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handout: The Kantian Sublime

What follows is a brief account from Dmitri Tymoczko, contrasting Edmund Burke’s notion of the human
experience of the sublime, with Kant’s notion. After that, I’ve included some passages from Kant’s own Critique of
Judgment (1790), which we’ll discuss in class.

I. Tymoczko on Burke, Kant, Beethoven

"When danger or pain press too nearly," wrote Edmund Burke in his 1757 Philosophical Enquiry
into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, "they are incapable of giving any delight,
and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and
they are delightful, as we every day experience." Beauty, according to Burke, is a matter of
straightforward pleasure: the uncomplicated enjoyment we take in listening to Pachelbel’s Canon, or
looking at a neoclassical painting. Sublimity, on the other hand, involves a more ambivalent sort of
appreciation, in which the route of our pleasure passes through fear. Safe at home, we look out the
window at a violent storm. Sensing the danger, adrenaline starts to rush through our bodies; yet we
still enjoy the experience because at some level we know that we are safe. Too much danger, and we
begin to feel genuine terror; too little danger, and we enter the realm of the (merely) beautiful.
Burke’s aim is to explain how we can take pleasure in experiences that, intrinsically, seem like they
should be unpleasant. Burke mentions the sound of a hurricane, when appreciated from the proper
distance, and great heights; we might add horror movies and haunted houses, roller coasters and
punk rock. As a piece of psychology, his suggestion seems plausible. And it certainly captures part
of what we might mean by saying that Beethoven’s music is "sublime." Beethoven’s music is
tumultuous and hurricanelike, and not just in those pieces, such as the "Storm" movement of the
Sixth Symphony, that have been associated with the violence of nature. But there is nothing in
Burke’s account to suggest why the sublime should be associated with anything religious or
"infinite." It is a purely psychological quality that we might just as well find in the cries of a wild
animal (to choose another of Burke’s examples) as in the soaring climaxes of a great symphony.
Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, written about 35 years after Burke’s Enquiry, proposes a
more spiritual interpretation of the concept. Analyzing beauty as a kind of "perfect fit" between an
object and a human subject, he labels as "sublime" the feeling of awe and reverence that certain
unlimited, immense, threatening, or incomprehensible phenomena seem to provoke in us–for
example, a hurricane, or St. Peter’s cathedral in Rome. As Kant remarks, the size of St. Peter’s
defeats our perception: by the time our eyes move from the floor to the ceiling, we lose our memory
of the starting point. Our apprehension exceeds our comprehension. And this incomprehension–
rather than terror, as in Burke’s account–provokes a certain "reverence" in us. (Dmitri Tymoczko,
“The Sublime Beethoven: What the composer and Kant had in common,” Boston Review, December
1, 1999)
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II. Quotes from Kant’s Critique of Judgment

from § 26

“….To take up a quantum in the imagination intuitively, in order to be able to use it as a measure or
a unit for the estimation of magnitude by means of numbers, involves two actions of this faculty:
apprehensionc (apprehensio) and comprehensiond (comprehensio aesthetica). There is no difficulty with
apprehension, because it can go on to infinity; but comprehension becomes ever more difficult the
further apprehension advances, and soon reaches its maximum, namely the aesthetically greatest
basic measure for the estimation of magnitude. For when apprehension has gone so far that the
partial representations of the intuition of the senses that were apprehended first already begin to
fade in the imagination as the latter proceeds on to the apprehension of further ones, then it loses
on one side as much as it gains on the other, and there is in the comprehension a greatest point
beyond which it cannot go.
This makes it possible to explain a point that Savary9 notes in his report on Egypt: that in order to
get the full emotional effect of the magnitude of the pyramids one must neither come too close to
them nor be too far away. For in the latter case, the parts that are appre- hended (the stones piled on
top of one another) are represented only obscurely, and their representation has no effect on the
aesthetic judg- ment of the subject. In the former case, however, the eye requires some time to
complete its apprehension from the base level to the apex, but during this time the former always
partly fades before the imagination has taken in the latter, and the comprehension is never complete.
– The very same thing can also suffice to explain the bewilderment or sort of embarrassment that is
said to seize the spectator on first enter- ing St. Peter’s in Rome. For here there is a feeling of the
inadequacy of his imagination for presenting the ideasa of a whole, in which the imagination reaches
its maximum and, in the effort to extend it, sinks back into itself, but is thereby transported into an
emotionally moving satisfaction.”
……………….

“….The feeling of the inadequacy of our capacityd for the attainment of an idea that is a law for
us is respect.15 Now the idea of the compre- hension of every appearance that may be given to us
into the intuition of a whole is one enjoined on us by a law of reason, which recognizes no other
determinate measure, valid for everyone and inalterable,e than the absolute whole. But our
imagination, even in its greatest effort with regard to the comprehension of a given object in a
whole of intuition (hence for the presentation of the idea of reason) that is demanded of it,
demonstrates its limits and inadequacy, but at the same time its vocationa for adequately realizing
that idea as a law. Thus the feeling of the sublime in nature is respect for our own vocation, which
we show to an object in nature through a certain subreption (substitu- tion of a respect for the
object instead of for the idea of humanity in our subject), which as it were makes intuitable the
superiority of the rational vocation of our cognitive faculty over the greatest faculty of sensibility.”

