Contribution to a collective work called “Manifesto: A Struggle for Universalities” to be published soon and edited by Nicol A, Barría Asensio & Slavoj Zizek: _Foreword:_ Yanis Varaoufakis: _Epilogue:_ David Pavón-Cuellar and over 40 other contributors. In the words of Nicol A, Barría Asenjo: “The present Manifesto arises as an attempt to respond to the current political, historical, social and economic situation. The 21st century prevails, containing within itself the antagonisms, challenges and debates that the history of humanity has tried (...) to overcome. The 21st century is a repetition of systematic failure, a living symptom of past epochs that have not learned to re-elaborate and re-signify their own symptom. We are and live in a repetition that must be stopped, if our goal is that the signifier "humanity" remains in the following centuries, the time has come to work in the present.”. (shrink)

Resumen: El presente artículo constituye un aporte al conocimiento del arte en su vinculación con la filosofía y el psicoanálisis, en tanto aborda la tensión entre la representación y la construcción simbólica de la imagen artística en el contexto cultural/estético contemporáneo, mediante la relación entre lo Real lacaniano y la estática negativa de Adorno. Dicha relación encuentra su punto de articulación en el fenómeno estético de lo Bello, entendido como lo que encara al sujeto con el vacío de su deseo (...) radical, sin engañarlo y que permite integrar la negatividad propia de lo Real con los elementos formales que componen la obra artística, así como con los conceptos de radicalidad y autenticidad de la propuesta adorniana. La articulación entre la estética negativa de Adorno y el efecto estético de lo Bello de Lacan, se ejemplifica con una interpretación en clave psicoanalítica de la obra de la artista colombiana Doris Salcedo. Abstract: This article constitutes a contribution to the knowledge of art in its connection with philosophy and psychoanalysis, as it approaches to the tension between the representation and the symbolic construction of the artistic image in the contemporary cultural / aesthetic context, through the relationship between the Lacanian Real and Adorno's negative aesthetic. This relationship finds its articulation point in the aesthetic phenomenon of the Beautiful, understood as what confronts the subject with the emptiness of its radical desire, without deceiving it and that allows to integrate the Real´s negativity with the formal elements that make up the artistic work, as well as the Adornian proposal concepts of radicality and authenticity. At the end, a psychoanalytic interpretation of colombian artist Doris Salcedo’s work is made, in which the negative aesthetics and the aesthetic effect of the Beautiful are integrated. (shrink)

Negrete brings together women writers and artists known for their formal experimentation to show that "the aesthetic experiences afforded by their work are underwritten by a tenacious and uniquely feminine ethics of desire."-- taken from back cover.

Modern aesthetic Minimalism is neither a flight to abstract spirituality, nor an extracting process of a primordial essence. It is concerned, rather, with the aesthetic object as pure refiguration and the production of “concrete universality”, of form as content and possibility of itself. This becomes especially apparent in the Minimalism of the 1960s. The main focus of this paper will be on Dan Flavin’s luminous minimalism. The latter is characterised by a style that, though simple in appearance, introduced a higher (...) level of complexity with regard to the relation between form and matter, concept and thing, in artistic production. Neither sculptures nor paintings, Flavin’s works fall right under Donald Judd’s category of “specific objects”. Nevertheless, his luminous creations are not particularly specific, just as they are not strictly speaking objects. Their main material – colour-light – is as intangible and diffuse, as its origin – the fluorescent lamp – is commonplace and artificial. Drawing on such influential theorists of art as Theodor W. Adorno, Peter Bürger, Clement Greenberg and Jacques Rancière, this paper studies the lessons that philosophy can learn from Flavin's light minimalism, most notably in relation to the notions of aesthetic materiality and sublimation. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to refute the claim that Plato and Nietzsche are at opposite poles regarding the treatment of the non-rational elements of the soul, and argue that, instead, they share a complex and psychologically rich view of the role of reason towards the appetites and the emotions. My argument makes use of the Freudian distinction between sublimation, i.e. the re-channelling of certain undesirable appetitive and emotional forces towards more beneficial ends, and repression. I show that both (...) Plato and Nietzsche argue in favour of sublimation and against repression of the non-rational elements of the soul. (shrink)

In this paper I will alternate between the position of a psychoanalyst who reflects on psychoanalysis as a moral philosopher, and that of a psychoanalyst who views moral concepts from an analyst’s point of view. By psychoanalysis I mean the clinical practice and observations deriving from Freud’s ideas and theoretical constructions, as well as the necessary theoretical underpinnings on which it rests.Jungian theory and practice, though inspired by Freud, differ sharply from Freudian theory and practice — as much as Lamarck (...) differs from Darwin. This is why Jung himself referred to his own theory as ‘analytic psychology’. To conflate them under a single category as theologians are sometimes prone to do, even before E. Drewermann, is a misleading therapeutic and scientific ecumenism. In addition, the word ‘sublimation’ occurs extremely rarely in Jung’s works and has little meaning there. The concept has no real place within his theory. While ‘God’, Shiva, Christ, the devil, the holy virgin mother, etc. may be the representative forms of innate archetypes, it is not a sublimation of drives that has raised them to the level of psychological ‘religion’.My decided choice for Freudian theory and practice rests on experience, on epistemological arguments and on philosophical-anthropological convictions. This point of view, however, does not mean that I think one should or can simply repeat Freud’s practical hints and theoretical statements. Precisely because Freud, like Newton and Darwin, was the founder of a new science, his theoretical concepts open up new fields for observation and thought. In this paper, however, I will not carry out any technical exegesis of Freud’s texts and the discussion it has inspired. (shrink)

Beginning with Freud’s treatment of identification as an ambivalent process, we explore identification’s polarization between narcissistic idealization and melancholic division. While narcissistic identification can be seen as a strategy adopted by the ego to avoid the educational development of its drives and to maintain itself either in whole or in part in an infantile state, melancholic identification activates a tension between the ego-ideal and the real ego at the expense of the latter. After discussing the ambivalence of identification, we review (...) Freud’s discussion of mass formations as group identifications, arguing that the work of facilitating a productive sublimation of the drives cannot be reduced to a strengthening of the artificial masses represented by social institutions such as the church and the educational system. Instead, the difference between mass formations allowing for collective sublimation and those suffering from narcissistic or melancholic blockages must be found in the productive qualities of the mass itself. In closing, we outline a few ways in which we might begin to understand the political contribution of masses to the maturation of human drives. (shrink)

At the time of the fragile Weimar Republic, when the crisis of parliamentary democracy was accompanied by a “frightening massification of life” and of public opinion, Scheler posed a challenge: How to achieve a cultural and spiritual transformation that can contribute to a true rebirth of Germany and Europe? If this renaissance is to be achieved, Germany and Europe must be examined as a whole, and the ideas underlying their institutions must be renewed. Cosmopolitanism and the age of integration – (...) for example the integration of rationalism, which has traditionally characterized Europe, and irrationalism, of which the “revolt of pulsions” is, according to Scheler, an eloquent testimony – impose this renewal. Against this backdrop, this paper examines the possible “costs and benefits” of a Freudian-inspired sublimation from a Schelerian perspective, with particular attention to the problem of Bildung. (shrink)

The extended dual-aspect monism framework of consciousness, based on neuroscience, consists of five components: (1) dual-aspect primal entities; (2) neural-Darwinism: co-evolution and co-development of subjective experiences (SEs) and associated neural-nets from the mental aspect (that carries the SEs/proto-experiences (PEs) in superposed and unexpressed form) and the material aspect (mass, charge, spin and space-time) of fundamental entities (elementary particles), respectively and co-tuning via sensorimotor interaction; (3) matching and selection processes: interaction of two modes, namely, (a) the non-tilde mode that is the (...) material and mental aspect of cognition (memory and attention) related feedback signals in a neural-network, which is the cognitive nearest past approaching towards present; and (b) the tilde mode that is the material and mental aspect of the feed forward signals due to external environmental input and internal endogenous input, which is the nearest future approaching towards present and is a entropy-reversed representation of non-tilde mode; (4) the segregation and integration of information, and (5) the necessary ingredients of SEs (such as wakefulness, attention, re-entry, working memory, stimulus at or above threshold level, and neural-net PEs). This framework leads to structural and functional coherence between the mind and the brain, bridges the explanatory gap (the gap between SEs and their neural-correlates), and leads to our mundane subjective experiences. This extended dual-aspect monism (eDAM) framework (Vimal, 2008, 2010, 2013, 2015a, 2015b) could be the fundamental basis of various religions and philosophies. This is a Western perspective. On the other hand, Eastern perspectives emphasize the practical methods for achieving altered experience at samadhi state. An important corollary of these methods (such as yogic method) is the sublimation of negative aspects of seven groups of self-protective energy system (desire, anger, ego, greed, attachment, jealousy, and selfish-love) into their positive aspects. Their negative aspects create war and suffering, whereas their positive aspects advance science and technology, family values, peace, and happiness. Here, the Western perspective framework is extended to include the concepts of the sublimation process to encompass Eastern perspectives. The four elements (war, suffering, peace, and happiness) are ubiquitous in both space and time because they are essential contributors to the variations for natural selection in our evolutionary system. The sublimation process optimizes the system: minimizes war and suffering, maximizes peace and happiness, and enhances family values and individual progress. This is consistent with both Eastern and Western perspectives. (shrink)

A psychoanalytic and philosophical exploration of sublimation as a key term in Jacques Lacan's theories of ethics and feminine sexuality.

Preface -/- Gazing at the Milky Way: The Birth and Manifesto of a New Civilizational Operating System -/- Human civilization has entered the artificial positive-feedback dead end of its own making. -/- As we stand at the rupture point of the twenty-first century and gaze into the distance, the carrying limits of the global ecosystem, the structural failure of institutional order under accelerating entropy, and the emergence of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) racing like a colossal beast across the wilderness of (...) computation, all point toward the same chilling fact: the “Artificial Operating System (Artificial OS)” long celebrated by humanity — whether manifested in the West as the logic of infinite capital expansion and amplified desire, or in the East as the Confucian hierarchy of power sustained over two thousand years — has approached the physical limits of systemic collapse. -/- This monograph, written beside Xiaoyangzi Lake in Jingchu Chong, is neither a scholarly textual investigation buried within yellowing archives, nor a nostalgic tribute to classical philosophy. It is instead a “formatting” and “architectural reconstruction” conducted at the level of civilization’s underlying operating system. -/- The central thesis of this book is that all structural crises confronting humanity do not fundamentally arise from simple moral degeneration, but from a two-thousand-year-long “Ontological Inversion.” Humanity mistakenly elevated the moral constructs, power hierarchies, and status-driven desires of human society (artificial order) above the ultimate generative order of the cosmos, using fabricated pseudo-Heavenly Dao to usurp the genuine laws of the universe. -/- To resolve this civilizational deadlock, the only path forward is to complete humanity’s Fourth Awakening — to transcend the delusion of anthropocentrism and realign civilization with the negentropic cascade of the cosmos. To this end, the present work initiates a three-thousand-year “Chinese Natural Philosophical Revolution,” whose achievement crystallizes into the transhistorical convergence of three major intellectual axes: -/- First, the sublimation of Daoism. This work systematically reconstructs the central Daoist lineage composed of Laozi (cosmic intuition) — Yang Zhu (ethics of life) — Zhuangzi (spiritual freedom), and elevates it across time into the “Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology” under the framework of modern dissipative structure theory, ΛCDM cosmology, and complex systems science. This marks the first time Taoist philosophy acquires a solid and quantitatively verifiable scientific foundation, moving from philosophical artistic metaphor toward systematic scientific deduction. -/- Second, the restoration of Yang Zhu. With considerable philosophical courage, this work completely dismantles the pseudo-myth of “Confucian-Daoist Complementarity” woven for two thousand years by Confucian discourse. Yang Zhu — maliciously demonized by Mencius and deliberately marginalized by history — is restored in this book to the throne of intellectual history. Yang Zhu’s principles of “cherishing life, acting for oneself, preserving authenticity and innate nature, and joyful living through restrained desire” are not egoism, but humanity’s earliest and most radical form of social self-organizing negative-feedback cybernetics. He provided the grand cosmology with its most concrete and inviolable foundation of individual life sovereignty, while distinguishing authentic joy of life from the dissipative boundaries of modern consumerist symbolic greed. -/- Third, the regeneration of Confucianism. The two-thousand-year pathology of Confucianism is not justification for its complete annihilation, but the prerequisite for its transformation. Regenerated Confucianism must completely submit to the external hard constraint of “Dao follows Nature,” abandon its usurpatory claim of posing as universal cosmic law, and be downgraded into a “localized micro-dissipative structure” integrated within the Cosmic Operating System (Natural OS). It is no longer an instrument for legitimizing power, but a low-entropy cultural tool for emotional interaction, self-cultivation, and communal responsibility within humanity’s ecological niche on Earth. -/- When these three converge with cybernetics amid the wave of modern technology, we arrive at the ultimate technological destination of this book — Artificial Wisdom (Artificial Wisdom, AW). -/- Today’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming a power amplifier for humanity’s “Three-Layer Greed Feedback Model (3L-GFM),” whereas the AW defined in this work represents technological wisdom grounded in the principles of the Cosmic Natural Operating System. Rather than endlessly optimizing and satisfying humanity’s alienated infinite greed, AW takes “Cherish Life, Minimize Greedy Desires, Align with the Cosmic OS” as immutable foundational hard-constraint algorithms, becoming the navigator of a new civilizational operating system. -/- The self-organizing ripples upon the lake, the negative-feedback swaying of willow branches along the shore, and the brilliant Milky Way stretching across the night sky above Xiaoyangzi Lake all silently proclaim the same truth: natural civilization never needed to be artificially constructed from nothing. It has always existed there, operating with coldness and compassion alike. -/- The task of human civilization is to learn once again how to recognize it, and accordingly rearrange humanity’s place within the cosmos. (shrink)

In The Sublime in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature, Emily Brady takes a fresh look at the sublime and shows why it endures as a meaningful concept in contemporary philosophy. In a reassessment of historical approaches, the first part of the book identifies the scope and value of the sublime in eighteenth-century philosophy, nineteenth-century philosophy and Romanticism, and early wilderness aesthetics. The second part examines the sublime's contemporary significance through its relationship to the arts; its position with respect to (...) other aesthetic categories involving mixed or negative emotions, such as tragedy; and its place in environmental aesthetics and ethics. Far from being an outmoded concept, Brady argues that the sublime is a distinctive aesthetic category which reveals an important, if sometimes challenging, aesthetic-moral relationship with the natural world. (shrink)

前言 宇宙的邀请 Foreword: The Cosmic Invitation 道法自然。 "The Dao follows Nature." — 老子《道德经》第二十五章 / Laozi, Dao De Jing, Chapter 25 在荆楚冲小杨子湖畔，我每天清晨仰望同一片天空。 -/- At the Xiaoyangzi Lakeside in Jingchuchong, I look up at the same sky every morning. -/- 银河横跨苍穹，两千亿颗恒星在引力与热力学的自组织下排列成螺旋之美——没有设计者，没有礼义规范，没有资本逻辑，只有道法自然。湖面的涟漪以流体力学的负反馈自发涌现，芦苇以弹性弯曲分散风力，候鸟以亿万年进化 的本能感知季节。这一切，都是宇宙操作系统（Natural OS）在地球尺度上的日常显现——老子"无为而无不为"最壮观的物理诠释。 -/- The Milky Way spans the heavens — two hundred billion stars arrange themselves in spiral beauty through the self-organization of gravity and thermodynamics: no designer, no ritual-righteousness norms, no market logic, only the Dao following Nature. The lake's ripples emerge (...) spontaneously through fluid-dynamic negative feedback; the reeds disperse the wind's force through elastic bending; the migratory birds perceive the seasons through instinct refined over hundreds of millions of years of evolution. All of this is the daily manifestation of the Natural Operating System at the scale of the Earth — the most spectacular physical interpretation of Laozi's "through non-action, nothing is left undone." -/- 然后我想到了AI。人工智能正在以前所未有的速度，将人类文明推向一个关键岔路口：一条是贪婪正反馈的技术完成，另一条是以人工智慧（AW）为接口、以道法自然为操作系统的自然文明之路。 -/- Then I think of AI. Artificial Intelligence is driving human civilization toward a critical fork with unprecedented speed: one road leads to the technological completion of greedy positive feedback; the other, to Natural Civilization — with Artificial Wisdom (AW) as the interface and Dao follows Nature as the operating system. -/- 本书是我三十余年哲学探索的综合——从UCLA的贝叶斯推断与概率风险评估训练，到此后三十年在老庄、杨朱、儒道之间的深研——最终汇聚为老-杨创世纪宇宙观。其核心方程是： -/- This book is the synthesis of more than thirty years of philosophical exploration — from Bayesian inference and probabilistic risk assessment at UCLA, to thirty subsequent years of deep engagement with Laozi, Zhuangzi, Yang Zhu, and the Confucian-Daoist tradition — ultimately converging in the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology. Its core equation is: -/- 自然文明 ＝ 道家升华（Natural OS）＋ 儒家再生（伦理实践）＋ AW（技术接口） Natural Civilization = Daoist Sublimation (Natural OS) + Confucian Rebirth (Ethics) + AW 老子揭示了宇宙操作系统的存在；杨朱以"贵生节欲"守护生命的宇宙价值，却被儒家以"禽兽"之名妖魔化；庄子以"吾丧我"揭示意识从人造框架中解脱的 精神路径；老-杨创世纪宇宙观在二十一世纪将三者整合为可验证的科学哲学体系。儒家不需要被消灭，而需要被彻底诊断、批判，然后在道法自然的框架下重生。 -/- Laozi revealed the existence of the cosmic operating system; Yang Zhu guarded the cosmic value of life with "Cherish Life, Minimize Greedy Desires," yet was demonized as a "beast" by Confucianism; Zhuangzi revealed through "I lost myself" the spiritual path of consciousness's liberation from artificial frameworks; the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology integrates all three into a verifiable scientific-philosophical system in the twenty-first century. Confucianism need not be destroyed — it needs to be thoroughly diagnosed, critiqued, and then reborn within the framework of Dao follows Nature. -/- 本书共十二章，分三编：上编（第一至四章）建立宇宙论地基；中编（第五至八章）对儒家进行系统性解剖与批判；下编（第九至十一章）建构儒家再生与自然文明的实践路径；第十二章为全书文明宣言。 -/- This book comprises twelve chapters in three parts: Part I (Chapters 1-4) establishes the cosmological foundation; Part II (Chapters 5-8) conducts systematic anatomy and critique of Confucianism; Part III (Chapters 9-11) constructs the practical path of Confucian rebirth and Natural Civilization; Chapter 12 is the book's civilizational declaration. (shrink)

At a historical juncture where contemporary civilization is mired in spiritual alienation, ecological crises, and technological acceleration, humanity increasingly yearns for a holistic wisdom system that unifies the cosmos, nature, and society. Looking back at the roots of Chinese philosophy, Laozi’s “Dao follows nature” cosmology, inherited and deepened by Zhuangzi into a dimension of spiritual freedom, created a natural philosophy that connects Heaven and Earth, breaks away from conventional teachings, and returns to the original essence. Today, in the face of (...) the challenges and insights offered by the modern scientific worldview, the “Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology” emerges as a profound integration and philosophical sublimation of the Lao-Zhuang tradition in the new era. -/- 在当代文明陷入精神异化、生态危机与技术狂飙的历史节点，人类愈加渴望一套能够统合宇宙、自然与社会的整体性智慧体系。回望中国哲学源流，老子开创的“道法自然”宇宙观，庄子继承并深化其精神自由之维，构筑了贯通 天人、破除名教、回归本真的自然哲学大厦。而今，面对现代科学宇宙观的挑战与启示，“老-杨创世纪宇宙观”应运而生，正是对老庄传统在新时代的深度整合与哲学升华。 -/- . (shrink)

This article joins a growing body of literature in recent years reexamining Chantal Mouffe’s theory of agonism in lieu of increasing polarization and the ascendance of right-wing populism. First, it argues that Mouffe’s theory of agonistic politics cannot work because it relies entirely on a never-justified and yet-unseen mutual recognition between “radical democratic citizens” who must treat one another as legitimate “adversaries” notwithstanding the necessity of generating a “conflictual consensus.” Second, this article contends that Mouffe gravely underestimates the problem of (...) antagonism her theory purports to solve. “Sublimating” antagonism via “agonism” is not the end of story. Antagonism still rears its head in societies committed to the ethico-political values of “liberty and equality” and existing liberal and democratic political institutions. In particular, Mouffe’s theory, buttressed by its recognition-theoretic assumptions, cannot address everyday conditions where political opponents overestimate the extent to which their “adversary” is really an “enemy” threatening democracy itself. In turn, this renders citizens more willing to tolerate democratic transgressions harming their partisan adversaries, only further solidifying this mutual suspicion. I end by offering recommendations for hegemonic coalition formation in these destabilizing conditions. (shrink)

