2 Problems for Kant’s Account

Kant divides his discussion of experiences of sublimity into the mathematical and the dynamical sublime. He describes both as involving the interaction between a formless, or boundless, object and our faculties of cognition. A case of the mathematical sublime typically arises when a vast object, paradigmatically a natural formation such as a mountain range or ocean, leads theoretical reason to demand of imagination that it comprehend the entirety of a formless object in a single intuition (§26 5: 254). For reasons I will explain later, a truly sublime object outstrips the imagination’s powers of comprehension, the process which unifies the manifold of intuition apprehended by imagination (FI §VI 20: 220). As a result, we experience pain at imagination’s failing, coupled, however, with pleasure at the realization of imagination’s attempted conformity to reason’s demand for completeness (§27 5: 257–8). In this respect, imagination is purposive for our ‘supersensible vocation’ (§27 5: 257). Similarly, in the case of the dynamical sublime, when threatening natural scenes, such as overhanging cliffs or stormy oceans, portend our physical destruction, we experience a pain, coupled with a pleasure attaching to our realization that such natural forces have no dominion over our practical reason, which is free in its moral capacity from any physical determination.

An aesthetic judgement on the sublime, moreover, has a claim to universal validity ‘in regard to every subject’ (§23 5: 244). This last detail demands a deduction, or justification, and Kant believes he provides one in the exposition of experiences of sublimity. He explicitly gives a reason why no separate deduction of judgements of the sublime is needed:

What, then, are Kant’s reasons for thinking that objects of nature are only ‘improperly’ called sublime, in contrast to natural objects of beauty, whose aesthetic predicate correctly applies? As has been noted (cf. Westphal Reference Westphal1998: 39–40), Kant gives four interrelated reasons. First, sublimity concerns formless, or limitless, objects, in contrast with the natural forms which invoke the pleasures of beauty (§25 5: 250). Second, objects of nature which usually provoke feelings of sublimity do not lead ‘to particular objective principles and forms of nature corresponding to these’ (§23 5: 246). Here, Kant is explicitly contrasting natural scenes provocative of the sublime with natural beauty. Because of the purposiveness of the form of the latter in respect to our cognitive faculties, we are led to think of nature as the intentional product of an agent on an analogy with art. This, in turn, ‘invites profound investigations into the possibility of such a form’ (§23 5: 246). Chaotic scenes usually associated with the sublime, however, do not lead by themselves to such an investigation of nature on account of their contrapurposiveness. From this, Kant claims ‘that the concept of the sublime in nature is far from being as important and rich in consequence as that of its beauty’ (§23 5: 246).

A third reason Kant gives for denying sublimity to objects of nature is that the sublime is that which is ‘absolutely great’ or that ‘in comparison with which everything else is small’ (§25 5: 250). Since any object of nature, no matter how large, can be deemed small in comparison to a larger unit of measure that encompasses, say, two objects the size of the first, no such object can be sublime. Fourth, Kant says that objects of nature evocative of the sublime do not elevate the mind, but cause pain by violating the imagination (§26 5: 256), whereas what is sublime, properly speaking, results in a pleasant feeling.

Commentators have challenged each of these reasons given by Kant to explain why no separate deduction is needed. Here, I will outline two of the strongest objections. The first objection is that it is not clear in what sense certain natural phenomena are formless. If Kant’s claim is that formless objects cannot be, properly speaking, sublime, and if natural objects are not formless in the requisite sense, then the criterion of formlessness by itself cannot exclude natural objects from being sublime. There are, in fact, two good reasons to think that natural objects typically involved in feelings of sublimity are not formless. First, just like purposive natural beauty, objects which invoke a feeling of sublimity interact with our cognitive faculties, specifically imagination and reason, in a distinctive way. As a result, it seems that such objects have to have a certain order, or form, which makes them suitable to evoke sublimity. It is not just any case of apparent formlessness which succeeds in invoking the sublime, after all. One might even go so far as to say that the particular apparent formlessness of such objects is itself the form required for the relevant experience to arise (cf. Guyer Reference Guyer1979: 267). Second, it is not even clear that objects typically provocative of the sublime are apparently formless. They are finite, have definite boundaries, and can (in some cases at least) be perceived as unitary objects (cf. Westphal Reference Westphal1998: 40).

