期刊名称：Proceedings of the European Society for Aesthetics
电子版ISSN：1664-5278
出版年度：2017
卷号：9
页码：629-653
出版社：European Society for Aesthetics
摘要：A prevailing reading understands Kant’s mathematical sublime asa twofold experience, in which we feel both displeasure in encounteringsensibility’s limitation and pleasure in revealing its supersensible vocation;but this reading cannot explain how, for Kant, all estimations of extensivemagnitude are ultimately aesthetic. This paper argues that Kant considers theexperience to be threefold: to facilitate an aesthetic estimation in general, theimagination is to reproduce a magnitude’s parts successively and unify themsimultaneously, such that it undergoes an inevitable tension between twotime-conditions. Since the tension both hampers and signifies our partialattainment of an aim set by theoretical reason, we feel both pleasure anddispleasure. When the tension becomes so great that it hinders theimagination’s further achievement, the feeling is absolutely great, that is,mathematically sublime. Moreover, the imagination’s failure to fully attainthe cognitive aim reveals its supersensible vocation and strengthens ourmoral feeling, which is purposive from a practical perspective. Hence, Ideclare Kant’s mathematical sublime to be a threefold aesthetic experienceconsisting of cognitive displeasure, cognitive pleasure, and practical pleasure.Meanwhile, against Kant, I argue that the judgment of the mathematicalsublime is neither universal nor necessary.
