scholarly journals Second Nature and the Sonic Sublime

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 178-196
Author(s):  
Miranda Stanyon
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Second Nature ◽  
Michel De Certeau ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Physical Environments ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Point Of Departure

Like other spaces of the Enlightenment, the sublime was what Michel de Certeau might have called “a practiced place.” Its rhetorical commonplaces, philosophical terrains, and associated physical environments were cultivated, shaped, and framed by human action and habit. But can the sublime—epiphanic, quasi-spiritual, unmasterable, extraordinary—ever really become a habit? Is it possible, even natural, to become habituated to sublimity? Taking as its point of departure the Aristotelian claim that “habit is a second nature,” this article explores the counterintuitive relationship between habit and the sublime. It focuses not on that eighteenth-century “cultivar,” the natural sublime, but on sonic sublimity, exploring on one hand overwhelming sounds, and on the other a conceptualization of sound itself as a sublime phenomenon stretching beyond audibility to fill all space. As this exploration shows, both the sublime and habit were seen as capable of creating a second nature, and prominent writers connected habit, practice, or repetition to the sublime. Equally, however, there are points of friction between the aesthetic of the sublime and philosophies of habit, especially in the idea that habit dulls or removes sensation. This is a prominent idea in Félix Ravaisson's landmark De l'habitude (1838), a text currently enjoying renewed attention, and one that apparently stems from Enlightenment attempts to explain sensation, consciousness, and freedom. Similar concerns inform the eighteenth-century sublime, yet the logic behind the sublime is at odds with the dulling of sensation. The article closes by touching on the reemergence of “second nature” in contemporary art oriented toward the sublime, and on the revisions of Enlightenment nature this involves.

Prologue

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Margaret C. Jacob
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Western World ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Secular World ◽  
Gradual Process ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Secular Terms

This prologue provides an overview of the Secular Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was an eighteenth-century movement of ideas and practices that made the secular world its point of departure. It did not necessarily deny the meaning or emotional hold of religion, but it gradually shifted attention away from religious questions toward secular ones. By seeking answers in secular terms—even to many religious questions—it vastly expanded the sphere of the secular, making it, for increasing numbers of educated people, a primary frame of reference. In the Western world, art, music, science, politics, and even the categories of space and time had undergone a gradual process of secularization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the Enlightenment built on this process and made it into an international intellectual cause. This book then aims to understand the major intellectual currents of the century that gave birth to the label “secular.”

Everyday Aesthetics and the Experience of the Profound

2020 ◽  
pp. 173-202
Author(s):  
Patrick Fessenbecker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Literary Aesthetics ◽  
Intellectual Content ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Everyday Aesthetics ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Deep Thought

The oldest arguments justifying formal analysis of literature, of course, grow out of a longer tradition in aesthetics, one having its roots in the development of a theory of the aesthetic in the eighteenth century. Ultimately, to emphasize the content over the form in literary interpretation is to emphasize forms of aesthetic value other than the beautiful and the sublime: to read for the content, and particularly for the intellectual content, is to value a book because it is deep, thought-provoking, and profound. Yet far from ignoring a text’s aesthetic nature, in fact these latter ways of reading offer the possibility for a renewed justification for literary aesthetics, one especially salient given the deep skepticism that formalist accounts of aesthetic value evoke.

scholarly journals Come Macbeth si lava le mani. La concezione diderotiana del movimento fra i primi scritti di estetica teatrale e i Salons

Itinera ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caterina Piccione
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Body Language ◽  
Circular Reasoning ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Precise Sense ◽  
The Aesthetic

In the pages of Diderot, theatre is able to enclose a precise sense of movement. By distancing itself from conventions, poses, mannerisms, and affectations, the stage gesture can embody a fundamental dynamism and vitalism. Such a gesture should be read in the light of Diderot’s materialistic conception of nature. The centrality of body language and of pantomime is a leitmotiv of the art of the French eighteenth-century actor. However, in Diderot’s formulation of a dramaturgy of space and motion, as well as in the theorization of the aesthetic relationship between actor and spectator, we find a peculiar synthesis of the dichotomies illusion / fiction and sensitivity / detachment, which emerge with regard to the fictional status of theatre in the Enlightenment environment. In this sense, the analogy with the pictorial sphere turns out to be a fundamental resource. There is a sort of circular reasoning that induces in Diderot the desire of reforming theatre on the basis of painting: a painting which is however conceived in a radically dramatic way. Concepts such as absorption, theatricalization, decisive moment, unity of action, and fourth wall are applied to theatre as well as to painting. Therefore, they can be included within a more general interpretation of the sense of movement, according to the principles of fluidity, harmony, and transformation that regulate both nature and the work of art.

Religious Themes in Contemporary Art

2016 ◽  
pp. 188-218
Author(s):  
Codrina Laura Ionita
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between art and religion, evident throughout the entire history of art, can be deciphered at two levels – that of the essence of art, and that of the actual theme the artist approaches. The mystical view on the essence of art, encountered from Orphic and Pythagorean thinkers to Heidegger and Gadamer, believes that art is a divine gift and the artist – a messenger of heavenly thoughts. But the issue of religious themes' presence in art arises especially since modern times, after the eighteenth century, when religion starts to be constantly and vehemently attacked (from the Enlightenment and the French or the Bolshevik Revolution to the “political correctness” nowadays). Art is no longer just the material transposition of a religious content; instead, religion itself becomes a theme in art, which allows artists to relate to it in different ways – from veneration to disapproval and blasphemy. However, there have always been artists to see art in its genuine meaning, in close connection with the religious sentiment. An case in point is the work of Bill Viola. In Romanian art, a good example is the art group Prolog, but also individual artists like Onisim Colta or Marin Gherasim, who understand art in its true spiritual sense of openness to the absolute.

Some Relations between Ethics, Aesthetics and Politics in Contemporary Art in Times of Crisis

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-27
Author(s):  
Maria Elena Ramos ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Ideal Sphere ◽  
Aesthetic Ideas ◽  
Aesthetic Structure ◽  
The Ideal

The inclusion of ethics and politics into artistic creation process is for many contemporary creators/artists an essential motivation while they consciously act in an aesthetic space polluted with the realities of a world in crisis. Art, which produces visible and sensible forms, can reveal aesthetic ideas and fundaments through aesthetic objects: drawing, video-installing or poem/poetry. And artists can make someone feel with their creations—whether these are beautiful, sublime, tragic, or ironic—ethical contentions violated by human action or the exertion/exercise of political power. Works of art that are not only guided by the categories signed by beauty, because in artistic languages, violence and suffering also make/create form. And times of crisis are the ideal sphere/dimension for an art that gives a vivid way of seeing/watching the uncertainty, the perversion, the terrible. In bringing these philosophical—ethical, aesthetic and political—topics, I do it from an approach that departs form artistic creations and curatorial research. I try to penetrate the narrow thread between an ethical topic and the plastic form in which it incarnates/embodies itself, or between a political action and the aesthetic structure of language as a creative, expressive consequence.

scholarly journals Between Art Academy and Entertainment Culture: Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg, John Martin, and the Sublime

Romantik ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Nikita Mathias
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Volcanic Eruptions ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Stage Design ◽  
Visual Mode ◽  
Class Interest ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Aesthetic

This article discusses the work and the reception of the artists Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740–1812) and John Martin (1789–1854), both in terms of their engagement with art as an academic discipline and in terms of their relationship to the emergent middle-class interest in the consumption of visual spectacle. A central concern in both respects was the aesthetic category of the sublime, which had been established around the mid-eighteenth century as the primary visual mode of experiencing the force and power of nature. De Loutherbourg successfully recreated sublime spectacles (for example, shipwrecks, volcanic eruptions, waterfalls, avalanches) within academy painting and stage design. Later, he invented the Eidophusikon, a multimedia device that was designed to stage dynamic natural phenomena. The Eidophusikon is thought to have influenced London’s pictorial entertainment circle, which proved inspirational for John Martin around half a century later.