The second objection to Kant’s conflating the exposition and the deduction of judgements of sublimity is that it is unclear whether he has explained all that he needs to explain in his exposition for it to amount to a deduction. A deduction should legitimize an assumption about the common operations of the cognitive faculties at play in producing a certain aesthetic response. As has been mentioned, in the case of the sublime, the faculties in question are imagination and reason. Kant indicates why we are justified in assuming a common operation of reason among human observers when he appeals to its predisposition to the feeling for practical ideas involved in practical reason’s generating the moral law, a capacity which he thinks is shared universally among rational beings. As he says in §29, the ground for assuming others’ necessary assent to a judgement on the sublime ‘has its foundation in human nature, and indeed in that which can be required of everyone and demanded of him along with healthy understanding, namely in the predisposition to the feeling for (practical) ideas, i.e., to that which is moral’ (5: 265).

As I have already noted, whether or not Kant actually establishes that reason operates in the same way among all observers is a question I will not pursue. For the purposes of the objection under consideration, it suffices to note that he clearly bases part of his deduction on the common operation of reason. But it appears as if Kant gives no ground for assuming a common operation of imagination among human observers, an essential component of the aesthetic response to the sublime. Put differently, why should we think that everyone is equipped with the same imaginative limitations such that the same vast natural phenomena which dumbfound the imagination of one observer will likewise afflict that of any other? This objection has been raised by Guyer, and several commentators follow him in considering it to be a significant obstacle to Kant’s account.Footnote ⁸

In light of these difficulties, any account of why Kant does not provide a separate deduction for judgements of the sublime has to meet several explanatory desiderata. First, it has to explain how the four reasons listed above for denying objects of nature sublimity are supposed to work. Second, it has to clarify what exactly Kant thought was the proper object of sublimity. These two points together will answer the first problem listed above, namely, the question of the sense in which the sublime object is formless. Third, the account should indicate where in his exposition Kant completes the second half of his deduction of the sublime, i.e. where he points out a relevant shared operation of imagination in the case of the sublime that justifies a demand for universal assent. This addresses the second problem above. And fourth, we must return to the original question and examine why an object’s form, or lack thereof, indicates whether or not a deduction is needed separately from an exposition. These are the tasks I aim to complete in the following sections.

3 Kant’s Diagnosis of Subreption

In this section, I will argue that once we properly understand why natural objects cannot be sublime and that ideas of reason are the only objects Kant considers, strictly speaking, sublime, we can address the two worries raised in section 2. First, understanding ideas of reason as the proper objects of judgements of sublimity will allow us to see what kind of formlessness is at play in such judgements. Second, as I will discuss in section 4, the fact that such ideas are the objects of judgements of sublimity gives us a way to see how Kant could argue that the faculty of imagination operates in the same way in every observer in experiences of sublimity.

In the previous section, we saw four reasons why Kant denies sublimity to natural objects. He emphasizes throughout the Analytic of the Sublime that objects of nature are only improperly called sublime. A few quotations will serve to make this clear. After saying that we express ourselves incorrectly by calling objects of nature sublime, he writes ‘We can say no more than that the object serves for the presentation of a sublimity that can be found in the mind; for what is properly sublime cannot be contained in any sensible form, but concerns only ideas of reason … (trifft nur Ideen der Vernunft)’ (§23 5: 245). Later, after defining the sublime as that which is absolutely great, Kant remarks that ‘it is a disposition of the mind (Geistesstimmung) resulting from a certain representation occupying the reflective judgement, but not the object, which is to be called sublime’ (§25 5: 250). And I have already cited the passage, found in §30 in the context of Kant’s explanation of why a separate deduction of the sublime is not needed, where Kant explains that the sublime is properly ascribed only to a ‘manner of thinking, or rather to its foundation in human nature’. And more evidence can be adduced for this claim (cf. §26 5: 256, §28 5: 264). Clearly this point is important for Kant’s purposes and should be taken seriously.

Furthermore, Kant explains that we falsely attribute sublimity to natural phenomena, of either vast or fearsome appearance, by a subreption, or imputation of a concept suited to a rational idea to a feature of nature: ‘Thus the feeling of the sublime in nature is respect for our own vocation, which we show to an object in nature through a certain subreption (substitution of a respect for the object instead of for the idea of humanity in our subject)’ (§27 5: 257). Kant’s explanation here of what happens during subreption is confused and needs to be unpacked. As Guyer has pointed out (Reference Guyer2005: 160), it seems that respect directed to one’s faculty of reason is a necessary feature of experiences of the sublime. This is because such experiences involve a ‘mixed’ phenomenology which includes pain at the failure of one’s sensible nature, coupled with a pleasure incited by a realization of one’s rational powers.Footnote ⁹ If respect were directed at a natural object instead of at reason, it is unclear how this distinctive phenomenology, in particular its pleasurable component, could arise. Furthermore, in a passage in the Critique of Practical Reason which we must regard as expressive of Kant’s considered view of respect, Kant denies that respect can be directed towards objects at all: ‘Respect is always directed only to persons, never to things. The latter can awaken in us inclinations and even love if they are animals … or also fear, like the sea, a volcano, a beast of prey, but never respect’ (5: 76). He later clarifies what he means here by ‘persons’, when he says that respect is directed ‘strictly speaking to the law that [a person’s] example holds before us’ (5: 78). It is also interesting to note that Kant gives the sea and volcanoes as examples of objects which we cannot respect, the very sorts of objects which we typically regard as sublime in our subreptive judgements thereof. For these two reasons, then, it seems that respect cannot be directed towards natural objects in any experience of sublimity, subreptive or not.

Nevertheless, Kant describes the subreption in question as a misdirection of respect from reason to the natural object. Based on a literal reading of this passage, Clewis argues that Kant does not hold subreption to be a necessary feature of the sublime since, if it were, we would never respect, and hence never recognize, the idea of human freedom and supersensible rationality that is a part of the dynamical sublime (Clewis Reference Clewis2009: 78). I agree that subreption is not a necessary feature of sublime experiences, but I disagree with the reason for this put forward by Clewis. If he is right, then subreption blocks any respect directed towards our supersensible nature. However, as I have suggested, it is precisely when respect is so directed, whether consciously or unconsciously, that the particular phenomenology of the sublime arises. Without respect being directed towards our own capacity of reason, it is unclear where the pleasurable aspect of sublime experiences comes from and what we are to make of Kant’s official view that respect can never be directed towards a sensible object. If this is right and on the reasonable assumption that we never impute sublimity to any object without an experience of sublimity constituted by this phenomenology, Clewis’s view yields the result that subreption is impossible. This is because, according to him, subreption is incompatible with the role of respect necessary for the feeling of sublimity which provides the only occasion to impute sublimity in the first place.

Moreover, Clewis cites with disapproval Guyer’s claim that experiences of the mathematical and dynamical sublime necessarily involve a recognition of reason’s power over our sensible nature precisely on the grounds that, if Guyer is right, subreption would be impossible.Footnote ¹⁰ Here it is important to keep in mind the distinction between the phenomenology of sublimity and Kant’s explanation of the causes of such phenomenology. The theoretical explanation of experiences of sublimity that Kant is giving makes use of respect for reason as a necessary condition of such experiences. As Abaci (Reference Abaci2010) rightly points out, the truth of this account does not imply explicit consciousness of such respect. With this distinction in place, we can see how Kant can maintain the theoretical innovation that respect directed towards reason is a necessary condition of experiences of sublimity, given their distinctive phenomenology, without holding that pre-Critical theorists, given over to attributing sublimity to natural objects without mention of reason as they were, never had a genuine experience of the sublime.Footnote ¹¹

