In this book Robert R. Clewis shows how certain crucial concepts in Kant's aesthetics and practical philosophy - the sublime, enthusiasm, freedom, empirical and intellectual interests, the idea of a republic - fit together and deepen our understanding of Kant's philosophy. He examines the ways in which different kinds of sublimity reveal freedom and indirectly contribute to morality, and discusses how Kant's account of natural sublimity suggests that we have an indirect duty with regard to nature. Unlike many other (...) studies of these themes, this book examines both the pre-critical Observations and the remarks that Kant wrote in his copy of the Observations. Finally, Clewis takes seriously Kant's claim that enthusiasm is aesthetically sublime, and shows how this clarifies Kant's views of the French Revolution. His book will appeal to all who are interested in Kant's philosophy. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s work on the sublimity of aesthetic experience lends itself to puzzlement, if not misclassification. Complicating matters, Kant distinguishes between two kinds of sublimity: respectively, the “mathematical” and “dynamical” sublime. More mystifying is that the sublime is ineffable, beyond the ken of human comprehension. These perplexities notwithstanding, Kant argues that sublime sentiment produces a feeling of supersensible comfort. Commentators identify this comfort emanating most strongly from the dynamical sublime. However, in this paper I draw from (...) the unity of reason thesis to offer a plausible account of how the mathematical sublime is equally capable of providing the same feeling of supersensible comfort. (shrink)

Occupying a seemingly minor role in the authorship of Kierkegaard, the concept of “the sublime” has not received much attention in the reception, compared to that of other more prominent concepts. This could essentially imply one of two things: either that the sublime is not an important theme for Kierkegaard, or that it is so pervasively present, that the reader does not know how to conceive it, let alone get a hold of a tangible definition of it. Proceeding (...) from the latter assumption, this article expounds in what sense the sublime occupies a pivotal role in Kierkegaard’s philosophy mediating between the aesthetic and the religious sphere. Using the Kantian conceptual framework of the sublime as my continual point of reference, I wish to show how Kierkegaard both remains loyal to certain aspects of this heritage, and at the same time transports the sublime to an entirely new plateau. Setting the stage for a modern discourse of the sublime will enable us to see in what sense the sublime enters a central position in Kierkegaard’s philosophy, being the feeling that awakens the individual from his social immurement and propels him into his path of self-realization. (shrink)

This interesting and important contribution to scholarship on Kant’s account of sublime feeling develops an argument that the author first makes in an article, “Kant’s Consistency Regarding the Regime Change in France” (Philosophy and Social Criticism 32 [2006]: 443–60). The heart of the argument, presented in chapters 2 through 5, concludes that aesthetic enthusiasm (Enthusiasm, which Clewis distinguishes from Schwärmerei, or fanaticism) is a kind of sublime feeling, which can indirectly support morality and thus elicit an interest of (...) reason (as Kant claims the beautiful does). In chapter 6, Clewis uses the foregoing analysis to resolve an apparent inconsistency between Kant’s remarks on the enthusiasm of .. (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.

This book is founded on a close reading of Kant’s Opus Postumum in order both to explore the essential motivation that drove Kant to write a last comprehensive magnum opus and, by doing so, to show the essential link between his aesthetics and the idea of Übergang, the title of this last work. For this work contains not only his dynamical theory of matter defining motion as preliminary to the notions of space and time, and the advanced version of his (...) philosophy of natural science, but also his arguments for the phenomenal validity of the metaphysical foundations, his teachings on the aesthetic human faculties of judgment and Anschauung, and the discernment of the transcendental philosophy from Platonic idealism carrying it to a cosmological level, i.e. Kant’s insertion of the concept of cosmotheoros. Since the process of transition is an aesthetic process based on human senses, intuitions and judgments, the argument will follow that in order to explicate Übergang, we need to reconcile cosmology, as the oldest branch of philosophy dealing with the interactions between the cosmic forces and the ways they affect human life, with aesthetics, as the youngest branch of philosophy dealing with how we sense, intuit and judge the form and motion of matter. Therefore, in the last analysis, Übergang becomes rather a cosmologic-aesthetic principle similar to the Heraclitean logos. Another building block of the book is the fruitful comparison between the Kantian sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian, which are going to be construed as the aesthetic theories on human understanding representing the transition from nature to art. For they are not only conceptual – aesthetic but also dynamic – cosmological theories due to their reference both to nature and to human nature. Finally, Cosmological Aesthetics employs the principles of transition and motion to analyze Van Gogh’s Starry Night in an excursus. (shrink)

This two-chapter work brings together Heraclitus, Kant, and Nietzsche in an effort to explore transition and motion, two concepts derived from Kant’s Opus Postumum that the author argues are indications of Kant’s cosmological-aesthetic approach in his late work. At times, the book seems to want to be a work of Kant scholarship, addressing the question of the role of the Opus Postumum in the Kantian corpus. Indeed, the most sustained engagements with secondary literature occur in the sections on Kant. (...) At other times, however, Erman Kaplama extracts the notion of transition from Kant’s work in order to make broader claims about the way in which the human faculty of sense intuition... (shrink)

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

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.

The sublime has been a relatively neglected topic in recent work in philosophical aesthetics, with existing discussions confined mainly to problems in Kant's theory.1 Given the revival of interest in his aesthetic theory and the influence of the Kantian sublime compared to other eighteenth-century accounts, this focus is not surprising. Kant's emphasis on nature also sets his theory apart from other eighteenth-century theories that, although making nature central, also give explicit attention to moral character and mathematical ideas (...) and generally devote more discussion to art and artifacts than Kant did.2 Recent postmodern and poststructuralist theories of the sublime tend to concentrate on the concept in art and .. (shrink)

Kant’s account of the sublime makes frequent appeals to infinity, appeals which have been extensively criticised by commentators such as Budd and Crowther. This paper examines the costs and benefits of reconstructing the account in finitist terms. On the one hand, drawing on a detailed comparison of the first and third Critiques, I argue that the underlying logic of Kant’s position is essentially finitist. I defend the approach against longstanding objections, as well as addressing recent infinitist work by Moore (...) and Smith. On the other hand, however, I argue that finitism faces distinctive problems of its own: whilst the resultant theory is a coherent and interesting one, it is unclear in what sense it remains an analysis of the sublime. I illustrate the worry by juxtaposing the finitist reading with analytical cubism. -/- . (shrink)

This paper is founded on a close reading of Kant’s Opus Postumum in order both to explore the essential motivation that drove Kant to write a last comprehensive magnum opus and, by doing so, to show the essential link between his aesthetics and the idea of Übergang, the title of this last work. For this work contains not only his dynamical theory of matter defining motion as preliminary to the notions of space and time, and the advanced version of his (...) philosophy of natural science, but also his arguments for the phenomenal validity of the metaphysical foundations, his teachings on the aesthetic human faculties of judgment and Anschauung, and the discernment of the transcendental philosophy from Platonic idealism carrying it to a cosmological level, i.e. Kant’s insertion of the concept of cosmotheoros. Since the process of transition is an aesthetic process based on human senses, intuitions and judgments, the argument will follow that in order to explicate Übergang, we need to reconcile cosmology, as the oldest branch of philosophy dealing with the interactions between the cosmic forces and the ways they affect human life, with aesthetics, as the youngest branch of philosophy dealing with how we sense, intuit and judge the form and motion of matter. Therefore, in the last analysis, Übergang becomes rather a cosmologic-aesthetic principle similar to the Heraclitean logos. Another building block of the paper is the fruitful comparison between the Kantian sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian, which are going to be construed as the aesthetic theories on human understanding representing the transition from nature to art. For they are not only conceptual – aesthetic but also dynamic – cosmological theories due to their reference both to nature and to human nature. (shrink)

The goal of this essay is to begin a reassessment of Kant's aesthetics and specifically his account of the sublime. This reassessment is intended to demonstrate its indebtedness to some recent feminist critics of philosophy and literature. Somewhat artificially, I will characterize the criticism in question as containing two categories or directions of investigation. The first sort is aimed at the unmasking of gender prejudice and ideology in the standpoint or conceptual framework of writers such as Burke and Kant. (...) the second sort of criticism is less familiar and harder to characterize, but it can be located among the works of literary critics who make use of recent poststruturalist philosophy and psychoanalysis. . . principally the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, along with that of Neil Hertz, Frances Ferguson, Joshua Wilner, and Naomi Schor. (shrink)

Schopenhauer singles out Kant's theory of the sublime for high praise, calling it ‘by far the most excellent thing in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement’, yet, in his main discussion of the sublime, he ridicules Kant's explanation as being in the grip of scholastic metaphysics. My first aim in this paper is to sort out Schopenhauer's apparently conflicted appraisal of Kant's theory of the sublime. Next, based on hisNachlaß,close readings of published texts and especially of his account (...) of the experience of tragic drama, I offer a reconstruction of Schopenhauer's theory of the sublime which understands it – against prevailing scholarly views – as atransformation ofrather than as a realdeparture fromthe Kantian explanation. Finally, I suggest that my interpretation of Schopenhauer's theory of the sublime has far-reaching consequences for a proper understanding of his views on freedom. (shrink)

I examine the place of the sublime within the Kantian architectonic, I examine why the topic matters for Kant and what its accommodation within the architectonic tells us about his conception of system. I present my argument in the form of answers to the following questions: “What is the sublime?” “What is the sublime about?” “Why does the sublime matter?”.

