A Philosophical Reconstruction of the Sublime

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-137
Author(s):  
John H. Zammito
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Philosophical Significance ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Concepts

Abstract Robert Doran claims that the sublime is all about transcendence transferred from the religious to the aesthetic domain of experience. Taken in this philosophical rather than stylistic sense, it proved crucial for the development of modern subjectivity. Doran traces the issue from Longinus through the decisive reception of Nicolas Boileau, who first distinguished le sublime from le style sublime, on to an extended engagement with Immanuel Kant. In all this he seeks its place in the rise of the modern bourgeois subject. The social-historical connections tend to be a bit overstated, first, with regard to Boileau and the idea of the honnête homme, and especially with the claim that “Burke treats aesthetic concepts as proxies for sociopolitical categories.” It is not fruitful for an understanding of Kant, either. This weakens his powerful argument for the philosophical significance of the sublime in modern thought.

scholarly journals FRIEDRICH HÖLDERLIN's AESTHETICS BETWEEN PLATO AND KANT (TO THE QUESTION OF FORMATION OF THE CATEGORIES OF THE BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME)

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 1041-1049
Author(s):  
I.B. ч I.B. Kazakova
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Theoretical Development ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One ◽  
Aesthetic Concepts

The article analyzes the aesthetic views of Friedrich Hölderlin, and, first, his understanding of the categories of the Beautiful and Sublime. Particular attention is paid to the comparison of Hölderlin's views with the aesthetic teachings of Plato and Immanuel Kant, who had a great influence on the German poet. The author of the article concludes that Hölderlin sought to unite the Platonian and Kantian understanding of beauty, seeing the similarity between the concepts of Plato and Kant in the question of the source of the beautiful. The central for aesthetics of Hölderlin was the problem of combining the spheres of aesthetic and ethical, to solve which he relied on the idea of Kant about beautiful as a symbol of the moral good and the Teaching of Plato on the climbing of the soul to the Good. Hölderlin pays less attention to the theoretical development of the category of the Sublime than to the comprehension of the category of the Beautiful, however, in his writings, the Sublime is present implicitly, and Hölderlin's understanding of this category is close, on the one hand, to Platonian, bringing together the Beautiful and the Sublime, and, on the other, to Kantian understanding, which brings the Sublime together with the idea of infinity, God and the sphere of morality. The conclusions to which Hölderlin comes, are far from Platonism, and from Kantianism. The poet concludes about the central and leading role of poetry and poetic gift in the knowledge of the world, which should be aesthetic. This indicates a romantic way to interpret Hölderlin's aesthetic concepts of Plato and Kant.

On the Freedom to Be Opaque Monsters

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek R. Ford ◽  
Tyson E. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
Capitalist Production ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Production Relations ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Point Of Intersection ◽  
Communicative Capitalism ◽  
Jim Crow South

As social movements amplify across the globe, activists and researchers are increasingly interested in the pedagogies of revolutionary transformation. To provide a rich resource for political educators and organizers, this article formulates what we call an (un)communicative communist pedagogy that is oriented against communicative capitalism. We show that there is a taut connection between capitalism and democracy that consists of a shared logic, pedagogy, and aesthetic that revolves around communication, inclusion, and transparency. Without grasping this aesthetic connection, anticapitalist struggles are reduced to liberal reforms that end up reinforcing and deepening capitalist production relations. To break out of this trap, we block together several political, philosophical, and aesthetic theories that might otherwise be thought of as mutually exclusive. In particular, we return to Immanuel Kant and his theory of the beautiful and the sublime to make a case that connections between capitalism and democracy rest on an unexamined aesthetic of the beautiful. To sever this link, and thus to push democratic struggles for equality toward a communist horizon, we suggest a new alignment between radical politics and aesthetics of the sublime via the Communist Party. Importantly, we find in the work of Jean-François Lyotard the point of intersection between communist pedagogy and sublime aesthetics. In closing, we read this aesthetic communist pedagogy through a communist study group in the Jim Crow South. What we find is a different aesthetic relationship between self and world that is not prefigured in various forms of liberal reformism. Rather, an excessive surplus is discovered that presses beyond the boundaries of what can be known and what can be imaginatively figured, provoking a sense of ineffable sublimity or political opacity. We call this excess the aesthetic dimension of (un)communicative communism.

Schopenhauer and the Paradox of the Sublime

2020 ◽  
pp. 237-255
Author(s):  
Bart Vandenabeele
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Aesthetic Object ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The World ◽  
The Aesthetic

Schopenhauer explores the paradoxical nature of the aesthetic experience of the sublime in a richer way than his predecessors did by rightfully emphasizing the prominent role of the aesthetic object and the ultimately affirmative character of the pleasurable experience it offers. Unlike Kant, Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the sublime does not appeal to the superiority of human reason over nature but affirms the ultimately “superhuman” unity of the world, of which the human being is merely a puny fragment. The author focuses on Schopenhauer’s treatment of the experience of the sublime in nature and argues that Schopenhauer makes two distinct attempts to resolve the paradox of the sublime and that Schopenhauer’s second attempt, which has been neglected in the literature, establishes the sublime as a viable aesthetic concept with profound significance.

scholarly journals Music to My Ears: A Material-semiotic Analysis of Fetal Heart Sounds in Midwifery Prenatal Care

2021 ◽  
pp. 016224392110051
Author(s):  
Annekatrin Skeide
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Prenatal Care ◽  
Fetal Heart ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Semiotic Analysis ◽  
Parental Love ◽  
The Social ◽  
Care Practices ◽  
The Aesthetic

Unlike sonographic examinations, sonic fetal heartbeat monitoring has received relatively little attention from scholars in the social sciences. Using the case of fetal heartbeat monitoring as part of midwifery prenatal care in Germany, this contribution introduces music as an analytical tool for exploring the aesthetic dimensions of obstetrical surveillance practices. Based on ethnographic stories, three orchestrations are compared in which three different instruments help audiences to listen to what becomes fetal heartbeat music and to qualify fetal and pregnant lives in relation to each other. In the Doppler-based orchestration, audible heartbeat music is taken as a sign of a child in need of parental love and care cultivated to listen. The Pinard horn makes esoteric fetal music that can be appreciated by the midwife as a skilled instrumentalist alone and helps to enact a child hidden in the belly. The cardiotocograph brings about soothing music and a reassuring relationship with a child but also durable scripts of juridical beauty. This material-semiotic analysis amplifies how well-being is shaped in midwifery prenatal care practices.

Adorno’s Philistine: the Dialectic of Art and its Other

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Paul Ingram
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Critical Potential ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Critical Turn ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract Theodor Adorno’s philistine functions as the other of art, or as the ideal embodiment of everything that the bourgeois aesthetic subject is not. He insists on the truth-content of the derogation, while recognising its unjust social foundation, and seeking to reflect that tension in a self-critical turn. His model of advanced art is negatively delimited by the philistinism of art with a cause and the philistinism of art for enjoyment, which represent the poles of the aesthetic and the social. The philistine is also the counterpart to the connoisseur, with the interplay between them pointing to his preferred approach to aesthetics, in which an affinity for art and alienness to it are combined without compromise. However, Adorno fails to realise fully the critical potential of the philistine as the immanent negation of art and aesthetics.

THE FREEDOM OF THE AESTHETIC: MONTSERRAT ROIG’S USE OF THE CITY IN RAMONA, ADÉU

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-99
Author(s):  
Caragh Wells
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
The Social ◽  
Catalan Literature ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The City

This article suggests that over recent decades Catalan literary criticism has paid too little attention to the aesthetic attributes of Catalan literature and emphasised the social, political and cultural at the expense of discussions of narrative poetics. Through an analysis of Montserrat Roig’s metaphorical use of the city in her first novel Ramona, adéu, I put forward the view that the aesthetic features of Catalan literature need to be re-claimed. This article provides a critical analysis of the aesthetic importance of Roig’s representation of the city in her first novel and argues that she uses Barcelona as a critical tool through which to explore questions of both female emancipation and aesthetic freedom. Following a detailed discussion of Roig’s descriptions of how her female characters interact with particular urban spaces, I examine how Roig makes subtle shifts in her semantic register during these narrative accounts when her prose moves into the realm of the poetic. I conclude that this technique enables us to read her accounts of urban space as metaphors for aesthetic freedom and are inextricably linked to her wider concerns on the importance of liberating Catalan literature from the discourse of political nationalism.