We must conclude from all of this that Kant’s language in his description of the relevant subreption is misleading. In the passage, he confuses the role of respect in the phenomenology of sublimity with the predication of sublimity itself. Thus, in explaining why we falsely call certain objects of nature sublime, he says that we regard them with respect. However, as I argued above, for any subreption to take place at all here, respect must be directed at something other than what we falsely take to be the sublime object. We can avoid confusion on this score if we distinguish between, on the one hand, a feeling of respect towards our faculty of reason which is, indeed, necessary in any experience of the sublime and, on the other, the predicate of sublimity. Kant’s diagnosis of subreption, although awkwardly expressed, clearly is the view that we incorrectly apply the predicate of sublimity to objects of nature, sublimity proper belonging to another type of object, notwithstanding the respect that must be directed towards reason to occasion the need to apply that predicate in the first place. Although any sublime experience, on Kant’s view, requires respect directed towards reason, the facts that this respect often goes unnoticed and that natural formations typically incite such experiences mislead observers to attribute the predicate to natural objects.

Furthermore, we should not assume that whatever respect is directed towards in an experience of sublimity thereby merits application of the predicate of sublimity. In particular, for the reasons I have given, respect must be directed towards human reason to produce the pleasurable component of the phenomenology. Nonetheless, I will argue below that ideas of reason, not the faculty of reason itself, are properly speaking sublime. Seeing that the object of respect comes apart from the sublime object in this way gives us room to see how the relevant subreption, understood as a misplacement of the predicate of sublimity, can coexist with respect’s being directed towards reason.Footnote ¹²

With this doctrine in the background, we can now assess the four reasons given by Kant and listed in the previous section that objects of nature are not properly called sublime. The reasons given, recall, involve sublime objects’ formlessness, the inability of chaotic natural objects to yield objective principles, the absolute greatness of sublime objects and the pain, not accompanied by sublime pleasure, induced by natural objects typically associated with the sublime. Notice that two of these reasons, the first and the third, refer to features of sublime objects, while the second and fourth reasons invoke aspects of natural objects. To understand Kant’s argument, it is important to realize that not all of these reasons for denying sublimity to nature involve features of natural objects.

As noted, a common objection to Kant’s claim that sublime objects are formless is that natural objects evocative of this aesthetic response are not literally without form. They are bounded, finite and have some shape. This is supposed to be an objection to Kant’s exclusion of objects of nature from the sublime, because it is supposed to assimilate such objects more closely to the case of natural beauty, which does have a form and, says Kant, has its predicate correctly applied. However, this observation of the finitude of natural objects really serves to bolster Kant’s claim, since he is explaining why objects of nature are not suitably called sublime. The premises that sublime objects are formless and absolutely great, that is, are meant to support the conclusion that natural objects are not sublime. To see how, consider the criterion of absolute greatness met by sublime objects. If sublime objects are, in fact, absolutely great, then it follows that no particular natural object, which will have definite boundaries and can always be considered small in comparison with a greater object (cf. Crowther Reference Crowther1989: 90), can be sublime. So when Kant calls sublime objects formless, he precisely does not mean that natural objects are formless. While certain natural formations can certainly provoke an experience of sublimity because of the way in which they sometimes appear formless, they are not literally formless and are, therefore, not strictly speaking involved in feelings of sublimity which involve such formlessness. This point, missed by commentators, is the response to the first major difficulty posed in section 2.

A similar misunderstanding afflicts Westphal’s objection to Kant’s fourth reason above, namely, that natural objects associated with the sublime are destructive of the imagination and, hence, painful, whereas sublimity involves pleasure. Westphal points out that, even though sublime objects are contrapurposive for productive imagination, they are purposive for the mind as a whole in revealing the role of reason and, therefore, pleasant. As I am about to argue, though, the only intentional objects directly involved in feelings of the sublime are rational ideas, such as that of an infinite given whole or of the idea of humanity. Westphal’s point applies to these notions, since they reveal imagination’s inadequacy and, at the same time, reason’s powers to transcend the limitations of human sensibility. However, objects of nature which prompt reason to these ideas are by themselves merely contrapurposive for imagination and, hence, only painful. This reading explains several of Kant’s remarks about the contrapurposiveness of natural objects. In §26, Kant asks rhetorically, ‘who would want to call sublime shapeless mountain masses towering above one another in wild disorder with their pyramids of ice, or the dark and raging sea, etc.?’ (5: 256). And in §23, he says:

To be sure, Kant often speaks of natural phenomena as ‘formless’, as in the above quotation about the shapelessness of mountains. But, as I have argued, we have strong reasons to believe he does not mean this literally, not the least of which is that he says that the sublime is absolutely great, a criterion not met by natural objects. We have to understand such language, then, metaphorically, perhaps referring to the tendency of certain natural scenes of disorder to provoke the mind to certain rational ideas on account of imagination’s inability to comprehend certain sights of nature in one intuition. When Kant suggests the formlessness of natural objects, then, we should understand this as a second-hand formlessness derivative of the authentic formlessness possessed by the rational ideas that some scenes of natural chaos evoke. Put differently, a feature actually had by some rational ideas is projected onto the natural objects which sometimes provoke those ideas and these natural objects are then said to have this feature when one is speaking loosely.

Given that such natural objects, then, are not the direct bearers of the predicate of sublimity, the question remains what exactly is. I have already indicated that I believe only ideas of reason are properly sublime, and I will now make clear why this is so. There has been widespread confusion in the literature concerning what exactly Kant takes to be sublime. I identify at least three common suggestions. Some commentators suggest that sublimity is attributed by Kant to rational ideas, such as that of the moral vocation of humanity,Footnote ¹³ others mention reason itself,Footnote ¹⁴ while still others suggest that the very feeling accompanying sublime experiences deserves the title.Footnote ¹⁵ This confusion is understandable, as Kant himself seems to suggest each of these various possibilities at times. As indicated, I agree with commentators who take the first option, namely, that rational ideas are sublime. However, whereas previous commentators have simply assumed one of these three options and often seem to conflate them, I will give an argument for the option in question.

A simple consideration based on what has been established already in this section should indicate that certain rational ideas, such as the idea of an infinite whole or of humanity in its noumenal freedom, deserve the title of sublimity. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant explains that by an idea of reason he means a concept which can never be exhibited in experience. As he says, ‘no actual experience is fully sufficient for’ (A311/B367) an idea of reason, because ‘nothing congruent to it can ever be given in concreto’ (A327/B384). That is, an idea of reason, such as ‘the absolute whole of appearances’, to use Kant’s example, is the concept of something which can never be encountered in experience, at least in its entirety. Such ideas have claim to be indeterminate and literally formless, qualities required by Kant of the sublime, as we have seen. The idea of an infinite whole cannot be exhibited in experience and is, hence, indeterminate, not to mention formless, in the sense of boundless, because it is the idea of something which can always be extended further. The idea of humanity expresses a moral vocation undetermined by sensible nature and is indeterminate and formless in that sense.Footnote ¹⁶ As I will now argue, the other two candidates for sublimity mentioned above are not suited for the job.Footnote ¹⁷

There is one striking passage which might be taken to indicate that the experience, or feeling, associated with sublimity is itself the sublime object. In a passage previously quoted in full from 5: 246, Kant talks about ‘a feeling which is itself sublime’. However, textual evidence for this view is thin, and it is unclear how the overall aesthetic feeling in question can have the requisite boundlessness and absolute greatness required by the sublime object. In addition, this view would involve telling a story about how a feeling, which is presumably in reaction to something sublime, is induced in reaction to itself. For these reasons, I think this is the least plausible candidate for sublimity. Now I will explain why I think reason itself fails to fit the bill.

