«Absolute, non comparative magnum»: The connotation of the mathematical in the Kantian Sublime

Abstract

In the Analytic of the Sublime in Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment, the connection between pure aesthetic judgment and mathematics appears at first sight as both surprising and unprecedented within Kantian aesthetics. The sublime is mathematical (as well as dynamical), leaving the attentive reader to ponder how this relationship between the mathematical and a feeling that claims universal communicability is possible. This distinction between mathematical and dynamic forms of the sublime is entirely original and lacks historical precedent. Neither Pseudo-Longinus nor Joseph Addison nor Edmund Burke nor Henry Home nor John Baillie (Scheck 2009, pp. 34ff), nor even Kant himself in his pre-critical work, Observations on the Feelings of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1764),^[1] made this distinction between two types of the sublime: mathematical and dynamical. Moreover, Kant emphasizes the autonomy of pure aesthetic judgments from both particular concepts and specific sensations, as neither of these representations constitutes the foundation of aesthetic judgment. Consequently, the origin of the association between the sublime and the mathematical, as well as the dynamical, remains opaque. This article will focus exclusively on the nexus between the mathematical and the sublime, invoking the synthesis of composition from Kant's First Critique as a possible explanation of this Kantian innovation.

^[1] Kulenkampff claims that Burke's influence on the sublime is not limited to Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, but extends to the Critique of the Power of Judgment: „So ist zum Beispiel bei Burke in der Unterscheidung von Endlichkeit und Rissigkeit als Quellen des Erhabenen (verg. Burkes Schrift Kap. IV, Nr. 13. u. ö.) phänomenologisch die Unterscheidung zwischen dem Mathematisch-Erhabenen und dem Dynamisch-Erhabenen vorgebildet. Ebenso findet sich bei Burke, allerdings ganz psychologisch gedacht, die Erklärung, daß die psychische Wirkung des Erhabenen auf einem Wechsel zwischen Krampf und Lösung beruhe (IV, 3) und das positive Ergebnis eine reinigende Erschütterung sein kann (IV, 7) (verg. KdUB 80ff. u. 102ff.; 75)» (Kulenkampff (1974): 11). It is possible that Kant took the empirical perspective of Burke's division of the sublime to give it a systematic critical foundation in his philosophy, however, Burke does not consider the mathematical in any way in his study of the beautiful and the sublime. Consequently, it remains an original division in Kantian critical aesthetics.