Although Kant disapproved of war, he asserted it was sublime. His views of war are disconnected and in places surprisingly positive, but he avoids grappling with their implications. This article analyses these heterogeneous discussions through Kant’s notion of the sublime to argue that some of his statements imply war’s sublimity can provoke an educated public into forming an international federation: the power to keep all in awe in Kant’s interpretation of international foundation is not the Hobbesean sovereign or (...) a coercive international government, but reflection on war itself. Kant’s ideas about sublime warfare are internally contradictory. Although they are valuable as an encouragement to work toward peace, working toward peace in actual fact may have unintended results. (shrink)

This study characterizes Kant's understanding of the relation between aesthetic and moral judgment by examining the concept of sublimity in three of Kant's texts: the Beobachtungen uber das Gefuhl des Schonen und Erhabenen , the Bemerkungen in den " Beobachtungen uber das Gefuhl des Schonen und Erhabenen" , and the Kritik der Urteilskraft . Part I examines aesthetic and moral judgment in the Observations and the Remarks; Part II characterizes Kant's account in the later or critical period; and Part III (...) contains my English translation of the Remarks . (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, to explain the distinction between Kant’s notions of the sublime and ugliness, and to answer an important question that has been left unnoticed in contemporary studies, namely why it is the case that even though both sublime and ugliness are contrapurposive for the power of judgment, occasioning the feeling of displeasure, yet that after all we should feel pleasure in the former, while not in the latter. Second, to apply my (...) interpretation of the sublime and ugliness to contemporary art, and to resolve certain issues that have been raised in accounting for the possibility of artistic sublimity. I argue that an experience of a genuine artistic sublimity is an uncommon occurrence. I propose that the value of contemporary art can be best explained by referring to Kant’s notion of ugliness and his theory of aesthetic ideas. (shrink)

Both for Kant and for Nietzsche, aesthetics must not be considered as a systematic science based merely on logical premises but rather as a set of intuitively attained artistic ideas that constitute or reconstitute the sensible perceptions and supersensible representations into a new whole. Kantian and Nietzschean aesthetics are both aiming to see beyond the forms of objects to provide explanations for the nobility and sublimity of human art and life. We can safely say that Kant and Nietzsche used (...) the dualities of the beautiful/sublime and Apollonian/Dionysian to advocate their general philosophical worldview, and that the initial formation (in Observations and The Birth of Tragedy) and final dissolution (in the Critique of Judgment and Zarathustra and other later works) of these dualities are determined by the gradually established telos of their philosophical endeavor. Therefore, by observing the evolution of these so-called dualities, Kaplama gathers important clues as to how Kant’s and Nietzsche’s aesthetics transformed into different ways to affirm human art and life. On the one hand, Kaplama argues, the Dionysian came to be the heart and soul of Nietzschean aesthetics and ethics, and the Apollonian (or the formal drive of individuation) was reduced into a mere aesthetic criterion. On the other, Kant treats the sublime (which is originally an idea-producing feeling and/or judgment) as a mere appendix to his Critique of Judgment and aesthetic theory teleologically reducing it into its possible moral consequences. This is why Schopenhauer calls the sublime “by far the most excellent thing in the Critique of Judgment” which touches on the real problem of aesthetics very closely but does not provide a real solution for it. Kant’s forced teleological move is to make his theory of aesthetic judgment stand as a ‘reaffirmation’ of the earlier ethical justification he believed to have accomplished in the first two Critiques and the Groundwork where he defends an affirmation of human life through a teleological morality centered on the principle of free-will. In contrast, Nietzsche’s aesthetics (particularly the Dionysian) guides his ethics and metaphysics again through defining an ideal human nature without which ethos would be static and meaningless, lacking the ability to move and change and represent the tragic pathos of human life. (shrink)

The article explores the closeness of the theme of the monstrous to the concept of the sublime, first of all linking them as moments that challenge our cognitive possibilities, starting from these two aspects: the feeling of fear and the rupture of the ordinary representative scheme of the subject. Among the many revivals and interpretations of the Third Critique and of Kant's sublime, two authors of the French twentieth century – Gilles Deleuze and Jean-François Lyotard – bring together (...) the sublime and the monstrous, radicalizing their epistemological scope, making them not only a cognitive possibility, but a necessary condition for the emergence of thought. (shrink)