…………...
“...Power is a capacityc that is superior to great obstacles. The same thing is called dominion if it is
also superior to the resistance of something that itself possesses power. Nature considered in
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aesthetic judgment as a power that has no dominion over us is dynamically sublime.

If nature is to be judgedd by us dynamically as sublime, it must be represented as arousing fear
(although, conversely, not every object that arouses fear is found sublime in our aesthetic judgment).
For in aesthetic judginga (without a concept) the superiority over obstacles can only be judgedb in
accordance with the magnitude of the resis- tance. However, that which we strive to resist is an evil,
and, if we find our capacityc to be no match for it, an object of fear. Thus, for the aesthetic power
of judgmentd nature can count as a power,e thus as dynamically sublime, only insofar as it is
considered an object of fear.
We can, however, consider an object as fearful without being afraid of it, if, namely, we judgef it in
such a way that we merely think of the case in which we might wish to resist it and think that in that
case all resistance would be completely futile. Thus the virtuous man fears God without being afraid
of him, because he does not think of the case of wishing to resist God and his commands as
anything that is worri- some for him. But since he does not think of such a case as impossible in
itself, he recognizes God as fearful.
Someone who is afraid can no more judge about the sublime in nature than someone who is in the
grip of inclination and appetite can judge about the beautiful. The former flees from the sight of an
object that instills alarm in him, and it is impossible to find satisfaction in a terror that is seriously
intended. Hence the agreeableness in the cessa- tion of something troublesome is joyfulness. But
this joyfulness on account of liberation from a danger is accompanied with the proviso that one
never again be exposed to that danger; indeed one may well be reluctant to think back on that
sensation, let alone seek out the opportunity for it.
Bold, overhanging, as it were threatening cliffs, thunder clouds tow- ering up into the heavens,
bringing with them flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder, volcanoes with their all-destroying
violence, hurri- canes with the devastation they leave behind, the boundless ocean set into a rage, a
lofty waterfall on a mighty river, etc., make our capacityg to resist into an insignificant trifle in
comparison with their power. But the sight of them only becomes all the more attractive the more
fearful it is, as long as we find ourselves in safety, and we gladly call these objects sublime because
they elevate the strength of our soul above its usual level, and allow us to discover within ourselves a
capacityh for resistance of quite another kind, which gives us the courage to measure ourselves
against the apparent all-powerfulness of nature.
For just as we found our own limitation in the immeasurability of nature and the insufficiency of
our capacitya to adopt a standard pro- portionate to the aesthetic estimation of the magnitude of its
domain, but nevertheless at the same time found in our own faculty of reason another, nonsensible
standard, which has that very infinity under itself as a unit against which everything in nature is
small, and thus found in our own mind a superiority over nature itself even in its immeasurabil- ity:
likewise the irresistibility of its power certainly makes us, consid- ered as natural beings, recognize
our physicalb powerlessness, but at the same time it reveals a capacityc for judgingd ourselves as
indepen- dent of it and a superiority over nature on which is grounded a self- preservation of quite
another kind than that which can be threatened and endangered by nature outside us, whereby the
humanity in our person remains undemeaned even though the human being must sub- mit to that
dominion. In this way, in our aesthetic judgment nature is judgede as sublime not insofar as it
arouses fear, but rather because it calls forth our powerf (which is not part of nature) to regard
those things about which we are concerned (goods, health and life) as trivial, and hence to regard its
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powerg (to which we are, to be sure, subjected in regard to these things) as not the sort of dominion
over ourselves and our authority to which we would have to bow if it came down to our highest
principles and their affirmation or abandonment. Thus nature is here called sublime merely because
it raises the imagination to the point of presenting those cases in which the mind can make palpable
to itself the sublimity of its own vocation even over nature.
This self-esteem is not diminished by the fact that we must see ourselves as safe in order to be
sensible of this inspiring satisfaction, in which case (it might seem), because the danger is not
serious, the sublimity of our spiritual capacityh is also not to be taken seriously.16 For the
satisfaction here concerns only the vocation of our capacityi as it is revealed to us in such a case,
just as the predisposition to it lies in our nature; while the development and exercise of it is left to us
and remains our responsibility.a And there is truth here, however much the person, if he takes his
reflection this far, may be conscious of his present actual powerlessness.”
…….

§29
“...Perhaps there is no more sublime passage in the Jewish Book of the Law than the
commandment: Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image, nor any likeness either of that
which is in heaven, or on the earth, or yet under the earth, etc.32 This commandment alone can
explain the enthusiasm that the Jewish people felt in its civilizeda period for its religion when it
compared itself with other peoples, or the pride that Moham- medanism inspired. The very same
thing also holds of the representation of the moral law and the predisposition to morality in us. It is
utterly mistaken to worry that if it were deprived of everything that the senses can recommend it
would then bring with it nothing but cold, lifeless approval and no moving force or emotion. It is
exactly the reverse: for where the senses no longer see anything before them, yet the unmistakable
and inextinguishable idea of mo- rality remains, there it would be more necessary to moderate the
momentum of an unbounded imagination so as not to let it reach the point of enthusi- asm,b,33
rather than, from fear of the powerlessness of these ideas, to look for assistance for them in images
and childish devices. That is why even govern- ments have gladly allowed religion to be richly
equipped with such supple- ments and thus sought to relieve the subjectc of the bother but at the
same time also of the capacityd to extend the powers of his soul beyond the limits that are arbitrarily
set for him and by means of which, as merely passive, he can more easily be dealt with.”