Kant’s sublime theory is complicit with domination

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Enlightenment is kind only by confronting reason’s link to domination.; Kant absolutized historical contradictions into nature, thereby affirming the status quo — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 215; Nature is the object of reason as liberation, not only domination — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 826 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Kant’s sublime frames aesthetic feeling as subjection to commanding violence #expands (0.92) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 602