Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-zlgnt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-30T19:32:17.916Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Kant’s Mathematical Sublime and the Role of the Infinite: Reply to Crowther

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2015

Simon D. Smith
Simon D. Smith*
Affiliation:
University College London
*
Email: uctysds@live.ucl.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper offers an analysis of Kant’s account of the mathematical sublime with reference to his claim that ‘Nature is thus sublime in those of its appearances the intuition of which brings with them the idea of its infinity’ (CJ, 5: 255). In undertaking this analysis I challenge Paul Crowther’s interpretation of this species of aesthetic experience, and I reject his interpretation as not being reflective of Kant’s actual position. I go on to show that the experience of the mathematical sublime is necessarily connected with the progression of the imagination in its move towards the infinite.

Keywords

mathematical sublimeestimation of magnitudeprogression of the imaginationthe infinite

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 99 - 120
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Allison, Henry E. (2001) Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crowther, Paul (1989) The Kantian Sublime: From Morality to Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Crowther, Paul (2010) The Kantian Aesthetic: From Knowledge to the Avant-Garde. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (1993) Kant and the Experience of Freedom: Essays on Aesthetics and Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (2006) ‘Bridging the Gulf: Kant’s Project in the Third Critique’. In Graham Bird (ed.), A Companion to Kant (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 423–440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1998) Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2000) Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, Patricia M. (1996) ‘Kant’s Sublime: A Form of Pure Aesthetic Reflective Judgment’. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 54(2), 165–180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myskja, Bjørn K. (2002) The Sublime in Kant and Beckett: Aesthetic Judgment, Ethics and Literature. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar