My paper examines a vital but neglected aspect of Frank Sibley's pioneering account of aesthetic concepts. This is the claim that many aesthetic qualities are such that they can be characterized adequately only by metaphors or ‘quasi-metaphors’. Although there is no indication that Sibley embraced it, I outline a radical, minimalist conception of the experience of perceiving an item as possessing an aesthetic quality, which, I believe, has wide application and which would secure Sibley's position for those aesthetic qualities that (...) conform to it. (shrink)

Echoing a distinction made by David Wiggins in his discussion of the relation of identity, this paper investigates whether aesthetic adjectives such as ‘beautiful’ are sortal-relative or merely sortal-dependent. The hypothesis guiding the paper is that aesthetic adjectives, though probably sortal-dependent in general, are sortal-relative only when used to characterize multifunctional artefacts. This means that multifunctional artefacts should be unique in allowing the following situation to occur: for some object x there are sortals K and K' such that x is (...) a beautiful K and also a K', but not a beautiful K'. Examples of multifunctional artefacts show that this is indeed a possibility. However, that multifunctional artefacts are unique in this respect will be demonstrated by a more principled argument, taking into account the nature of functions on the one hand, and the nature of artefact-classification on the other hand. (shrink)

"The writer discusses the concept of kitsch. Having reviewed a variety of approaches to kitsch, he posits an historical conception of it, connecting it to modernity and defining it as a coping-mechanism for modernity. He thus suggests that kitsch is best understood as a tool in the struggle against the particular stresses of the modern world and that it uses materials at hand, fashioning from them some sort of stability largely through projecting images of nature, stasis, and continuity. He discusses (...) the relation of kitsch to fine art, arguing that fine art also has as its primary function a counter-movement to modernity. He suggests that the main difference between fine art and kitsch is that fine art, as well as its emotional function, also involves a reception context that allows it to assume an intellectual task. Among the writer's conclusions, he finds that positing a stark or absolute contrast between kitsch and fine art is unjustifiable as both have the same roots and objectives." [WilsonWeb]. (shrink)

This paper attacks an account of Kant's controversial distinction between "free" and "dependent" beauty. I present three problems—The Lorland problem, The Crawford Problem, and the problem of intrinsic relation—that are shown to be a consequence of various interpretations of Kant's distinction. Next, I reconstruct Robert Wicks' well-known account of dependent beauty as "the appreciation of teleological style" and point out a key equivocation in the statement of Wicks' account: the judgment of dependent beauty can be thought to consist in comparing (...) any two objects' teleological styles either in respect of how or in respect of how well each realizes a common purpose. I argue that this equivocation forces Wicks into a dilemma: either he must assert the impossibility of ugliness or he must assert that the judgment of dependent beauty is reducible to the judgment of perfection. Either way, he denies important theoretic desiderata. (shrink)

In this paper, I hope to reintroduce debate on the issue of aesthetic supervenience, especially in light of work undertaken by metaphysicians in recent years. After providing a brief walkthrough of some of the major views on supervenience generally, including several important metaphysical distinctions, I build upon views by Jerrold Levinson, John Bender, Nick Zangwill, and Gregory Currie, to develop a realist thesis of strong local supervenience, such that aesthetic properties of artworks and other objects depend upon their formal/structural properties (...) and reduce to powers to produce aesthetic effects of particular kinds in suitable perceivers under suitable conditions. (shrink)

Functional beauty in the aesthetic tradition -- Functional beauty in contemporary aesthetic theory -- Indeterminacy and the concept of function -- Function and form -- Nature and environment -- Architecture and the built environment -- Artefacts and everyday aesthetics -- The functions of art.

