Concept
Sublime (philosophy)
Overview
In aesthetics, the sublime (from Latin sublīmis 'uplifted, lofty, exalted, etc.; elevated, raised') is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation. Since its first application in the field of rhetoric and drama in ancient Greece it became an important concept not just in philosophical aesthetics but also in literary theory and art history.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Sublime (philosophy) is discussed.
It is a magnitude which is like itself alone. It follows hence that the sublime is not to be sought in the things of nature, but only in our Ideas; but in which of them it lies must be reserved for the Deduction. The foregoing explanation can be thus expressed: _the sublime is that in comparison with which everything else is small_. Here we easily see that nothing can be given in nature, however great it is judged…
Immanuel Kant, Kant's Critique of Judgement
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Our explanation of the sublime applies also to the ethical, to what is called the sublime character. Such a character arises from this, that the will is not excited by objects which are well calculated to excite it, but that knowledge retains the upper hand in their presence.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
It is a sublime thing in human nature to be determined to actions immediately by a purely rational law; sublime even is the illusion that regards the subjective side of this capacity of intellectual determination as something sensible and the effect of a special sensible feeling (for an intellectual feeling would be a contradiction). It is also of great importance to attend to this property of our personality and as…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason
names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
The present inquiry[1] has for its subject-matter _Aesthetic_. It is a subject co-extensive with the entire _realm of the beautiful_; more specifically described, its province is that of _Art_, or rather, we should say, of _Fine Art._ For a subject-matter such as this the term…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1
author linked in the graph
A sublime man; who, alone in those dark days, had saved his crown of spiritual manhood; escaping from the black materialisms, and revolutionary deluges, with "God, Freedom, Immortality" still his: a king of men. The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character; and sat…
Thomas Carlyle, Life of John Sterling
names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Sublime (philosophy)
- Immanuel Kant
- Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
- Jean-François Lyotard
- Friedrich Schiller
- Richard Kearney
Related ideas
- Edmund Burke
- Empiricism
- Neo-Kantianism
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Book of Genesis
- The World as Will and Representation
- Homer
- Philosophy
- Immanuel Kant
- Impressionism
- Analytic philosophy
- Joseph Addison
- Ion (dialogue)
- Metaphysics
- Augustine of Hippo
- Art history
- Aesthetics
- Plato
- Psychoanalysis
- Jean-François Lyotard
- Symposium (Plato)
- Rhetoric
- Spirituality
- Semiotics
Place in the tradition
Part of Aesthetics.