Kant’s Critique of Judgement on the sublime (2)

Continuing our investigation of Kant’s Analytic of the Sublime. In this post we’ll look at §§24-26.

§24: Divisions of the sublime

In the very short §24, Kant explains that judgements of the sublime may be divided into the same four moments as judgements of the beautiful:

The satisfaction in the sublime... must be represented as universal in its quantity, as without interest in its quality, as subjective purposiveness in its relation, and the latter, as far as its modality is concerned, as necessary. (p131)

I discussed the Four Moments here. Each of the moments discusses a particular aspect of a judgement. As Paul Guyer puts it:

Kant’s four moments... describe a complex set of relations among feelings of aesthetic response, explanations of such responses, and the status of the judgments which give expression to these responses.¹

Kant is claiming that these two distinct forms of aesthetic judgement, the beautiful and the sublime, arise from the same set of logical criteria. He does not divide out the moments into their own headed sections quite as he did in the Analytic of the Beautiful, which, as Guyer points out in his Editor’s Introduction, ‘may make it hard at first to see how Kant is using the four original categories’ (p. xxx). Guyer goes on:

In fact, his account of the mathematical sublime is organised around the concepts of quantity and quality while the discussion of the dynamical sublime represents the application of the concepts of relation and modality. (p.xxx-xxxi)

For clarity:

• The mathematical sublime concerns quantity and quality:
• Quantity (universality): The discussion of magnitude in §25-26
• Quality (disinterestedness): The discussion of the quality of the satisfaction in the sublime in §27
• The dynamical concerns relation and modality:
• Relation (subjective purposiveness): The discussion of the purposiveness of the sublime for reason in §28
• Modality (necessity): The discussion of culture in §29

Kant adds that a further division of the sublime is necessary which the beautiful did not require: into mathematical (mathematisch) and dynamical (dynamisch). Kant evokes the theme of harmony/relaxation vs tension, calm vs movement:

• Judging the beautiful presupposes ‘calm contemplation’
• Judging the sublime however involves a two-step ‘movement of the mind’, from negative to positive reactions

It is important to know that for Kant, reason has two aspects: theoretical and practical, a.k.a. cognition and desire. The former (which is logical, speculative) was explored in the Critique of Pure Reason, the latter (which addresses how we ought to act) in the Critique of Practical Reason. His view is that the two are different applications of ‘one and the same reason’², a doctrine known as the ‘unity of reason’. It is this division into two aspects that leads to the two kinds of the sublime:

This movement is to be judged as subjectively purposive (because the sublime pleases), thus this movement is related through the imagination either to the faculty of cognition or to the faculty of desire, but in both relations the purposiveness of the given representation is judged only with regard to this faculty (without an end or interest): for then the first is attributed to the object as a mathematical, the second as a dynamical disposition of the imagination, and thus the object is represented as sublime in the twofold manner intended. (p131)

The contra-purposive sublime representation is relayed to the faculty of reason in both cases. The two forms of the sublime flow from whether it is relayed

• either to cognition (theoretical reason) → the mathematical sublime
• or to desire (practical reason) → dynamical sublime. 

This is an either/or: the movement relates to one or the other, depending on the kind of contra-purposiveness involved, and the kind of feeling is different in either case, though both relate to the one overarching faculty of reason. We will look at both kinds, and I will tabulate their attributes presently, but in brief:

• the mathematical concerns what is physically big or infinite
• the dynamical concerns what is powerful

The division between mathematical and dynamical refers back to a distinction of mathematical and dynamical made in the Critique of Pure Reason, which is – you will be unsurprised to hear – rather complicated, and I see no need to get into it.

Kant’s text is potentially a bit confusing because he overlays his discussion of the mathematical and dynamical sublime onto sections that are supposedly divided according to the four moments. Bear in mind that, ideally, the moments concern all judgements of the sublime, of whatever type.

The mathematically sublime (§25-6)

Kant begins §25 with a definition:

We call sublime that which is absolutely great.

