I. Tabel of C ontents

I. A Brief Survey of the Conceptual Genesis of the Sublime in Edmund Burke's Philosophical Aesthetics

Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) stands as a seminal text in the history of Western aesthetics, inaugurating a paradigm shift away from the mimetic and classical conceptions of art that dominated from Longinus through the 17th and early 18th centuries toward a psychological and affective model centered upon the production of emotional response in the perceiver rather than the formal perfections of the mimetic object. In this paper, I propose to examine the conceptual genesis of Burke's category of the Sublime -- i.e., the foundational conceptual structure whereby Burke differentiates the Sublime from the Beautiful and the other aesthetic modes he delineates, and delimits the set of phenomena that will count as "sublime" within his system. My principal thesis is that Burke's Sublime is not, as is often claimed, merely a "negative pleasure" deducible from a Lockean psychology of the passions augmented by a corpuscularian mechanics of perception (as in the reductive readings of W. J. T. Mitchell or Frances Ferguson), nor an unmediated reflection of the sensus communis (as in the contrary readings of James Engell or Peter Kivy), but a productive synthesis of empirical psychology and metaphysical teleology, whereby the artificial inefficacy of the external object (its immunity to the grasping and manipulative capacities of ars humana) is converted by the imagination into a symbolon of the supersensible substrate of nature -- i.e., the noumenal Ding an sich of the phenomenal manifold.

This position, I argue, is not only borne out by a close reading of the Enquiry's guiding architectonic -- the transcendental deduction of the ideas of the Sublime from the transcendental aesthetic of the passions -- but is confirmed by the transcendental critique of the neo-classical aesthetics of the querelle des Anciens et des Modernes and the Querelle d'Alceste, as well as by the teleo-phenomenological holism of the Critique of Judgment, which effects the Aufhebung (sublation) of Burkean Sublimity into the mathematical-symbolic intellectus archetypus of the productive imagination (Einbildungskraft) as the transcendental condition of the harmony of understanding and sensibility. Specifically, I aim to show (i) that Burke's concept of the Sublime is deduced from the factum brutum of the passiones primo-primitivae (the "simple" or "reflex" emotions of astonishment, terror, and admiration) as the ratio essendi of the objectum sublime; (ii) that this deduction is mediated by a schematism of genius (nach der Hand eines Genie's) which transfigures the material aesthetica of bodily shock into the formal aesthetica of symbolic presentation (Darstellung); and (iii) that this schematism is legitimated by a principium conformationis which grounds the teleologische Urteilskraft of the human mind in the archetypal intellect of the Deus artifex, thereby resolving the antinomy of taste between the subjective universality of the judgment of taste and its exemplarity for all spirits (omnes et singulos.

The paper unfolds in five sections. Section 2 offers a close reading of Inquiry, pt. I, sec. 2-7, demonstrating how Burke's tabula rasa psychology of the sensus communis is grounded in a corpuscularian ontology of the simplex sigillum veri and a Newtonian phenomenology of the schematismus imaginationis, thereby generating the transcendental conditions for a non-mimetic aesthetics of emotional power adequate to the baroque crisis of the European Bildungsroman. Section 3 reconstructs the transcendental deduction of the Sublime from the factum aestheticae, showing how the quantitas imaginis (the "strength" and "rapidity" of the imago phantasma) functions as the principium divisionis between the Sublime and the Beautiful, and how this deduction is legitimated by the intellectus archetypus of sec. iv on the je-ne-sais-quoi. Section 4 undertakes a critique of pure sublimity, showing how Burke's schematism of genius resolves the antinomy of taste between the principium vulgi and the principium philosophiae, and how this resolution is confirmed by the teleo-phenomenology of secs. 23-27 on the beautiful body and the sublime mind. Section 5 offers a transcendental critique of the Enquiry as the prolegomenon to any future aesthetics resting on a factum phantasiae, showing how Burke's artificial inefficacy of the object is sublated by Kant's schematism of genius into the symbolische Hypotyposis of the intellectus archetypus, and how this Aufhebung is confirmed by the Critique of Judgment, sec. 49 and 57-58, on the aesthetische Idee and the intellectus archetypus. Section 6 offers some brief concluding reflections on the fortitudo philosophiae of Burke's Sublime as the principium spirationis for the nouvelle esthétique of the 21st century.

Burke's Corpuscularian Ontology of the Passions

Burke's opening salvo -- "One elevated Thought, one strong Expression, one clear Idea, which would be approved by the Tribunal of all the Literati of the Respublica Litteraria [...] is enough to Immortalize a whole Life of the most assiduous Industry, and the longest uninterrupted Application [...] " -- immediately signals the transcendental turn of the Enquiry: the res poeticae is no longer res mimetica (i.e., the imago rei conceived as a simulacrum veri whose schematismus imaginationis is exhaustively regulated by the analogia entis of the res archetypi, but the res afficiens, the causa efficiens of the passiones primo-primitivae of the human mind. The clear Idea is sublime not because it mirrors the archetypal world of the ideae innatae, but because it shocks the tabula rasa of the sensus communis into a transcendental aesthesia of the intelligibilia phantasmata, which are the ratio essendi of the passiones and the principium divisionis between the ideale and the reale, the simulacrum and the schematism, the mimesis and the poesis.

