DOCSLIB.ORG

The Role of the Sublime in Kant's Moral Metaphysics

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Role of the Sublime in Kant's Moral Metaphysics Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series I, Culture and Values, Volume 18 The Role of the Sublime in Kant's Moral Metaphysics By John R. Goodreau The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy 1 Copyright © 1998 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Gibbons Hall B-20 620 Michigan Avenue, NE Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Goodreau, John R. The role of the sublime in Kant’s moral metaphysics / John R. Goodreau. p.cm. — (Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series I. Culture and values ; vol. 18) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804. Kritik der Urteilskraft. 2. Kant, Immanuel, (1724-1804)— Contributions in concept of the sublime. 3. Sublime, the--History. 4. Asethetsics. I. Title. II. Series. B2784.G66 1998 98-47982 111’.85’092—dc21 CIP ISBN 1-56518-124-7 (pbk.) 2 Table of Contents Foreword ix Preface x Introduction 1 I. The Pre-Critical Years 17 II. The Emergence of the Critical Philosophy 47 III. The Critique of Judgment: The Beautiful 89 IV. The Critique of Judgment: The Sublime 133 V. After the Critique of Judgment 155 Conclusion 189 Bibliography 193 3 Foreword George F. McLean This work of Professor John Goodreau is topical, for the basic change of our times is its opening to the aesthetic dimension of human consciousness. To see this it is necessary to return to the beginning of the modern period. At that time it was the fashion to remove from the mind all except the clear and distinct ideas of technical reason. Thus Bacon would smash the idols which bore the content of human wisdom, Descartes would put all under doubt, and Locke would erase all in order to begin with the mind as a blank tablet. The work of the mind would be to assemble the simple ideas received in order to construct the content of human understanding. During the following four centuries the great potentialities of this method were sedulously explored. But with the Cold War it was seen to have reached the limits of its possibilities in not only distinct but conflicting systems. This situation indicated that there must be more to the human consciousness than had thus far been explored. This directed the mind beyond the first critique of Kant focused on the methodology of the physical series and the second critique focused on ethics to his third critique, that of aesthetic judgement. The development of this new level of awareness is of the greatest moment for it opens new levels of human consciousness in ways of finding unity in multiplicity. But for this to be properly an addition and evolution of human thought it is necessary that this be not contrary to science as developed in the first two critiques or even a simple addition thereto, but something that is implied therein. To investigate this is the task of the present work by Professor Goodreau. Upon it depends the cohesive and creative character of the changes we are experiencing at this turn of the millennium. For this contribution to deep and lasting progress Professor Goodreau has our admiration, gratitude and sincere and congratulation. 5 Preface Riccardo Pozzo When I heard John R. Goodreau suggesting that he would work on Kant's theory of the sublime as exposed in the Critique of Judgment taking into consideration Kant's Lectures on Meta- physics and Lectures on Ethics, which had then just been translated into English, I knew he was going to break new ground. The result is this study on The Role of the Sublime in Kant's Moral Meta-physics that Catholic University's George F. McLean has accepted for publication in the series "Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change" of the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy in Washington, D.C. It is an innovative work from both the systematic and the historical point of view. With regard to the systematic point of view, Goodreau's work is indeed insightful. It forces us to reconsider Kant's relation to metaphysics. It forces us to accept that Kant's philosophy is not a refutation but is rather a legitimation of metaphysics and that this metaphysics is primarily a moral metaphysics. His main thesis that the feeling of the sublime permits us to experience the noumenon is very well argued and will surely gain attention. With regard to the historical point of view, Goodreau masters effectively all the fundamental methods of contemporary research in the history of philosophy. The history of Kant's development is enriched by a new line toward the Critique ofJudgment starting from Herder's Mitschriften of Kant's lectures on ethics of 1762-4, through the Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, the Nachschriften of Kant's lectures on metaphysics and on ethics from the mid- seventies to the mid-eighties, taking into account both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason and making special reference to the Reflection 988, which Goodreau considers pivotal because of the moral foundation of intellectual pleasure." Texts by Hutcheson, Hume, Rousseau, Baumgarten, Meier, and Burke are analyzed by Goodreau and accounted for in the context of the history of Kant's sources. Of course, Goodreau also considers the dimension of the history of tradition by examining the eighteenth century reception of Longinus. Concerning the perspective of the history of the concepts, Goodreau's book is instrumental in explaining the differences between Kant's understanding of the sublime and that of his predecessors: with Kant the sublime is no longer merely a criterion for esthetics or a tool for poetics, it rather becomes a subject for metaphysical inquiry. The history of the problems is touched by Goodreau with regard to the question of, what is the role played by metaphysics in tying together aesthetics and ethics? The answer provided by Goodreau could not be clearer: the sublime is the doorway connecting aesthetics and ethics to metaphysics. (School of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America) 7 Introduction Commentators on Kant's aesthetics generally seem to fall into two camps. The first group endeavors to interpret the third Critique in terms of consistency with the critical philosophy of the first two Critiques. The second group, while not ignoring the issue of consistency, is more open to an interpretation that is sympathetic to Kant's statements regarding a relationship between the aesthetic and the moral. The former group tends to dismiss Kant's explicit statements concerning the moral significance of his aesthetic theory as either irrelevant or inconsistent with the critical philosophy, if they do not ignore it altogether. This is especially true with respect to the sublime. As Robert Dostal writes, "Those sympathetic with the Kantian project have found [the sublime] exceedingly troublesome, while on very much the same grounds those, like the romantics, impatient with the strictures of the Kantian project find much to praise here."1 The present work will argue that there is a continuity in Kant's thought on the sublime and its moral role that can be traced from his earliest writings to his last work, and that there is no inconsistency between imputing moral and metaphysical significance to Kant's description of the experience of the sublime and the first two Critiques. The sections on the sublime in the Critique of Judgment are not as anomolous as some have argued. A continuity of ideas can be discerned through a study of the Kantian corpus, particularly his lectures on Metaphysics and Ethics, which come down to us in a series of student notebooks dating from the mid-1760s to the mid-1790s. The notebooks are especially significant in that they provide important insights into Kant's position during the silent decade" between the Inaugural Dissertation of 1770 and the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. A survey of these notebooks reveals the evolution of such themes as intellectual pleasure, communal sense and the relationship between freedom, pleasure, aesthetics and morality. The Kantian sublime has not been considered in this historical context until now. Moreover, a survey of the corpus reveals Kant's lifelong concern with the problem of moral motivation, which speaks to the significance of the aesthetic experience, particularly the experience of the sublime, in terms of his overall concern with morality.2 Here the sublime will be considered in the context of moral motivation, which constitutes a new approach.3 Hence the present work will side with those commentators who attempt to reach an understanding of the Kantian sublime that is sympathetic to Kant's own claims concerning the role of the aesthetic experience but from a different perspective. Let us now turn to some examples. Paul Guyer is among the prominent writers who belong to the critical group. His detailed study of the Critique of Judgment, entitled Kant and the Claims of Taste, is focused on the problem of the intersubjective validity of the aesthetic judgment. Although the connection between aesthetic judgment and morality is not the focus of his book, Guyer does devote his last chapter to that topic. The feeling of the sublime, however, is conspicuous by its absence, and the focus of the chapter is on whether the analogous relationship between beauty and morality that Kant describes in §59 supports the intersubjective validity of the aesthetic judgment. Guyer explains in a footnote: "Although Kant's explanation of our response to sublimity might be taken to supplement and
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Systemic Thought and Subjectivity in Percy Bysshe Shelley's Poetry