That is, infinite – or at least, so big that it makes us think of infinity. These two sections get dense and complicated. What Kant is trying to communicate – in his frustrating, barely readable way – is that the sublime creates a special kind of awareness in us, because it is too big for us to comprehend.

This is why he starts talking about relative sizes and ‘magnitude’. From the quote below I’ve removed the Latin interpolations:

To be great [Groß-sein] and to be a magnitude [eine Größe³ sein] are quite different concepts. Likewise, simply to say that something is great is also something entirely different from saying that it is absolutely great [schlechthin groß]. The latter is that which is great beyond all comparison. (p131-2)

There are three concepts here:

• Great: the object is big in a general sense
• Magnitude: the object has a specific measurement
• Absolutely great: the object beyond all comparison = the sublime

Normally, when we experience an object, we use a mathematical means of quantifying it. A thing can be considered a magnitude, i.e. to have size, simply from itself; but to judge how great it is requires a comparison, i.e. you need another thing with a size, which you can compare it with.

To measure an object’s greatness against that of something else, we use a unit of measurement. But however big a thing is, there could always be something bigger. For bigger things you can keep adding units of measurement until you’ve finished measuring it, but such measurements are comparative and can never match up to a concept of something that is absolutely great.

When we say something is ‘great’ it seems we aren’t making any comparisons, because it’s just a vague term. But in fact, the word itself does imply the thing is bigger than other comparable objects. We’re just not given a specific size or measurement. Here we see the moment of quantity/universality making itself felt: such a judgement, says Kant, ‘lays claim to universal assent’, and is ‘grounded on a standard that one presupposes can be assumed to be the same for everyone’.

But such a judgement is not determinate – it has no specific measurement like ‘100 kilograms’ or ‘10 kilometres’ – and is therefore not a matter of logical cognition. Instead it is an aesthetic, reflecting judgement, ‘since it is a merely subjective standard’. Kant concludes:

Even if we have no interest at all in the object, i.e., its existence is indifferent to us, still its mere magnitude, even if it is considered as formless, can bring with it a satisfaction that is universally communicable, hence it may contain a consciousness of a subjective purposiveness in the use of our cognitive faculties. (p133, my emphasis)

This of course resembles the beautiful. But the sublime object has no form; the pleasure doesn’t lie in cognition in general like the free play of the beautiful; instead it lies in an ‘enlargement of the imagination in itself’.

Kant notes that anything we intuit aesthetically as an appearance is a quantum i.e. has a size, so we can judge anything in terms of large or small, even beauty.

But if we say something is absolutely great, says Kant,

we do not allow a suitable standard for it to be sought outside of it, but merely within it. (p134)

Ordinary measurement is by its nature comparative and thus not suitable for the sublime, which is great beyond all comparison. When we experience a vast or infinite thing, we don’t have meaningful units of measure for it. ‘It is a magnitude that is equal only to itself.’ Compared to the sublime, everything else is small.

Anything can appear huge if compared to something much smaller (e.g. using a microscope), or tiny if compared to something much bigger (e.g. using a telescope). Therefore, nothing that can be an object of the senses can be sublime: the sublime is absolutely great, not comparatively so. E.g. it can’t be made to look smaller by comparing it to something bigger, since nothing can be bigger than infinity. Kant gets a bit ahead of himself here:

Just because there is in our imagination a striving to advance to the infinite, while in our reason there lies a claim to absolute totality, as to a real idea, the very inadequacy of our faculty for estimating the magnitude of the things in the sensible world awakens the feeling of a supersensible faculty in us... It is the disposition of the mind [Geistes-stimmung] resulting from a certain representation occupying the reflective judgement, but not the object, which is to be called sublime. (p134)

We’ll get onto all that shortly, as he elaborates it in §26. But this is why Kant argues that the object itself is not sublime. It is ‘the use that the power of judgment naturally makes in behalf’ of the feeling (of the supersensible) that is absolutely great, compared to which any other use is small. Kant concludes:

That is sublime which even to be able to think of demonstrates a faculty of the mind that surpasses every measure of the senses.

