the sublime
I've often cited this concept as an influence in my thesis work, but have failed to articulate it fully in my presentations. Here are some excerpts from wikipedia that offer some explanation and context for this common source of artistic inspiration:
exerpt from sublime wikipedia entry:
The sublime, on the other hand, was for Kant a feeling of satisfaction celebrating reason itself and our capacity as moral beings. The feeling is experienced when our imagination fails to comprehend the vastness of the infinite and we become aware of the ideas of reason and their representation of the totality of the universe, as well as those powers that operate in the universe which we do not grasp and are beyond our control. The feeling is at once existential in that we realize our own finitude, or smallness, but is universal in the realization of our own moral worth as an autonomous being belonging to the fraternity of mankind which shares a moral destiny through its capacity to apply the moral laws of practical reason. The judgments of the sublime arise from two principles of reason, the mathematical and the dynamic, which are both elements that have a common thread throughout Kant’s writings on pure and practical reason. The sublime reflects the exaltation of reason and the nobility of the human spirit, whereas judgments of beauty belong to the "mere" understanding.
exerpt from Lyotard wikipedia entry:
Lyotard is fascinated by this admission, from one of the philosophical architects of the Enlightenment, that the mind cannot always organise the world rationally. Some objects are simply incapable of being brought neatly under concepts. For Lyotard, in Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, but drawing on his argument in The Differend, this is a good thing. Such generalities as 'concepts' fail to pay proper attention to the particularity of things. What happens in the sublime is a crisis where we realise the inadequacy of the imagination and reason to each other. What we are witnessing, says Lyotard, is actually the differend; the straining of the mind at the edges of itself and at the edges of its conceptuality.
01:38 AM September 21, 2005 Comments 1
msteffen
Hmm, that helps a little. I've definitely had those moments when I consider the vastness of the universe, of God's creation--realizing that our own lives which take up so much of our thoughts, are just an infintesimally small part of the bigger picture.
So that's how you mean sublime? Cool. Prior to reading this, I thought you just meant "a sense of inner peace", or something to that effect. I suppose that's part of it, but you're going for something deeper.
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