The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom

In this book Robert R. Clewis shows how certain crucial concepts in Kant's aesthetics and practical philosophy - the sublime, enthusiasm, freedom, empirical and intellectual interests, the idea of a republic - fit together and deepen our understanding of Kant's philosophy. He examines the ways in which different kinds of sublimity reveal freedom and indirectly contribute to morality, and discusses how Kant's account of natural sublimity suggests that we have an indirect duty with regard to nature. Unlike many other studies of these themes, this book examines both the pre-critical Observations and the remarks that Kant wrote in his copy of the Observations. Finally, Clewis takes seriously Kant's claim that enthusiasm is aesthetically sublime, and shows how this clarifies Kant's views of the French Revolution. His book will appeal to all who are interested in Kant's philosophy.

Introduction; 1. The Observations and the Remarks; 2. The judgment of the sublime; 3. Moral feeling and the sublime; 4. Various senses of interest and disinterestedness; 5. Aesthetic enthusiasm; 6. Enthusiasm for the idea of a republic; 7. Conclusion; Appendix 1. On the Remarks; Appendix 2. Some features of the feelings discussed in this book; Appendix 3. Classification of what elicits sublimity; Bibliography; Index.

Robert R. Clewis is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Gwynedd-Mercy College, Pennsylvania. He received his BA in Philosophy and French from Wake Forest University, North Carolina and an MA and PhD in Philosophy from Boston College, Massachusetts. He also received an MA in Economics from the University of Bologna, Italy.