Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime: Kant's Critique of Judgment, Sections 23-29 (Meridian : Crossing Aesthetics Series)

Over the past decade, radical questioning of the grounds of Western epistemology has revealed that some antinomies of the aesthetic experience can be viewed as a general, yet necessarily open, model for human understanding. This book is a rigorous explication de texte of a central text for this thesis, Kant’s Analytic of the Sublime. This Volume Presents A Close Reading Of Kant's Critique Of Judgment Looking Specifically At The Complex Paragraphs 23-29: The Analytic Of The Sublime. 1. Aesthetic Reflection. System And Peeling. Sensation As Tautegory. The Subjective Aesthetic Temporality. The Heuristic. Anamnesis. Reflection And Category In The Theoretical And Practical Realms. Reflection And Category In The Territory Of The Aesthetic -- 2. Comparison Of The Sublime And Taste. Why An Analytic Of The Sublime? The Beautiful And The Sublime Compared In The Quality And Quantity Of Judgment. Animation. The Beautiful And The Sublime Compared In The Relation (finality) And Modality Of Judgment. Continuity And Discontinuity Between Beautiful And Sublime -- 3. Categorical Examination Of The Sublime. Quantity And Magnitude. From Quantity To Modality Through Relation. Mathematical And Dynamical. Quality, Once Again -- 4. The Sublime As Mathematical Synthesis. Comprehension Is Measured. Composition Is Infinite. The Infinite Is Not Comprehensible As A Whole: Fear. The Infinite Is Thinkable As A Whole: Exaltation. 5. The Sublime As Dynamical Synthesis. Attempt To Resolve The Differend Through Ethical Mediation. Attempt To Resolve The Differend Through A Dialectic Dynamical Synthesis Of The Cause And The Conditioned. Necessity Of The Synthesis Of Sensations In Sublime Feeling. Heterogeneity Of The Sensations Of Time In The Sublime Synthesis -- 6. A Few Signs Of Heterogeneity. Resistance. Negative Presentation. Enthusiasm. Simplicity -- 7. Aesthetics And Ethics In The Beautiful And The Sublime. Delight. The Beautiful, Symbol Of The Good. The Analogy Of The Beautiful With The Good As It Is Logically Argued. The Nerve Of The Teleological Argument. Facultary Interest And Primacy Of The Practical. The Family Story Of The Sublime. Teleology In The Beautiful And The Sublime. The Sublime Sacrifice. 8. The Communication Of Taste. Demand For A Universal Communication. Demand For A Necessary Communication. Hesitation About The Demand. Localization Of The Principle Behind The Demand. Solution To The Antinomy Of Taste. Limit-ideas. The Supersensible Substrate. The Procedure Of Communication -- 9. The Communication Of Sublime Feeling. A Mediatized Communication. The Other Feeling. The Other Object. The Aesthetic Feeling Inspired By Moral Judgment. Jean-françois Lyotard ; Translated By Elizabeth Rottenberg. Includes Index. Philosophical aesthetics has seen an amazing revival over the past decade, as a radical questioning of the very grounds of Western epistemology has revealed that some antinomies of aesthetic experienceand in particular of the limits of the aestheticalcan be viewed as a general, yet necessarily open model for human understanding. In this revival, no text in the classical corpus of Western philosophy has been more frequently discussed than the complex paragraphs modestly inserted into Kant's Critique of Judgment as sections 23-29: the Analytic of the Sublime. This book is a rigorous explication de texte , a close reading of these sections. First, Lyotard reconstitutes, following the letter of Kant's analysis, the philosophical context of his critical writings and of the European Enlightenment. Second, because the analytic of the sublime reveals the inability of aesthetic experience to bridge the separate realms of theoretical and practical reason, Lyotard can connect his reconstitution of Kant's critical project with today's debates about the very conditionsand limitsof presentation in general. Lyotard enables us to see the sublime as a model for reflexive thinking generally via his concept of the "differend," which emphasizes the inevitability of conflicts and incompatibilities between different notions and "phrases." The Analytic of the Sublime, he points out, tries to argue that human thought is always constituted through a similar incompatibility between different intellectual and affective faculties. These lessons thus highlight the analysis of a "differend of feeling" in Kant's text, which is also the analysis of a "feeling of differend," and connect this feeling with the transport that leads all thought (critical thought included) to its limits.