scholarly journals Los nuevos decorados del arte

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (17) ◽  
pp. 102
Author(s):  
Carlos Fajardo Fajardo
Keyword(s):  
Jean Baudrillard ◽  
Cultural Logic ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Advanced Capitalism ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
Fredric Jameson

RESUMENEl presente artículo pasa revista y analiza algunas de las tesis que Jean François Lyotard, Fredric Jameson y Jean Baudrillard construyeron para dar cuenta de las consecuencias de la llamada crisis de la modernidad y sus repercusiones en el arte. Se presta especial atención a categorías estéticas que surgieron a partir del resquebrajamiento de los pilares del edificio estético de Occidente bajo la globalización y la posmodernidad. De Lyotard se abordan su reflexión sobre la crisis de los grandes relatos y su noción de lo sublime, de Jameson sus apreciaciones sobre el pastiche, la moda retro bajo las lógicas culturales del capitalismo avanzado, y, de Baudrillard, los conceptos de transestética y estetización, y la pérdida de ilusión estética en la sociedad tecno-mediática y de mercados.PALABRAS CLAVESPosmodernidad, sublime, pastiche, moda retro, estetización.MUSO ALLI CHIKUNA SUGLLAPIKai kilkape willakume imasam kai kimsa runakuna Jean Francois Lyotard, Fredic Jameson y Jean Baudrillard rurankuna tukui mana allilla kaskakunata Kawangapa imasam kunaurra, ruranchi, paikuna allilla ñawe churranaku Kawangapa imasam kunaurra ruranchi, paikuna allilla ñawe shuranaku Kawangapa mana paquerechu tuku, kaipe willaku llukanchi llullarenga Allila mana kai atun llakiikuna pasarrengapa mana chingarrengachu Tukui allila ruranakuska tukui runakunamanda.IMA SUTI RIMAI SIMINespa musukauangapa, atun iuiai, kauaskatak rurangapa, kunaurra musu Kauai, retro, estatización.THE NEW SCENERIES OF ART. ABSTRACTThis article reviews and discusses some of the theses that Jean Francois Lyotard, Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard advanced to account for the consequences of the so-called crisis of modernity and its impact on art. Special attention is given to the aesthetic categories that emerged from the breakdown of the pillars of the Western aesthetic building under globalization and postmodernity. From Lyotard, the article picks up his reflections on the crisis of the grand narratives and his notion of the sublime; from Jameson, his theoretical insights on the pastiche and the retro in fashion under the cultural logic of advanced capitalism; and from Baudrillard, the concepts of transaesthetics and aesthetization, and the loss of the aesthetic illusion in the techno-media and market society.KEYWORDSPostmodernism, sublime, pastiche, retro fashion, aesthetization. LES NOUVEAUX DÉCORS DE L’ART. RÉSUMÉCet article examine certaines des thèses que Jean François Lyotard, Fredric Jameson et Jean Baudrillard ont élaborées pour tenir compte des conséquences de la dite crise de la modernité et de son impact sur l’art. Une attention particulière est donnée aux catégories esthétiques qui ont émergé de l’effondrement des piliers de l’édifice esthétique occidental dans le cadre de la mondialisation et du postmodernisme. De Lyotard on aborde sa ré- flexion sur la crise des grands récits et sa notion du sublime ; de Jameson ses vues sur le pastiche et la mode rétro dans la logique culturelle du capitalisme avancé, et, de Baudrillard, les concepts de transesthétique et esthétisation, et la perte de l’illusion esthétique dans la société techno-médiatique et des marchés.MOTS CLÉSPostmodernisme, sublime, pastiche, mode rétro, esthétisation.OS NOVOS ENFEITES DA ARTE. RESUMOO presente artigo passa revista e analisa algumas das teses que Jean Françoeis Lyotard, Fredic Jameson e Jean Baudrillard construíram para dar conta das conseqüências da chamada crise da modernidade e suas repercussões na arte. Presta-se especial atenção a categorias estéticas que surgiram a partir do rachamento dos pilares do edifício estético do Ocidente sob a globalização e a pos-modernidade. De Jameson suas apreciações sobre o pasticho, a moda retro sob lógicas culturais do capitalismo avançado, e, de Baudrillard, os conceitos de trans-estética e estetização, e a perda de ilusão estética na sociedade tecno-mediática e de mercados.PALAVRAS CHAVESPos-modernidade, sublime, pasticho, moda retro, estetização.