To be sure, in many passages Kant suggests that the faculty of reason itself is properly sublime, as when he calls the sublime object our ‘manner of thinking’ (§30 5: 280), a ‘disposition of the mind’ (§26 5: 256) and founded ‘in human nature’ (§30 5: 280). One holding that reason itself is sublime could argue that, although rational ideas, with their boundlessness, are necessary for an experience of sublimity, when we realize that the pain caused by imagination’s inability to accommodate them indicates the demands made by reason, we feel a negative pleasure directed towards reason itself, which is therefore deemed sublime. Furthermore, reason itself is boundless in the way required by the sublime object, in its capacity to operate on rational ideas themselves infinite in scope. Kant himself, in fact, admits that reason is infinite in this way when he says, ‘Even a faculty for being able to think the infinite of supersensible intuition as given (in its intelligible substratum) surpasses any standard of sensibility, and is great beyond comparison’ (§26 5: 255). Here the faculty, in its capacity to entertain rational ideas infinite in scope, is itself infinite.Footnote ¹⁸

The main difficulty with this view, however, is that it fails to make clear why Kant argues that the sublime object is infinite in scope, since, as we will soon see, the infinitude of reason does not play a direct role in Kant’s exposition of sublimity. This is so because, as I will argue in the next section, ideas of reason are necessary features of an experience of sublimity, because it is their infinitude which dumbfounds the imagination and which Kant exploits to complete his deduction of judgements of sublimity. According to the view about the sublime object which I am rejecting here, one would have to say that, although indefinite ideas of reason are themselves necessary for an experience of sublimity (for the reasons I give below), they really serve merely to direct our gaze to the true sublime object, namely, reason itself. It is then because Kant has already said that the sublime object is infinite in scope that one has to appeal to the passage above to explain in what sense reason is infinite. However, this account leaves obscure why Kant thinks that the sublime object is infinite, since the only role infinity and boundlessness play in the account is at the level of ideas of reason. My account, by contrast, explains both why Kant thinks that the sublime object is infinite and offers an equally plausible candidate for this type of object. It is merely as a by-product of the fact that ideas of reason are infinite that Kant attributes this same property to reason itself in the passage at 5: 255.

To summarize this section, I have argued that Kant gives adequate justification for thinking that no objects of nature are sublime, but that his theory awards this title to ideas of reason instead. In the process, I have defended Kant against one criticism of his justification for the diagnosis of subreption. We still need to understand how he establishes a common operation of the imagination among possible aesthetic observers. It is to this issue that I now turn.Footnote ¹⁹

4 Kant’s Deduction and the Imagination

Given that Kant takes his exposition of the sublime also to be its deduction, a question arises concerning on what grounds we legitimately impute to other observers assent to our judgements on the sublime. Clearly, the shared faculty of reason in both its theoretical and practical aspects has a role to play in this account. This point is made by Kant in a passage already quoted from §29 of the Analytic of the Sublime, where he points to our right to assume a shared ‘predisposition to the feeling for (practical) ideas’ (5: 265) amongst humans. A more difficult question concerns the other half of Kant’s deduction, namely, the grounds on which a common operation of the imagination can be claimed. This is, as previously noted, a challenge raised by Guyer. Given that both imagination and reason are involved in feelings of the sublime, what grounds does Kant give us to assume that the powers of any individual’s imagination match those of any other’s, so that we may legitimately demand universal assent in our judgements on the sublime? It certainly seems possible that a natural scene evocative of the sublime to one individual should fail to provoke that same aesthetic response in another, perhaps due to a difference in the imaginative powers of each. The key to understanding this part of Kant’s deduction is to see that ideas of reason, rather than natural objects, are necessary components of an experience of sublimity. In the case of the mathematical sublime, for instance, the relevant idea is that of an infinite given whole.

Kant’s deduction of a universally shared operation of the imagination can be found in §§25 and 26. At the beginning of §26, Kant distinguishes between mathematical (or logical) and aesthetic estimation of magnitudes, explaining that the former involves a definite measure of greatness ‘by means of numerical concepts’, whereas the latter is estimation ‘in mere intuition (measured by eye)’ (5: 251). The magnitude of any numerical measure used in mathematical estimation, furthermore, must itself be judged in comparison with another measure, with the result that the smallest basic unit used in any mathematical estimation is itself judged aesthetically.

