What is the Sublime?
Ecologies of Emptiness, Aesthetics, and the Visual Arts
What is the Sublime?
Ecologies of Emptiness, Aesthetics, and the Visual Arts
Buying pre-order items
Ebook and audiobook pre-orders will be delivered on the publication date.
Payment for this pre-order will be taken when the item becomes available
Description
An elaboration on the concept of the sublime that both clarifies the historical confusion, and offers recourse to the compulsion that characterizes our contemporary lives.
The sublime has been an elusive concept since its introduction by Longinus. No one seems to agree on a definition of the term; neither the idealists (Burke, Kant), nor the modernists (Barnett Newman), nor the postmodernists (Lyotard). 'Sublime moments' reveal the unobscured, undistracted, and unselfconscious nature of our minds-free of worry, anxiety, and fear. This describes what, in Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy, is called emptiness (sunyata)-the genuine, underlying nature of who we are. Christopher Huck elaborates on this concept through a dialectical inquiry into the now-classic Burke-Kant sublime, which is grounded in either a notion of fear (Burke), or of something too vast to take in, but still somehow subject to rational containment (Kant). Huck demonstrates his view of the 'empty-sublime' through a revivification of the aesthetic experience which provokes and illuminates art's potential as expressive of the empty-sublime experience, evidenced in the work of visual artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Agnes Martin, and Wolfgang Laib. These artists exemplify art that emerges from a space of vividness, clarity, and unselfconscious openness; that is to say, a lucid emptiness.
Accessibility Information
Additional accessibility information
- EPUB 3.0
- Conforms with the requirements of EPUB Accessibility Spec v1.1
- WCAG level AA
- WCAG v2.2 compliant
- accessibility@bloomsbury.com
Hazards
The publication contains no hazards
Support for non-visual reading
- No accessibility features offered by the reading system, device or reading software are disabled or otherwise unusable with the product
- Has alternative text descriptions for images
Visual adjustments
Appearance of the text and page layout can be modified according to the capabilities of the reading system (font family and size, spaces, as well as color of background and text)
Navigation
- Page list to go to pages from the print source version
- Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation
- All or substantially all textual matter is arranged in a single logical reading order
- Content is enhanced with ARIA roles to optimize organization and facilitate navigation
- Purposes of all links are made clear
Rich content
Language tagging provided
Table of Contents
1. Sublime beginnings
1.1. Longinus, Peri hupsous, and the sublime in antiquity
1.2. Basilios Bessarion and the (re)discovery of Peri hupsous
1.3. The sublime in Renaissance Europe and Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux's Traitè
1.4. John Dennis and sublime's swerve into theistic passions and terrors
1.5. The sublime of eighteenth-century British critics and writers
1.6. Kant: the final arbiter of the sublime?
2. Incoherencies, fallacies, and parallel readings
2.1. Arguments against modern theories of the sublime: Sircello and Forsey
2.2. The Sublime as Sunyata
2.3. Is Sunyata the Key to the Sublime?
2.4. Parallel Readings: Discourses on the Sublime, Discourses on Sunyata
3. Nihilism, Eternalism, and Sunyata: the Middle Way Between Extremes
3.1. The long debate beginning with Parmenides
3.2. Heidegger and das Nichts
3.3. Sartre and le néant
4. Sunyata, the Sublime, and the Visual Arts
4.1. The (re)emergence of the sublime in New York's Abstract Expressionist movement, 1940s and 1950s
4.2. Newman, Danto, and the Postmodern Sublime
4.3. Robert Rauschenberg: “I try to act in that gap…”
4.4. Agnes Martin: “It is what is known forever in the mind…”
4.5. Wolfgang Laib: “There is no beginning and no ending…”
5. Ecologies of Sunyata, Aesthetics, and the Visual Arts
5.1. Sunyata and visual artists
5.2. Sunyata, aesthetics, and everyday life
5.3. The religiosophy of Sunyata
Bibliography
Index
Product details
| Published | Jan 07 2027 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 224 |
| ISBN | 9781978759923 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 15 tables |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Related Titles