    Systemic Thought and Subjectivity in Percy Bysshe Shelley‟s Poetry Sabrina Palan Systemic Thought and Subjectivity in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Poetry Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung eines akademischen Grades einer Magistra der Philosophie an der Karl- Franzens Universität Graz vorgelegt von Sabrina PALAN am Institut für Anglistik Begutachter: Ao.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr.phil. Martin Löschnigg Graz, 2017 1 Systemic Thought and Subjectivity in Percy Bysshe Shelley‟s Poetry Sabrina Palan Eidesstattliche Erklärung Ich erkläre an Eides statt, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbstständig und ohne fremde Hilfe verfasst, andere als die angegebenen Quellen nicht benutzt und die den benutzen Quellen wörtlich oder inhaltlich entnommenen Stellen als solche kenntlich gemacht habe. Überdies erkläre ich, dass dieses Diplomarbeitsthema bisher weder im In- noch im Ausland in irgendeiner Form als Prüfungsarbeit vorgelegt wurde und dass die Diplomarbeit mit der vom Begutachter beurteilten Arbeit übereinstimmt. Sabrina Palan Graz, am 27.02.2017 2 Systemic Thought and Subjectivity in Percy Bysshe Shelley‟s Poetry Sabrina Palan Table of Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 5 2. Romanticism – A Shift in Sensibilities .................................................................................. 8 2.1 Etymology of the Term “Romantic” ............................................................................. 9 2.2 A Portrait of a Cultural Period .....................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Sławek Tadeusz. (1994). "Sublime Labours" : Blake, Nietzsche and the Notion of the Sublime
    Title: "Sublime labours" : Blake, Nietzsche and the notion of the sublime Author: Tadeusz Sławek Sławek Tadeusz. (1994). "Sublime labours" : Blake, Nietzsche Citation style: and the notion of the sublime. W: T. Rachwał, T. Sławek (red.), "”The most sublime act” : essays on the sublime" (S. 28-42). Katowice : Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego TADEUSZ SLAWEK University o f Silesia “Sublime Labours” : Blake, Nietzsche and the Notion of the Sublime I In Jerusalem Blake inscribes the philosophy of sublime into the logic of contraries, the most powerful machinery of his thought. In the frontispiece of an early version of the poem we read that the landscape of Albion is for­ med by two principal “rocks” of “Sublime and Pathos” 1 which, however, are locked in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, they are seats of so­ lidity, foundational rocks upon which The combination of pathos and sub­ lime could possibly signal Blake’s things can be built (“fix’d in the Earth”, allegiance to the 18th-century aes­ J. 1.4), but — on the other hand — they thetics. In 1696 John Dennis was are not readily available as such, their “led to reduce art to the expression solidity is suppressed by the “Spectrous of passion”, and in this way “the Power” of “reason” which “covers them sublime and the pathetic begin their long journey in each other’s com­ above”. There are, at least, two impor­ pany”. tant consequences of such a positioning (W.H. Monk, The Sublime. A Study o f Critical of sublime. First, its foundational, ori- Theories in XVIII-Century England (New ginary, character must be validated by York: 1935), p.
    [Show full text]
  • I a HUMDRUM AHA!: JOHN CLARE's MUNDANE SUBLIME by Dana Odwazny Pell a Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Dorothy F. Schm
    A HUMDRUM AHA!: JOHN CLARE’S MUNDANE SUBLIME by Dana Odwazny Pell A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida August 2012 i A HUMDRUM AHA!: JOHN CLARE’Sii MUNDANE SUBLIM ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to share my sincere appreciation and love to my friends, family, and husband for their support throughout this project. Their encouragement kept me writing even when my focus waned. I would also like to express my continued gratitude for my academic springboard, Betsy Cohen. Miles might separate us, but we have come a long way together. In addition, I am indebted to the Florida Atlantic English department faculty, especially Dr. Golden, Dr. Berlatsky, Dr. Adams, and Dr. McGuirk. Each of you has inspired and humbled me. iii ABSTRACT Author: Dana Odwazny Pell Title: A Humdrum Aha!: John Clare’s Mundane Sublime Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Don Adams Degree: Master of Arts Year: 2012 Following the work of Sara Houghton-Walker and Edward Strickland, this thesis theorizes the “mundane sublime” as encountered in romanticist John Clare’s poetry. Instead of being oriented upward, as with Longinus’s elevatory sublime, Clare’s mundane sublime brings the subject downward to earth. While the sublime of the Burkean tradition begins with terror, I claim that the mundane sublime emerges out of love for that which is commonplace. Still revelatory, it may be further characterized by an engagement with ecosystems, eternity, divinity, and nature as a whole.