An important difference noted by Kant between mathematical and aesthetic estimation, furthermore, is that for the former, there is no greatest magnitude, since whatever unit one is using to measure can be extended to infinity; however, for aesthetic estimation, there is a greatest magnitude, namely the largest which can be grasped in a single intuition. If, moreover, this greatest aesthetic magnitude is judged as absolutely great, defined by Kant as that which is ‘great beyond all comparison’ (§25 5: 248), then the idea of infinity is invoked. This is clear from Kant’s comment that ‘the infinite … is absolutely (not merely comparatively) great. Compared with this, everything else … is small’ (§26 5: 254). In the previous section, Kant claims that the sublime is that which is absolutely great, and he connects this with the idea of infinity when he explains that when the greatest aesthetic magnitude is judged to be absolutely great (i.e. infinite), a feeling of sublimity is provoked: ‘and about this I say that if [the greatest aesthetic magnitude] is judged as an absolute measure, beyond which no greater is subjectively (for the judging subject) possible, it brings with it the idea of the sublime’ (§26 5: 251).

I now turn to the ‘watershed’ (Crowther Reference Crowther1989: 95) passage of these sections, where Kant explains how the operation of the imagination is dumbfounded in an attempt to synthesize an absolutely great magnitude. Kant distinguishes between two activities of the imagination in intuiting a given magnitude: apprehension and comprehension. Apprehension involves taking up into imagination successive sensible intuitions, while comprehension reproduces these intuitions alongside one another in memory, enabling a series of perceptions. Kant diagnoses imagination’s failing when confronted with an absolutely great magnitude as a failure of aesthetic comprehension:

It is when comprehension fails in this way that a sublime experience ensues. As apprehension proceeds to infinity in mathematical estimation, aesthetic estimation becomes impossible because of this failing of comprehension. But, as Kant says, the voice of reason demands totality ‘for all given magnitudes … hence comprehension in one intuition, and it demands a presentation for all members of a progressively increasing numerical series, and does not exempt from this requirement even the infinite (space and past time), but rather makes it unavoidable for us to think of it … as given entirely (in its totality)’ (§26 5: 254).

Thus, as I have argued, reason is provoked by the presence of an aesthetically greatest magnitude to demand of imagination comprehension of an infinitely given whole. The failure of imagination to accomplish this task results in a displeasure accompanied, however, with a pleasure in the realization that a faculty of the mind, reason, is capable of making such a demand, which requires the thought of an infinite given whole in the first place. As Kant says, ‘But what is most important is that even being able to think of it as a whole indicates a faculty of the mind which surpasses every standard of sense’ (§26 5: 254). This further explains why no natural object can be sublime, on Kant’s view: it is precisely because something truly sublime, namely the infinite, cannot be given in intuition that Kant says sublimity is not predicated of objects of nature.

And now we can see how Kant’s deduction proceeds with respect to the imagination. We are justified in assuming a common operation of the imaginative faculties in judging of a sublime object precisely because what prompts an experience of the sublime is the idea of an infinitely given whole itself (at least in the mathematical case), and it is a logical impossibility that imagination should be able to comprehend such an idea. In other words, provided a sublime object, i.e. a relevant idea of reason, is present, imagination will in principle fail in comprehending this object. It is on the legitimate assumption of the common operation, in this case a failing, of the imagination that Kant tries to establish the claim that any judgement of sublimity passed on the sublime object has universal validity. I think a parallel account can be given in the case of the dynamical sublime, where the relevant rational idea is that of humanity in its rational capacity which remains undetermined by sensible nature.

A further important question remains, however. What exactly is the role of objects of nature in an experience of sublimity? Put differently, on what grounds does Kant claim that everyone’s imagination is stimulated by the same natural scenes to an experience of sublimity? On the account of Kant’s deduction just offered, judgements of sublimity have universal validity only when passed on objects which are properly speaking sublime, namely, rational ideas. This is so because only such objects guarantee the same operation of the imagination in all observers: imagination’s failed comprehension. This entails that natural objects are not necessary components of sublime experiences, since such experiences rely only on a relevant idea of reason being present to the mind. Furthermore, we can have no guarantee that the same natural objects will provoke the relevant rational ideas in all aesthetic observers. However, this should not concern us, since the deduction purports to establish the universal validity of judgements passed on sublime objects and, as we have seen, objects of nature are not sublime.