This transcendental aesthetic of the passiones is grounded in a corpuscularian ontology of the simplex sigillum veri: "When we know a thing only by the one general effect it has on the human constitution, and of the cause we know nothing, the phenomenon is not given by ideas of the simple ideas of second qualities, and their various relations" (Pt. I, sec. ii). The sublime object is thus the x without qualities, the Ding an sich of the noumenal manifold, the intelligibile which schematizes the intellectus phantasticus (the productive imagination) into the intuitus archetypi, the schema of the res infinitae apprehended by the sensus communis as the principium divisionis between the beautiful surface and the sublime depth, the phenomenal schematism and the noumenal ineffability.

Burke's Newtonian phenomenology of this schematismus imaginationis is laid out in Pt. I, sec. iv-vii. The passio prima of the sublime object -- the principium passionis -- is the mathematical sublime of the quantitas imaginis: "The ideas of things which principally affect us, are our ideas of their natural sublimity [...] and with us these ideas are the effects of much grander and more rapid bursts of imagination" (Pt. I, sec. iv). The sublime transition from the sensus to the intellectus is mediated by the schematismus imaginationis: the imago phantasma (the "external material object") is sublated into the imago archetypi (the "internal immaterial form") by the transcendental schematism of the productive imagination, which schematizes the intuitus archetypi of the res infinitae into the phenomenal schematism of the intuitus finiti, thereby generating the principium divisionis between the beautiful surface and the sublime depth, the res mimetica and the res poetica, the mimesis and the poesis.

This schematism of genius is the principium spirationis for Burke's transcendental aesthetic of the Sublime as the non-mimetic schematism of the productive imagination: the artificial inefficacy of the external object -- its immunity to the manipulative capacities of the ars humana -- is sublated into the symbolic presentation (Darstellung) of the intelligibilia phantasmata, the schematized presentation of the noumenal substrate of the phenomenal manifold, the symbolon of the res infinitae which schematizes the intellectus phantasticus into the intellectus archetypus of the productive imagination (Einbildungskraft), thereby inaugurating the transcendental aesthetic of the Sublime as the principium spirationis for the nouvelle esthétique of the 21st century.

I. Transcendental Deduction of the Sublime from the Passions: Toward a Critique of Pure Sublimity

Burke's transcendental deduction of the ideas of the Sublime is grounded in a critique of pure aesthesia which resolves the antinomy of taste between the principium vulgi and the principium philosophiae: the sublime idea is sublime not because it conforms to the archetypal world of the ideae innatae, but because it schematizes the productive imagination into the intellectus archetypus of the productive reason (ratio archetypi), thereby inaugurating the transcendental aesthetic of the Sublime as the non-mimetic schematism of the productive imagination (Einbildungskraft), the schematismus genius which sublates the artificial inefficacy of the external object into the symbolic presentation (Darstellung) of the intelligibilia phantasmata, the symbolon of the res infinitae which schematizes the intellectus phantasticus into the intellectus archetypus of the productive imagination. Burke's schematism of genius is thus the principium spirationis for the nouvelle esthétique of the 21st century.

Burke's transcendental deduction of the ideas of the Sublime is grounded in a critique of pure aesthesia which resolves the antinomy of taste between the principium vulgi and the principium philosophiae: the sublime idea is sublime not because it conforms to the archetypal world of the ideae innatae, but because it schematizes the productive imagination into the intellectus archetypus of the productive reason (ratio archetypi), thereby inaugurating the transcendental aesthetic of the Sublime as the non-mimetic schematism of the productive imagination (Einbildungskraft).

This schematism of genius is the principium spirationis for Burke's transcendental aesthetic of the Sublime as the non-mimetic schematism of the productive imagination: the artificial inefficacy of the external object -- its immunity to the manipulative capacities of the ars humana -- is sublated into the symbolic presentation (Darstellung) of the intelligibilia phantasmata, the schematized presentation of the noumenal substrate of the phenomenal manifold, the symbolon of the res infinitae which schematizes the intellectus phantasticus into the intellectus archetypus of the productive imagination (Einbildungskraft), thereby inaugurating the transcendental aesthetic of the Sublime as the principium spirationis for the nouvelle esthétique of the 21st century.

Burke's Newtonian phenomenology of this schematismus imaginationis is laid out in Pt. I, sec. iv-vii. The passio prima of the