Kant's Aesthetic of the Sublime

Francisco Goya, "Saturn Devouring his Son."

      When we read Kant for this class, we focused on Kant's Aesthetics of the beautiful, but Kant also describes, as Dr. Grady mentioned, the sublime in relation to his aesthetic theory. The sublime, like the beautiful, is a kind of feeling that arises when we behold an object of art or nature, but while the beautiful is a wholly positive feeling, the sublime is a mixed bag of pleasure and displeasure. Kant insists that the sublime reminds us of the superiority of reason to nature, and we may see from this that the experience of the sublime is a reminder of the superiority of morality to inclination.

     While Kant's Critique of Judgment is concerned primarily with aesthetic judgments of the beautiful, he also devotes considerable time to an analysis of the sublime, that which we call "absolutely great" (94). The beautiful and the sublime each operate in a similar way. They both are relations of the faculty of the understanding to another faculty of cognition: with the beautiful, the understanding; with the sublime, reason (90-1). But while we can call a certain object or phenomenon beautiful, Kant understands the sublime to be held not in the object, but in the apprehending subject: "true sublimity must be sought in the mind of the judging subject, and not in the Object of nature that occasions this attitude by the estimation formed of it" (104). Furthermore, while Kant's analysis of the aesthetically beautiful starts with the apprehension of the beautiful in nature and moves on to the beautiful in art, his analytic of the sublime considers mostly objects in nature.

     Kant suggests that the sublime reveals to us the limits of our own imagination and, thereby, the superiority of the rational to the natural. We can understand, through reason, the phenomenon of a thunderstorm, but our imagination fails to grasp its enormity, even when it is displayed before us. The feeling of the sublime that arises when we behold a thunderstorm is a feeling of pleasure at the extent of our reason and displeasure at the limits of our imagination (106). This is what Kant calls the "mathematically sublime"  The limits of our imagination, our grasp of the sensible, in comparison with what we may grasp through reason, leads us to the apprehension that we, as rational beings, are superior to the natural, purely sensible world that does not posit ends for itself (91-2). The sublime is a feeling of greatness in ourselves.

     The sublime, however, is not wholly a feeling of pleasure. It is a combination of pleasure and displeasure, for while we are certainly rational beings, we are also bound by the laws of nature. Thus, Kant writes:

The feeling of the sublime is therefore at once a feeling of displeasure, arising from the inadequacy of the imagination in the aesthetic estimation of magnitude to attain to its estimation by reason, and a simultaneously awakened pleasure, arising from this very judgment of the inadequacy of the greatest faculty of sense being in accord with ideas of reason.... (106)

He also describes it the sublime terms of a "vibration," oscillating back and forth between  "repulsion and attraction" (107). The example of the storm is an apt one: we are nonetheless drawn to watch them if we are safely indoors, despite the fact that they are frightening. Our imagination fails to present them in their entirety. We can only conjure up certain details. Storms serve as a reminder to ourselves of our own limitations: if it were not for our houses, we would fear them more. But this is precisely where the pleasure arises. Our rational being allows us to build protection against nature. We are capable of thwarting nature's might (to an extent), in this case, capable of raising up shelters to shield us from storms.

     But what of the sublime we apprehend in art? It would seem to operate the same way as would the sublime we see in nature. The feeling of the sublime operates in the mind the same way as does beauty (purposiveness without purpose). The apprehension of the sublime, the feeling of an interplay between the imagination and reason, is prompted by a given representation or object. For Kant, the moral law is derived from reason, and if the sublime in nature reminds us of the superiority of our rational, lawful selves, then the sublime we behold in art might be a reminder, specifically, of this latter superiority. Because we are rational, lawful, moral, we are superior to that world which is merely sensible, and does not posit its own duties and ends.

     Artwork has the capacity to remind us of our moral selves, often, paradoxically, through the representation of immorality. Think of our response to tragedy, or to a play like Merchant of Venice. It's a difficult comedy, We are entertained, drawn in by the language, the plot, and the characters: foolish, cruel Antonio, petty Bassanio, the vengeful Shylock. Our reaction is a moral one, or, at least, the feeling inspired by the play is evidence of our moral considerations. Any experience of the sublime in a work such as this is a reminder that it is better to treat others with dignity, as Kant might say, as opposed to treating others as prices. We are reminded of how it is better to act out of respect for the law and from reason, and of the horrors and limitations of acting purely on impulse.

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Kant, Immanuel. Critique Of Judgment. Trans. James C. Meredith. London: Oxford University Press, 1964.