A well-known feature of great works of art is their power to “live on” long after the moment of their creation – to remain vital and alive long after the culture in which they were born has passed into history. This power to transcend time is common to works as various as the plays of Shakespeare, the Victory of Samothrace, and many works from early cultures such as Egypt and Buddhist India which we often encounter today in major art museums. (...) -/- What is the nature of this power and how does it operate? The Renaissance decided that works of art are timeless, “immortal” – immune from historical change – and this idea has exerted a profound influence on Western thought. But do we still believe it? Does it match our experience of art today which includes so many works from the past that spent long periods in oblivion and have clearly not been immune from historical change? -/- This book examines the seemingly miraculous power of art to transcend time – an issue widely neglected in contemporary aesthetics. Tracing the history of the question from the Renaissance onwards, and discussing thinkers as various as David Hume, Hegel, Marx, Walter Benjamin, Sartre, and Theodor Adorno, the book argues that art transcends time through a process of metamorphosis – a thesis first developed by the French art theorist, André Malraux. The implications of this idea pose major challenges for traditional thinking about the nature of art. (shrink)

Paradigmatic aesthetic properties include beauty, elegance, gracefulness, harmony, balance, loveliness, prettiness, handsomeness, and unity, as well as their negative counterparts, for example, ugliness, clumsiness and disunity. The book investigates the nature, reality, and structure(s) of these properties. It also focuses on special cases such as rightness of architectural proportion, musical beauty, functional beauty, and the aesthetic properties that are responsible for our interest in ‘painful art’ (horror and tragedy). [Manuscript is currently undergoing revision.].

The aim of this paper is to achieve a better understanding of why modern buildings do not easily harmonize with one another. After proposing, and defending, an analysis of the concept of architectural harmony, the paper turns to three possible views on whether we can expect more harmony from modern architecture in the future.

In The Aesthetics of Architecture, Roger Scruton makes at least four claims about rightness of architectural proportion. The present paper lists those claims, briefly discusses the way they are related, and, finally, selects one as the topic of discussion: the claim that there cannot be an exact, mathematical definition of rightness of proportion. Scruton’s arguments for this claim are reviewed. The first is found to be substantially correct, whereas the second is found to rely on a mistaken assumption, namely the (...) assumption that rightness of proportion is relative to a point of view. The paper ends by arguing that either the real or the apparent proportions of a building have to be definitely right, and that neither can be allowed to be definitely wrong. (shrink)

Aesthetic properties are often thought to have either no evaluative component or an evaluative component that can be isolated from their descriptive component. The present article argues that this popular view is without adequate support. First, doubt is cast on the idea that some paradigmatic aesthetic properties are purely descriptive. Second, the idea that the evaluative component of an aesthetic property can always be neatly separated from its descriptive component is called into question. Meanwhile, a speculative hypothesis is launched regarding (...) the structure of being garish and being cacophonous. Finally, an explanation is given of how the issue of the structure of aesthetic properties bears on their reality and (presumed) response-dependence. (shrink)

According to Roy Sorensen [Philosophical Studies 100 (2000) 175–191] an object cannot differ aesthetically from its mirror image. On his view, mirror-reversing an object – changing its left/right orientation – cannot bring about any aesthetic change. However, in arguing for this thesis Sorensen assumes that aesthetic properties supervene on intrinsic properties alone. This is a highly controversial assumption and nothing is offered in its support. Moreover, a plausible weakening of the assumption does not improve the argument. Finally, Sorensen’s second argument (...) is shown to be formally flawed. As a result, the case for the aesthetic irrelevancy of orientation seems still open. (shrink)

What is kitsch? The varieties of phenomena which can fall under the name are bewildering. Here, I focus on what has been called “traditional kitsch,” and argue that it often turns on the emotional effect specifically captured by Edmund Burke’s concept of “beauty” from his 1757 'A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful.' Burkean beauty also serves to distinguish “traditional kitsch” from other phenomena also often called “kitsch”—namely, entertainment. Although I argue that Burkean beauty in domestic decoration allows for (...) us to see “traditional kitsch” as resting on natural and even healthy impulses, I also argue that an all-too-common political function of traditional kitsch directs it to dangerous ends. (shrink)

Hamilton explains why "drama" is a category of literature rather than of theater, even though it is appropriate to describe many theatrical performances as "dramatic." Consideration of the possibilities of theatrical performance are especially important to this category of literature, but need not be (and often are not) decisive in constraining interpretations of dramatic works.

