De Quincey's Crazy Body

PMLA ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Youngquist

De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater evaluates life from the perspective of digestion instead of cognition. The text mounts a critique of Kant's transcendental philosophy that tests the freedom of reason against the fate of eating. De Quincey's “The Last Days of Immanuel Kant” relates details of the philosopher's life and diet that corroborate this critique. Opium becomes the hero of the Confessions because eating it changes De Quincey physiologically, forcing him to confront the body's materiality. From the opium eater's perspective, the beautiful and the sublime occur as effects, not of representation, but of incorporation, giving rise to the possibility of material thought. A specialized diet also challenges the norms of public medicine, such as those expressed in Thomas Beddoes's Hygiea, which grounds public health in private reflection and responsibility. De Quincey's Confessions affirms a subjectivity that is the effect of daily dosing.

GEOgraphia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (19) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Alexandre Domingues Ribas ◽  
Antonio Carlos Vitte

Resumo: Há um relativo depauperamento no tocante ao nosso conhecimento a respeito da relação entre a filosofia kantiana e a constituição da geografia moderna e, conseqüentemente, científica. Esta relação, quando abordada, o é - vezes sem conta - de modo oblíquo ou tangencial, isto é, ela resta quase que exclusivamente confinada ao ato de noticiar que Kant ofereceu, por aproximadamente quatro décadas, cursos de Geografia Física em Königsberg, ou que ele foi o primeiro filósofo a inserir esta disciplina na Universidade, antes mesmo da criação da cátedra de Geografia em Berlim, em 1820, por Karl Ritter. Não ultrapassar a pueril divulgação deste ato em si mesma só nos faz jogar uma cortina sobre a ausência de um discernimento maior acerca do tributo de Kant àfundamentação epistêmica da geografia moderna e científica. Abrir umafrincha nesta cortina denota, necessariamente, elucidar o papel e o lugardo “Curso de Geografia Física” no corpus da filosofia transcendental kantiana. Assim sendo, partimos da conjectura de que a “Geografia Física” continuamente se mostrou, a Kant, como um conhecimento portador de um desmedido sentido filosófico, já que ela lhe denotava a própria possibilidade de empiricização de sua filosofia. Logo, a Geografia Física seria, para Kant, o embasamento empírico de suas reflexões filosóficas, pois ela lhe comunicava a empiricidade da invenção do mundo; ela lhe outorgava a construção metafísica da “superfície da Terra”. Destarte, da mesma maneira que a Geografia, em sua superfície geral, conferiu uma espécie de atributo científico à validação do empírico da Modernidade (desde os idos do século XVI), a Geografia Física apresentou-se como o sustentáculo empírico da reflexão filosófica kantiana acerca da “metafísica da natureza” e da “metafísica do mundo”.THE COURSE OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF IMMANUEL KANT(1724-1804): CONTRIBUTION FOR THE GEOGRAPHICALSCIENCE HISTORY AND EPISTEMOLOGYAbstract: There is a relative weakness about our knowledge concerningKant philosophy and the constitution of modern geography and,consequently, scientific geography. That relation, whenever studied,happens – several times – in an oblique or tangential way, what means thatit lies almost exclusively confined in the act of notifying that Kant offered,for approximately four decades, “Physical Geography” courses inKonigsberg, or that he was the first philosopher teaching the subject at anyCollege, even before the creation of Geography chair in Berlin, in 1820, byKarl Ritter. Not overcoming the early spread of that act itself only made usthrow a curtain over the absence of a major understanding about Kant’stribute to epistemic justification of modern and scientific geography. Toopen a breach in this curtain indicates, necessarily, to lighten the role andplace of Physical Geography Course inside Kantian transcendentalphilosophy. So, we began from the conjecture that Physical Geography hasalways shown, by Kant, as a knowledge carrier of an unmeasuredphilosophic sense, once it showed the possibility of empiricization of hisphilosophy. Therefore, a Physical Geography would be, for Kant, theempirics basis of his philosophic thoughts, because it communicates theempiria of the world invention; it has made him to build metaphysically the“Earth’s surface”. In the same way, Geography, in its general surface, hasgiven a particular tribute to the empiric validation of Modernity (since the16th century), Physical Geography introduced itself as an empiric basis toKantian philosophical reflection about “nature’s metaphysics” and the“world metaphysics” as well.Keywords: History and Epistemology of Geography, Physical Geography,Cosmology, Kantian Transcendental Philosophy, Nature.


