EVENT DETAILS

A Lecture by Robert Doran "Aesthetics as Cultural Critique: The Sublime in Kant and Stendhal"

This presentation examines how the idea of sublimity is invoked to address certain socio-cultural themes (e.g., secularization, war, the decline of the aristocracy), thereby revealing its extra-aesthetic significance and critical vocation. The works of Kant (_The Critique of Judgment_) and Stendhal (_The Red and the Black_) are adduced to show how this little-noticed fusion of aesthetic reflection with cultural critique is actually an essential feature of the modern concept of sublimity.