Kant's Critique of Judgment (3)

Analytic of the Sublime - Notes

The feeling of the sublime arises when the purposiveness in the presentation of an object is attributed to the free play of the imagination with a concept to which no possible intuition can be predicated. Here, what triggers the sublime is not a qualitative but rather a quantitative relation between the imagination and reason (i.e. the faculty of producing ideas to which no possible intuition can be given.) So every analytic of the sublime must start with the examination of quantity.

Tangent: Nietzsche's talk of the greatness of the mountains and the abyss of the sea is only a poetic version of Kant's rigorous exposition of the sublime.

Two types of the sublime

1. Mathematical Sublime = the imagination plays with the idea of absolute largeness, i.e. absolute infinity
2. Dynamical Sublime = the imagination plays with the idea of absolute domination, or absolute fearfulness in the object

(1) is the quantitative sublime; (2) is the qualitative sublime.
Tangent: there are two other sublimes missing here, namely, the modal sublime and the relational sublime.

The sublime, like the beautiful, is found via reflective judgment.
Imagination + Understanding [Verstand] = Beautiful
Imagination + Reason [Vernunft] = Sublime

The feeling of the sublime is a "negative pleasure" which is preceded by the momentary inhibition of our cognitive powers. In beauty, the form of the object is purposive. In the sublime, the sensible form of the object is contrapurposive, i.e. it appears as a form for which no concept or purpose is adequate.

• Since we cannot like an object unless it is purposive (whether with or without a purpose,) no object in nature is sublime.

The sublime gives rise to an idea of reason through the awareness of the inadequacy of the sensible object for the demand of the idea.

A sublime object is too chaotic to be related to any concept of nature. For example, an astronomical mess would arouse the feeling of the sublime, since no concept can capture what is going on in that piece of observation.

In the sublime, purposiveness is felt not in nature but rather "within ourselves."

• Sublimity merely resides within our way of thinking.
• Thus, in terms of purposiveness of nature, the sublime is almost entirely marginal and irrelevant.
• The idea of the sublime makes purposive use of the mere presentation of nature.

The feeling of the sublime, contra beauty, arouses agitation which is nonetheless subjectively purposive.

• Agitation of the cognitive powers = quantitative or mathematical sublime
• Agitation of desire = qualitative or dynamical sublime

(1) On the Mathematically Sublime

Absolute largeness = mathematical sublime = large beyond all comparison = absolute infinity

Since no intuition can correspond to absolute largeness, this idea is not a concept of the understanding. This is because a magnitude in appearance or nature is always cognized in relation to a measurement or another magnitude, and as such is not absolutely large but rather bounded.

• "This just is large!" does not specify how large the object is, and so it is absolutely large.
• This judgment is subjectively purposive and thus is universally valid.
• The largeness of this object is not a concept, so the judgment is aesthetic.
• The liking associated with the sublime is not based on the harmony between our cognitive powers, but rather to the expansion of our imagination.

Large/small is a standard which could be applied to all possible objects, concepts, rules, ideas, etc.

The sublime is a largeness which has the standard for its own largeness within itself. In comparison to the mathematically sublime, everything else in nature is small. The feeling of the sublime is thus merely an attunement of the intellect through a certain presentation of nature.

The mere thinkability of the sublime signifies the supersensible powers of the mind.

What is the subjective purposiveness of the mathematically sublime?

• In the unbounded estimation of magnitude performed by the imagination, there is something purposive (since magnitude as such is already a purposive) yet there is no determinate purpose.
• Imagination (providing a unit of measurement) + Understanding (synthesizing intuition based on the unit thus provided) = an infinity with a unit, i.e. a set of an infinite number of identical units; this infinity is progressive, incomplete, and not-total (or "non-all.")
• Imagination (unit) + Reason (idea of totality) = absolute infinity (a boundlessness which is represented as one totality.)
• Absolute infinity cannot be represented as appearance, yet it is thinkable due to the demands of reason.
• Nature is sublime in those appearances whose intuition carries with it the idea of its own infinity.
• This idea can only be inferred from our experience of the inadequacy of our cognitive powers for the idea of reason.
• This must be an aesthetic estimation of magnitude, since no determinate unit is objectively cognized.
• Since the ground of the judgment is the inability or finitude of our mental powers, the sublime is a subjective phenomenon.

