The category of sublime in Kant's Aesthetics
In the history of aesthetic, the sublime does not benefit from such a great theoretical attention as the beautiful - the interest in the sublime always flashes or quenches; it comes to life in connection with the requirements of rhetoric or of the arts who exhibit to the sublime piety; or disappears through centuries in which the same rhetoric and certain forms of art remain out of the attention of the people. And, according to Kant, the notion of the sublime of nature is far less important and rich in lessons than the notion of the beauty of nature. Yet Kant's interest in the sublime is constant, he encompasses all his aesthetic work - from the early "Observations," through the third "Critique" to "Anthropology", where one paragraph is dedicated to the sublime. Kant's interest in the sublime is not dictated either by rhetoric or by the classical and pre-romantic artistic trends, he is purely philosophical interest, the second part of the analysis of aesthetic ability for judgment - the connecting link between reason and mind, cognitive ability and ability for desire, between truth and behavior. The beautiful and the sublime agree that they both like themselves for assuming a non-sensuous and not logically determinant but reflective judgment that their judgments are single but claim to be universally binding on each subject, though just for the feeling of pleasure. The sublime looks like the beautiful but sublime is distinct from the beautiful in some ways.
"The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" by Caspar Friedrich
According to Kant, the beauty of nature refers to the shape of the object, which consists in limiting. Above, however, can also be found in a formless subject, inasmuch as in it or in the sense of it there is boundlessness, and yet, the whole of this boundlessness is added. That is why, in the beautiful pleasure, it is connected with the image of quality, and in the sublime - with the idea of quantity. But the pleasure itself is different. The pleasure of the beautiful directly contains a sense of encouragement for life and unites with the game of imagination - the beautiful one calls out love and trusting sympathy. The pleasure of the sublime occurs only indirectly through the sense of momentary suppression of the vital forces and the next, then, the stronger pouring of these forces - therefore it is not a game, but something serious in the pursuit of imagination and therefore contains less positive pleasure , the more admiration or respect, which is why it should be called "negative pleasure." But the most important difference between the beautiful and the sublime, given the nature, is that natural beauty involves the appropriateness in its form, through which the object seems to be predetermined for our imagination, and therefore natural beauty is itself a matter of pleasure, so that we express ourselves quite rightly when we call beautiful many objects of nature; on the contrary, what awakens our feeling of sublime form may seem inappropriate for our ability to judge, and as if it is violent to the imagination, but it is nevertheless considered to be so sublime , and this proves that we express ourselves incorrectly, when we call sublime a natural object, because the real sublime can not be contained in any sensible form, but only refers to ideas of reason - the chaos or the wildest in nature, unrestrained and devastated by any rules when they are prominent ichieto and power, most excite in our sublime ideas; the beautiful is taken from the depiction of an indefinable concept of reason, and the sublime - to depict an undefined concept of reason. Thus the difference between sublime and beautiful is greater and more substantial than the similarity between them.