In recent years, the claim of the unrepresentability of the Shoah has stirred vivid debates, especially following the strong positions taken by the French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann and author of Shoah (1986). This claim of unrepresentability, it can be shown, draws part of its attraction from the fact that it oscillates undecidedly between a claim of logical impossibility (“the Shoah can’t be represented”) and a normative demand (“the Shoah shouldn’t be represented”). This essay analyzes the argumentative structure of the advocates (...) of the unrepresentability and shows why the often made connection to Kant is flawed. Although his Critique of the Power of Judgment affirms indeed that the prohibition of representation is the “perhaps most sublime passage in the Jewish Law”, turning the prohibition of representation into a supposedly Kantian claim does not hold grounds. The essay reconstructs the political framework of the debate, situates the Kantian passage in its precise philosophical context and then successively assesses the main arguments put forward by Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière and Georges Didi-Huberman in their critique of Lanzmann’s categorical imperative. While showing why the rhetoric of the “unrepresentable” bear troubling structural analogies to what they want to fight (i.e. the politics of erasure, which always also include the erasure of the traces of erasure), a certain notion of the “unrepresentable” is rescued nevertheless at the end of the essay. Representation, so it is argued by returning to a Kantian distinction, is not a matter of Kanon, but a matter of Organon, which then puts the debate about the Sublime (which took place between Lyotard and Rancière in the 90’s) into a new perspective. (shrink)

You are standing in the redwood forest of California, craning your neck to see the top of the giant sequoias. You marvel at their grandeur, as the trees seem to pierce the sunny clouds, but you might find the sequoias even more marvellous if you knew they were over 200 feet high. And wouldn't you stand in still greater awe if you realized that these trees are more than 2,000 years old? Knowing the age of sequoias and other living things (...) can be the basis of a distinctive aesthetic experience – the organically sublime. (shrink)

This essay develops an account of the link between Kant's aesthetics and his ethics. It does so by articulating a Kantian account of moral psychology by way of aesthetic reflective judgements of sublimity. Since judgements of sublimity enrich the picture of a Kantian subject by forcefully revealing the unbounded power of the faculty of reason, I investigate the possibility that judgements of this kind could serve as a basis for moral motivation. The paper first shows how judgements of (...) sublimity help a subject recognize reason's unbounded nature, and proceeds to analyse the practical effects of a subject judging itself sublime. When judgements of sublimity have as their object the unbounded and unsythesizable power of reason, they may thereby serve as the basis for both the recognition of our moral vocation, and the grounds for determining the will to act from respect for it. Since a judgement of sublimity produces for Kant the experience of an enlivening emotion and an outflowing of vital forces, the paper then develops Kant's concept of “life” motivated by a recognition of its practical orientation. In this way sublimity rather than beauty can be interpreted as symbolic hypotyposis of morality. The paper then takes up less favourable interpretations of the practical effects of self-predicated judgements of sublimity, and constructs critical responses to such positions. I conclude, following Adorno, by stressing the historical and social dimension of the capacities for both making sublime judgements, and being morally enlivened by them. (shrink)

The essay explores the philosophical concept of disaster within the Kantian ethical and religious thought. Kant’s notion of a «perverse end of all things» can in fact be seen as a focal point in the entire ethical and moral philosopher reflection, through the link placed in several of his writings between «morality» and «terror». The philosophical meaning of this relationship emerges in all its importance in the analysis of the feeling of the sublime, here analyzed in some Kant’s (...) works, from the pre-critical Observations on the Feeling of Beautiful and Sublime, to his Critique of Judgment, Critique of Practical Reason and The End of All Things, in order to show how this reflection is undergoing a marked revaluation both in the contemporary philosophical debate and in performing arts. (shrink)

This article reconstructs Jean-François Lyotard’s theory of the sublime in contemporary art, focusing on his claim that such art ‘presents’ the unpresentable, and tracing its origins in Kant’s account of the sublime. I propose that Lyotard identifies a difficulty concerning Kant’s account: to understand why the disparate elements in the experience of the sublime should be synthesized to form that experience. Lyotard recasts this difficulty as a pragmatic problem for artistic practice – how to ‘testify’ to the (...) absolute in a non-absolute, sensibly perceivable object – that can be understood to drive avant-garde artistic experimentation. (shrink)

This chapter argues that Kant’s aesthetic theory of the sublime has particular relevance for his ethics of virtue. Kant contends that our readiness to revel in natural sublimity depends upon a background commitment to moral ends. Further lessons about the emotional register of the sublime allow us to understand how Kant can plausibly contend that the temperament of virtue is both sublime and joyous at the same time.