Ethical, political and rhetorical discussions on the sublime

In his book, Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant defines the sublime as "nature considered in an aesthetic judgment as might that has no dominion over us". This thesis aims a discussion on the ethical, political, and rhetorical aspects of the sublime. To accomplish that, first, the ethical – aesthetical concepts of British empiricist philosophers, namely, Earl of Shaftesbury's the sense of right or wrong, Hutcheson's uniformity in diversity and Burke's passion for self-preservation will be explained. Then, the transformation of these concepts into Kant's moral law, reflective judgments, categorical imperative, dynamic and mathematical sublime, and autonomy will be examined. In particular, the derivation of the concept of autonomy through a transformation from negative freedom in the Critique of Pure Reason to positive freedom in the Critique of Practical Reason will be explained. By establishing a connection between this concept of autonomy and the idea of Enlightenment over Kant's article "What is Enlightenment?" and Foucault's complementary one to it, the characteristic of the Enlightenment will be matched with the critical attitude. The last ethical aspect of the sublime will be the comparison between the flaneur and the dandy, both of which exemplifies the critical attitude of modern individual. While discussing the political aspects of the sublime, it will be shown that both Hume's concept of the critic and Kant's concept of the genius, "by which nature gives rule to art", contradict with Kant's concept of discipline culture. Afterwards, the roles of sublimation, of sense of guilt and of conscience in Sigmund Freud interpretation of civilization, as the product of the tension between the object-instinct of Eros and the ego-instinct of Thanatos, will be analyzed. The discussion on the political aspect will result in showing that Marcuse's Marcuse's concept of affirmative culture, shaped around the idea of soul (Seele), contradicts with the Kantian disciplinary culture. In the discussion of its rhetorical aspects, Longinus's five resources of sublime – great thoughts, strong emotion, certain figures of thought and speech, noble diction, and dignified word arrangement – will be the starting point. Accordingly, while the correlation between sublimitas and figura in the analysis of Auerbach's narrative styles will exemplify the sublime's resource for certain figures of thought of speech, Bakhtin's differentiation between monoglossia and heteroglossia, monologic and dialogic traditions will exemplify the resource for noble diction. Considering the proposition in Plato's Sophist dialogue, as an example of dialogic text, that mimesis (imitation) constitutes false opinion, it will be stated that Matthew Arnold's definition of high culture, which exemplifies the resource for dignified word arrangement, is nothing more than a rhetoric imitating the nobility of the soul with the features of sublimitas style.