sublime

is the death drive which is experienced as an uncanny disruption of subjectivity at its very core.

The sublime is the death drive which is experienced as an uncanny disruption of subjectivity at its very core, and any authentic theological thinking must grapple with the profound logic of this death drive, as well as the difficulties surrounding sublimation.

is an intrinsic combination of pleasure and pain: The pleasure that reason should exceed all presentation, the pain that imagination or our feeling should not be equal to the concept.

As Lyotard explains, Kant describes the unrepresentable aspects of 'the real sublime sentiment' as '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' (PC, 81... cf. Kant [1764] 1973: 45... and [1790] 2000: 128-31). Lyotard, then, argues that Kant's aesthetic of the sublime is modern in contrast to a 'postmodern' sublime which 'puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself' (PC, 81). (Sim 217)

is a repression of the dark and obscure power of the uncanny into the interior, into the institutionalized practice of the mysteries.

The sublime, in contrast, involves a repression of the dark and obscure power of the uncanny into the interior, or, as in Homer's days, into the institutionalized practice of the Mysteries.

is a repression of the threat of the uncanny redirected back into the interior, which frees up the subject to continue to be interested in that which is beyond the self and beyond the grasp of the self.

Thus, the direction of the repression is reversed. Repression no longer takes the form of a projection outward, as in the uncanny... rather, it is redirected back to the interior. What is the gain of this second repression' Apparently, the opposite of the preservation of a clearly defined self-image or strong ego boundaries is at stake. After the destabilizing threat caused by the uncanny has been repressed inward, the subject's orientation can still be directed outward. There continues to be interest in that which is beyond the self, and beyond the grasp of the self. Instead of safeguarding the self, then, there is in the sublime an inclination to lose the self in the extensions of the ungraspable and unattainable, and thus to engage with it.

I know of nothing sublime which is not some modification of power.

is an experience that violates the limits of imagination in order to conceptualize an inconceivable disruption, to represent the unrepresentable, or to make conscious what, like truth, cannot be an object of conscious reflection.

the sublime is. . . an experience that violates the limits of imagination in order to conceptualize an inconceivable disruption, to represent the unrepresentable, or to make conscious what, like truth, cannot be an object of conscious reflection.

is an object elevated to the level of the thing.

Lacan's definition of the sublime ('an object elevated to the level of the Thing') could be rendered as 'the sublime is an object, a piece of reality, into which the real of desire is inscribed by means of an anamorphotic grimace.' (Zizek 1991:68)

is as an experience, a cathartic outlet, a clearing of the body's constipated fibers.

Burke had pictured the sublime experience as a cathartic outlet, a clearing of the body's constipated fibers, and was criticized by Kant for his empiricism.

sublime, n.Definitions

sublime