Now let’s move on to §26 which explains further how this stuff works.

§26

When we use numbers to make determinate/specific measurements or estimations of magnitude we make a mathematical estimation. ‘Logical estimations of magnitude’, as Kant also calls them, simply keep counting on and on, in a numerical series. There is no limit to how far towards infinity this can keep going.

In the sublime, which is great beyond all comparison and thus out of the reach of ordinary, comparative measurements, we make a general measurement by eye. This is an aesthetic estimation, which attempts to grasp the magnitude ‘in one intuition’ (p135). (As Kant uses the word ‘aesthetic’ here at the start of §26 he seems to mean it in the older sense of aisthesis or sense perception.) In this case, there is a limit, namely the absolute, beyond which no greater measure is possible, which ‘brings with it the idea of the sublime’ (p135). The aesthetic estimation produces an ‘emotion’ that the mathematical one cannot (i.e. our satisfaction in becoming aware of our powers of reason).

We have to try to apprehend and understand the objects of the sublime aesthetically, in one intuition, as a single great whole. But we can only handle objects that are on a finite scale – our senses are limited to representations of bounded objects. Faced with sublime objects (or more correctly, objects that prompt the sublime in our minds), our imagination struggles and fails.

Kant explains how he thinks this works. We take in a measurement in ‘mere intuition’ and therefore sensorily. To try and measure a magnitude is the job of the imagination, which requires two functions:

• Apprehension (Auffassung), associated with mathematical estimation. Here the imagination uses a basic measure to progressively add units in a sequence.
• Comprehension (Zusammenfassung), associated with aesthetic estimation. Here the imagination compiles a number of units, acquired in a temporal sequence, into one big one.

These functions differ in handling the sublime:

There is no difficulty with apprehension, because it can go on to infinity; but comprehension becomes ever more difficult the further apprehension advances, and soon reaches its maximum, namely the aesthetically greatest basic measure for the estimation of magnitude. (p135)

When confronted with the sublime, apprehension can cope because it’s just an ongoing count using the standard mathematical/numerical concepts. But the comprehension can’t as there is a limit to our ability to grasp a size in an intuition:

For when apprehension has gone so far that the partial representations of the intuition of the senses that were apprehended first already begin to fade in the imagination as the latter proceeds on to the apprehension of further ones, then it loses on one side as much as it gains on the other, and there is in the comprehension a greatest point beyond which it cannot go. (p135)

As the eye travels across the sublime object, the bits that we saw earlier start to fade in the imagination before we can complete the intuition. Our apprehension can keep on going, but our comprehension hits a limit. Taking in an absolutely great whole in one go is impossible for us. You can’t do it in a single intuition.

Kant gives the example of the Pyramids and then St Peter’s (p135-6), though he never personally experienced either. You have to get within a certain distance of the building, or you can’t see it clearly; but once you’re near enough to see it, you can’t take it all in. (Note this means there is an optimum distance for experiencing the sublime.)

The eye requires some time to complete its apprehension from the base level to the apex, but during this time the former always partly fades before the imagination has taken in the latter, and the comprehension is never complete. (p136)

Rising from top to bottom, your perception of the base of the building fades in your imagination before you have taken in its apex, and you cannot connect the parts. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, but some of the parts are all we can get.

Too big to take in: St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Photo: Nserrano

As Kant puts it, the representation (in this case, the Pyramid, or St Peter’s) is non-purposive for our power of judgement: unlike the beautiful, it does not seem as if it were designed with our faculties in mind. This creates a ‘bewilderment or sort of embarrassment’.