A survey of and a comparison of the relative strengths of two favored views of what theatrical performers do: pretend or engage in a variety of self-display. The behavioral version of the pretense theory is shown to be relatively weak as an instrument for understanding the variety of performance styles available in world theater. Whether pretense works as a theory of the mental capacities that underly theatrical performance is a separate question.

Hamilton argues that theatrical performances have always been regarded as works produced for inspection and evaluation in their own right. The reason this has been obscured is the enormously successful text-based literary tradition in modern European theater. To show why this is as it should be, Hamilton shows how theater's spectators pick out, grasp, and assess performances without reference to the texts they employ, even within that successful literary tradition.

For the most part, the Aesthetic Theory of Art—any theory of art claiming that the aesthetic is a descriptively necessary feature of art—has been repudiated, especially in light of what are now considered traditional counterexamples. We argue that the Aesthetic Theory of Art can instead be far more plausibly recast by abandoning aesthetic-feature possession by the artwork for a claim about aesthetic-concept possession by the artist. This move productively re-frames and re-energizes the debate surrounding the relationship between art and the (...) aesthetic. That is, we claim Aesthetic Theory so re-framed suggests that the aesthetic might have a central and substantial explanatory role to play within both traditional philosophical enquiries as well as recent and more empirical enquiries into the psychological and cognitive aspects of art and its practice. Finally, we discuss the directions this new work might take—by tying art theory to investigations of the distinctive sensorimotor capacities of expert artists, their specialized aesthetic conceptual schemata, and the ways these distinctive capacities and schemata contribute to the production of artworks. (shrink)

Disputing the common misconception that nihilism is wholly negative and necessarily damaging to the human spirit, John Marmysz offers a clear and complete definition to argue that it is compatible, and indeed preferably responded to, with an attitude of good humor. He carefully scrutinizes the phenomenon of nihilism as it appears in the works, lives, and actions of key figures in the history of philosophy, literature, politics, and theology, including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Camus, and Mishima. While suggesting that there ultimately is (...) no solution to the problem of nihilism, Marmysz proposes a way of utilizing the anxiety and despair that is associated with the problem as a spur toward liveliness, activity, and the celebration of life. (shrink)

Humorous laughter is related to the sublime experience in that it involves the transformation of a potentially unpleasant perception into a pleasurable experience. However, whereas sublimity is associated with feelings of awe and respect, humorous laughter is associated with feelings of superiority and contempt. This difference is a result of the fact that sublimity is an affective response involving an individual’s perception of vulnerability while humorous laughter is a response involving perceived invulnerability.

encyclopedia article focused on drawing, stressing facture, the physicality of three media.

First ever philosophy treatise on photography, analytic in approach but sensitive to photo-history, not confined to aesthetics or art (illus.), Walker Evans photo on cover. Papercover printing, Dec. 2000.

cannot grasp what is at stake in it without taking both its claims and its tone seriously. Read philosophically, Danto wants to reconceive art’s aesthetic dimension as those features that ‘inflect’ our attitude towards a work’s meaning, and to distinguish, in so doing, between beauty that is and beauty that is not internal to that meaning. Although welcome, I argue that his attempt to carry this through is compromised by his countervailing tendency to conceive the aesthetic in non-cognitive terms. Read (...) as a work of philosophical confession, on the other hand, I suggest that Danto’s late turn to aesthetics may be illuminated through a comparison with Philip Guston’s late turn to figuration. To do so, I draw parallels between Guston’s development as a painter and Danto’s philosophical trajectory. Danto concludes that, though necessary to life, beauty is not necessary to art; I conclude that, on this account, only an aesthetic art makes a warranted claim on our attention. (shrink)

Paradigmatic aesthetic properties include beauty, elegance, gracefulness, harmony, balance, loveliness, prettiness, handsomeness, and unity, as well as their negative counterparts, for example, ugliness, clumsiness and disunity. The book investigates the nature, reality, and structure(s) of these properties. It also focuses on special cases such as rightness of architectural proportion, musical beauty, functional beauty, and the aesthetic properties that are responsible for our interest in ‘painful art’ (horror and tragedy). [Manuscript is currently undergoing revision.].

