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The Sublime
Edited by Robert R. Clewis (Gwynedd Mercy University, LMU Munich)
About this topic
| Summary | The sublime (sublimity) has been described as an experience, feeling, or judgment. As a positively valenced feeling, it is similar to excitement, astonishment, or awe. The concept become influential in aesthetics through the reception of pseudo-Longinus’s work of rhetoric, On the Sublime, where the sublime referred to that inspiring or overwhelming quality in great literary works or speeches. In the modern period, it became associated more with nature than art, and was distinguished from beauty. It was seen as a positive aesthetic experience in response to vast or powerful (apparently formless) objects such as waterfalls and mountains. As an aesthetic experience, the sublime is distinguished from moral feelings and outright fear. Given its emotional intensity, the sublime is distinguished from wonder and curiosity. |
| Key works | It was through the reception of Pseudo-Dionysus's work of rhetoric, On the Sublime, and modern translations such as Longinus & Broom 1757, that the concept became influential in rhetoric and philosophy. Burke 1759 and Kant 2007 contributed influential accounts of sublimity. |
| Introductions | Shaw 2006 and Kirwan 2005 provide good introductions. |
Show all references
Related
Siblings
- Beauty (307)
- Cuteness (0)
- Humour (771)
- Kitsch (0)
- Style (72)
- The Picturesque (0)
- The Tragic (95)
- The Uncanny (0)
- Ugliness (1)
- Aesthetic Qualities, Misc (213)
See also
- Aesthetics (73,253)
- Topics in Aesthetics (1,155 | 379)
History/traditions: The Sublime
- Kant: The Sublime (158)
Contents
298+ found
Order:
| 1 — 50 / 298 |
- On Sublime-Liminal experiences and Post-Mortem.Víctor Ausina Mota - manuscriptOn Sublime, subliminal experiences in terms of life and death realtion, in desire and social status.
- Pensées sur l’interprétation de la peinture: On the Interpretation of Painting — An Analysis of the Thought of Denis Diderot.Juliette Christie - manuscriptIf everything in the universe is material, how can master painters create images of nature which enable us to see, to know, beauty more perfect than can ever exist in reality? What materially real thing does the master painter access to portray on canvas? The work of the 18th century French philosopher Denis Diderot responds to this conundrum. Diderot’s answer pulls from his rich scientific thought coupled with the unique form of art criticism he develops. In both cases the role (...)
- The idea of sublime.Victor Mota - manuscriptsublime and sublimation, between ascetism en religious practice, social order and cultural feelings.
- The Artificial Sublime.Regina Rini - manuscriptGenerative AI systems like ChatGPT and Midjourney can produce prose or images. But can they produce art? I argue that this question, though natural and intriguing, is the wrong one to ask. A better question is this: can generative AI yield distinct or novel forms of aesthetic value? And I argue that the answer is yes. Generative AI can be used to put us in contact with the artificial sublime – a type of aesthetic value that Kant famously argues is (...)
- The Sublime in Adam Smith's Philosophy of Science.Eric Schliesser - manuscriptIn this chapter, I identify a distinctive use of ‘sublime’ in Adam Smith’s philosophy of science. I show that for Smith a scientific discipline and its theories can be sublime. I trace this idea back to Malebranche. I show that in Smith it is a way to convey something about the irrational nature of the natural order lurking behind’s science’s intellectual achievements. In section 1, I diagnose and distinguish three uses of ‘sublime’ in Smith. I situate two of these in (...)
- Ancient Ruins & the Sublime.Patrick Hassan - forthcoming - British Journal of Aesthetics.Following a prominent 18th and 19th century tradition, some contemporary philosophers have appealed to the notion of the sublime as a promising avenue for exploring the aesthetic experience of ancient ruins. Nevertheless, existing accounts have typically focused solely upon the great magnitudes of ruins—specifically the magnitude of time—and have therefore operated exclusively within the bounds of the ‘mathematically sublime’. However, this paper defends a less well-represented view in contemporary literature, that ancient ruins ought to also be appreciated in terms of (...)
- Wonder upon Wonder.Brandon Yip - 2026 - Ethics 136 (4):874-900.I propose a framework for wonder that accounts for its heterogeneity and clarifies disputes about the ethics of wonder. The various species of wonder are unified as responses to a recurrent practical situation: that of recognizing that our mental structures require alteration to cognitively accommodate some object. This recognition is momentous but evaluatively indeterminate, and this provokes a variety of secondary appraisals and coping responses. The heterogeneity of wonder therefore reflects the ethical drama of the diverse ways we grapple with (...)
