A Talk From the International Conference Aesthetics and
Ethics
March 18th, 1997
I will talk about the contemporary sublime and its nature as an ethical sentiment instead of the established aesthetical theme.
In essence, I want to distinguish between the moment of the sublime experience, in particular, the emotional aspects of it, and the intellectual judgments which are constructed afterwards.
Also, the intrinsic nature of the events themselves need to be re-assessed in light of postmodern culture.
My thesis will be, that today's sublime is an ethical event, not an aesthetical one.
I'd like to preface this by stating that there is most definitely still access to the experience of the sublime in postmodern society, where natural disasters are not a serious threat to everyday life. This should be viewed positively; the sublime moment is now a common occurrence: not dependent on a "nature experience." The sublime is no longer a rare and unpredictable natural occurrence, it is commonplace.
experience." The sublime is no longer a rare and unpredictable natural occurrence, it is commonplace.Also, it is not my intention today to review Kant and the modernists, but it is impossible to discuss the sublime without some reference to its historical background, which I'll be using to contrast with the contemporary sublime.
Jean-François Lyotard explains the difference between the modern and postmodern sublime as follows:
"... modern aesthetics is an aesthetics of the sublime, though a nostalgic one. It allows the unpresentable to be put forward only as the missing contents; but the form, because of its recognizable consistency, continues to offer the reader or viewer matter for solace and pleasure." But according to Lyotard, we should not be fooled by the nostalgic form. "... These sentiments do not constitute the real sublime sentiment, which is an intrinsic combination of pleasure and pain: the pleasure that reason should exceed all presentation, the pain that imagination or sensibility should not be equal to the concept."
In other words, the modern sublime would be an aesthetical pleasure in the boundlessness of the brain, and the ethical pain is in the inability of the tangible world to come close to the concept that lives in the imagination. But in postmodern culture this modern relationship that Lyotard presents is no longer in the realm of perceptions -- of how we see the world. It is no longer aesthetics.
The positive and common experience of the postmodern or contemporary sublime resides in ethics. In the postmodern sublime we sustain a contradiction to enable an means for living a good life. Since the sublime now manifests itself in an intangible gap between consciousness and the material world, where and when do we experience it? In the past, the inability of humans to represent the absolute is the source of the sublime feeling in us. For Kant, a feeling of inadequacy arose from the realization of this human shortcoming. Typical of modernist ideas, this inadequacy is tinged with sadness. But for postmodernists, this gap between being human, with all of our human abilities, and the Thing which we cannot create, is the sublime. The gap is manifested in our imagination, in our ability to sustain this contradiction, with no expectations of sadness or joy in our non-absolute (mortal) Being. No representation of the sublime Thing can adequately present that feeling. But the sublime then becomes an "object in which we can experience this very impossibility, this permanent failure of the representation to reach after the Thing."
If the sublime is the Thing which is never there, does the lack of something, within a representation, evoke the sublime? If absence is the key to the sublime, is anything that is implied, and not shown, in a representation, a producer of this feeling? Is the sublime present in Hitchcock's violence? Because a shadow of violence is depicted and not the actual stabbing? The pure implication of something - without it being shown, is not in itself enough to generate the sublime. This is not a "failure of representation" it is only a narrative device. The gap between what is being shown (occurring within our reason) and what is happening (a manifestation of imagination) is the sublime. The mere use of a device to suggest something, could be a means to this, but it could also be a mere contrivance.
We see the postmodern sublime appear in art and in mass media. In art it is used in terms of an `event' in painting. This event is what our consciousness cannot formulate. What does not mentally solidify is that something happens. Or that it happens. The something that happens is the event of the sublime. We ask, "Is it happening?" What is happening - the event - can only be explained in terms of the displacement of consciousness that is sublime. This temporal event is not the only method of experiencing the sublime in fine art. Any representation which either through absence, or the apparent generation of a space between the imagination and the actual can present the sublime sentiment.
According to the modernist understanding, the sublime Thing cannot be represented, but the postmodern paradox is as such: we create a thing in which the sublime feeling is reproduced without the object/image itself being the sublime Thing. That is to say, it is only sublime when it is experienced. This may seem like the tree that does or doesn't make a sound when it falls in the forest, but the difference lies with the intent. A tree has no choice whether to make a sound or not, we have the choice to create something which evokes the sublime experience, as well as to put ourselves in a situation where we experience the sublime.
In a postmodern world of language games, where anything goes, and when the superficial "ontology of style" attains importance, the sublime experience presents us with an inescapable confrontation with the inner substance which makes us human. This is no game, no fashion. For the split second of the sublime experience, regardless of the source, we humans are faced with a incontestable truth. The "stuff" or matter of ourselves, of our lives is brought to the surface and enlarged. Being is the only thing presented in that moment. The essence of natality and mortality, the habitation of a being who lives in the interstices of enormity and microscopic insignificance. Solid space, emptiness, pleasure and pain.
The sublime is what "dismantles consciousness," and leaves us only with imagination. To experience the contradiction of the sublime is pure imagination. This is imagination in its purest form. This moment of confrontation with your own thoughts, your own inner Being is imagination; it resides in the realm of ethics. It is the momentary realization of your place in the world. By contrast, intellectual reason, which follows this moment is responsible for determining our sense of beauty; this is aesthetics. The postmodern sublime is important for the Event-in-Itself. Where Kant chose reason as an exterior means to view the sublime, we choose to experience it through imagination. Instead of the inherited attitude toward the sublime as "negative pleasure," I prefer to call it "positive pain."
Our confrontation with this inside "stuff" is what defines the sublime as an ethical experience. The face to face situation of you and your human condition in a world of cultural numbness and games becomes the only truth. This truth presents itself as something that humans want to live over and over again. How can I live a good life? What is my place? What is my belief system? What is it to be a human being? During the sublime experience we are offered a glimpse of the answers.
Aesthetics deals with our perceptions of the outside world; perceptions which originate outside of ourselves. Ethics originates from the inside and moves toward the outside. The internal event of the sublime occurs despite our perceptions, and because of what is inside of us as humans. The instantaneous modernist sublime experience happened in the realm of perceptions, in the realm of aesthetics. The long term effect of that experience was the ethical ramification. There is a change or even a reversal in the implication of the modern and postmodern sublime for aesthetics and ethics. We postmodernists experience this in the causes and effects of the sublime. The sublime event is the confrontation with our own humanity. The aesthetic rationalization of this experience comes later. We put ourselves in a situation to experience the sublime, to see the sublime because for that instant, through a contradictory experience, we gain an illusive insight about how to live a good life.
For more information please visit the