Kant, Aesthetic Judgement, and Beethoven

2021 ◽  
pp. 42-65
Author(s):  
John Hare
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theology ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Slow Movement ◽  
Piano Sonata ◽  
Aesthetic Judgement ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Better Than

This chapter explores Kant’s conception of the relation of the beautiful and the sublime to freedom and to moral theology. It then turns to Beethoven’s conception of the sublime, and illustrates this by an analysis of the slow movement of his early piano sonata Op. 2, No. 2, and an analysis of the first movement of the Eroica. The thesis of the chapter is that a Kantian ‘optimistic’ account of the sublime fits these pieces better than some other accounts of the sublime that the chapter describes, namely ‘the uncanny sublime’, ‘the authoritarian sublime’ and ‘the solipsistic sublime’. The chapter ends with a brief remark about the relation between Kantian freedom and the Christian faith.

Schopenhauer's Transformation of the Kantian Sublime

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-511 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Shapshay
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Judgement ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Tragic Drama

AbstractSchopenhauer singles out Kant's theory of the sublime for high praise, calling it ‘by far the most excellent thing in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement’, yet, in his main discussion of the sublime, he ridicules Kant's explanation as being in the grip of scholastic metaphysics. My first aim in this paper is to sort out Schopenhauer's apparently conflicted appraisal of Kant's theory of the sublime. Next, based on his Nachlaß, close readings of published texts and especially of his account of the experience of tragic drama, I offer a reconstruction of Schopenhauer's theory of the sublime which understands it – against prevailing scholarly views – as a transformation of rather than as a real departure from the Kantian explanation. Finally, I suggest that my interpretation of Schopenhauer's theory of the sublime has far-reaching consequences for a proper understanding of his views on freedom.

Cosmic Passions

2018 ◽  
pp. 36-46
Author(s):  
David Wood
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
The World ◽  
At Home

Should imminent climate change provoke angst or despair? Hume tells us that “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions.” But which passions? A geophenomenology would begin by acknowledging the constitutive power of cosmic passions such as wonder, curiosity, and delight. Kant’s account of the sublime opens up a range of experiences with an intrinsic reflexive resonance. Stirred in with Heidegger’s connection between angst and freedom, it offers grounds for a certain hope. Heidegger’s sense that to be truly at home in the world we must experience something of the uncanny (Unheimlich) is wedded to the idea that our manner of dwelling can be transformed by adopting new narratives that free us from false desires.

Appropriating Ovid’s Tyrannical Raptures in Macbeth

2019 ◽  
pp. 163-181
Author(s):  
John D. Staines
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Titus Andronicus ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Human Understanding

In contrast to Titus Andronicus, Macbeth adapts few Ovidian sources; nonetheless, the play reveals how completely the mature Shakespeare appropriates Ovid’s poetics, especially the element of raptus, seizing and being seized. Macbeth himself is the body rapt, and raped, as he experiences the sublime terror of being swept up and violated by forces at the edge of human understanding. The tyrant is both the rapist and the raped, seized by passions he cannot, or will not, control, tortured in “restless ecstasy” that drives him to greater violations. Using the rhizome and assemblage of Deleuze and Guattari, and the hauntology of Derrida, this chapter sees Shakespeare, Ovid, and human culture as fragmentary records of violent appropriations and traumatized ghosts haunting past, present, and future. The uncanny, spectral experiences Maurizio Calbi finds in postmodern Shakespearean adaptations are thus intensifications of experiences Shakespeare found in Ovid and made central to his art.

Church-Turing Lovers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Bołtuć
Keyword(s):  
Gold Standard ◽  
Humanoid Robots ◽  
First Person ◽  
Significant Other ◽  
Uncanny Valley ◽  
Silver Standard ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Sex Robots ◽  
The Right ◽  
Better Than

Church-Turing Lovers are sex robots that attain every functionality of a human lover, at the desired level of granularity. Yet they have no first-person consciousness—there is “nobody home.” When such a lover says, “I love you,” there are all the intentions to please you, even computer emotions. Would you care whether your significant other is a Church-Turing Lover? Does one care about one’s lover only insofar as his/her functionalities are involved, or does one care how the lover feels. Church-Turing Lovers demonstrate how even epiphenomenal experience provides reasons to care about other people’s first-person consciousness. In a related argument, I propose the notion of the Uncanny Valley of Perfection. I systematize the standards for humanoid robots as follows: minimally humanoid (teddy bears); bottom of the Uncanny Valley (repulsive sex dolls); Silver Standard (almost human-looking), Gold Standard (hard to distinguish from humans at the right level of granularity); Platinum Standard (slightly improved on humans); the Uncanny Valley of Perfection (too much better than humans); the Slope of the Angels (no longer humanoid, viewed with awe).

Reflection: Its Structure and Meaning in Kant's Judgements of Taste

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-80
Author(s):  
Kristi Sweet
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Aesthetic Judgement ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Sublime

When Kant announces in a letter to Reinhold that he has discovered a new domain of a priori principles, he situates these principles in a ‘faculty of feeling pleasure and displeasure’ (Zammito 1992: 47). And it is indeed in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, named in this letter the Critique of Taste, that we find his elucidation of the relation of the principle of purposiveness to the feeling of pleasure. The kinds of judgements in which our feelings are evaluated in accordance with a principle are what Kant names reflective judgements. And while reflective judgements emerge in the third Critique to include not only judgements of taste, but also judgements of the sublime and teleological judgements of nature, in this paper I will focus on the first, as the question of the relatedness of reflection to pleasure is most pronounced in this context. There is no consensus in Kant scholarship as to what the structure of reflective judgements is, as evidenced by the widely disparate views of those such as Guyer, Allison, Pippin, Ginsborg, Lyotard, and others.

Middle America, the Moon, the Sublime and the Uncanny

2009 ◽  
Vol 57 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 178-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren Jorgensen
Keyword(s):  
The Moon ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Middle America
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