Author(s):  
Marcel Buß

Abstract Immanuel Kant states that indirect arguments are not suitable for the purposes of transcendental philosophy. If he is correct, this affects contemporary versions of transcendental arguments which are often used as an indirect refutation of scepticism. I discuss two reasons for Kant’s rejection of indirect arguments. Firstly, Kant argues that we are prone to misapply the law of excluded middle in philosophical contexts. Secondly, Kant points out that indirect arguments lack some explanatory power. They can show that something is true but they do not provide insight into why something is true. Using mathematical proofs as examples, I show that this is because indirect arguments are non-constructive. From a Kantian point of view, transcendental arguments need to be constructive in some way. In the last part of the paper, I briefly examine a comment made by P. F. Strawson. In my view, this comment also points toward a connection between transcendental and constructive reasoning.


Author(s):  
Philip V. Bohlman

The translations in Song Loves the Masses close with Herder’s final large-scale essay on music, published in 1800 as a chapter in Kalligone, the culmination of his aesthetic work. With this late essay Herder, a polemic against his former teacher, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), reveals the extent to which he has moved into a fully aesthetic domain in his concern for the universal history of humanity. Embodying the subjectivity of song and singing, music acquires the force of transcendence, and it therefore aspires to the Enlightenment ideals of the sublime. In Herder’s “On Music,” human beings are endowed with a degree of understanding that allows them to perceive the traits that make music unlike any other form of expression.


Author(s):  
Alan G. Gross

The sublime evokes our awe, our terror, and our wonder. Applied first in ancient Greece to the heights of literary expression, in the 18th-century the sublime was extended to nature and to the sciences, enterprises that viewed the natural world as a manifestation of God's goodness, power, and wisdom. In The Scientific Sublime, Alan Gross reveals the modern-day sublime in popular science. He shows how the great popular scientists of our time--Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Brian Greene, Lisa Randall, Rachel Carson, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, and E. O. Wilson--evoke the sublime in response to fundamental questions: How did the universe begin? How did life? How did language? These authors maintain a tradition initiated by Joseph Addison, Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, and Adam Smith, towering 18th-century figures who adapted the literary sublime first to nature, then to science--though with one crucial difference: religion has been replaced wholly by science. In a final chapter, Gross explores science's attack on religion, an assault that attempts to sweep permanently under the rug two questions science cannot answer: What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of the good life?


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-93
Author(s):  
Miguel Angel Gaete Cáceres

ABSTRACTThis article provides a critical review of the concept of the sublime based on Longino, Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant. From here, we will try to discover the presence of the sublime as an important factor in shaping the contemporary world culture, through its presence in art or in the conception of nature and the environment. Finally, the main objective of this paper is demonstrate how the sublime offers an alternative means to understand the problem of "infinite" and "unlimited" in the context of technology, the emergence of the metropolis and the filtration in the capitalist rhetoric, offering a different focuser in this classic study of aesthetics.RESUMENEl presente texto es un estudio que ofrece una revisión crítica al concepto de lo sublime basándose en la teorización clásica de esta idea, es decir, la adjudicada a Longino, Edmund Burke e Immanuel Kant. A partir de aquí, se intentará descubrir la presencia de lo sublime como un factor relevante en la configuración cultural del mundo contemporáneo, pasando por su presencia innegable en el arte de las vanguardias o en la concepción de la Naturaleza y el entorno. Finalmente, el objetivo central de este escrito es demostrar cómo lo sublime ofrece también una alternativa para comprender el problema de "lo infinito" y "lo ilimitado" en el marco de las tecnologías, la eclosión de las grandes ciudades y su filtración en el sustrato retórico del capitalismo, ofreciendo así una vía diferente en el estudio de este tema clásico de la estética.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek R. Ford ◽  
Tyson E. Lewis

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.


Author(s):  
Marco Sgarbi ◽  

«Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily reflection is occupied with them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me». With these famous words written on paper and inscribed in stone, Immanuel Kant concludes the Critique of Practical Reason. In this paper, I intend to show how this sentence is closely linked with: 1) the kantian doctrine on the sublime and 2) to the foundation of the logic of the irrational in the Critique of Judgement.