Here there is a feeling of the inadequacy of his imagination for presenting the ideas of a whole, in which the imagination reaches its maximum and, in the effort to extend it, sinks back into itself. (p136)

Then something special happens. As the imagination ‘sinks back into itself’, it is ‘thereby transported into an emotionally moving satisfaction’. Kant explained this feeling a couple of pages earlier, which we quoted already but should make more sense now:

Just because there is in our imagination a striving to advance to the infinite, while in our reason there lies a claim to absolute totality, as to a real idea, the very inadequacy of our faculty for estimating the magnitude of the things in the sensible world awakens the feeling of a supersensible faculty in us. (p134)

As the spectator’s imagination fails to perceive the whole, we are made aware of an idea of the whole (or the totality, or the absolute). We can’t sense the whole but we can conceive of it; can’t make a sensory representation of it but can make a rational representation of it. This is ‘infinity comprehended’ (p139). This representation can only have come, not from the imagination, but from the faculty that produces such abstract, non-sensory ideas: reason. The idea is not something we have sensed, because we can’t empirically sense abstract concepts of that sort; they are outside our experience. Instead, it is created by a part of ourselves that is supersensible.

Even being able to think of [the infinite] as a whole indicates a faculty of the mind which surpasses every standard of sense. (p138)

The fact that we even attempt to think of things like the infinite reveals in us the power of reason that gives us the idea of an absolutely great whole to start with. Realising we have the capacity to conceive such things in the form of ideas gives us that ‘emotionally moving satisfaction’ – a sort of self-congratulatory feeling. Seeing as we’re becoming aware of a greatness in the mind that outstrips any magnitude and in a way even nature itself, perhaps it’s no wonder we’re pleased with ourselves.

There’s a partition in the text, marked with three asterisks, after which Kant explores all this a little further.

Even to be able to think the given infinite without contradiction requires a faculty in the human mind that is itself supersensible. For it is only by means of this and its idea of a noumenon, which itself admits of no intuition though it is presupposed as the substratum of the intuition of the world as mere appearance, that the infinite of the sensible world is completely comprehended in the pure intellectual estimation of magnitude under a concept, even though it can never be completely thought in the mathematical estimation of magnitude through numerical concepts. (p138)

The noumenon refers to something in the world of things in themselves. This noumenal world, not knowable to us directly, underwrites all the appearances or phenomena that we experience. There is no way that we humans could be able to think the infinite, which we cannot experience directly. We could only be able to think of such things if, again, we are in touch with the supersensible: the realm of the soul, of infinity, of God. This ability is great beyond comparison with the mere mathematical estimation of magnitude, which doesn’t allow us to think of infinity in its entirety.

The pure sublime and art

Kant introduces a new distinction of the ‘pure’ sublime, which he defines as ‘not mixed up with
anything teleological as judgments of reason’ (p136). In other words, it is similar to pure beauty in not being mixed up with a concept or end – except that he is thinking about nature, not art, so he mentions it in terms of teleology instead of human ends/intentions.

A pure judgment on the sublime... must have no end of the object as its determining ground if it is to be aesthetic and not mixed up with any judgment of the understanding or of reason. (p136-7)

He expands on this via a comment on the role of art:

If the aesthetic judgement is to be pure... and if an example of that is to be given which is fully appropriate for the critique of the aesthetic power of judgement, then the sublime must not be shown in products of art (e.g. buildings, columns, etc.), where a human end determines the form as well as the magnitude, nor in natural things whose concept already brings with it a determinate end (e.g., animals of a known natural determination), but rather in raw nature (and even in this only insofar as it by itself brings with it neither charm nor emotion from real danger), merely insofar as it contains magnitude. (p136, my emphases)

Kant is limiting the ‘pure’ sublime (the sublime without an end) to raw nature containing magnitude only: too big for us to grasp, and seen from a position of safety. Works of art or animals can’t count as sublime since we have no difficulty grasping them as wholes using our imagination. He seems to be forgetting – or regretting – that he offered the Pyramids and St Peter’s as examples of the sublime, both of which are ‘buildings’ and ‘products of art’. Perhaps, given the unusual scale of architecture compared to most other works of art, the sheer size of such buildings makes them an exception amongst the arts.

Kant doesn’t claim we cannot represent the sublime in art. He himself mentions the sublime in art in passing in §23, where he comments that it ‘is, after all, always restricted to the conditions of agreement with nature’ (whatever that means), which acknowledges that the sublime in art can exist. However, the sublime in art would not be ‘pure’, which reminds us of his division of beauty into ‘free’ and ‘adherent’.