    [Show full text]
  • Words and Passions in Edmund Burke: Revisiting Burke's “Sublime” With
    The Japanese Society for Aesthetics Aesthetics No.16 (2012): 1-10 Words and Passions in Edmund Burke: Revisiting Burke’s “Sublime” with Pseudo-Longinus HOSHINO Futoshi The University of Tokyo, Tokyo Preface In this paper, by examining the relationship between “word” and “passion” in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757/59) by Edmund Burke (1729–97), I intend to situate his theory on the sublime in the tradition of rhetoric [1]. More concretely, by focusing on the role of passion in this book, I will reconsider Burke’s theory on the sublime as a critical successor to On the Sublime by Pseudo-Longinus. First, it seems necessary to justify such an approach to Burkean theory on the sublime. As is well known, in part V of The Sublime and Beautiful, Burke relates the essence of poetry to “sympathy” rather than “imitation” by discussing the influence of words on the passion of others. As I will show in the following sections, part V of this book deviates from its end, which is to clarify the origin of the notions of “sublime” and “beautiful,” so that it could be read as theory on language independently from the entire book. Further, the fact that he focuses on “words” reminds us of the influence of Pseudo-Longinus’ On the Sublime on Burke. Generally, the influence of Pseudo-Longinus on Burke is barely referenced in discussions of the notion of the sublime in the work of the latter. Rather, from the historical viewpoint, Burke is often recognized as having introduced the rhetorical notion of the sublime to psychology and prepared the way to the “analytic of the sublime” that Kant delineated in The Critique of Judgment (1790).
    [Show full text]
  • The Romantic and Contemporary Sublime the Idea of a Contemporary Or Postmodern Sublime Is Frequently Invoked in Discussions of Recent Art
    The Romantic and Contemporary Sublime The idea of a contemporary or postmodern sublime is frequently invoked in discussions of recent art. How does the contemporary sublime differ from its Romantic manifestation? This is an outline of the evolving conceptions of the sublime since the 18th Century with reference to its key thinkers. + Unknown Limits The essay will compare the Contemporary Sublime to that of its Romantic predecessor and highlight re-emergence of the Sublime as the dominant aesthetic concept in Contemporary Art. It will demonstrate that Sublime aesthetics has always been a prime motivator for artistic expression, with the Contemporary Sublime purely the latest incarnation in a long continuum. I will illustrate through key examples of art that Sublime theory, be it Contemporary or Romantic, is a means of describing emotions and thoughts when faced with limitlessness, the uncontrollable and the unknown. To understand the Contemporary Sublime an examination of the Romantic Sublime is prerequisite. It was the ‘rediscovery’ and translation of the writings of First or Third Century AD Pseudo-Longinus in describing the Sublime experience of exultation that influenced the reintroduction of the Sublime as an aesthetic concept in the writings of Edmund Burke (1729 -1797). 1 Up until this time, the Sublime was an unnamed aspect of Beauty, with Beauty an emanation of God. Unlike Longinus’ spiritual explanation of the sublime, Bourke’s was a rational response. In his 1757 A Philosophical Enquiry into The Origin of our Ideas into the Sublime and the Beautiful Burke described the Sublime as “a state of the soul where all its motions are suspended with some degree of horror”.
    [Show full text]
  • The Kantian Sublime: a Feeling of Superiority?
    CHAPTER 8 The Kantian Sublime: A Feeling of Superiority? Gerbert Faure In this paper, I would like to reveal an ambiguity in the Kantian conception of the sublime experience. I will do this in an indirect manner by turning to a thinker whose views on the sublime are strongly influenced by Immanuel Kant: Friedrich Schiller. In his text Über das Pathetische, Schiller argues that the satisfaction of the sublime experience is ultimately grounded in the dis- covery of the faculty of freedom, whether this faculty is employed in moral or immoral actions. In this way, Schiller creates a gap between aesthetics and ethics which is absent in Kant’s theory of the sublime, but which nevertheless points to an ambiguity in the latter. Does Kant consider the sublime feeling to be pleasurable because it makes us realise that our moral principles can’t be affected by sensuous nature or because it makes us feel that the moral subject is superior and invulnerable? It will turn out that for Kant and Schiller these insights necessarily go hand in hand. Freedom and morality are inex- tricably bound up with each other through the notion of rationality. Arthur Schopenhauer will abandon this assumption and thus make room for a more plausible view that is expressed by Friedrich Nietzsche early on in his career: It is not the subject, but the object that is sublime. 1 Friedrich Schiller and the Separation of the Aesthetic and the Ethical Friedrich Schiller is famous for being a thinker of freedom, which is appar- ent in his plays as well as in his theoretical writings.