What is kitsch? The varieties of phenomena which can fall under the name are bewildering. Here, I focus on what has been called “traditional kitsch,” and argue that it often turns on the emotional effect specifically captured by Edmund Burke’s concept of “beauty” from his 1757 'A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful.' Burkean beauty also serves to distinguish “traditional kitsch” from other phenomena also often called “kitsch”—namely, entertainment. Although I argue that Burkean beauty in domestic decoration allows for (...) us to see “traditional kitsch” as resting on natural and even healthy impulses, I also argue that an all-too-common political function of traditional kitsch directs it to dangerous ends. (shrink)

In Only a Promise of Happiness Alexander Nehamas holds that beauty is the object of love. I raise three objections to this claim when formulated in terms of personal love: love is too narrow in scope to be the attitude whose formal object is beauty; one can experience a person's beauty but have no love for her; and love is of particulars, not of attributes, however specific, such as beauty. A second kind of love, hedonic love, is too broad in (...) scope to be the attitude whose formal object is beauty. I also argue, contra Nehamas, that inner beauty exists. (shrink)

It is shown through examples ranging from Parmenides and Plato to Whitehead and Wittgenstein that beauty is central among the values that have made metaphysical theories appealing and credible. A common attitude would be that the aesthetic properties of metaphysical theories may be important for effective presentation but are irrelevant to the cognitive value of the theories. This however is question-begging, since it assumes without argument that ultimate reality is indifferent to ’value considerations’ such as beauty. If on the contrary (...) we allow that the aesthetic properties of theories may be cognitively relevant, which such properties should be considered? This question is explored in the final section of the paper. (shrink)

: In this paper, I argue that one of the most intense ways women are encouraged to enjoy sublime experiences is via attempts to control their bodies through excessive dieting. If this is so, then the societal-cultural contributions to the problem of eating disorders exceed the perpetuation of a certain beauty ideal to include the almost universal encouragement women receive to diet, coupled with the relative shortage of opportunities women are afforded to experience the sublime.

According to Stephen Davies, there is no such thing as free beauty. Using actual and imaginary examples, he tries to show that our aesthetic evaluations of objects inevitably pay heed to the kinds to which they belong or in which we judge them to belong. His examples are not as compelling as he thinks, however. Furthermore, nature looked at through a microscope (or a telescope) provides us with a particular class of counter-examples which have not been dealt with by Davies (...) and which put considerable pressure on his account. (shrink)

'Doing an Aristotle' on Form: a highly compressed attempt to explain what we mean by the ambiguous term "form" in visual arts.

The concept of functional beauty is analysed in terms of the role played by beliefs, in particular expectations, in our perceptions. After finding various theories of functional beauty unsatisfying, I introduce a novel approach which explains how aesthetic judgements on a variety of different kinds of functional objects (chairs, buildings, cars, etc.) can be grounded in perceptions influenced by beliefs.

Human Beauty 3. Natural Beauty 4. Everyday Beauty 5. Artistic Beauty 6. Taste and Order 7. Eros and Art 8. Sacred Beauty Notes and Further Reading.

Hume is plausibly interpreted as asserting that an artwork is beautiful if and only if it pleases ideal critics. Jerrold Levinson maintains that Hume's commitment to this biconditional gives rise to a problem that occurs neither to Hume nor to his any of his interpreters—the problem of explaining why you should care what pleases ideal critics if you are not one yourself. I argue that this problem arises only if you hold an empiricist theory of aesthetic value—that is, a theory (...) that reduces the aesthetic value of a work to the value of the experience it affords—as Levinson does. I argue that Levinson's own attempted solution to the problem cannot succeed. And I argue that the problem never arises for Hume because his commitment to the biconditional is not a commitment to an empiricist theory of aesthetic value, but to an empiricist theory of aesthetic evaluation. (shrink)

This book conducts a timely inquiry into contemporary conscience and politics.