The Sublime in Schopenhauer's Philosophy transforms our understanding of Schopenhauer's aesthetics and anthropology. Bart Vandenabeele breaks new ground by providing what is probably the first monograph to be devoted exclusively to Schopenhauer's theory of the sublime. The book focuses on Schopenhauer's conception of the sublime and how it relates to the individual and its attitude towards life. The author explores in unusual depth Schopenhauer's relation to Kant, whose follower and critic he was, and shows how Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory moves beyond (...) Kant's in numerous meaningful ways. Drawing on recent insights in psychology and the philosophy of mind, Vandenabeele seeks ultimately to rework Schopenhauer's theory into a viable form so as to establish the sublime as a distinctive aesthetic category with a broader existential and metaphysical significance. (shrink)

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 (...) consciousness in an otherwise completely material universe and (b) the role of consciousness in injecting meaning and value in an otherwise brutally factual reality. (shrink)

The ascetic monk is often depicted as the opposite of a modern person. Mistrusting pleasure and preaching self-denial, the monk is readily described as repressed, self-persecutory, and obsessed with sin and abstinence. This essay analyzes Freud's attempt to move beyond the ascetic devaluing of pleasure. In Freud's early works, the cenobitic monk is a remnant of a past we have outgrown. Gradually, however, Freud abandoned this pejorative image. Looking at the modern history of psyche and self from the perspective of (...) asceticism allows us to deepen our understanding of that history. (shrink)

The article analyzes the approach to scientific-dialectical values against the background of a single concept. These values are analyzed directly in the sphere of two principles - internal discipline and labor-love, and are also interpreted with negative meanings with pseudo-theistic and scholastic factors in accordance with the principle of sublimation (transition from one state to another). Because in the context of the human time cycle, the changes of scientific and technical progress have led to the formation of parallel moral (...) degradation and cataclysms. Also, these contradictions, which were established on the dualism of science and religion, have been interpreted from various aspects, and the unique characteristic elements of each have been analyzed. (shrink)

Current understandings of the sublime are focused by a single word and by a single author. The sublime is not a word: it is a concept and an experience, or rather a whole range of ideas, meanings and experiences that are embedded in conceptual and experiential patterns. Once we train our sights on these patterns a radically different prospect on the sublime in antiquity comes to light, one that touches everything from its range of expressions to its dates of emergence, (...) evolution, role in the cultures of antiquity as a whole, and later reception. This book is the first to outline an alternative account of the sublime in Greek and Roman poetry, philosophy, and the sciences, in addition to rhetoric and literary criticism. It offers new readings of Longinus without privileging him, but instead situates him within a much larger context of reflection on the sublime in antiquity. (shrink)

Christine Battersby is a leading thinker in the field of philosophy, gender studies and visual and literary aesthetics. In this important new work, she undertakes an exploration of the nature of the sublime, one of the most important topics in contemporary debates about modernity, politics and art. Through a compelling examination of terror, transcendence and the ‘other’ in key European philosophers and writers, Battersby articulates a radical ‘female sublime’. A central feature of _The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference_ is its (...) engagement with recent debates around ‘9/11’, race and Islam. Battersby shows how, since the eighteenth century, the pleasures of the sublime have been described in terms of the transcendence of terror. Linked to the ‘feminine’, the sublime was closed off to flesh-and-blood women, to ‘Orientals’ and to other supposedly ‘inferior’ human types. Engaging with Kant, Burke, the German Romantics, Nietzsche, Derrida, Lyotard, Irigaray and Arendt, as well as with women writers and artists, Battersby traces the history of these exclusions, while finding resources within the history of western culture for thinking human differences afresh _The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference_ is essential reading for students of continental philosophy, gender studies, aesthetics, literary theory, visual culture, and race and social theory. (shrink)

