THE SUBLIME – CONCEPTUALIZATION AND RE-CONCEPTUALIZATION

The current text is dedicated to the interpretation of Ognyan Kovachev on Edmund Burke’s treatise “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”. This interpretation is to be found in Kovachev’s preface to the first Bulgarian edition of the treatise of 2001, as well as parts of the monograph “The Gothic Novel” (2004). We interpret Kovachev’s introduction to Burke not only in its didactic and propaedeutic dimensions – as a text that introduces the Bulgarian public to the problems of a hitherto unknown author within the framework of its broad cultural, historical and philosophical context (the 18th century), but in view of the specific interpretation of Burke’s aesthetics, offered by Kovachev. The study claims that Kovachev reads Burke through the problem of doubling and duality. At the same time, for Kovachev, Burke’s doubling functions not as a subversive element in the logic of the philosophical exposition, but rather as a constitutive moment of the aesthetic subject of Modern age. The latter is related to the genre of the gothic novel and its interpretation in Kovachev’s monograph on this type of novel.

The article develops Ognyan Kovachev’s observation that in Edmund Burke’s influential Philosophical Inquiry of the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, “[t]he characteristic for modernity device of estrangement turns out to be an active principle.” Although Burke rejects at the outset novelty as an effective resource for aesthetic effects because of the destructive impact of the force of habit on novelty, he distributes its effects over various aspects of the beautiful and the sublime, and thus renders it ubiquitous.

This   article   examines   the   structural   relationship   between Kant’s philosophy and the genre of Gothic literature, in view of the formation of the modern idea of the subject. The paradox of Kant’s idea of the sublime reveals the blind spot of the Subject: Reason does not (can not?) know itself. The phenomenon is noumenal at its very core insofar as the existential condition is not susceptible to objectification because the existential idea presupposes the inseparability of the subject from the object. From this point of view, the appearance of the figure of the gothic Double is inseparable from the emergence of the category of subject itself. Ultimately, the Subject is the Double. Duality is an ontological structure determining for Modernity – the Double is the matrix of reflexivity, and therefore of Reason and the Subject. This experimental hypothesis was developed by juxtaposing Immanuel Kant and Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s ideas of the determinism of nature and supernatural necessity.

In the following text I advocate the opinion that the concept of “genius” is unconditionally necessary today, in our contemporary times, among the proliferating critical languages, institutions, strategies for recognition and affirmation in art, philosophy and the sciences. The Kantian concept of genius is given here the central stage and is partially implemented, where necessary, by the interpretations that follow. The aim is to outline the possibility for relativity between the activity and affectivity of the sublime and the activity of the genius. These approximations allow us to explore the possible relation within 1) the logic of analogy, doubling, as an apposition between two immense powers, 2) as a confrontation of two infinities; 3) through the concepts of “heterosimultaneity”, “counterfinality”, “freedom”. An additional hypothesis here – that the material forces of life are the forces of philosophy (namely, in Boyan Manchev’s philosophical fantastic they are Fire / Eros, Apeiron, Chaos, Chaos Unbound), which had fascinated Kant as well, are transitive within the modal foundations of existence – follows from the free play between the monstrous force of nature and the magic power of the conceptual language of the genius, from the necessity of thought as an active force of the transformation of the world. In the perspective of Boyan Manchev’s surcritique and modal ontology, I will attempt to extend the definition of genius. If the given law of nature must be overturned, this is only possible if the secret of nature lays open, the secret of creativity, of the genesis beyond the gene, of the necessary freedom. Тhe genius weaves the secret of free world-creation. The sublime is a representation of his technique. It is a measure of desire of thought; a front and a companion on the front of his unknown; a projective transfiguration of the internal eternal fire of thought.

The article examines the problem of the sublime in Pushkin’s ‘little tragedy’ “The Stone Guest”. The late Pushkin associates art not with beauty and contemplation, but with the sublime – with fear, power and justice. He imagines it as more powerful than life, able to abandon its separateness from life, and directly intervene in its course.

The paper examines several testimonies from Plato (from the dialogues “Laws”, “Protagoras” and “Phaedrus”), as well as several key verses from Theognis, which contribute to delineating certain characteristics of early canonizing thought in the field of the literature. There is a prioritization of poetry over prose and works that are examples of transmitting a model of virtue are more highly valued, whether from the position of the philosopher taking on the role of a literary critic, or of the author himself. More often, these works are ancient, but it is not impossible for a similar status to be attributed to contemporary works of the commenter, including own works. Until Aristotle, there is still a lack of real reflection on the artistic characteristics of highly valued literary genres/individual poets, insofar as emphasis is put both on the educational role (towards achieving general virtue) of the commented poetic examples and on the variability of receptive situations and the individual preferences and abilities of the recipients. However, a certain openness and liberality of the discourse on literary production and reception is also found, allowing the aesthetic and ethical benefit of the perception of works from different genres. This legitimizes Ancient Greek literature, along with similar theoretical reflections within its framework, as rightly recognized as canonical in its entirety.