Is a theory of the sublime possible?

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 65, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 381-389

  Forsey, Jane ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WINNIPEG   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 57749160031     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-594X.2007.00271.x     Document Type: Review

References (24)

1. Paul Crowther, The Kantian Sublime (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989)
2. Jean-François Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg, (Stanford University Press, 1991)
3. Kirk Pillow, Sublime Understanding: Aesthetic Reflection in Kant and Hegel (MIT Press, 2000)
4. Dabney Townsend, ed., Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetics (Amityville: Baywood Publishing, 1999)
5. Andrew Ashfield and Peter de Bolla, eds., The Sublime: A Reader in British Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
6. Guy Sircello, "How is a Theory of the Sublime Possible?" The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51 (1993): 541-550. References to Sircello's work will be inserted in parentheses in the body of the text
7. Edmund Burke, "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful," in The Sublime: A Reader in British Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory, pp. 131-144, quote from p. 132
8. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 81
9. James Usher, "Clio, or a Discourse on Taste," in The Sublime: A Reader in British Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory, pp. 147-157, quote from pp. 150-151
10. Addison, "The Spectator," p. 62
11. Burke, "A Philosophical Enquiry," p. 133
12. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974)
13. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 172
14. Malcolm Budd, "Delight in the Natural World: Kant on the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature. Part III: The Sublime in Nature," The British Journal of Aesthetics 38 (1998): 233-251, quote from p. 240
15. Budd, "Delight in the Natural World," p. 241
16. As Paul Guyer has noted, "it is we ourselves who are sublime." See his "The Difficulty of the Sublime, " presented to the American Society for Aesthetics Annual General Meeting, Providence, Rhode Island, October 2005, for the panel "Knowing the Sublime," p. 15
17. Immanuel Kant, "Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals," in Kant Selections, trans. Lewis White Beck (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998), p. 281, emphasis added
18. I have chosen this translation for its emphasis on the term 'sublime.' And see Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Suhrkamp, 1974), p. 75
19. Henry Allison, in Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Cambridge University Press, 2001), offers a good discussion of the moral implications of the sublime, see pp. 341-344
20. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993), p. 92
21. And see Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Suhrkamp, 1974), p. 211
22. William Wordsworth, The Prelude 1799, 1805, 1850, quoted in Sircello, p. 543
23. Lao-tzu, Tao te Ching, quoted in Sircello, p. 544
24. An early version of this article was presented at the American Society for Aesthetics Annual General Meeting, Providence, Rhode Island, October 2005, for the panel "Knowing the Sublime." I greatly benefited from the commentary provided by Jeffrey Wilson, Department of Philosophy, Loyola Marymount University, and from discussion by participants Paul Guyer, Kirk Pillow, and Melissa Zinkin