    [Show full text]
  • Terror and the Sublime in the So-Called Anthropocene
    Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies Vol. 16, No. 2 (2020) Terror and the Sublime in the So-Called Anthropocene Gene Ray The earthquake of Lisbon reached far enough to cure Voltaire of Leibniz’s theodicy, and the visibly comprehensible [überschaubare] catastrophe of first nature was insignificant compared to that of the second, social one, which defies human imagination since it readied real hell from human evil. —Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics In a rapidly warming world, the room for any modernist theodicy is as rap- idly disappearing. Climate science has made it plain what it would mean to let business as usual run its full course. —Andreas Malm, The Progress of this Storm In modern Western aesthetics, terror and the sublime go together. For canonical theorists and commentators of the eighteenth century, the sublime encounter with nature renders terror delightful, or at least enjoyable, through a “negative pleas- ure” variously derived. After the violence of mid-twentieth century, critical theo- rists of the sublime were more certain than ever about the involvement of terror, but some accounts of the negative pleasure did not survive the Second World War. Renewed reflection on the sublime after 1945 has clarified the social context and historical character of this aesthetic category. The feeling has changed, as modernity has unfolded, and as the relations and interactions between society and Gene Ray is Associate Professor in the CCC Research Master Programme at HEAD – Genève/ Geneva School of Art and Design. He writes about the cultural politics of memory, political theory and Marxist aesthetics, in relation to planetary meltdown.
    [Show full text]
  • Burke's Higher Romanticism: Politics and the Sublime
    Burke’s Higher Romanticism: Politics and the Sublime William F. Byrne St. John’s University Introduction Both Edmund Burke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau can be grouped among the key thinkers of the eighteenth century. They are widely understood to be quite different from one another, and their outlooks—especially their political-philosophical views—are often contrasted by scholars. Among those who have profitably contrasted Burke with Rousseau is the early twentieth century lit- erary scholar and social critic Irving Babbitt. Babbitt famously fa- vors the “classic” over the “romantic”; he considers romanticism’s ethical and political implications to be destructive of society. He uses Rousseau as his prime representative of romanticism and of all that is wrong with it, and uses Burke as a foil in criticizing Rousseau. Although Babbitt never explicitly describes Burke’s thought as “classical,” Burke sometimes seems to serve as Babbitt’s primary representative of the “classical” perspective he champions. What is odd about Babbitt’s treatment of Burke and Rousseau Burke and is that Babbitt never points out that Burke is, himself, a romantic. Rousseau both Literary scholars and students of aesthetics have long grouped romantics. both Rousseau and Burke among the originators or articulators of the romantic tradition. Although it is Rousseau who is more widely associated with the romantic movement today, Burke’s WILLIAM F. BYRNE is Assistant Professor of Government and Politics at St. John’s University and Associate Editor of HUMANITAS. 14 • Volume XIX, Nos. 1 and 2, 2006 William F. Byrne Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful was, for a century, almost ‘required reading’ for writers and artists of a romantic bent, or for anyone with an interest in romanticism, not just in the English-speaking world but on the Continent as well.
    [Show full text]
  • From the Sublime to Duende: a Cross-Cultural Study on the Aesthetics of Artistic Transcendence
    FROM THE SUBLIME TO DUENDE : A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY ON THE AESTHETICS OF ARTISTIC TRANSCENDENCE A Thesis by Patricia K. Cooke Bachelor of Arts, Wichita State University, 2005 Submitted to the Department of English and the faculty of the Graduate School of Wichita State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts May 2008 © Copyright 2008 by Patricia K. Cooke All Rights Reserved FROM THE SUBLIME TO DUENDE : A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY ON THE AESTHETICS OF ARTISTIC TRANSCENDENCE The following faculty have examined the final copy of this thesis for form and content, and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts with a major in English. _________________________________ Mary Waters, Committee Chair _________________________________ Christopher Brooks, Committee Member _________________________________ Eunice Myers, Committee Member iii DEDICATION To my family, who now knows more about duende than they ever cared to know. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Mary Waters for her constant patience and guidance, Dr. Chris Brooks for his ruthlessness in rooting out my many grammatical errors, and Dra. Eunice Myers for her expert help in making sense of difficult translations. v ABSTRACT For centuries, artists have used their works as a means of communication. Such communication can, at times, connect artist and audience in a unique experience which defies barriers of both language and culture. Although artists have written about this experience-- referred to here as “artistic transcendence” or “artistic transport”--since classical times, no word seemed able to encompass its meaning until Longinus used the word “sublime” to describe it.