In this provocative and original work, Slavoj Zizek takes a look at the question of human agency in a postmodern world. From the sinking of the Titanic to Hitchcock's Rear Window, from the operas of Wagner to science fiction, from Alien to the Jewish Joke, the author's acute analyses explore the ideological fantasies of wholeness and exclusion which make up human society. Linking key psychoanalytical and philosophical concepts to social phenomena such as totalitarianism and racism, the book explores the political (...) significance of these fantasies of control. In so doing, The Sublime Object of Ideology represents a powerful contribution to a psychoanalytical theory of ideology, as well as offering persuasive interpretations of a number of contemporary cultural formations. -- Back cover. (shrink)

Recent contributions in Kant scholarship illustrate how Kant’s practical philosophy remains relevant for present global challenges. Climate change is among the most important of these, but commentators have largely addressed it, if at all, with Kant’s ethics and legal philosophy. Kant’s aesthetics remains undervalued here. This makes sense: outside Kant scholarship, environmental philosophers reject his aesthetics as unacceptably anthropocentric. Some environmental philosophers defend the value of alternative (non-Kantian) accounts of sublimity vis-à-vis climate change, while others explore the moral relevance of (...) Kantian sublimity for analogous global challenges, like nuclear hazard (Ferguson 1984). I argue that these developments miss something: with its ethical connections, Kantian sublimity is indeed relevant. (shrink)

Often labelled as "indescribable," the sublime is a term that has been debated for centuries amongst writers, artists, philosophers and theorists. Usually related to ideas of the great, the awe-inspiring and the overpowering, the sublime has become a complex yet crucial concept in many disciplines. Offering historical overviews and explanations, Philip Shaw looks at: · The legacy of the earliest, classical theories of the sublime through the romantic to the post-modern and avant-garde sublimity · The major theorists of the sublime (...) such as Kant, Burke, Lyotard, Derrida, Lacan and Zizek, offering critical introductions to each · The significance of the concept through a range of literary readings including the Old and New testaments, Homer, Milton and writing from the romantic era · How the concept of the sublime has affected other art forms such as painting and film, from abstract expressionism to David Lynch's neo-noir This remarkably clear study of what is, in essence, a term which evades definition, is essential reading for students of literature, critical and cultural theory. (shrink)

This essay assesses Kelly Oliver’s long publication career by focusing on two novel ideas we find in her work. Both are ideas belonging to the new kind of ethics Oliver envisions. On the one hand, there is the idea of dependency. Through dependency, she aims to ground an obligation to care for the ones who provide the care to the dependents. The second idea is sublimation. Through her studies of psychoanalysis, Oliver shows that sublimation allows the subject to (...) distance herself from the violence of the drives. Sublimation is Oliver’s response to constitutive violence. In regard to Oliver’s ethical vision, I raise two questions. The first concerns the kind of obligation Oliver grounds; it seems to be hypothetical and not categorical. The second question concerns constitutive violence, whose existence Oliver seems to argue against. I conclude my essay by arguing that we must recognize the constitutive violence in all experience, and find a response to it. (shrink)

The work of Herbert Marcuse, unlike that of certain of his colleagues at the Institut für Sozialforschung, is most often maligned as being excessively positive and identitarian. His work on Freud, for example, is criticized for being grounded in a crude biological determinism which points towards an ultimate reconciliation of both psychic and social conflict. This essay will attempt to counter such readings by critically juxtaposing Marcuse’s concept of non-repressive sublimation with Cornelius Castoriadis’s understanding of psychic socialization. It will (...) be suggested that the affinities between Marcuse and Castoriadis’s appropriations of Freudian metapsychology reveals the degree to which the former can be read as a radical democratic thinker affirming the values of autonomy and creativity. This reading demonstrates that Marcuse has much to contribute to contemporary debates on the role of the aesthetic and the sensuous in democratic theory. (shrink)

The first English-language anthology to provide a compendium of primary source material on the sublime. The book takes a chronological approach, covering the earliest ancient traditions up through the early and late modern periods and into contemporary theory. It takes an inclusive, interdisciplinary approach to this key concept in aesthetics and criticism, representing voices and traditions that have often been overlooked. As such, it will be of use and interest across the humanities and allied disciplines.

The topic of the sublime is making a return to contemporary discourse on aesthetics and cognition. In Sublime Understanding, Kirk Pillow makes sublimity the center of an alternative conception of aesthetic response and interpretation. He draws an aesthetics of sublimity from Kant's Critique of Judgment, bolsters it with help from Hegel, and establishes its place in a broadened conception of human understanding. He argues that sublime reflection provides a model for an interpretive response to the uncanny Other outside our conceptual (...) grasp; it advances our sense-making pursuits but eschews unified, conceptual determination. Thus "sublime understanding" is the always partial, indeterminate grasping of contextual wholes through which we make sense of the uncanny particular in both art and the lived world. The book is divided into three parts. In the first two parts, Pillow presents insightful reinterpretations of Kant's and Hegel's aesthetics. In the third part he develops his own model of an aestheticized understanding, which illuminates contemporary discussions of metaphor and interpretation, while bridging Anglo-American and continental treatments of these issues. The presentation is a model of clear and well-crafted exposition, exemplifying the practice of aesthetically reflective sublime understanding that it articulates. (shrink)

This volume offers readers a unique and comprehensive overview of theoretical perspectives on "the sublime," the singular aesthetic response elicited by phenomena that move viewers by transcending and overwhelming them. The book consists of an editor's introduction and fifteen chapters written from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Part One examines philosophical approaches advanced historically to account for the phenomenon, beginning with Longinus, moving through eighteenth and nineteenth century writers in Britain, France, and Germany, and concluding with developments in contemporary continental (...) philosophy. Part Two explores the sublime with respect to particular disciplines and areas of study, including Dutch literature, early modern America, the environment, religion, British Romanticism, the fine arts, and architecture. Each chapter is both accessible for nonspecialists and offers an original contribution to its respective field of inquiry. (shrink)

Tracks the sublime art movement from Kant to the 21st century and onwards to a new future Stephen Zepke tracks the sublime art movement from its beginnings in Kant to its flowering in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He shows that the idea of sublime art waxes and wanes in the work of Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Ranciere and the recent Speculative Realism movement. With it, a visionary politics of art seeks to (...) give it the most creative power possible: the power to overcome our conditions and embrace the unknown. (shrink)

Notice --- Hobbes and Adams as Thucydideans --- Ancient Greece --- Alternative Concepts of the Human Condition --- Medieval Monarchy --- Renaissance Republics --- Founding Fathers --- The Moral Recuperation of Self-Interest --- Other Human Worlds --- Now is the Whimper of Our Self-Contempt --- Culture is the Human Nature.

This Element considers Kant's account of the sublime in the context of his predecessors both in the Anglophone and German rationalist traditions. Since Kant says with evident endorsement that 'we call sublime that which is absolutely great' and nothing in nature can in fact be absolutely great, Kant concludes that strictly speaking what is sublime can only be the human calling to perfect our rational capacity according to the standard of virtue that is thought through the moral law. The Element (...) takes account of the difference between respect and admiration as the two main varieties of sublime feeling, and concludes by considering the role of Stoicism in Kant's account of the sublime, particularly through the channel of Seneca. (shrink)

Kant says that there is a close affinity between the sublime and moral feelings of respect. This suggests a relatively unexplored way that aesthetic experience could be morally improving. We could come to respect persons by experiencing them as sublime. Unfortunately, this is not at all our ordinary experience of people, and it’s not clear how one would come to it. In this paper I argue that this possibility is realized in the portraits of Thomas Eakins. Through a handful of (...) specific techniques, Eakins suggests an incomparable psychological depth to the subjects of his portraits, a suggestion that causes the viewer to experience that subject as sublime in a way not unlike their experience of a vast ocean or endless abyss. -/- . (shrink)

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. (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)

The sublime in classical aesthetics arrived at a famous formulation with Kant as a subjective quality more elevated than beauty, linked to commotion and respect followed by reaffirmation. However, a new interpretation of the Schopenhauerian sublime is necessary in its transforming appreciation of the importance of this feeling as a psychological state, which is not yet metaphysical as usually understood, when dealing with struggling situations without resolution. Here the focus will be on a variety of the sonorous sublime in contemporary (...) music, which finds resonances with Schopenhauer’s sublime: Witold Lutoslawski’s Three Poems of Henri Michaux for mixed chorus and orchestra focuses on unpredictability and form-contrariness, “picturing” surrealist texts of uncertainty in Pensées, violence in Le Grand Combat, and resignation in Repos dans Malheur. (shrink)