- Defending and Expanding Nick Zangwill's Hierarchy Theory of Aesthetic Judgements.S. Barrett - 2025 - Dissertation, University of LincolnIn recent aesthetics, the historic focus on beauty has given way to a focus on aesthetic properties more generally. Nick Zangwill’s theory of aesthetic judgements aims to ‘stick up for beauty’ (2001, p. 9) by restoring its exceptional status in aesthetics. Zangwill argues that beauty and ugliness are exceptional among aesthetic properties in being verdictive, with the former consisting in overall aesthetic merit and the latter overall aesthetic demerit. These supervene upon substantive aesthetic properties that attribute or deduct instances of (...)
- Monumentality, poetry, and memory : Eugène Delacroix's The death of Sardanapalus and Yannoulis Halepas's Sleeping lady.Melita Emmanouil - 2025 - In Argyro Loukaki, The monumental. New York, NY: Routledge.
- On the monumental.Manolis Korres - 2025 - In Argyro Loukaki, The monumental. New York, NY: Routledge.
- The monumental.Argyro Loukaki (ed.) - 2025 - New York, NY: Routledge.The Monumental is an interdisciplinary collection of original, cutting-edge contributions by international researchers pursuing the epistemology and ontology of monuments over time and geography. The contributors are specialists in geography, architectural theory and history, prehistoric, Greek and Roman archaeology, modern art, Byzantine studies, landscape theory and heritage reception. Against the global climate of flux and uncertainty in the present turbulent world, the durability of monuments as "urban permanences" emerges as one of the few remaining spatial and mental anchorages. As such (...)
- Consciousness is Sublime.Takuya Niikawa - 2025 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 12 (28).Does consciousness have non-instrumental aesthetic value? This paper answers this question affirmatively by arguing that consciousness is sublime. The argument consists of three premises. (1) An awe experience of an object provides prima facie justification to believe that the object is sublime. (2) I have an awe experience about consciousness through introspecting three features of consciousness, namely the mystery of consciousness, the connection between consciousness and well-being, and the phenomenological complexity of consciousness. (3) There is no good defeater of the (...)
- The Sublime of Consciousness.Takuya Niikawa & Uriah Kriegel - 2025 - British Journal of Aesthetics 65 (1):113-130.The aesthetic tradition has identified as paradigmatically sublime such objects as imposing mountains and intense storms, as well as monumental art. But the tradition also acknowledges less paradigmatic cases, including sometimes mathematical structures or abstract concepts. In this paper, we argue that there is also a case for considering phenomenal consciousness—the experiential quality of subjective awareness—as a sublime phenomenon. One appreciates this, we argue, when one is struck by (fitting) awe upon contemplating (a) the perplexing existence of something like phenomenal (...)
- The other monument : from monumentality to mnemonicality.Konstantinos Soueref - 2025 - In Argyro Loukaki, The monumental. New York, NY: Routledge.
- The Uncanny as Antisublime.Mark Windsor - 2025 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 83 (4):330–342.Many authors have remarked on the relationship between the aesthetic categories of the sublime and the uncanny. Building on a suggestion made by Cynthia Freeland, my aim in this paper is to show how, once inverted, Kant's theory of the sublime provides a valuable resource for developing a novel theoretical approach to the uncanny. Whereas, according to Kant, the positive feeling of the sublime is a feeling of the superiority of one's faculty of reason over anything in nature, the uncanny (...)
- Le sublime comme possibilité éthique chez Schopenhauer.Melis Herrmann-Aktas - 2024 - Les Cahiers Philosophiques de Strasbourg 56 (56):275-294.The question of the sublime remains considerable in Schopenhauer’s thought, insofar as it gives the essential clue to his ethical intentions. Schopenhauer’s emphasis on corporeality and the questioning of representation at the limits of his metaphysics of the Will, as well as his discourse on freedom without any reference to a moral law, mark a distance from the Kantian perspective. In this article, our aim is to examine Schopenhauer’s thought of the sublime while taking into account Kant’s analyses on the (...)
