"if you think childlike, you'll stay young. If you keep your energy going, and do everything with a little flair, you're gunna stay young. But most people do things without energy, and they atrophy their mind as well as their body. you have to think young, you have to laugh a lot, and you have to have good feelings for everyone in the world, because if you don't, it's going to come inside, your own poison, and it's over" Jerry Lewis "I don’t believe in the irreversibility of situations" Deleuze
Consider, for example, Picasso as he is painting a particular picture. At any moment, there are probably several alternative brush strokes that he could make - all of which would yield a perfectly recognizable Picasso picture. (256bc)
“Power is a capacity that is superior to great obstacles.” Dominion is the superiority to the resistance of something powerful. “Nature considered in aesthetic judgment as a power that has no dominion over us is dynamically sublime” (§28 143d).
Only when nature is represented as arousing fear may we judge it dynamically sublime (143-144). And we fear only those powers whose resistance we cannot overcome.
But while being in the state of fear, we cannot judge something as sublime, because there is no pleasure yet, which comes by means of the joyfulness resulting when we escape the danger (144bc).
Frightening things in nature, such as thunderclouds, steep cliffs, volcanoes, hurricanes, and immense waterfalls, “make our capacity to resist into an insignificant trifle in comparison with their power.” But when we joyously flee them to safety, we come to admire them more, and call them sublime, because “they elevate the strength of our soul above its usual level, and allow us to discover within ourselves a capacity for resistance of quite another kind, which gives us the courage to measure ourselves against the apparent all-powerfulness of nature” (144c-145a).
So just as with the mathematical sublime in which our limitations were overcome and led us to respect humanity, so too when experiencing the dynamic sublime we face our physical powerlessness, while at the same time seeing our power to persevere despite the immense threat to our safety. “In this way, in our aesthetic judgment nature is judged as sublime not insofar as it arouses fear, but rather because it calls forth our power (which is not part of nature) to regard those things about which we are concerned (goods, health and life) as trivial, and hence to regard its power (to which we are, to be sure, subjected in regard to these things) as not the sort of dominion over ourselves and our authority to which we would have to bow if it came down to our highest principles and their affirmation or abandonment. Thus nature is here called sublime merely because it raises the imagination to the point of presenting those cases in which the mind can make palpable to itself the sublimity of its own vocation even over nature” (145c).
It is on account of their capacity to not shrink from danger that primitive warriors inspire in us the greatest admiration (146b). And hence the general should be revered more than the statesman, because war has something sublime about it, and those that fight have had more dynamically sublime experiences (146c).
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews.
When we estimate a magnitude numerically, this is mathematical; when we estimate by mere intuition, ‘measured by the eye,’ this is aesthetic (§26 134d).
But even mathematical estimation relies on an aesthetic estimate of a common measure which may be computed variously (135b). (This aesthetic estimate is obtained by means of averaging).
In mathematical estimation, there can be no greatest magnitude, because numbers succeed to infinity. But on account of the limitations of our faculties, there can be a greatest estimated aesthetic magnitude: if there is a point to which anything greater is beyond our comprehension, it does not matter how much greater, because all will seem absolutely great. This caries with it the idea of the sublime and produces an emotion “which no mathematical estimation of magnitudes by means of numbers can produce” (135bc).
In order to use a quantum in the imagination to estimate a magnitude, there must be two facultative activities: apprehension and comprehension. We apprehend an object when it is given part-by-part in series, and we then comprehend them through synthetic unification. But we have only so much capacity to retain apprehensions, so when a certain quantity has been obtained, we begin to forget those furthest back in our retention. So we cannot comprehend something whose magnitude is beyond our retentional capacities (135c-d).
These aesthetic judgments must be pure, and thus not involve teleology. Hence the sublime is not shown in products of art, which were made with a human end in mind that determines its form and magnitude; nor is the sublime found in natural things whose “concept already brings with it a determinate end,” as for example animals with known natural determinations. Rather, the mathematical sublime can only be found in raw nature merely insofar as it contains magnitudes, and not whether it by itself alone brings charm or the emotion felt in times of danger (136bc).