Kant doesn’t discuss what sublime art would involve, which is rather disappointing, and he seems to regard it as marginal. It does seem difficult to imagine a ‘formless’ work of art, even if we don’t take the demand for formlessness literally; and the insistent attribution of sublimity to the mind rather than the object itself, prompted by our inability to grasp the physical size or power of the object, seems equally problematic when talking about artworks. Perhaps it is less about the art object itself than the sublime subject matter it portrays, which can evoke in us something like what we feel when confronted by the sublime in nature.

The monstrous and the colossal 

Kant goes on, in a very short passage on p136-7, to add a couple of weird terms – the monstrous and the colossal – which are a bit confusing. Kant begins:

...In this sort of representation [by which he seems to mean the mathematical sublime] nature contains nothing that would be monstrous (or magnificent or terrible); the magnitude that is apprehended may grow as large as one wants as long as it can be comprehended in one whole by the imagination.

Clearly he is posing them against the ‘pure’ mathematical sublime, which contains nothing monstrous. But it is confusing to read about the sublime being ‘comprehended in one whole by the imagination’, as this is precisely what Kant has just said we cannot do with the sublime. Anyway, Kant then introduces the two terms:

• Monstrous (ungeheuer): ‘by its magnitude [the object] annihilates the end which its concept constitutes’. The object is so big that it destroys the purpose it is meant to have (whatever that means).
• Colossal (kolossalisch): ‘the presentation of a concept... which is almost too great’ for our faculty of presentation. The ‘almost’ suggests the colossal is a bit less big than the monstrous – not impossible for us to comprehend, just difficult.

Kant does not explain what it means for the sublime to involve a concept, or what it means for magnitude to ‘annihilate’ one, so this passage is rather unclear. The academic Robert Doran states it this way:

What is judged monstrous or colossal are objects of great magnitude that are fused with a concept of their end, as if their magnitude violated (the monstrous) or almost violated (the colossal) the objective purposiveness of the object.⁴

From the context, Kant seems to be making the point that just because an object is big and part of ‘raw nature’ doesn’t necessarily make it pure. There are things in raw nature that can be huge and have a concept of their end, namely monstrous and colossal objects – frustratingly he offers no examples of such objects, so it’s hard to tell what sort of thing he has in mind. Neither allows for a ‘pure’ judgement, as they involve an end/concept, i.e. the object has a purpose or function. That means the monstrous and colossal would involve adherent (or dependent) aesthetic judgements, if we may borrow the language used with regard to beauty, which admittedly Kant doesn’t do here.

There is some further evidence of Kant’s thinking in another later work, the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View,⁵ in which he distinguishes the sublime from the monstrous:

• ‘The sublime is awe-inspiring greatness (magnitudo reverenda)’
• ‘The monstrous is greatness that is contrapurposive (magnitudo monstrosa)’

This confirms that in Kant’s mind the sublime and the monstrous are distinct, i.e. the monstrous and colossal are not forms of the sublime. It makes the point that ‘not all contrapurposive representations of magnitudinous nature are sublime’ (Doran). The feeling of satisfaction in reason could not be ‘monstrous’ for Kant.

Then at the end of the passage, before the partition, Kant again underlines that the pure sublime is neither monstrous nor colossal:

A pure judgment on the sublime, however, must have no end of the object as its determining ground if it is to be aesthetic and not mixed up with any judgment of the understanding or of reason.

This passage of some dozen lines is literally the only time he uses the terms ‘monstrous’ and ‘colossal’ in the CoJ. The intellectual labour required to make sense of them, therefore, far outweighs the importance their inventor places on them.

Notes

1. Paul Guyer, ‘Kant’s Distinction between the Beautiful and the Sublime’ (1992).
2. Critique of Practical Reason, 5:121.
3. In case you’re wondering, the German word Kant uses for the moment of quantity is Quantität, not Größe.
4. Robert Doran, The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant (2015), p238.
5. Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), translated and edited by Robert B. Louden, p140.