Keeping Narcissism at Bay: Kant and Schiller on the Sublime

Authors

  • Alexander Mathäs University of Oregon

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/konturen.3.1.1371

Abstract

This essay considers the sublime as a veiled form of narcissism. Both narcissism and the sublime test and reveal the limits of the concept of the self and both can be viewed as attempts to transcend the borders of the self. Yet while narcissism has been defined as a “failure of spiritual ascent” (Hadot), the sublime has been used to transcend the limitations of the self by pointing to its infinite potential. The essay explores how the sublime in Immanuel Kant’s and Friedrich Schiller’s aesthetics relies on narcissistic impulses by creating a male inner self and protecting it from the stigma of vanity. I propose that their use of this aesthetic category helped objectify an essentially subjectivist aesthetics. Yet while Schiller follows Kant in deriding the sensual aspects of human nature as egotistical and amoral, Schiller’s dramas also challenge some of the Kantian premises. When Schiller’s protagonists sacrifice lives in the service of ethical ideas, the sublime’s oppressive spirit reveals itself.

Author Biography

Alexander Mathäs, University of Oregon

Alexander Mathäs (PhD 1990, UT-Austin, Texas) is Professor of German at the University of Oregon. He has published numerous articles on eighteenth - twentieth century literature. He is the author of Der Kalte Krieg in der deutschen Literaturkritik: Der Fall Martin Walser (1992) and Narcissism and Paranoia in the Age of Goethe (U of Delaware Press, 2008). He edited a collection of essays, entitled The Self as Muse, which is to appear in 2011. He is currently working on a book project that explores from a posthumanist perspective how eighteenth and nineteenth-century philosophical and anthropological notions of humanism are aestheticized.

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Published

2010-12-28

How to Cite

Mathäs, A. (2010). Keeping Narcissism at Bay: Kant and Schiller on the Sublime. Konturen, 3(1), 19–44. https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/konturen.3.1.1371