- Sublime music.Jerrold Levinson - 2024 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 82 (4):367-375.The goal of this essay is to identify the species of music that is most justifiably denominated sublime and to characterize it as fully as possible, in part through a suggested taxonomy of the species, illustrated by a wide range of musical examples. After a general discussion of sublimity in its original sphere of application—the natural world—I go on to consider the nature of sublime musical experience. I propose that categorizing music as some species of sublime is at base a (...)
- Fundamentul moral al sublimului kantian.Mihai Ometiță - 2024 - In Virgil Ciomoș, Provocări actuale în științele socio-umane. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană. pp. 175-183.In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant remarks that the feeling of the dynamically sublime is actually conditioned and that its foundation is the moral feeling, which he addressed in the Critique of Practical Reason. In order to elucidate those transient yet significant remarks, this paper confronts the analytic of the dynamically sublime from the third Critique with the analytic of the moral feeling from the second Critique. By uncovering an architectonic, constitutive and structural kinship between the two (...)Find it on Amazon.com (collection)Remove from this list Direct download (3 more)Export citationBookmark
- Horizon of Error: The Function of the Sublime in Nietzsche’s Dawn.Camilla Pitton - 2024 - Journal of Nietzsche Studies 55 (2):184–211.This article assesses Nietzsche’s engagement with the sublime in Dawn to shed light on an aspect thereof that has so far been overlooked: Nietzsche’s deployment of the sublime as a philosophical framework for coming to terms with epistemic limits and transcendental errors. By engaging with the sublime both descriptively and methodologically, Nietzsche promotes an awareness of cognitive limits that fosters, instead of impeding, the pursuit of knowledge and the accomplishment of philosophical endeavors. While complicating the minimal existing literature on the (...)
- Sublimation and drives in sports: a psychoanalytic perspective.Yunus Tuncel - 2024 - Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 18 (1):41-50.In continuation with my on-going research and presentations on sport as a field of channeling and externalizing cruelty and violence, as a field of transfiguration of drives, in this paper I will examine instincts, drives and sublimation in Freud and post-Freudian psychoanalytic literature within the context of sports. Freud was influenced by Nietzsche on his drive theory; however, in Freud it assumes a specific meaning and finds its place within the context of his overall psychoanalytic work, especially in relation to (...)
- Is the sublime sustainable?: a comparative aesthetics approach to the sublime.Peter L. Doebler - 2023 - Boston: Brill.Is the Sublime Sustainable?' introduces the key points of debate around the sublime while opening new avenues for future inquiry, especially through its comparative aesthetics approach. In it, you will discover how thinking on the sublime emerged historically and then engage with the recent critical scholarship on the topic, including from the fields of theology, philosophy, and literature. The critiques of the sublime are then expanded in dialogue with perspectives from Japanese aesthetics and art, shaping the argument that what is (...)
- The Sublime and the Pale Blue Dot: Reclaiming the Cosmos for Earthly Nature.Matt Harvey - 2023 - Environmental Values 32 (2):169-193.Amidst a worsening climate crisis, there is growing public discourse theorising the possible colonisation of outer space to secure a sustainable future for humanity. In the face of these escapist fantasies, political discussion on humanity's relation to the universe is notably limited and primarily frames space exploration as a dangerous Promethean endeavour. While I do not contest this claim, I argue that humanity's technological capabilities and acquired knowledge of the universe can alternatively facilitate an Earth-centred engagement with the Cosmos as (...)
- God undercover: een missionair concept met het sublieme als leidraad.Herman Heijn - 2023 - [Vught]: Uitgeverij Skandalon.Het sublieme is fascinerend en verwarrend. Het maakt kunst tot Kunst, tekent verzet aan bij kitsch, McDonaldization en Disneyization, en kan een gecommercialiseerde samenleving humaniseren. 'God undercover' brengt een cultureel-maatschappelijk gesprek op gang door het fenomeen van het sublieme. Het sublieme is voor het eerst op noemer gebracht door de Griekse Longinus, tijdgenoot van Jezus - en heeft daarna steeds een rol gespeeld in het westerse denken. Doopsgezind em. predikant Herman Heijn integreert het sublieme in de theologie. Het sublieme kan (...)
- A Fitting-Attitude Approach to Aesthetic Value?Uriah Kriegel - 2023 - British Journal of Aesthetics 63 (1):57-73.It is a noteworthy disanalogy between contemporary ethics and aesthetics that the fitting-attitude account of value, so prominent in contemporary ethics, sees comparatively little play in aesthetics. The aim of this paper is to articulate what a systematic fitting-attitude-style framework for understanding aesthetic value might look like. In the bulk of the paper, I sketch possible fitting-attitude-style accounts of three central aesthetic values – the beautiful, the sublime, and the powerful – so that the general form of the framework come (...)
- Experimental Science as Epistemic Expansion: New Work for a Theory of the Sublime.Glenn Parsons - 2023 - In Milena Ivanova & Alice Murphy, The Aesthetics of Scientific Experiments. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 155-174.Dating back to the early modern theories of Burke and Kant, philosophical accounts have made cognitive failure central to the experience of the sublime. This essay argues for a re-conception of the sublime in terms of the notion of epistemic expansion. Doing so not only provides a plausible account of traditional examples of the sublime, but also provides us with language that can capture an important but neglected aesthetic dimension of experimental science: the expansion of human perception. Recognizing this dimension, (...)Find it on Amazon.com (collection)Remove from this list Direct downloadExport citationBookmark 2 citations
- Immanuel Kant’s Theory of the Sublime.Matthew Sanderson - 2023 - 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology.While experiences of the sublime are often overwhelming and overpowering, overall they are deeply empowering. According to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the sublime empowers us by revealing the greatness (i.e., the sublimity) of our rational minds. This essay summarizes Kant’s theory of the sublime.
- Tanrı, Estetik ve Estetik Kanıt/God, Aesthetic and Aesthetic Proof.Büşra Nur Tutuk - 2023 - Dissertation, Ankara UniversityThe subject of the thesis is the relationship between aesthetic and God. It aims to discuss whether the sense of beauty is proof of the existence of God and to determine the plausibility of aesthetic proof. As a matter of fact that reality and the perception of beauty point to two-way consciousness. In this context, it will be inevitable to mention God's relation with consciousness in the emergence of beauty. In the first part, the concepts of aesthetics will be analyzed, (...)
- Liturgy and the Sublime.Matthew Wennemann - 2023 - British Journal of Aesthetics 63 (3):351-368.Experience of the sublime is most often discussed as a facet of the aesthetic experience of nature. In this paper, I argue that religious liturgy can be a source of sublimity and that experiences of the liturgically sublime are analogous to aesthetic experiences of nature and natural sublimity. Experiences of the liturgically sublime are not religious experiences, since the aesthetic experience of liturgy is not dependent upon any particular belief, such as belief in a deity, does not communicate specific information, (...)
- Le cosmos des brindilles : un sublime pour notre époque.Alexandre Billon - 2022 - Klesis 52.Le sentiment du sublime est une expérience de la nature qui nous fait prendre conscience de la place paradoxale que nous occupons dans le cosmos et provoque par ce biais un plaisir ambivalent. Selon la théorie classique, kantienne, cette expérience proviendrait d’une sorte de combat de catch mental, dont on perdrait les premiers rounds en laissant la nature déborder nos sens, mais que l’on finirait par remporter grâce à la puissance de notre raison et de notre liberté. On n’aurait d’expérience (...)
- Art, the Sublime, and Movement: Spaced Out.Amanda Du Preez - 2022 - New York, NY: Routledge.This book is a critical interdisciplinary approach to the study of contemporary visual culture and image studies, exploring ideas about space and place and ultimately contributing to the debates about being human in the digital age. The upward and downward pull seem in a constant contest for humanity's attention. Both forces are powerful in the effects and affects they invoke. When tracing this iconological history, Amanda du Preez starts in the early nineteenth century, moving into the twentieth century and then (...)
- The sublime reader: edited by Robert R. Clewis, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, pp. 456, £20.29 (pb), ISBN: 978-1350030152.Dorit Barchana-Lorand - 2021 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 29 (1):184-186.
- The Sublime in the Pedestrian: Figures of the Incognito in Fear and Trembling.Martijn Boven - 2021 - History of European Ideas 47 (3):500-513.This article introduces a novel conceptualization of sublimity: the sublime in the pedestrian. This pedestrian form of sublimity is exemplified by the Biblical figure Abraham, the central character in Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous work “Fear and Trembling: Dialectical Lyric by Johannes de silentio”. It is grounded in the analysis of one of the foundational narratives of the three monotheistic religions: Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac. The defining characteristic of this new, pedestrian form of sublimity is that it remains concealed behind what (...)
