The Metaphysical and the Critical: Moments of the Sublime

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Issue Date
2019-08-30
Language
en
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Abstract
The discussion on the sublime has centred around two apparently divergent notions of this feeling, describes by Christine Pries as the metaphysical and the critical sublime. The former is associated with a perception of overwhelming harmony, exemplified in Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, whereas the latter relates to feeling of incomprehension which might raise an awareness of a critical dimension of thought, represented in Schönberg’s Survivor from Warsaw. Even though apparently divergent, these notions actually converge in the Kantian idea of negative presentation. As the attempted presentation of an idea of reason in the realm of the sensible, this idea explains both the problematic aspects of the metaphysical sublime and shows how the discussion of the sublime as mere critical feeling, characteristic of the postmodern revival of the sublime, is one-sided.
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Faculteit der Filosofie, Theologie en Religiewetenschappen
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