“An object is monstrous if by its magnitude it annihilates the end which its concept constitutes.” An object is colossal when the mere presentation of its concept is almost too great for all presentation. “A pure judgment on the sublime, however, must have no end of the object as its determining ground if it is to be aesthetic and not mixed-up with any judgment of the understanding or of reason” (136-137).
When magnitudes are estimated conceptually, there is no force that pushes the imagination to comprehend the infinite, because the imagination can schematize in a way that presents the entire magnitude in such a manner that it can be grasped as one abstract quantity (137c-d).
But in aesthetic apprehensions, the “voice of reason” requires that all given magnitudes be comprehended into intuition, and demands that even the infinite be comprehended (138ab). However, the infinite is absolutely great, and cannot be compared to a standard measure, and hence cannot be comprehended into one homogenous quantity. “But what is most important is that even being able to think of it as a whole indicates a faculty of the mind which surpasses every standard of sense;” and “even to be able to think the given infinite without contradiction requires a faculty in the human mind that is itself supersensible” (138b).
“Nature is thus sublime in those of its appearances the intuition of which brings with them the idea of its infinity” (138d).
Normally in aesthetic judgment, the free play of the imagination connects comprehensions to concepts in the understanding: the synthesized representation of a rose is matched with its concept. But we have no concept of the absolute whole, because we have never comprehended it; however, the faculty of reason contains the a priori idea of the absolute whole, and so reason steps-in to restore harmony among the faculties by matching the representation of the faculties’ limitations with this idea of the absolute totality.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews.
The mathematical sublime is absolutely great.
A magnitude is a multitude of homogeneous elements that together constitute a unity, and magnitudes can be cognized by themselves alone. However, the greatness of something depends on judging not only the multitude or number of homogeneous elements in the object’s magnitude, but also the magnitude of each unity, and this magnitude requires a common measure, although no absolute concept of magnitude is possible (on account of an infinite regress: each magnitude derives its value by relating to some other, and hence there can be no first one. This is why numerical estimation of magnitude – no matter how abstractly computed – is grounded in aesthetic apprehension) (132b). The common measure is aesthetic and presumed subjectively universal, and may be empirical, as in the case of average magnitude, or a priori, which are given in concreto, such as the “magnitude of a certain virtue” or “the magnitude of the accuracy or inaccuracy of an observation or measurement” (133b).
But when something is absolutely great, that is, sublime, then there is no standard of measurement outside it, only one within it. “It is a magnitude that is equal only to itself,” and thus the sublime is not found in nature but rather only in ideas (133-134).
On account of its self-relative absolute magnitude: “that is sublime in comparison with which everything else is small” (134a).
We can use microscopes and telescopes to see continually smaller-and-smaller or larger-and-larger objects, but our imagination strives to attain-to the infinite scope, and our reason contains a real idea of absolute totality, thus “the very inadequacy of our faculty for estimating the magnitude of the things of the sensible world awakens the feeling of a supersensible faculty in us” (134b-c). [For Deleuze, it is not the imagination’s concordant efforts with reason to attain to the absolute scope that constitutes the “supersensible;” rather it is the detection of irreducible difference resulting when the faculties jointly perceive something differently and communicate their differences to one another.]
Hence as well: “that is sublime which even to be able to think of demonstrates a faculty of the mind that surpasses every measure of the senses” (134c).
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews.
Judgments of beauty concern the form of the object, and because form is a matter of the object’s delimitations, judgments of beauty are concerned with limitation. Judgments of the sublime, however, are made in regard to something formless. As being a matter of form, judgments of beauty concern quality; and as being a matter of limitlessness, judgments of sublime concern quantity (§23 128c).
The feeling of pleasure differs for both judgments. The beautiful directly provides a feeling of the promotion of life, resulting partly from the free play of the imagination. The sublime induces pleasure only indirectly, and it results after a “feeling of a momentary inhibition of the vital powers and the immediately following and all the more powerful outpouring of them; hence as an emotion it seems to be not play but something serious in the activity of the imagination. Hence it is also incompatible with charms, and, since the mind is not merely attracted by the object, but is also always reciprocally repelled by it, the satisfaction in the sublime does not so much contain positive pleasure as it does admiration or respects, i.e., it deserves to be called negative pleasure” (§23 128-129).