scholarly journals On the centenary of Zygmunt Janiszewski (1888-1920): ideals of mathematical practice and the constitution of continuum theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (18) ◽  
pp. 431-453
Author(s):  
Luis Carlos Arboleda ◽  
Andrés Chaves
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Practice ◽  
Continuum Theory ◽  
Axiomatic System ◽  
Intellectual Character ◽  
The Social ◽  
Polish School ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Values ◽  
Philosophy Of Mathematical Practice ◽  
Scientific Life

This paper shows the importance of applying a certain approach to the history and philosophy of mathematical practice to the study of Zygmunt Janiszewski's contribution to the topological foundations of Continuum theory. In the first part, a biography of Janiszewski is presented. It emphasizes his role as one of the founders of the Polish School of Mathematics, and the social, political and military facets in which his intellectual character was revealed, as well as the values that guided his academic and scientific life. Kitcher's view of mathematical practice is then adopted to examine the philosophical conceptions and epistemological style of Janiszewski in relation to the construction of the formal axiomatic system of knowledge about the continua. Finally, it is shown the convenience of differentiating in Kitcher's approach, the methods, procedures, techniques and strategies of practice, and the aesthetic values of mathematics. Keywords: Zygmunt Janiszewski; Continuum theory; Philosophy of mathematical practice; Polish school of mathematics.

scholarly journals Staging the Social Drama of Work: Ethnography of a Theater Company as a Means of Analyzing Theater Activity

2022 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 78-99
Author(s):  
Celia Bense Ferreira Alves
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Central Group ◽  
The Core ◽  
Collective Activity ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Service Relationship

This paper shows how conducting the ethnographic study of a theater hall and company can help define theater activity. Once the aesthetic of the social organization is set apart from the proper division of labor, theater appears as a collective activity which requires the cooperation of eight groups playing different social roles. The cooperation modes rest on a meshing of direct or indirect services for the actors who carry out the core task of performing. This specific organization of work around a central group is what makes the activity artistic. Simultaneously, the service relation offers the possibility for some categories to bring their relationship with actors closer to a state of symmetry and sometimes reverse asymmetry. As a status enhancing opportunity, service relationship for actors also directly or indirectly provide the grounds for participant commitment and thus guarantee long-lasting operation for the theatrical organization.

scholarly journals The Logos between psychology, ontology, and Divinity: Fundamental aspects of the concept of Logos in the early thought of Slavoj Žižek

2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Corneliu C. Simuț
Keyword(s):  
Special Interest ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Psychological Aspects ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
Fundamental Feature ◽  
Slavoj Žižek ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Thought

Slavoj Žižek’s philosophy spans over more than three decades, which is confirmed by the numerous books he published since the late 1980s. Since his thinking about the idea of logos is no exception, this article focuses on what can be termed Žižek’s early philosophy, and especially that depicted in his The sublime object of ideology (1989) and The metastases of enjoyment (1994). Whilst the former underlines the psychological aspects of the logos, the latter focuses more on theories about being, as well as on theological considerations. This is why, three uses of the logos were identified in Žižek’s thought: psychological, ontological and theological, all three with a clear focus on the human being as conceived in modern thought, which for Žižek seems to be utterly opposed to traditional thinking about man and his relationship with God. It is clear from Žižek that whilst the notion of God does appear in this thought, it only refers to the human being which encapsulates the essence of Žižek’s philosophy to the point that the logos itself is a fundamental feature of the human being’s material existence in the natural world. Regardless of whether the logos points to psychology, ontology or divinity (theology), it always emerges as an idea which centres on the human being, with a special interest in how it exists as well as how it works in the world.

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