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Kant, Wordsworth & the sublime

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  • 02-08-2010 9:43pm
    #1
    WinstonSmith
    Closed Accounts Posts: 191 ✭✭


    Dear all,
    I am currently trying to understand the difference between Kant's and Wordswoth's conception of the sublime and would appreicate any help people could give me. I know that Kant placed more emphasis on supersensible ideas per se and that these would elevate the mind of a man undergoing the necessary external stimuli to a sublime experience, and I recognise that Wordsworth differed slightly in that he was said (by Keats) to favour an "egotistical sublime". The problem I face is attempting to pin down how the ego transcends the power of nature to create a sublime experience. In The Prelude, for example, I can find many instances of man transcending the power of nature, but how he does this is less easily defined. The boat-stealing episode of book 1, for example, is undoubtedly sublime- it is dark, obscure, the speaker is completely awe-struck by the looming mountain which seems to get bigger, blacker and more menacing by the second- but in the crucial instant in which the passage is differentiated from being what Burke would call "merely odious" the speaker realises his transcendence over the power of nature and flees, thus releasing him to the safety of his "homeward journey". What causes him to flee the chaotic scenes he witnesses in nature? Surely reason; the faculty of reasoning acted upon the passions of self-preservation and suggested he flee. After the initial suspension of this faculty, it recovered to trigger the desire for self-preservation. Reason is also the major element in Kant's version of the sublime when he suggests that nature can only be chaotic at best and cannot be sublime in and of itself, but our perceptions and ability to reason about such scenarios are sublime. What then separates the Wordsworthian, or egotistical sublime, and the Kantian sublime? Particularly astute readers will also have noticed that I have conflated the Burkean sublime with these two also. Any help in deciphering the explicit differences and how to recognise the differences would be ever so greatly appreciated.
    Kind Regards,
    Winston.


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