The article shows the critical analysis of the analytics of the sublime from Kant’s Critique of Judgment, presented by V. Basch. In his work Essai critique sur l’esthetique de Kant Basch tries to prove Kantian division between the mathematical and dynamically sublime superfluous. In his interpretation of the problem also other aspects of Kant’s theory of the sublime (such as referring to the idea of the infinity and his description of the process of ‘grasping and uniting’ in the experience of mathematical sublime) are needless. On the grounds of his criticism Basch gives his own theory of the sublime. According to it the very nature is sublime, and the glorification of human nature is given not in calling to the ideas of reason, but in the uniting with nature.
Taine postulates that the status of the humanities should be equal with that of the sciences. The claim is based on a conviction, shared by other positivist philosophers, that both kinds of knowledge should share the same methodology. Thus, all knowledge turns out to be a collection of facts and relations among them. The facts are subordinate to some major facts being their “causes” or “principal features”. The task of a work of art is to extract such facts. The emergence of the characteristic feature of a phenomenon allows us to describe a work as a perfect one. The value of the work depends on the kind of a characteristic feature, being more or less universal.
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