scholarly journals Helen’s semiotic body: ancient and modern representations

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-213
Author(s):  
Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Physical Vacuum ◽  
Male Gaze ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Ancient Literature ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
A Site

The paper draws on theoretical work on the representation of the female body as an object of the male gaze in modern narrative, in order to decode and analyze Helen’s portrayal as a physical vacuum in ancient literature. I argue that the negation of Helen’s corporeality emphasizes the semiotic duality of her body, allowing it to be deployed both as a sign and as a site for the inscription of signs. The paper, then, proceeds to show how Helen’s Iliadic depiction has provided the eighteenth-century philosopher Edmund Burke with a rhetorical platform upon which to theorize the aesthetic dichotomy between the beautiful and the sublime. I close my analysis by illustrating how the eclecticism, compromises, and pastiches that inform Helen’s cinematic recreations find a parallel in, and thus perpetuate, ancient pictorial techniques.

scholarly journals At the very edge of the abyss of subjectivity: Kant’s concept of the sublime

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 151-158
Author(s):  
Iva Draskic-Vicanovic
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Definition Of

In this text the concept of the sublime is recognized as one of the most important in Kant?s philosophy. In the first part the essay deals with the influence of British aestheticians of the Enlightenment on Kant?s theory of the sublime: Addison?s outline of the notion of greatness, Burke?s concept of the sublime and Hutcheson?s definition of beauty as a phenomenological quality of human mind?s experience. In the second part essay focuses on the relations between the aesthetic and the moral from the standpoint of transcendental analysis. Comparing and contrasting key characteristics of judgment of beauty and judgment of sublime author examines the boundaries of this method. In author?s opinion, transcendental analysis, when the concept of the sublime is concerned, reaches its highest point, that is to say, it has been brought to the very edge of the abyss of subjectivity.

Art and Evangelical Spiritual Aspirations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Bruce Hindmarsh
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Moral Choice ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Common School

Analyzing evangelical theological controversies in the context of contemporary art and aesthetics, it is clear that evangelicals’ spiritual aspirations concerned deep feeling. Arguments over art were parallel to theological controversies as Reynolds and Gainsborough, like Wesley and Whitefield, debated issues while “engrossed by the same pursuits” within a common “school.” Moreover, the evangelical Calvinist expressed spiritual aspirations that were a religious version of the sublime—that sense of “shrinking into the minuteness of one’s nature” felt in the presence of overwhelming vastness and power. And the evangelical Arminian expressed spiritual aspirations that appear as a religious version of the heroic—that feeling for the agony of moral choice demanded by the good that requires struggle and rests only in victory after travail. Ultimately, the Calvinist-Arminian tension among eighteenth-century evangelicals was concerned with the religious meanings of modern agency, modern moral aspiration, and the realization of good in the modern world.

DREADFUL ENEMIES: THE “BEAST,” THE HYENA, AND NATURAL HISTORY IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-61
Author(s):  
JAY M. SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Southern France ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Hybrid Character ◽  
Century Science

The hypothesis that the beast of the Gévaudan (an intriguingly mysterious killer that roamed southern France in the 1760s) might be an African hyena was not simply a popular and amusing misconception; it reflected an important dimension of the critical spirit driving eighteenth-century science. By historicizing natural discovery and its motivations, this essay uncovers aspects of Enlightenment natural history—namely an attraction to the unknowable and a desire for uncertainty, both reflected in the fascination with the sublime—that only became more marked as the frontiers of knowledge receded. In doing so, the essay shows the distinctively hybrid character of an Enlightenment mentality that savored both illumination and darkness.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document