The sublime is commonly experienced through our feeling and sense of endlessness. Kant gives the example of progressively observing the mountains, the earth, the sun, and the Milky Way. The progressive observation arouses a sense of endlessness in the size of the world, which allows us to make an aesthetic judgment which generates the feeling of the mathematically sublime. However, what we experience at first as the boundlessness of nature is in fact, as this analysis shows, the boundlessness of the imagination as it tries to respond to the demand of reason.

The feeling of self-inadequacy in the face of an ideal is respect. Since the idea of absolute infinity is our own, the sublime is accompanied by a feeling of respect for the vocation which we demand for ourselves.

• Respect is an intuition which gives us an indirect clue to the superiority of reason over the imagination.
• To judge all possible objects of experience as small compared to the idea of absolute infinity is a law of reason.

Sublime → Displeasure (not purpose can fit the object) → Respect (due to the vocation of reason) → Pleasure (purposiveness of the idea of reason)

The alteration between pleasure and displeasure arouses agitation. This is because the thing is repulsive to sensibility (i.e. to the imagination) yet attractive to reason. This conflict is the ground of purposiveness. The quality of the feeling of the sublime is thus one of a pleasure conditioned by a prior displeasure, i.e. masochism.

(2) On the Dynamically Sublime

Might = relative power of one object over another.
Domination = a higher might which reigns over other objects with might.
Dynamic Sublime = nature as a might without dominance-over-us.

A judgment that an object is dynamically sublime arouses fear ex nihilo. This judgment is grounded in the quantity of resistance only, thus not a determinate concept.

• Here, the object is judged as being fearful, yet this does not arouse the emotion of fear within us with regard to the existence of the object.
• E.g. God is fearful even to a virtuous person, yet this person would not be afraid of God.
• Fear, as an emotion, is actually an obstacle to the universality of the aesthetic judgment which leads to the sublime.

The feeling of the dynamically sublime has two requirements.

1. We are safe from the dominating force of the object (e.g. a storm, thunder, or a volcano.)
2. The object nonetheless exhibits a might which would surely dominate us were it to become a real threat.

Tangent: feeling of the dynamically sublime (Kant) = being-toward-death (Heidegger)?

We feel pleasure in the fact that the absolute immensity of nature's dominance is nonetheless captured (i.e. further dominated) by the idea of our reason.

• By judging an object sublime, we call forth not our fear but our strength in the face of nature's immensity.
• All lesser mights of nature are made small compared to the sublime.
• E.g. trivial objects such as games, accessories, fine clothes, etc. are made ready to be dispensed with when the sublime calls for the imagination to respond to a higher vocation.
• The possibility of the dynamically sublime is confirmed even in the most common cases where we judge a person to be courageous in the fact of an absolutely fearful object.

Compared to the sublimity of war and adventure, prolonged peace merely gives rise to a commercial spirit.

The same object can be an object of fear for the coward and a sublime object for the courageous.

Compared to the beautiful, it is even more difficult to come to agreement (i.e. the construction of common sense) concerning our judgment of the sublime, since the latter requires a higher degree of imagination (i.e. the cultivation of our cognitive powers) as well as the cultivation of reason.

• However, this does not mean that the sublime is an empirically acquired feeling; rather, it rests on the a priori powers of reason, and thus demands everyone's assent.
• Failure to see the beautiful implies lack of taste; for the sublime, lack of feeling.
• Here, the sublime is derived from a necessary aesthetic judgment.

(At this point, Kant launches into a long and utterly unconvincing polemic on the relation between moral feeling (i.e. a feeling generated by our free act of making the moral law our principle for action) and the sublime. I will only cite Kant's "table of aesthetic judgments" (which is neither convincing nor consistent) and leave it at that.)

Table of Aesthetic Judgments

Quantity - the Agreeable
Quality - the Beautiful
Relation - the Sublime
Modality - the Good (this judgment gives rise to a moral feeling which is not strictly speaking aesthetic, since it is derived not from purposiveness but from the moral law (i.e. purposiveness with a purpose); nonetheless, the judgment is somewhat analogous to an aesthetic one, so, according to Kant, the Good "deserves" a place in this table.)

Tangent: this table is a mess. It should not be in the book at all.