Lyotard on the Kantian Sublime
ABSTRACT: In this essay I explicate J.F. Lyotard's reading of the Kantian sublime as presented in Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime (1994) and in "Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism" (1984). Lessons articulates the context in which critical thought situates itself as a zone of virtually infinite creative capacity, undetermined by principles but in search of them; "Answering the Question" explores how the virtually infinite creative capacity of thought manifests in the avant-gardes. Essentially, in both works Lyotard understands the Kantian sublime as legitimating deconstructive postmodernism.
In the Critique of Judgement Kant defines the sublime as "that, the mere ability to think which shows a faculty of the mind surpassing every standard of sense." (1) Such striving for absolute comprehension beyond what the imagination is capable of representing in a simple perception or image may be occasioned by the "rawness" of scenes like the Great Pyramid of Cheops, the magnitude or immensity of which alludes to the Idea of absolute greatness. (2) Imagination's failure to contain this Idea understandably results in pain. (3) But pain is not the end-point; characteristic of sublime feeling is a "movement" of pain to pleasure: "the feeling of a momentary checking of the vital powers and a consequent stronger outflow of them." (4) In other words one is awestruck: nature appears as a "mere nothing in comparison with the Ideas of Reason." (5) From this we realize our superiority to nature "within and without us" and our supersensible destination beyond nature. (6) In this paper I wish to explicate J-F. Lyotard's reading of the Kantian sublime. There are lessons to be learned here, as the title of his recent work (1994), Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, suggests.
Essentially, the heuristic function of the sublime is to expose reflective judgment (of which sublime feeling is a species) as the context in which the critical enterprise functions or as the "manner" in which critical thought situates its own a priori conditions. (7) The Kantian sublime may teach us something else: In an earlier work (1984), "Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?," Lyotard views the sublime as legitimating the avant-garde as way of extending the critical enterprise to the arts. The method behind the madness of the avant-gardes, Lyotard contends, is incomprehensible unless one is already familiar with "the incommensurability of reality to concept which is implied in the Kantian philosophy of the sublime.
"Water Pollution." Current Issues: Macmillan Social Science Library. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 5 May 2014.
Furthermore, resonation can be found in Preziosi exploration of the establishment of female identification through aesthetics. Within Preziosi chapter on aesthetics he addresses main issues including “Kant’s Critique of Judgment, judgment about beauty, and perception of perfection.” Aesthetics was addressed in the perception of how the female body is formed and encased while a male looks at the female body. In this case the male would be Degas gazing at his ballerina while either sketching his model or doing a sculpture of the ballerina. Preziosi states that “there should be two kinds of theory or sciences of knowledge corresponding to each logic and aesthetics.” This concept of two kinds of theory made more apparent as every sculptor Degas made is presented as a different theory, yet the two theories are different, Degas’s artwork deals with both logic and aesthetics. Logic can be applied to Degas’s____, works of art. Where as aesthetics deals with____. Later on in Preziosi chapter on aesthetics, he brings up the issue of “the idea that sensory knowledge could have its own perfection-and, further, that an aesthetic judgment about beauty or beautiful objects.” When viewing Degas’s sculptor the
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Nevertheless, the sublime does not lead us to despair, but to a higher pleasure than beauty affords
Rose, Carol. "American Civil Liberties Union." American Civil Liberties Union. N.p., 08 Dec. 2012. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.
When you eat a cheeseburger, you might know that you are eating a beef patty with cheese, lettuce, and ketchup on a sesame seed bun, but do you know what you are really eating? According to the documentary GMO OMG, “approximately 85% of all processed foods contain GMOs”, yet most consumers are unaware that this secret ingredient is included in most of their food. Although Monsanto believes their product is safely feeding the world, consumers should be aware of the hidden horrors of genetically modified food because research indicates that GMOs could drastically affect their health as well as cause environmental damage, all while violating the rights of consumers and farmers.
What can be said about the sublime? Class discussion led to the definition of sublime as the element found in travel literature that is unexplainable. It is that part of travel literature where the writer is in awe of his or her surroundings, where nature can be dangerous or where nature reminds a human being of their mortality. The term "sublime" has been applied to travel texts studied in class and it is hard not to compare the sublime from texts earlier in the term to the texts in the later part of the term. Two texts that can be compared in terms of the sublime are A Tour in Switzerland by Helen Williams and History of a Six Weeks' Tour by Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. There are similarities and differences found in both texts concerning individual perspectives of travel and the sublime. The main focus of this commentary will be comparing and contrasting the perspectives of Williams and Shelley within their respective texts, the language of the sublime and the descriptions of the sublime.
Over the years, this country has witnessed many cases of police brutality. It has become a controversial topic among communities that have seen police brutality take place in front of their homes. Officers are faced with many threatening situations everyday forcing them to make split second decisions and to expect the worst and hope for the best. Police officers
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Amnesty International. Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department, 1999b.
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Theo D’haen, a professor at the University of Leuven, synthesizes that a postmodernist writer is one who uses a “combination of any number of techniques that were seen as innovative and perhaps even transgressive, especially with regard to all forms of referentiality, be it reference to some “real” reality as in realism or to a “psychological” reality as in modernism”(Theo D’haen 272). Following this explanation, the self-reflectiveness, interdependency, parody and mimetic reality that readers are exposed to when reading a metafictional piece, branches into the different interpretations presented by D’haen: a ‘real’ reality and a ‘psychological’ reality. The act of judging any work of art in relation to its representation of reality is a parallel to the reader’s assimilation of a mimetic reality, acknowledged by a physiological th...
"Water Pollution Solutions: Cleaning Our Water Systems." Water Pollution Solutions: Cleaning Our Water Systems. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.