Kant’s Account of the Sublime as Critique
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Rachel Zuckert
Abstract
Kant’s account of the sublime in the Critique of Judgment has been extremely influential, prompting extensive discussion of the psychology, affect, moral significance, and relevance to artistic representation of the sublime on his provocative view. I focus instead on Kant’s account of the mathematical sublime in connection to his theoretical critical project, namely his attempt to characterize human cognitive powers and to limit human pretensions to knowledge of the supersensible. I argue, first, that his account of the psychology of the sublime is designed to explain not just its affective character (its displeasure-pleasure), but also to address challenges concerning the coherence of an experience of something as transcending one’s cognitive abilities. Thereby, I argue moreover, Kant provides an alternative, demystifying account of mystical experiences, in which humans might take themselves to intuit that which is beyond human understanding or reason, and thus to claim that they have special cognitive access to the supersensible, transcending the limits Kant claims to establish for human cognition. Kant’s account of the mathematical sublime is not merely so reductive of mystical experience, however; it also, I suggest, describes the aesthetic of Kantian critique itself.
© 2019 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- List of Contributors
- Titelei
- Table of Contents
- Game between Arch-enemies: An Interpretation of the Free and Harmonious Play of Faculties
- Can there be a Finite Interpretation of the Kantian Sublime?
- Aesthetic Judgment as Parasitic on Cognition
- Performative versus Orientational Hermeneutics. Gadamer’s Criticism of Kant’s Sensus Communis and its Hermeneutical Rehabilitation by Makkreel
- Kant on Common-sense and the Unity of Judgments of Taste
- Kant’s Account of the Sublime as Critique
- List of Contributors
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2020, 2021 and 2022
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- List of Contributors
- Titelei
- Table of Contents
- Game between Arch-enemies: An Interpretation of the Free and Harmonious Play of Faculties
- Can there be a Finite Interpretation of the Kantian Sublime?
- Aesthetic Judgment as Parasitic on Cognition
- Performative versus Orientational Hermeneutics. Gadamer’s Criticism of Kant’s Sensus Communis and its Hermeneutical Rehabilitation by Makkreel
- Kant on Common-sense and the Unity of Judgments of Taste
- Kant’s Account of the Sublime as Critique
- List of Contributors
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2020, 2021 and 2022
