Kant’s sublime describes reason’s violence over imagination and its subjection to a cause.

Evidence

Nowhere is this clearer, perhaps, than in the recurring descriptions of the Gewalt (force, violence, and dominion) exercised by reason over imagination and sensibility. 18 The feeling of the sublime, Kant writes, is “a feeling that the imagination is deprived and robed of its freedom,” accompanied, among other things, by a feeling of”the cause to which it is subjected” (section 29). — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 602 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

History is the negation of Nature. What is only natural is overcome and recreated by the power of Reason. The metaphysical notion that Nature comes to itself in history points to the unconquered limits of Reason. It claims them as historical limits—as a task yet to be accomplished, or rather yet to be undertaken. If Nature is in itself a rational, legitimate object of science, then it is the legitimate object not only of Reason as power but also of Reason as freedom; not only of domination but also of liberation. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 826 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Kant’s sublime frames aesthetic feeling as subjection to commanding violence — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 602; Kant’s sublime is constitutively tied to political and religious power. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 604; Kant’s sublime theory is complicit with domination (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Kant’s sublime frames aesthetic feeling as subjection to commanding violence #corroborates (0.97) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 602
• Nature is the object of reason as liberation, not only domination #complicates (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 826
• Beautiful art can transfigure atrocity and thus justify suffering aesthetically #complicates (0.73)
• Kant rescued objectivity by passing it through subjectivity according to Adorno. #complicates (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2272