The Sublime in Kant and Beckett: Aesthetic Judgement, Ethics and Literature

325 Pages·2002·8.17 MB·English

by  Bjørn K. Myskja

Bjern Κ. Myskja
The Sublime in Kant and Beckett
w
DE
G
Kantstudien
Ergänzungshefte
im Auftrage der Kant-Gesellschaft
herausgegeben von
Gerhard Funke, Manfred Baum, Bernd Dörflinger
und Thomas M. Seebohm
140
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
2002
Björn Κ. Myskja
The Sublime in Kant and Beckett
Aesthetic Judgement, Ethics and Literature
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
2002
® Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier,
das die US-ANSI-Norm über Haltbarkeit erfüllt.
Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme
Myskja, Björn K.:
The sublime in Kant and Beckett : aesthetic judgement, ethics and
literature / Björn K. Myskja. - Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 2002
(Kantstudien : Ergänzungshefte ; 140)
ISBN 3-11-017126-0
© Copyright 2001 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin.
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Contents
Acknowledgements IX
Citations and abbreviations XI
Introduction 1
The sublime, literature and ethics 1
Background: The ethics of literature 2
Problem: The ethics of Beckett's Molloy 5
Approach: Interpretation of Kant's aesthetic and ethical theories 7
Outline of contents 9
1. Beckett's Molloy and the ethics of literature 12
1. 1 Meaninglessness and ethics 15
Searching for no reason 15
Three forms of meaninglessness 19
Meaninglessness and ethics 20
1.2 Molloy and ethical literary theory 23
Nussbaum's project 23
Nussbaum, Kant, and the separation of aesthetics and ethics 27
Guilt, shame and love in Molloy 32
Ending the production of words 42
Particular stories and universal statements 43
1.3 The sublime in Molloy 48
The experience of nothing 48
The moral significance of the sublime 55
2. Kant's theory of aesthetic reflective judgement 60
2.1 The faculties involved in judgement 65
Understanding and imagination 65
Practical reason 66
Judgement - determinative and merely reflective 67
2.2 Judgements of taste - feelings claiming intersubjective validity 70
Contents
VI
Feeling and judgement 69
Disinterested aesthetic reflective judgements and other feelings 77
Beauty and ugliness 80
Judging the form of the object 85
2.3 Universal validity ofjudgements of taste 87
The subjective condition of cognition 87
Subjective and objective reflective judgements 93
Purposiveness and teleology 95
The subjective condition of teleological judgements 102
Form of purposiveness 107
Intersubjective and objective validity 112
3. The judgement of the sublime in nature 113
3.1 The feeling of the sublime in nature 115
The formlessness of the sublime 115
The quality of the feeling of the sublime 118
The relationship between attraction and repulsion 121
Feelings of the sublime 124
3.2 The aspect change of the judgement of the sublime 129
The sublime and aspect change 129
The free play of imagination and reason 131
The mathematically sublime 133
Mathematically sublime objects with form 138
The dynamically sublime 139
3.3 The mathematically sublime and moral ideas 141
The supersensible vocation of man 141
Theoretical and practical ideas of reason 142
The idea of spontaneity 144
The idea of autonomy 144
3.4 The sublime, affects and respect 149
Noble sublime affects 149
Fearfully sublime affects 152
The feeling of the sublime and respect 155
3.5 Universal validity of judgements of the sublime 160
The distinction between judgements of taste and sublimity 160
The principle of the purposive use of nature 163
Morality and concepts of purpose 165
The sublime and moral ideas 169
Contents yjj
4. The moral import of the sublime 174
4. 1 The real sublime 176
Morality as the real sublime 176
Freedom and the two concepts of will 179
Pure practical reason and feeling 182
The divided self and the two realms 183
Autonomy and the moral law 186
4. 2 Culture and moral ideas 187
Cultural development and the experience of the sublime 187
Thinking ideas and feeling the sublime 192
4. 3 Cultivation and conversion 194
Cultivation of feeling 194
Moral conversion 199
4. 4 Maxims and disposition 203
Maxims and character 203
Moral worth and disposition 208
Three kinds of maxims 214
4.5 Character, conversion and development 216
Kant's conception of character 216
Empirical conversion 221
The feeling of the sublime and cultivation of character 222
4. 6 The moral import of the beautiful and of the sublime 223
5. The sublime in art and literature 232
5. 1 Art andpurposiveness 234
Intentional production and aesthetic judgement 234
Purposiveness without purpose in works of art 237
5.2 Genius and aesthetic ideas 240
Genius and non-intended purpose in art 240
Expression of aesthetic ideas and the purpose of art 243
The purposive formation of the work of art 247
5.3 The sublime in art 253
Sublime objects of art 253
Sublime art in the Critique of Judgement 257
Sublime novels 263
Purposive form and sublime content 265
Aesthetic, cognitive, and moral judgements of art 270
Vili Contents
6. Molloy and the Kantian sublime 273
6. 1 Forms of sublimity in Molloy 274
Text, imagination and feeling 274
The mathematically sublime form 276
The dynamically sublime characters 283
The murmur and sublime poetry in Molloy 287
6. 2 Aesthetic judgements and other judgements of literature 291
Ethical literary theory and aesthetic reflective judgement 291
Human suffering, evil, and moral judgement of sublime art 296
6. 3 Molloy, the sublime, and ethics 301
Bibliography 305
Index 310
Acknowledgements
I want to thank The Research Council of Norway, The Ethics Programme for a
three year Fellowship that made this work possible. The colloquiums and meetings
of The Ethics Programme have been a source of inspiration, and I have received
many helpful comments and suggestions from the participants. I also want to
express my gratitude to the Department of Philosophy at NTNTJ Trondheim for an
inspirational and friendly work environment. The Faculty of Arts, NTNU,
supported a visit to Princeton University in the fall 1998. I am very grateful to
Béatrice Longuenesse for inviting me and to the Department of Philosophy at
Princeton for allowing me to visit. This gave me the opportunity to participate in
Longuenesse's seminar on the Kant's Critique of Judgement from which I learned
a lot.
Truls Wyller and Thomas Pogge have read drafts of the entire manuscript in
different stages of completion. I have learned very much about Kant's philosophy
from both of them, and their comments led to many improvements. Pogge saved
me from several serious mistakes and has been an invaluable source of inspiration
and encouragement. Béatrice Longuenesse commented on drafts to chapters two
and three, which resulted in a major reworking of these chapters. Hannah
Ginsborg commented on drafts to the same chapters. Many of her comments are
reflected in these chapters that from the outset was inspired by her interpretation
of Kant's third Critique. Tom Eide and Petter Aaslestad read drafts to chapter one
and six. I hope to have done some justice to their patient explanations and
suggested improvements. David Sussman read a draft to chapter four, and his
thorough comments led to several changes. Helge Heibraaten commented on
chapter one and helped me find the right approach to the project in its early stages.
Martin Frank has proof-read all the citations in German, and many times helped
me to make sense of difficult passages of Kant's German. I have learned a lot
from discussing philosophy with him. I have also benefited from discussing
Kant's aesthetic theory with Brit Strandhagen. Jonathan B. Beere proof-read the
English of chapters one to six and suggested several improvements of the
argumentation, as well. Any grammatical error found in this work is most likely
due to changes in the manuscript after he checked the language.
Trondheim, October 2001 Bj0m K. Myskja