It is sometimes held that “the aesthetic” and “the cognitive” are separate categories. Enterprises concerning the former and ones concerning the latter have different aims and values. They require distinct modes of attention and reward divergent kinds of appreciation. Thus, we must avoid running together aesthetic and cognitive matters. In this paper, I challenge the independence of these categories, but in unorthodox fashion. Most attempts proceed by arguing that cognitive values can bear upon aesthetic ones. I approach from the opposite (...) direction. I show that a work’s aesthetic merits can affect its cognitive ones and, more provocatively, its philosophical ones. (shrink)

On one standard view, paraphrasing Kierkegaard requires no special literary talent. It demands no particular flair for the poetic. However, Kierkegaard himself rejects this view. He says we cannot paraphrase in a straightforward fashion some of the ideas he expresses in a literary format. To use the words of Johannes Climacus, these ideas defy direct communication. In this paper, I piece together and defend the justification Kierkegaard offers for this position. I trace its origins to concerns raised by Lessing and (...) Mendelssohn about the relationship between form and content in works of art. I maintain that Kierkegaard follows early German Romantic thinkers in applying these aesthetic concerns to philosophical writing. By way of conclusion, I discuss the implications of Kierkegaard’s position for contemporary scholarship. (shrink)

One striking feature of On the Genealogy of Morals concerns how it is written. Nietzsche utilizes a literary style that provokes his readers’ emotions. Recently, Christopher Janaway has argued that this approach is integral to Nietzsche’s philosophical goals: feeling the emotions Nietzsche’s style arouses is necessary for understanding the views he defends. This paper shows that Janaway’s position is tempting but mistaken. The temptation exists because our emotions often function as “tools of discovery.” They bring things into focus we otherwise (...) could not see. However, once we grasp what they reveal, we can communicate it to others without first having to arouse their emotions. Thus there may be truths none of us would know unless one of us consulted his or her emotions. But it is not the case that each of us must consult his or her emotions in order to understand these truths. (shrink)

Following the pattern set by the early German Romantics, Kierkegaard conveys many of his insights through literature rather than academic prose. What makes him a valuable member of this tradition is the theory he develops to support it, his so-called “theory of indirect communication.” The most exciting aspect of this theory concerns the alleged importance of indirect communication: Kierkegaard claims that there are some projects only it can accomplish. This paper provides a critical account of two arguments Kierkegaard offers in (...) defense of this claim. The first argument is that he needs to use indirect communication in order to discourage people from losing themselves in the “crowd”. The second argument is that he needs to use it in order to help people out of a “monstrous illusion”. It is shown that while both arguments justify Kierkegaard’s decision to use indirect communication, neither one supports the original claim about its indispensability. (shrink)

This dissertation concerns Kierkegaard’s theory of indirect communication. A central aspect of this theory is what I call the “indispensability thesis”: there are some projects only indirect communication can accomplish. The purpose of the dissertation is to disclose and assess the rationale behind the indispensability thesis. -/- A pair of questions guides the project. First, to what does ‘indirect communication’ refer? Two acceptable responses exist: (1) Kierkegaard’s version of Socrates’ midwifery method and (2) Kierkegaard’s use of artful literary devices. Second, (...) for what end does Kierkegaard use indirect communication? There are two acceptable responses here as well: (1) helping others become religious and (2) making others aware of the nature of existence. -/- These responses are interrelated. First, Kierkegaard’s notion of religion places restrictions on the means he can use to get readers to become religious. These restrictions ultimately entail that the only viable form of religious pedagogy is the midwifery method. Second, Kierkegaard engages in the midwifery method in part by making readers aware of the nature of existence (especially religious existence). But given the problems plaguing his readers, he thinks a straightforward approach to this project will likely fail. An approach that used artful literary devices such as deception and humor would be more successful. Third, Kierkegaard believes that there is one aspect of religious existence (viz. subjectivity) that people can come to know only first-hand. As such, he cannot directly impart knowledge of subjectivity to his readers. He argues that this means he must use the midwifery method. And he thinks the most productive way to do so is to provide readers with the kind of fictional narratives found in his early pseudonymous writings. Thus artful rhetorical devices play a role here as well. -/- All of Kierkegaard’s arguments for the indispensability thesis turn on debatable assumptions. But the arguments concerning artful rhetorical devices have the additional defect of being merely probabilistic in nature. They lack the strength to support the indispensability thesis even if we grant the relevant background assumptions. Therefore, to the degree that the indispensability thesis has merit, it lies with the arguments concerning the midwifery method. (shrink)