    [Show full text]
  • Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and Other Writings CAMBRIDGE TEXTS in the HISTORY of PHILOSOPHY
    This page intentionally left blank CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY IMMANUEL KANT Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and Other Writings CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Series editors KARL AMERIKS Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame DESMOND M. CLARKE Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University College Cork The main objective of Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy is to expand the range, variety, and quality of texts in the history of philosophy which are available in English. The series includes texts by familiar names (such as Descartes and Kant) and also by less well-known authors. Wherever possible, texts are published in complete and unabridged form, and translations are specially commissioned for the series. Each volume contains a critical introduction together with a guide to further reading and any necessary glossaries and textual apparatus. The volumes are designed for student use at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and will be of interest not only to students of philosophy but also to a wider audience of readers in the history of science, the history of theology, and the history of ideas. For a list of titles published in the series, please see end of book. IMMANUEL KANT Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and Other Writings PATRICK FRIERSON Whitman College PAUL GUYER University of Pennsylvania PATRICK FRIERSON Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao˜ Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge ,UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/ Cambridge University Press This publication is in copyright.
    [Show full text]
  • The Desire for the Ineffable: on the Myth of Music As Absolute
    The desire for the ineffable: on the myth of music as absolute W. Froneman School of Music Potchefstroom Campus North-West University POTCHEFSTROOM E-mail: [email protected] Abstract The desire for the ineffable: on the myth of music as absolute This article proposes to establish and critique connections between religious and musico-aesthetic conceptions of in- effability by exploring the link between neoplatonic thought and romantic aesthetics. The central thesis is that recourse to the ineffable is often made by resorting to theological tenets and, consequently, that romantic aesthetics, although desperately trying to disengage itself from theological thinking, can in fact be interpreted as being inextricably bound up with it. Taking Plotinus’ conception of the relationship between the “One” and “Intellect” as model, the romantic conception of the absolute is revealed to be a fallacy. It is shown that claims of the ineffability of music not only locate music as a false absolute, but also confer on music a quasi-religious authority. This results in an ungrounded secular faith in the power of music and the mastery of its composer-god to lead mankind to the truth. Untangling the myths of ineffability leads the way to a detranscendentalised conception of music with performance at its centre. Opsomming Die soeke na die onsegbare: oor die mite van musiek as die absolute Hierdie artikel poog om konneksies tussen religieuse en musiek-estetiese beskouings oor die onsegbare uit te wys en te kritiseer, deur die gebruik van die term in onderskeidelik neo- platoniese en romantiese denke te ondersoek. Die sentrale hipotese is dat ’n diskoers rondom die onuitspreeklike dikwels op teologiese uitgangspunte moet steun en gevolglik, dat die Koers 74(1 & 2) 2009:1-22 1 The desire for the ineffable: on the myth of music as absolute romantiese estetika geïnterpreteer kan word in ’n nóú verbin- tenis met teologiese denke, ten spyte van ’n amper desperate poging tot die teendeel.
    [Show full text]
  • Adorno and the Sublime in Live Performance
    Aberystwyth University Adorno, the Sublime and Live Performance Gritzner, Karoline Published in: European Legacy DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2016.1215174 Publication date: 2016 Citation for published version (APA): Gritzner, K. (2016). Adorno, the Sublime and Live Performance. European Legacy, 21(7), 633-643. https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2016.1215174 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Aberystwyth Research Portal (the Institutional Repository) are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the Aberystwyth Research Portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the Aberystwyth Research Portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. tel: +44 1970 62 2400 email: [email protected] Download date: 27. Sep. 2021 CELE 1215174 CE: XX QA: GI Initial 23 July 2016 Coll:XX QC:XX THE EUROPEAN LEGACY, 2016 VOL. XX, NO. XX, 1–11 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2016.1215174 Adorno and the Sublime in Live Performance Karoline Gritzner Drama and Theatre Studies, Aberystwyth University, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth SY23 3AJ, Wales, UK ABSTRACT 5 This article examines Adorno’s re-conceptualisation of the traditional concept of the sublime, arguing that for Adorno the sublime aesthetic experience foregrounds an awareness of non-identity and the “priority of the object.” For Adorno, tears, shudders, and the emotions of shock and terror remain authentic responses to artworks because they remind the ego of its affinity with nature.
    [Show full text]