Die Krise des Erhabenen (The Sublime in Crisis)
In cooperation with Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
Lecture + Talk Talks & Workshops
In the Fremder Planet series, philosopher Juliane Rebentisch discusses the concept of the sublime. In philosophical aesthetics, the concept of the sublime denotes something overwhelmingly powerful or immeasurably vast.
In light of recent environmental crises, the concept of the sublime appears, at first glance, to be relevant in two respects. These two aspects correspond to the two sides of the sublime in Kant: the dynamic sublime on the one hand, and the mathematical sublime on the other. In view of the uncontrollable force of extreme weather events, which are increasingly shaking our present, the association of the sublime with an immeasurable power—as characterised by the dynamic sublime—seems, firstly, to suggest itself. Secondly, given that in the Anthropocene, environments are becoming a central theme in their spatial and temporal expanses that tend to exceed human comprehension, the association of immeasurable magnitude characteristic of the Mathematical Sublime comes to the fore. Rebentisch discusses the concept of the sublime. One might even think that the sublime is amplified in a ‘hyperobject’ (Timothy Morton) such as global warming, because it combines the characteristics of the mathematical and the dynamic sublime. At the same time, however, such an ‘object’ undermines central building blocks of a theory of the sublime. The crisis of the sublime is evident, amongst other things, in the fact that a neighbouring aesthetic phenomenon is becoming increasingly prominent within its aesthetics: the uncanny.
About the lecture series
Global environmental and political challenges define the present day; we are witnessing rapid developments in artificial intelligence and a resurgence in space exploration. Is there a connection between these phenomena? And what do they have to do with the resurgence of authoritarian forms of government? The lectures in this series explore the changing image that humanity constructs of itself and the world – previous speakers have included Ulrike Haß, Jan Völker, Samo Tomšič and Goran Vranešević.
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Juliane Rebentisch is a professor of philosophy at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg. She is a regular visiting professor in the German Department at Princeton University and a permanent fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. From 2015 to 2018, she was president of the German Society for Aesthetics. Publications include: An Introduction to Theories of Contemporary Art (Hamburg: Junius 2013); The Dispute over Plurality: Engagements with Hannah Arendt (Berlin: Suhrkamp 2022), The Ecologically Uncanny (Materialverlag HFBK Hamburg 2024)
Marcus Quent is a junior professor of philosophy at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie.