As indicated by its title, the aim of this essay is debating with the contemporary French philosophy reception of Kant’s concept of the sublime, particularly with Jean-François Lyotard. As a consequence of this French influence, instead of highlighting, as traditional commentators tend to do, the moral and systematic implications of Kantian sublime, this essay takes Kant’s notion as intended in the first place to account for an essential aspect of our experience of art. But, at the same time, I want to distance myself from Lyotard’s interpretation and object to his view that Burke’s notion of the sublime is more adequate than Kant’s conception for understanding contemporary art. In particular, I want to hold that it is possible to understand time (that Lyotard takes to be the central aspect of Burke’s notion) as being also a key feature of Kantian sublime.
Kant; Jean-François Lyotard; aesthetics; sublime