Author(s):  
Christophe Madelein

In 1790 Immanuel Kant published his third Critique, the Kritik derUrteilskraft, one of the most influential studies on aesthetics in modernEurope. Particularly his discussion of the sublime remains to this very day apoint of reference. But Kant had already discussed the sublime in an earlierwork in 1764. This early work, Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönenund Erhabenen, was translated into Dutch in 1804. In the introduction the(anonymous) Dutch author refers to Paulus van Hemert as the driving forcebehind the translation. Between 1796 and 1798, this Paulus van Hemen hadpublished Beginzels der kantiaansche wijsgeerte, a four-volume introduction toKant's critical philosophy. In this article I present Kant's early interpretationof the sublime and the later discussion of it in the Kritik der Urteilskraft, bymeans of these two Dutch texts.


2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Martinus Ariya Seta

Abstrak: Di dalam filsafat teoretis Kant, status Tuhan bukan lagi transenden tetapi transendental. Perubahan status Tuhan menjadi transendental memiliki dampak ganda. Di satu sisi, Kant memberikan pendasaran rasionalitas konsep Tuhan. Akan tetapi di sisi lain, Kant menghindari penegasan terhadap eksistensi Tuhan. Menurut Kant, konsep Tuhan adalah sebuah ide regulatif. Ide regulatif tidak memiliki referensi di luar pikiran manusia. Kant hanya menegaskan urgensi logis konsep Tuhan bagi kesatuan pengetahuan. Akan tetapi, urgensi logis tidak cukup memadai sebagai argumen pembuktian eksistensi Tuhan. Kant memisahkan antara keternalaran dan ada. Pemisahan ini terlihat jelas di dalam kritik Kant terhadap pembuktian ontologis. Menurut penulis, profil filsafat transendental menjadi transparan di dalam kritik Kant terhadap pembuktian ontologis. Pengadopsian secara parsial paham dasar rasionalisme dan empirisme melatarbelakangi filsafat transendental dan memicu pemisahan antara keternalaran dan ada yang tampak jelas di dalam kritik Kant terhadap pembuktian ontologis. Kata-kata Kunci: Konsep, transendental, keternalaran, ada, ide regulatif, pembuktian ontologis. Abstract: In Kant’s theoretical philosophy, the status of God is not transcendent anymore, but transcendental. The transcendental status of God has a double impact. On the one hand, the concept of God is conceivable. But on the other hand, Kant avoids the affirmation of the existence of God. The conceivability of God is not an argument for God’s existence because the concept of God is a regulative idea. A regulative idea has no reference outside the mind. Kant only affirms the logical necessity of the concept of God. However, the logical necessity is not an adequate argument for the existence of God. Kant separates between conceivability and being. The separation is obvious in his critique toward the ontological argument. In my opinion, the profile of the transcendental philosophy is transparent in Kant’s critique toward the ontological argument. The partial adoption of empirical and rational principles works behind the transcendental philosophy and leads to the separation between conceivability and being, which is visible in the Kant’s critique toward the ontological argument. Keywords: Concept, transcendental, conceivability, being, regulative idea, ontological argument.


Author(s):  
Emily Dumler-Winckler

AbstractThis essay traces the contours of a trans-Atlantic Romantic legacy of aesthetic, moral and religious taste from its inception in Edmund Burke, through its modifications by Immanuel Kant, to its culmination in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Divinity School Address. In A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful Burke suggests that religious experience is an aspect of aesthetic and moral taste. Immanuel Kant follows suit in the Critique of Judgment, offering a distinct account of religious taste. Emerson alludes to yet significantly refines aspects of both accounts in his Divinity School Address. Whereas Kant and Burke’s variously stoic accounts depict good religious taste as an experience of alienation from God and from the world, Emerson’s religious agent cultivates a modern spirituality quite at home in the world. Adapting Burke’s re-enchanted moral psychology of taste, Emerson offers a distinctively religious, indeed Christian, form of this modern re-enchantment. Yet for Emerson, refined religious taste allows agents to recognize the full spectrum of normative demands in nature and thus to make a home of such a world.


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