Distant Suffering examines the moral and political implications for a spectator of the distant suffering of others as presented through the media. What are the morally acceptable responses to the sight of suffering on television, for example, when the viewer cannot act directly to affect the circumstances in which the suffering takes place? Luc Boltanski argues that spectators can actively involve themselves and others by speaking about what they have seen and how they were affected by it. Developing ideas in (...) Adam Smith's moral theory, he examines three rhetorical 'topics' available for the expression of the spectator's response to suffering: the topics of denunciation and of sentiment and the aesthetic topic. The book concludes with a discussion of a 'crisis of pity' in relation to modern forms of humanitarianism. A possible way out of this crisis is suggested which involves an emphasis and focus on present suffering. (shrink)

"Every culture needs to appropriate the universal truth of human suffering," says Fernando Escalante, ". . . to give its own meaning to this suffering, so that human existence is bearable." Originally published in Spanish as La mirada de Dios: Estudios sobre la cultura del sufrimiento, this book is a remarkable study of the evolution of the culture of suffering and the different elements that constitute it, beginning with a reading of Rousseau and ending with the appearance of the Shoah (...) in the Western consciousness--"The memory endures, and this constitutes a fundamental transition for the Western conscience: we have witnessed." Drawing on writings from the Greeks to Cervantes, Voltaire to Nietzsche, and Freud to William James, Escalante combines his considerable knowledge of politics and political theory with a vast array of literary examples to arrive at an intellectual understanding of the history and meaning of suffering. His investigation encompasses the rise of popular politics, the role of messianism in modern nationalism, and the contemporary implications of the Shoah. This book will appeal to a wide audience: students of political theory, humanism, and philosophy, as well as the general reader interested in a glimpse into the mind of a highly original Latin American thinker. (shrink)

Hamilton explains why "drama" is a category of literature rather than of theater, even though it is appropriate to describe many theatrical performances as "dramatic." Consideration of the possibilities of theatrical performance are especially important to this category of literature, but need not be (and often are not) decisive in constraining interpretations of dramatic works.

A survey of and a comparison of the relative strengths of two favored views of what theatrical performers do: pretend or engage in a variety of self-display. The behavioral version of the pretense theory is shown to be relatively weak as an instrument for understanding the variety of performance styles available in world theater. Whether pretense works as a theory of the mental capacities that underly theatrical performance is a separate question.

Hamilton argues that theatrical performances have always been regarded as works produced for inspection and evaluation in their own right. The reason this has been obscured is the enormously successful text-based literary tradition in modern European theater. To show why this is as it should be, Hamilton shows how theater's spectators pick out, grasp, and assess performances without reference to the texts they employ, even within that successful literary tradition.

ILLUSTRATIONS Chapter 2 1. Roy Lichtenstein, Little Big Painting 83 2. Luis Buriuel, Viridiana (Last Supper scene) 86 3. ...

