Returns of the Sublime
Positing and Performative in Kant, Fichte, and Schiller
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10611331 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andrzej Warminski (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2001 |
| Volume | 116 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 964-978 |
| Publication date | 2001-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern Language Notes (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0149-6611 • E-ISSN: 2326-1978 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/mln.2001.0086 |
| OpenAlex | W2059271392 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 3 |
There is more than a little irony in an afterthought Fichte appends to his account and examples of what he calls thetic judgments. After having explained why "I am" constitutes "the first and foremost judgment of this type" and how all judgments subsumed under it, "i.e., under the absolute positing of the self," are also of this type--"for example, man is free"--Fichte adds, after a dash: "The judgment of taste, A is beautiful (so far as A contains a feature [Merkmal] also present in the ideal of beauty), is likewise a thetic judgment; for I cannot compare this feature (Merkmal) with the ideal, since the latter is unknown to me. It is, rather, a mental task (eine Aufgabe meines Geistes) derived from the absolute positing of myself, to discover this ideal, though one that could only be discharged after a completed approximation to the infinite (nur nach einer vollendeten Annäherung zum Unendlichen)--Thus Kant and his followers have very properly described these judgments as infinite, though nobody, so far as I know, has explained them in a clear and determinate manner" (WL, 37-8, 115). 1 It is appropriate--and convenient for me--that Fichte here names both Kant and his followers, for the irony of his complaint--that no one has been able to explain aesthetic reflexive judgments in a satisfactory manner--points both backwards and forwards: back to the Kantian problematic and its inconclusive solution in the third Critique; and forward to the solution--or non-solution--of the German idealists, starting with Schiller and his peculiar appropriation of [End Page 964] Kant (and of Fichte) in the Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. As always, the irony cuts several ways, sparing no one, and it is nicely legible here in Fichte's Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre toward the end of his discussion of the third Grundsatz. Indeed, one could say with some justice that Fichte's relatively off-hand remark about aesthetic judgment represents something like a pivot or an articulating joint between the critical system of Kant and the German idealist systems to follow. In explaining how so we may also go some distance in understanding how ironic
Absolute (philosophy) · Aesthetics · Beauty · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics) · Irony · nobody · Performative utterance · Reflexive pronoun · Sublime · Humanities and Social Sciences · Kantian Philosophy and Modern Interpretations · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,17 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2020 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |