The Sublime

The beautiful in nature is a question of the form of the object and this consists in limitations, whereas the sublime is to be found in an object even devoid of form, so far as it immediately involves or by its presence provokes a representation of limitlessness, yet with a superadded thought of its totality. Accordingly the beautiful seems to be regarded as a presentation of an indeterminate concept of understanding, the sublime as a presentation of an indeterminate concept of reason now in just the same way the irresistibility of the might of nature forces upon us the recognition of our physical helplessness as beings of nature, but at the same time reveals a faculty of estimating ourselves as independent of nature, and discovers a pre-eminence above nature that is the foundation of a self- preservation of quite another kind from that which may be assailed and brought into danger by external nature. One who is in a state of fear can no more play the part of a judge of the sublime of nature than one captivated by inclination and appetite can of the beautiful.

The sublime is based on a succession of experiences rather than the synoptic experience.

[T]he judgment of taste with its attendant consciousness of detachment from all interest must involve a claim to validity for all men and must do so apart from universality attached to objects i.e. there must be coupled with it a claim to subjective universality.

Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful

Mont Blanc

The everlasting universe of things

Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,

Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom--

Now lending splendour, where from secret springs

The source of human thought its tribute brings

Of waters--with a sound but half its own,

Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,

In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,

Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,

Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river

Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

Ancients

vs

Moderns

The sublime brings ethical considerations back into discussions of art

The sublime work of art “not only persuades the audience, it also enslaves it.”

The sublime is trans-historical

Importance of the audience

"nature underlies all things as a kind of first element and archetype of creating" - Longinus

By true sublimity our soul somehow is both lifted up and—taking on a kind of exultant resemblance—filled with delight and great glory, as if our soul itself had created what it just heard. […] On the whole, consider it a rule that those sublimities are fine and true to nature which are satisfying throughout all time and to all men. You see, whenever men of different behaviors, lives, emulations, ages, and speeches and writings all have one and the same opinion about something, then the agreed upon opinion, arising out of a discordant group, takes on for the object of wonder an assuring strength which does not lend itself to debate.

The Sublime

Longinus: Greek teacher of rhetoric living between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE

Peri Hypsous (On the Sublime), rediscovered in the 18th century

In the 18th century, the sublime shifted from a specifically rhetorical term to a general aesthetic theory