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  3. The Sublime
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
July 2018
Print publication year:
2018
Online ISBN:
9781108529709
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108529709
Subjects:
History of Philosophy, Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, Philosophy Texts, Philosophy
Series:
Elements in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant
Information

Book description

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' (Critique of the Power of Judgment, 5:248) and nothing in nature can in fact be absolutely great (it can only figure as such, in certain presentations), Kant concludes that strictly speaking what is sublime can only be the human calling (Bestimmung) 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.

References

References

1 Primary Sources

Kant

References to the works of Kant, with the exception of the Critique of Pure Reason, follow volume and page of the German Academy edition: Kants Gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, later the Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (Walter de Gruyter [and predecessors], 1902–). Quotations are drawn, with occasional modifications, from the translations in the following volumes of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant:

  • (1992) Lectures on Logic. Ed. J. Michael Young.

  • (1996) Practical Philosophy. Ed. Mary J. Gregor.

  • (1996) Religion and Rational Theology. Ed. Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni.

  • (2002) Critique of the Power of Judgment. Ed. Paul Guyer.

  • (2005) Notes and Fragments. Ed. Paul Guyer.

  • (2007) Anthropology, History, and Education. Ed. Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden.

I have consulted the following translations as well:

  • (1987) Critique of Judgment. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett.

  • (2003 [1929]) Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

I use the following abbreviations for Kant’s works:

Anth

Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View

CJ

Critique of the Power of Judgment

CPR

Critique of Pure Reason

CPrR

Critique of Practical Reason

FI

First Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment

JL

Jäsche Logic

MFNS

Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science

MM

Metaphysics of Morals

MM-DV

Metaphysics of Morals, Doctrine of Virtue

Refl

Reflexionen (Academy volumes 14–17)

Rel

Religion within the Boundaries of Reason Alone

WIE

‘What is Enlightenment’

Others

Ashfield, A. & de Bolla, P., eds. (1996). The Sublime: A Reader in British Eighteenth-century Aesthetic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Baumgarten, A. G. (2007 [1750]). Aesthetica/Ästhetik, Latin-German edition. Trans. Dagmar Mirbach. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.
Bond, D. F., ed. (1965). The Spectator. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Burke, E. (1990 [1757]). A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. Phillips, Adam. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Carter, E. (1817). Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Montagu, Between the Years 1755 and 1800, Chiefly upon Literary and Moral Subjects. Ed. Rev. Pennington, Montagu. Volume 1. London: F. C. and J. Rivington.
Dennis, J. (1693). Miscellanies in Verse and Prose. London: James Knapton.
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Seneca, L. A. (2015). Letters on Ethics to Lucilius. Trans. Margaret Graver and A. A. Long. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

2 Secondary sources

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Beiser, F. C. (2009). Diotima’s Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing. New York: Oxford University Press.
Brady, E. (2013). The Sublime in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brandt, R. (2003). The Vocation of the Human Being. In Jacobs, B. and Kain, P., eds., Essays on Kant’s Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 85–104.
Brennan, T. (2003). Stoic Moral Psychology. In Inwood, B., ed., Cambridge Companion to the Stoics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 257–94.
Budick, S. (2010). Kant and Milton. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Budd, M. (2002). The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Budd, M. (2008). Aesthetic Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Clewis, R. (2009). The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cochrane, T. (2012). The Emotional Experience of the Sublime. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 42 (2), 125–48.
Crowther, P. (1989). The Kantian Sublime. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Darwall, S. (1977). Two Kinds of Respect. Ethics 88 (1), 36–49.
Darwall, S. (2008). Kant on Respect, Dignity, and the Duty of Respect. In Betzler, M., ed., Kant’s Ethics of Virtue. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 175–200.
di Giovanni, G. (2011). The Year 1786 and Die Bestimmung des Menschen. In Munk, R., ed., Moses Mendelssohn’s Metaphysics and Aesthetics. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 217–34.
Doran, R. (2015). The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Forsey, J. (2007). Is a Theory of the Sublime Possible? Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 85 (4), 381–9.
Graver, M. (2016). Anatomies of Joy: Seneca and the Gaudium Tradition. In Caston, R. R. and Kaster, R. A., eds., Hope, Joy, and Affection in the Classical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 123–42.
Guyer, P. (1993). Kant and the Experience of Freedom: Essays on Aesthetics and Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Guyer, P. (2005). The Symbols of Freedom in Kant’s Aesthetics. In Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 222–41.
Guyer, P. (2014). A History of Modern Aesthetics. Volume 1: The Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kennett, J. (2015). What is Required for Motivation by Principle? In Björnsson, G., Strandberg, C., Olinder, R. F., Eriksson, J., Björklund, F. B., eds., Motivational Internalism. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 108–29.
Koller, A. (2011). Mendelssohn’s Response to Burke on the Sublime. In Munk, R., ed., Moses Mendelssohn’s Metaphysics and Aesthetics. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 329–50.
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Lyotard, J.-F. (1994). Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime. Trans. E. Rottenberg. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
McDowell, J. (1979). Virtue and Reason. The Monist 62 (3), 331–50.
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Merritt, M. (2012). The Moral Source of the Kantian Sublime. In Costelloe, T., ed., The Sublime: from Antiquity to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 37–49.
Merritt, M. (2017). Sublimity and Joy: Kant on the Aesthetic Constitution of Virtue. In Altman, M., ed., Palgrave Kant Handbook. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 447–67.
Merritt, M. (2018). Kant on Reflection and Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Rayman, J. (2012). Kant on Sublimity and Morality. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
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Santozki, U. (2012). Die Bedeutung antiker Theorien für die Genese und Systematik von Kants Philosophie. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Schaper, E. (1992). Taste, Sublimity, and Genius: The Aesthetics of Nature and Art. In Guyer, P., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 367–93.
Sherman, N. (1997). Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vogt, K. M. (2008). Law, Reason, and the Cosmic City: Political Philosophy in the Early Stoa. New York: Oxford University Press.
Warda, A. (1922). Immanuel Kants Bücher. Berlin: Martin Breslauer.
Zuckert, R. (2003). Awe or Envy: Herder contra Kant on the Sublime. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 61 (3), 217–32.

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