The most import and difference between the two types of judgments is that beauty is comprehendible and seems predetermined to be in accord with our powers of judgment, and hence is purposive, whereas the sublime is contrapurposive to our power of judgment, because we cannot comprehend it; hence it does “violence to our imagination, but is nevertheless judged all the more sublime for that” (129b).
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews.
When discussing Kant’s notion of common sense, Deleuze adds an unconventional meaning, the common exercise of the faculties, which might at first seem unfounded in Kant’s text. The following will explore the paragraphs in the Critique of Judgment which provide for Deleuze’s interesting construal of Kant’s common sense.
In §20, Kant distinguishes common sense from common understanding. Judgments of taste may be made according to either a subjective or objective determination. In subjective judgments of sensory taste, one still presumes that this judgment holds universally, but does not come to that conclusion by means of concepts. To presume that one’s judgments of sensory taste hold universally for all people requires the principle of common sense, which means that one holds that all people subjectively sense something in such a similar manner as to come to the same judgment about it. In contrast, when one makes a judgment of taste by means of concepts that leads one to believe that the judgment holds universally and necessarily, then the judgment was made according to a principle of common understanding (122b).
We can know that a judgment or mental state is common sense (shared universally) when it is communicable, which occurs even in cases of sensuous comprehensions. Objects are given to us sensuously in pieces, in a series of apprehensions, and the imagination synthesizes this manifold and unifies it with a concept in the understanding. This harmonious exercise of the faculties has a pleasant feeling that although subjective is universally communicable, because the same object activating the same faculties in all people should produce the same feeling, and this is Kant’s common sense (§21 122-123).
So because the common sense that is universal among all people is grounded individually in everyone’s harmonious facultative exercises, Deleuze connects these two sorts of common sense under the same term, and writes “Our supposition of a ‘communicability of feeling’ (without intervention of a concept) is therefore based on the idea of a subjective accord of the faculties, in so far as this accord itself forms a common sense (CJ paras 39,40)” (Deleuze 49).
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties. Transl. Hugh Tomlinson & Barbara Habberjam.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews.
Normally a sensuous experience of color or sound cannot be considered beautiful, because only universally communicable non-subjective judgments may deem something as beautiful. However, they can be judged beautiful if they are considered pure: colors and sounds are vibrations or pulses whose effect is not merely their immediate impression on our eyes and ears, but as well results from our synthesizing the play of impressions into a representation of the sound or color. Because such a representation can be universally communicated, sounds and colors in this pure form may be deemed beautiful (§14 108-109).
Because in order for these representations to be pure there cannot be any disturbances or interruptions of other sensations: “all simple colors, insofar as they are pure, are held then beautiful; those that are mixed do not have this advantage” (109c).
But what is essential in all the arts is ‘drawing,’ which provides form. “All form of the objects of the senses (of the outer as well as, mediately, the inner) is either shape or play: in the latter case, either play of shapes (in space, mime, and dance), or mere play of sensations (in time).” Even though the charm of colors may be added, it remains the drawing or form that is essential in judging something as beautiful (110b).
(page numbers from: Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews.
Transcendentally speaking (i.e., without regard for empirical matters, such as pleasure), an end is the object of a concept insofar as the concept is considered as the cause (the ground of possibility) of its object. In other words, when the concept of something is presupposed for that object to be, or for it to be thought, then it is an end. Purposiveness is the concept of an object being the cause of that object. The representation of the end is presupposed for it to be an outcome. Pleasure is our consciousness of such a representation, which allows us to maintain this state of awareness; while displeasure is the consciousness of the representation that thwarts pleasure (§10 105b). Will is the faculty of desire’s being in relation to representations of ends. Something is purposive only if it relates to ends and thus also to will (§10 105c).
(page numbers from: Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews.