"The Bard" by Thomas Jones
And the judgment of the sublime need - in its analyst - the same four moments as the judgment of beauty, namely, in quality, in quantity, in respect and in modality, only insofar as the sublime refers not to the form but to the lack of form, his analyst must start with the quantity. But for the analysis of the sublime it becomes necessary also one of its own subdivision, namely of: mathematically lofty and dynamically sublime. The mathematically sublime is the feeling related to the great size (in space and in time), the dynamically superior is the feeling related to the great power; the first is for the extensive one, and the second is for the intensive nature. One is the sublime magnitude and the other one is the sublime power, and one is closer to our ability to understand, and the other to our strength to resist, to the will.In the definition of the sublime Kant it seems to use the principle of gradualism. It begins with what is closest to the obvious, which is in the sight, and it seems self-perceivable to penetrate gradually and reach what remains hidden from the first sight and ordinary consciousness, but in which, according to Kant, only, truly and truly, has the sublime. "The principle of graduation" is imposed in the definition of the sublime, because it has the ability to deceive about its own nature. The sense of sublime in nature is in fact a respect for our purpose, the idea of the human in us that we, by some kind of substitution, regard as respect to a natural object. To overcome this replacement and thus reach the true nature of the sublime, Kant thinks the task of analyzing the sublime. The critique of aesthetic ability for judgment, revealing the a priori principles of beauty and sublime, according to Kant, gives reason enough to be taken out of empirical psychology and transferred to transcendental philosophy. The empirical introduction to aesthetic judgments sets the beginning by collecting material for a higher study. Compared to the teachings / analytics / for the beautiful, the Kant's teaching / analyst / of the sublime is less formalistic but, moreover, it is more subjective - the narrowing of the sphere of formal moments is at the expense of the expansion of the sphere of the subjective components. In the doctrine of the sublime, two of the most characteristic features of Kant's aesthetics - rationalism and subjectivity - reach their highest point. The idea of the activity of consciousness here is brought to the limits of the absolute - the subject, and only the subject creates the sublime, creates it by himself, by his moral will, where the external object is not the cause, but only the cause of the sublime, whose base and the peak are in the ideas of reason, moral feeling. Thus in the "Analytics of the Sublime", despite its subjectivity, and partly thanks to it, the moral pathos - the idea of human dignity and power, the energy of moral feeling - enter. And despite Kant's deep conviction of the radical evil in human nature, his doctrine of the sublime is not just a corrective, but an antithesis of the evil that is rooted in this nature - a true triumph of the good, moral, human rooted in human nature. Kant's teaching of the sublime is an aesthetic projection of Kant's ethos.
"Pandemonium" by John Martin
Kant's teaching of the sublime gives grounds for essential conclusions regarding some of the fundamental features not only of his aesthetics but also of his philosophy in general. Kant's thinking is equally inherent in the tendency towards purity and the tendency towards systemicity. The tendency towards purity seeks the exact domain of a given phenomenon, its complete independence and autonomy over close and related phenomena, its differentia specifica to the degree of self-closure. The tendency towards systematicity, on the contrary, seeks the connection between phenomena, their higher synthesis, understood not as a mechanical aggregate, but rather as an organism, such as organic unity. These two contradictory but equally inherent tendencies of Kant's theoretical thinking are most tangible in the Critique of Judgment Ability - the work that has come to unite the theoretical and practical philosophy, knowledge and morality, nature and freedom. Now that Kant's place of pleasure, being a link between cognitive ability and the ability to desire, already at the very place of judgment, is a bridge between reason and reason, at least partially condemns the attempt to examine them as absolutely autonomous, as absolutely independent of other spiritual and cognitive abilities, which, on the other hand, should lead the tendency towards purity. For this failure, he suggests even the stylistic figure used by Kant. If the sense of pleasure, the ability to judge is a bridge between cognition and the ability of desire, between reason and reason, they, as well as each bridge, must at one end of their own walk along one of the two shores that connect like bridge. And at least at these pillars, the absolute absolute purity and absolute autonomy in relation to cognitive ability and ability to desire, to reason and reason disappears. Conceived philosophically as a connecting factor, the aesthetic ability of judgment is precisely because of this, it is more like the famous two-fold Roman deity - with one face, she looks (and not only) to reason, knowledge and nature, and to the other - to reason, morality and freedom. The tendency toward systemicity may allow - at most - a relative purity, to absolute purity, which by its very nature can not reach. Thus, with its basic subdivision, the aesthetic ability of judgment links knowledge and morality in such a way that the idea of beauty is its relation to knowledge, and the idea of the sublime is its relation to morality. But in addition to the fact that the beauty is closer to knowledge, and the sublime is closer to morality, the subdivision of the sublime mathematical sublime proves to be closer to reason and knowledge, but to the dynamically superior to reason and behavior. Thus the ability to judge is proving to be binding insofar as it is not pure and pure as far as it is not binding.
