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SoSe 21: The Sublime / Das Erhabene – Aesthetical concepts from Greek antiquity to contemporary debates

Marianne Eusterschulte

Information for students

Advice for registration: If you are not able to register in Campus Management please send an e-mail to Miró Hermann (miro.hermann[at]fu-berlin.de) up to 3 days before the seminar begins, stating the first name, last name, event number, title of the event, matriculation number if applicable, and institution if applicable. Thank you! If you do not have a Blackboard account yet, please inform us as well. close

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The sublime has traditionally been thought to have had a merely marginal place in the explicit theorization of ancient Greek and Latin aesthetics and literary theory (though recent scholarship has argued that it was more central than has often been thought), yet it is difficult not to apply this category to many ancient artistic and literary works. But the explicit category of the sublime did not become central to European aesthetics until the 17th century and then continued until the 19th century to play a central role in discussions of art and literature, but also of religion, politics, and other fields. By the middle of the 19th century it was being discussed much less than before, but in the past forty years the sublime has returned to play an important role in aesthetic theorization.
The seminar will not only consider the curious history of the sublime, examining central texts from ancient (Longinus) and modern aesthetics (Boileau, Burke, Kant, Schiller, Schlegel, Schelling, