| thoughts from a cunning linguist | |
"Taste," wrote Immanuel Kant, "is the ability to judge an object, or a way of presenting it, by means of a liking or disliking devoid of all interest. The object of such a liking, he says, "is called the beautiful." The "sublime," on the other hand, he says, is "what is absolutely large...large beyond all comparison... That is sublime in comparison with which everything else is small."
The above makes me think that the strongest, most intense forms of desire are sublime. Isn't what we want somehow always in excess of what our minds already have or can hold?
I've found myself thinking a lot about Kant in the last few days. I've always been fascinated by his ideas about the sublime and the beautiful. I've only rarely wanted with great intensity. But each time it happens to me, I get this sense of the absolute largeness of it. The sublime has often been associated with events or states in nature that the mind cannot take in all at once. (Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Mont Blanc" is one of the most famous examples of the sublime in poetry.) But I think it relates to the mind, too.
I'm not sure Kant is right about beauty being devoid of interest. But the sublime itself seems both difficult and delicious, awe- and terror-inspiring--all at once.
Then again, maybe wanting just is what it is, and philosophy is just a poetic way of saying so.
Posted by Bush Whacker at June 9, 2003 07:23 PMI often think of a completely different quote (from Thomas Paine, Age of Reason) when hearing "sublime" - mostly, I imagine, because it just as often seems that people using the word are engaging in a sort of largeness of pretension rather than an appreciation of the subtlety to which the word lends itself even as it encompasses the width and breadth of something that can be awe-inspiring if we let it. Obviously this doesn't apply to you; you simply happen to be a waystop on tonight's journey and dredged up a random thought...
Posted by: Annette on June 14, 2003 12:28 AM