Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime

by Jean-François Lyotard, Elizabeth Rottenberg (Translation)

Philosophical aesthetics has seen an amazing revival over the past decade, as a radical questioning of the very grounds of Western epistemology has revealed that some antinomies of aesthetic experience—and in particular of the limits of the aesthetical—can be viewed as a general, yet necessarily open model for human understanding. In this revival, no text in the classical corpus of Western philosophy has been more frequently discussed than the complex paragraphs modestly inserted into Kant's Critique of Judgment as sections 23-29: the Analytic of the Sublime.

This book is a rigorous explication de texte, a close reading of these sections. First, Lyotard reconstitutes, following the letter of Kant's analysis, the philosophical context of his critical writings and of the European Enlightenment. Second, because the analytic of the sublime reveals the inability of aesthetic experience to bridge the separate realms of theoretical and practical reason, Lyotard can connect his reconstitution of Kant's critical project with today's debates about the very conditions—and limits—of presentation in general.

Lyotard enables us to see the sublime as a model for reflexive thinking generally via his concept of the "differend," which emphasizes the inevitability of conflicts and incompatibilities between different notions and "phrases." The Analytic of the Sublime, he points out, tries to argue that human thought is always constituted through a similar incompatibility between different intellectual and affective faculties. These lessons thus highlight the analysis of a "differend of feeling" in Kant's text, which is also the analysis of a "feeling of differend," and connect this feeling with the transport that leads all thought (critical thought included) to its limits.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, 20th Century, Art

262 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Jean-François Lyotard (DrE, Literature, University of Paris X, 1971) was a French philosopher and literary theorist. He is well-known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and for his analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition.

He went to primary school at the Paris Lycées Buffon and Louis-le-Grand and later began studying philosophy at the Sorbonne. After graduation, in 1950, he took a position teaching philosophy in Constantine in French East Algeria. He married twice: in 1948 to Andrée May, with whom he had two daughters, and for a second time in 1993 to the mother of his son, who was born in 1986.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always found Lyotard’s work to be incredibly lucid and generous toward those philosophers he takes up. This book works as an exceptional example of Lyotard’s approach. The book provides a comprehensive overview of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, and in so doing gives a reading that helps to elucidate the entire critical project. The book focuses on the importance of the faculty of judgment for Kant's aesthetic theory, demonstrating how Kant distinguishes between judgment, understanding and reason to develop his key concepts for aesthetic theory: pleasure, disinterestedness and Sensus Communis. Each of these is distinguished in turn from understanding and will, while at that same time, Lyotard shows their importance for understanding the role of orientation, schematism and production of concepts in the Critique of Pure Reason as well as the production of ideas with a moral imperative in the Critique of Practical Reason. A pleasure to read.

[Derek Frasure · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every time I read Lyotard, I feel that I'm in the presence of a master. This is the finest explication de texte I have ever read. Lyotard pays close attention to the main problems of Kantian philosophy as they relate to the third Critique, and defines Kant's idiomatic terminology in Kant's own words. I was surprised to find out these are Lyotard's lecture notes, and that he has another book on Kant. I'd definitely be motivated to read his other book, because this was incisive. To say this is a mere explication belies the far more postmodern reading he's bringing to bear on Kant. Specifically, Lytotard emphasizes his own concept of the differend in Kant's antinomies, but far more importantly, Lyotard deconstructs Kant's critique. Kant is shown to be insufficient by his own terms upon a deeper analysis: "The table [of categories] also reminds us that the final end is not finality: the concept of first causality or freedom is given by reason as the end to will; finality (paradoxical in the case of the sublime), which is expressed in aesthetic feeling, is subjectively 'judged' (tautegorically, as sensation) by a power of judgment that operates without the mediation of a concept." That said, he's quite generous and faithful in his reading of Kant. That said, one should heed the book's warning that it is not an introduction to Kant's Critique of Judgment, nor is it a substitute for reading the text.

[Whitney Borup · Rating 1 out of 5]

My translation is totally incomprehensible. And I think he slips between certain Kantian ideas to serve his own purpose (which won't be clear until his next publications). Sloppy.