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed a change in the perception of the arts and of philosophy. In the arts this transition occurred around 1800, with, for instance, the breakdown of Vitruvianism in architecture, while in philosophy the foundationalism of which Descartes and Spinoza were paradigmatic representatives, which presumed that philosophy and the sciences possessed a method of ensuring the demonstration of truths, was undermined by the idea, asserted by Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, that there exist alternative styles of enquiry among (...) which a choice is open. The essays in this book examine the circumstances, features, and consequences of this historical transition, exploring in particular new aspects and instances of the inter-relatedness of content and its formal representation in both the arts and philosophy. (shrink)

This collection of texts on the Sublime provides the historical context for the foundation and discussion of one of the most important aesthetic debates of the Enlightenment. The significance of the Sublime in the eighteenth century ranged across a number of fields - literary criticism, empirical psychology, political economy, connoisseurship, landscape design and aesthetics, painting and the fine arts, and moral philosophy - and has continued to animate aesthetic and theoretical debates to this day. However, the unavailability of many of (...) the crucial texts of the founding tradition has resulted in a conception of the Sublime often limited to the definitions of its most famous theorist Edmund Burke. Andrew Ashfield and Peter de Bolla's anthology, which includes an introduction and notes to each entry, offers students and scholars ready access to a much deeper and more complex tradition of writings on the Sublime, many of them never before printed in modern editions. (shrink)

This book explores the impulses behind the fascination for that experience.

An effort to lay out a kind of taxomony of conceptual relations between the domains of the sublime and the religious. Warning: includes two somewhat graphic images. -/- .

The Observations and the Remarks -- The Observations -- Forms of the sublime, and the grotesque -- Virtue -- The Remarks : history and background -- Four senses of freedom -- Enthusiasm : the passion of the sublime -- The judgment of the sublime -- Preliminary issues -- The mathematical and the dynamical sublime -- A third kind : the moral sublime -- Dependent and free sublimity -- The monstrous and the colossal -- Sublimity elicited by art -- Moral feeling (...) and the sublime -- The moral feeling of respect -- Sublimity as presupposing freedom -- Sublimity as supporting morality -- Various senses of interest and disinterestedness -- Interest -- First-order and second-order interests -- Empirical and morally based interests -- Aesthetic enthusiasm -- Enthusiasm in the corpus -- Affect -- Enthusiasm as morally ambiguous -- Enthusiasm as an aesthetic feeling of sublimity -- "Without enthusiasm nothing great can be accomplished" -- Conclusion : Kantian enthusiasm and the revelation of freedom -- Eenthusiasm for the idea of a republic -- The charge against Kant -- Means and ends -- Freedom and the idea of a republic -- The consistency of Kant's position -- Sublimity's basis in freedom -- The transition to freedom. (shrink)

The literature on the venerable aesthetic category of the sublime often provides us with lists of sublime phenomena — mountains, storms, deserts, volcanoes, oceans, the starry sky, and so on. But it has long been recognized that what matters is the experience of such objects. We then find that one of the most consistent claims about this experience is that it involves an element of fear. Meanwhile, the recognition of the sublime as a category of aesthetic appreciation implies that attraction, (...) admiration or pleasure is also present.1However, there is also a sense of fear and attraction when we watch car chases or fights. Neither of these is an occasion for the sublime so much as a visceral sort of excitement.2 As .. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 'The sublime'. A short introduction to a long history Timothy M. Costelloe; Part I. Philosophical History of the Sublime: 1. Longinus and the ancient sublime Malcolm Heath; 2...And the beautiful? revisiting Edmund Burke's 'double aesthetics' Rodolphe Gasche; 3. The moral source of the Kantian sublime Melissa Meritt; 4. Imagination and internal sense: the sublime in Shaftesbury, Reid, Addison, and Reynolds Timothy M. Costelloe; 5. The associative sublime: Kames, Gerrard, Alison, and Stewart Rachel Zuckert; 6. The 'prehistory' (...) of the sublime in early modern France: an interdisciplinary perspective a Madeleine Martin; 7. The post-Kantian German sublime Paul Guyer; 8. The postmodern sublime: presentation and its limits David B. Johnson; Part II. Disciplinary and Other Perspectives: 9. The 'subtler sublime': in modern Dutch aesthetics John R. J. Eyck; 10. The first American sublime Chandos Michael Brown; 11. The environmental sublime Emily Brady; 12. Religion and the sublime Andrew Chignell and Matthew C. Halteman; 13. The British romantic sublime Adam Potkay; 14. The sublime and the fine arts Theodore Gracyk; 15. Architecture and the sublime Richard Etlin. (shrink)