- L'anima e il sublime.Irina Casali (ed.) - 2021 - Milano: Editori della peste.
- Why the Sublime Is Aesthetic Awe.Robert R. Clewis - 2021 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 79 (3):301-314.This article focuses on the conceptual relationship between awe and the experience of the sublime. I argue that the experience of the sublime is best conceived as a species of awe, namely, as aesthetic awe. I support this conclusion by considering the prominent conceptual relations between awe and the experience of the sublime, showing that all of the options except the proposed one suffer from serious shortcomings. In maintaining that the experience of the sublime is best conceived as aesthetic awe, (...)
- The Beautiful.Tom Cochrane - 2021 - In The Aesthetic Value of the World. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 30-53.This chapter links the value we take in beauty with our practical drive for knowledge. The contemporary ‘processing fluency’ account of aesthetic pleasure is examined and rejected. Instead, it is claimed that beautiful objects appear to be perfectly fitting together, which stimulates a rewarding sense that knowledge of the object is highly accessible. The nature of ugliness is then considered. On the face of it, ugliness presents a significant problem for Aestheticism, for how can everything be aesthetically valuable if some (...)
- The Aesthetic Value of the World.Tom Cochrane - 2021 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.This book defends Aestheticism- the claim that everything is aesthetically valuable and that a life lived in pursuit of aesthetic value can be a particularly good one. Furthermore, in distilling aesthetic qualities, artists have a special role to play in teaching us to recognize values; a critical component of virtue. I ground my account upon an analysis of aesthetic value as ‘objectified final value’, which is underwritten by an original psychological claim that all aesthetic values are distal versions of practical (...)
- The Tragic.Tom Cochrane - 2021 - In The Aesthetic Value of the World. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 97–116.The paradox of tragedy is introduced in this chapter. It is noted that it is harder to value real-life tragedies or suffering than artistic tragedies. Accounts attempting to reconcile us with tragedy by means of the overall beauty of the world are too distanced and callous. An account of the value of tragedy that is simultaneously ethically appropriate is required. It is argued that tragic works of art are ethically appropriate when they properly acknowledge suffering. The same is possible for (...)Find it on Amazon.com (collection)Remove from this list Direct downloadExport citationBookmark 1 citation
- Minor Aesthetic Values.Tom Cochrane - 2021 - In The Aesthetic Value of the World. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 187-197.Brief analyses are presented of the cute, the cool, the kitsch, the uncanny, the horrific, the erotic, and the furious. In each case, relevance to the general theory of aesthetic value and aestheticism is briefly considered.
- The Sublime.Tom Cochrane - 2021 - In The Aesthetic Value of the World. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 54-74.An analysis of the sublime is presented in this chapter. It is argued that experiences of the sublime combine a negative emotional state, in which the individual feels a sense of ‘self-negation’, with a pleasurable sense of the object’s sublime qualities. After reviewing a number of different historical theories of the sublime, it is argued that the positive aspect of the sublime requires that we recognize our psychological capacity to empathize with objects. It is argued that by means of our (...)
- Introduction.Tom Cochrane - 2021 - In The Aesthetic Value of the World. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 1-9.This Introduction sets the scene for the rest of the book by raising the problem of evil; a problem that for theist and atheist alike, makes us doubt the value of the world. To value the world requires that we find something of final positive value. When we experience final positive value we feel pleasure, however the intrinsic reward of pleasure cannot always satisfy us. We must find a value that works even when our lives are going badly. It is (...)
- In Defence of Aestheticism.Tom Cochrane - 2021 - In The Aesthetic Value of the World. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 140–162.This chapter draws together the various sources of aesthetic value presented in earlier chapters of the book and articulates how together they allow us to experience the entire world as aesthetically valuable. This chapter is intended as a consolidated defence of the core aestheticist position, and can be read relatively independently of the rest of the book. Comparisons are made to historical defences of Aestheticism from Saint Augustine and Nietzsche. Various criticisms of Aestheticism that have come up over the course (...)
- The dramatic.Tom Cochrane - 2021 - In The Aesthetic Value of the World. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 75-96.This chapter presents an analysis of dramatic value. Dramatic value is identified in three major forms: dramatic narratives, musical dramas, and dramatic appearances. It is observed that dramatic objects typically possess attention-absorbing intensities. This leads to a discussion of the rich experience account of aesthetic value; however it is argued that rich experience is not a distinct aesthetic value. Instead it is argued that the aesthetic value of drama lies in the exciting sense of an agent’s capacities being stretched. It (...)
