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)

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.

This collection of essays by one of the preeminent Kant scholars of our time transforms our understanding of both Kant's aesthetics and his ethics. Guyer shows that at the very core of Kant's aesthetic theory, disinterestedness of taste becomes an experience of freedom and thus an essential accompaniment to morality itself. At the same time he reveals how Kant's moral theory includes a distinctive place for the cultivation of both general moral sentiments and particular attachments on the basis of the (...) most rigorous principle of duty. Kant's thought is placed in a rich historical context including such figures as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Burke, Kames, as well as Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Schiller, and Hegel. Other topics treated are the sublime, natural versus artistic beauty, genius and art history, and duty and inclination. These essays (half being published for the first time) extend and enrich the account of Kant's aesthetics in the author's earlier book, Kant and the Claims of Taste (1979). (shrink)

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)

A crucial feature of Kant's critical-period writing on the sublime is its grounding in moral psychology. Whereas in the pre-critical writings, the sublime is viewed as an inherently exhausting state of mind, in the critical-period writings it is presented as one that gains strength the more it is sustained. I account for this in terms of Kantian moral psychology, and explain that, for Kant, sound moral disposition is conceived as a sublime state of mind.

Review of Robert Clewis, _The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom_.