Crockett develops a constructive radical theology from the philosophy of Kant. Reading The Critique of Judgment back into The Critique of Pure Reason, Crockett draws upon the insights of such continental philosophers as Heidegger, Derrida, Lyotard and Deleuze. This book shows how existential notions of self, time and imagination are interrelated in Kantian thinking, and demonstrates their importance for theology. An original theology of the sublime emerges as a connection is made between the Kantian sublime of the Third Critique and (...) the transcendental imagination of the First Critique. (shrink)

Paul Crowther, in his book, The Kantian Sublime (1989), works to reconstruct Kant's aesthetics in order to make its continued relevance to contemporary aesthetic concerns more visible. The present article remains within the area of Crowther's "cognitive" sublime, to show that there is much space for expanding upon Kantian varieties of the sublime, particularly in art.

It might at first seem that the senses (the five traditionally recognized conduits of outer sense) would have very little to contribute to an investigation of Kant's aesthetics. Is not Kant's aesthetic theory based on a relation of the higher cognitive faculties? Much however can be revealed by asking to what degree sight is essential to aesthetic judgment (of beauty and the sublime) as Kant describes it in the 'Critique of Judgment.' Here the sublime receives particular attention.

The concept of the “sublime” has been discussed by a few philosophers. According to German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), the sublime refers to something “absolutely great,”1 such as the vast Sahara Desert or an earthquake, that surpasses one’s ability to comprehend with one’s reason. The sublime brings a mixture of anxiety and pleasure to those experiencing it: anxiety from the conflict between reason and imagination, and pleasure from the awareness of the supremacy of human reason. While Kant focuses on sublime (...) nature, French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) concentrates on sublime art, such as avant-garde art, which presents “the existence of something unpresentable”2 and confronts us with .. (shrink)

In the history of aesthetics, few concepts have been as powerful and as elusive as the idea of the sublime, the "enthusiastic terror" that can possess us when we behold a mountain or a miracle. In his new book, James Kirwan traces the history of the sublime from its emergence in the eighteenth century to its resurgence in contemporary aesthetics. Sublimity addresses the nature of the sublime experience itself, and the function that experience has played, and continues to play, within (...) aesthetic discourse. The book both updates and revises existing treatments of the sublime in the eighteenth century, examines its neglected role in the nineteenth century aesthetics, and analyzes the significance of the modifications the concept has undergone in order to serve the interests of contemporary aesthetics. The book thus offers the most comprehensive coverage of the history of the sublime available. With its appeal for readers in aesthetics, art history, religion, and literary theory, Sublimity will beof wide use to students and scholars. (shrink)

Womens Liberation and the Sublime is a passionate report on the state of feminist thinking and practice after the linguistic turn. A critical assessment of masculinist notions of the sublime in modern and postmodern accounts grounds the author's positive and constructive recuperation of sublime experience in a feminist voice.

Disputing the common misconception that nihilism is wholly negative and necessarily damaging to the human spirit, John Marmysz offers a clear and complete definition to argue that it is compatible, and indeed preferably responded to, with an attitude of good humor. He carefully scrutinizes the phenomenon of nihilism as it appears in the works, lives, and actions of key figures in the history of philosophy, literature, politics, and theology, including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Camus, and Mishima. While suggesting that there ultimately is (...) no solution to the problem of nihilism, Marmysz proposes a way of utilizing the anxiety and despair that is associated with the problem as a spur toward liveliness, activity, and the celebration of life. (shrink)

Humorous laughter is related to the sublime experience in that it involves the transformation of a potentially unpleasant perception into a pleasurable experience. However, whereas sublimity is associated with feelings of awe and respect, humorous laughter is associated with feelings of superiority and contempt. This difference is a result of the fact that sublimity is an affective response involving an individual’s perception of vulnerability while humorous laughter is a response involving perceived invulnerability.