- Aesthetic Value.Tom Cochrane - 2021 - In The Aesthetic Value of the World. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 10-29.This chapter develops a foundational account of aesthetic value in general. It presents an analysis of aesthetic value as ‘objectified final value’. It is not only that we can aesthetically value the world, but also that we only really value the world in its own right by means of aesthetic value. This analysis is then underwritten with a key psychological claim: that aesthetic values are ‘distal versions’ of practical values. Moreover, the intensity of each aesthetic value rests on an ‘essential (...)
- The Creation of Art.Tom Cochrane - 2021 - In The Aesthetic Value of the World. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 163–186.This chapter presents Aestheticism as a general approach to life. It is argued that a dedicated aestheticist will be inspired to create works of art. In alignment with this view an aesthetic functionalist account of art is defended, incorporating aspects of the expression theory of art and the cognitive theory of art. It is then suggested that the way an artist creatively responds to the value of the world is an ideal of living well. Moreover, although there are other such (...)
- The Comic.Tom Cochrane - 2021 - In The Aesthetic Value of the World. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 117–139.An account of comic value is presented in this chapter that refines the traditional ‘incongruity’ theory of comedy. It is argued that humorous objects are regarded as norm-violating (by failing, exceeding, or deliberately breaking a norm). In addition, these violations are regarded as ‘non-serious’ in the sense that we discern no pragmatic pull to correct, avoid, or imitate the norm-violation. These conditions are further refined by a consideration of timing in comedy and the humour of persona-based stand-up. The reward of (...)
- De l’impossible représentation de l’infini à l’affirmation politique de l’homme. La face cachée du sublime de Kant.Luna Málaga Natasha - 2021 - In Anne Elisabeth Sejten & Claudio Rozzoni, Revisiter le sublime. Éditions Mimésis. pp. 73-88.Nous allons tout d’abord nous occuper de quelques points essentiels, bien que fréquemment négligés, chez Kant : la nature spécifiquement esthétique du sublime, le rôle productif de l’imagination, la valeur positive de la “présentation négative” de l’infini, etc. C’est ainsi que –et au-delà de ce qui a été développé par Kant lui-même– nous développerons l’idée que la non-présentation possible de l’infini, la juste sensation (i.e. la non-détermination) de notre vocation morale, la non-concordance, et donc, la non-familiarité entre raison et nature, (...)
- A Two-Tiered Theory of the Sublime.Sandra Shapshay - 2021 - British Journal of Aesthetics 61 (2):123-143.By the start of the twenty-first century, the notion of ‘the sublime’ had come to seem incoherent. In the last ten years or so considerable light has been shed by empirical psychologists on a related notion of ‘awe’, and a fruitful dialogue between aestheticians and empirical psychologists has ensued. It is the aim of this paper to synthesize these advances and to offer what I call a ‘two-tiered’ theory of the sublime that shows it to be a coherent aesthetic category. (...)
- What Is the Monumental?Sandra Shapshay - 2021 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 79 (2):145-160.The aesthetic category of the sublime has been theorized (especially in the Kantian tradition) as integrally intertwined with the moral. Paradigmatic experiences of the sublime, such as gazing up at the starry night sky, or out at a storm-whipped sea, lead in a moral or religious direction depending on the cognitive stock brought to the experience, since they typically involve a feeling of awe and reflection on the peculiar situation of the human being in nature. The monumental is a similar (...)
- The Picturesque, the Sublime, and the Authentic: Leonardo and Richter.Patricia Emison - 2020 - Journal of Aesthetic Education 54 (4):76-88.I begin with a Gerhard Richter painting, and I intend to think backward to Leonardo and Dürer. The history of art lies behind us as a great and convoluted landscape, and our task is to deal with it not as its heirs but as its nonimperialist possessors.In this age of replication and of thinking machines, do we not long for a thoroughly secular authenticity? For example, a hatmaker in a northern Italian town who makes, among other things felucce for students, (...)
- Kantian Sublimity and Supersensible Comfort: A Case for the Mathematical Sublime.José Luis Fernández - 2020 - Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics 43 (2):24-34.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 (...)
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