It may be noted that this puts my view in stark contrast with one recently put forward by Emily Brady. In her work on Kant’s theory of the sublime, she argues against what she sees as the ‘self-regarding’ interpretation of the Kantian sublime which relegates external objects to the status of mere triggers of the experience of sublimity. She does this by suggesting that, for Kant, external natural objects are necessary conditions on experiences of the sublime.Footnote ²⁰ Brady attempts to back this claim up by appeal to the mixed phenomenology of experiences of the sublime. On her view, the shapelessness of natural objects is required to generate the pain at imagination’s failure which, in turn, allows us to take pleasure in our rational activities. This is so because, as she argues, Kant’s diagnosis of subreption claims that natural objects are not properly called sublime in virtue of their formlessness, sublimity being properly attributed to something with form (cf. Brady Reference Brady2012: 101, Reference Brady2013: 80). Moreover, Kant is clear that formlessness is required to foil the imagination’s efforts at comprehension, thereby setting in motion the mixed phenomenology of the sublime. Therefore, according to Brady, such experiences require objects of nature to present formlessness to the imagination. As I have argued above, though, such an account misunderstands the reasons for Kant’s denying sublimity to natural objects. Kant’s actual argument is that no object of nature is sublime because the sublime object is absolutely great and, in this respect, formless, whereas natural objects are finite and with a form. Natural objects, then, cannot serve to sustain the mixed phenomenology of the sublime, as Brady suspects, since they are not formless, and can at most trigger a rational idea which is formless in the relevant sense.

My account has several additional interpretative advantages over that offered by Brady. First, while there is no direct textual evidence to suggest Kant thought natural objects play an indispensable role in experiences of sublimity, there are passages suggestive of sublime experience completely divorced from nature. I am thinking in particular of Kant’s exclamation of ‘Duty! Sublime and mighty name …’ (5: 86). Here it seems that Kant countenances the case of sublime experience provoked by contemplation of the moral law and the duties required by it. Certainly, there is no suggestion that natural objects need play a role in such a case. Second, as I have outlined, my account offers an argument for the common operation of the imagination among aesthetic observers, namely, its failure to comprehend rational ideas, required for Kant’s deduction of the sublime. On Brady’s view, we cannot attribute to Kant a plausible argument for the universal validity of judgements of sublimity since natural objects on her view are necessary conditions of such judgements and yet which natural objects trigger an idea of reason to interact with imagination remains an empirical matter. Third, as I will shortly make clear, my account justifies Kant’s decision to collapse the deduction of judgements of sublimity into their exposition. On Brady’s view, it remains opaque why Kant did not deliver a separate deduction.Footnote ²¹

We still might wonder how natural objects trigger experiences of sublimity, as they often do. An answer to this question has been suggested above in the thought that when a natural object exceeds the greatest aesthetic magnitude in intuition, for instance when an observer is confronted with a mountain range extending as far as the eye can see or an ocean stretching to the horizon, the idea of absolute greatness, i.e. infinity, is brought to mind. Kant suggests how this might happen at the end of §26. His account seems to involve the movement of the mind from a particular natural object to ever vaster and vaster stretches of nature ad infinitum. When a vast mountain range is observed, the mind sees that it can serve as the unit of measure for a larger stretch of nature, which, in turn, measures an even larger stretch. The description of Kant’s that suggests this idea is as follows:

Of course, it remains an empirical matter, on this theory, precisely what natural conditions lead the mind to the idea of nature as an infinite given whole. Kant seems to recognize this in §29 when he says that, in contrast to judgements of taste, ‘we cannot promise ourselves that our judgement concerning the sublime in nature will so readily find acceptance by others’ (5: 264, emphasis mine). As I have argued, though, once rational ideas are provoked by certain natural scenes, Kant has an account to offer of on what grounds the universal validity for judgements of the sublime rests.