubjectivity for the Sublime. Interpretation: link to morality.

  11. A contemporary voice “I suggest that Kant offers a compelling characterization of the relation between human subjectivity and the natural world. In his account of the beautiful, he claims that we have reason to think that human subjectivity indeed is immersed within a deeply meaningful world of which it is a responsive part; whereas, in his account of the sublime, he demonstrates a way in which the human subject experiences itself as separate from and transcendent to the world of nature. Kant’s aesthetics therefore suggests that there is a fundamental ambiguity characterizing the human relationship with the world. [...] Kant’s work provides us with a starting point for coming to grips with the idea that human uniqueness does not sanction wanton disregard of the world around us.” M. Lucht, 2007, Am. J. of Econ. and Soc. 66

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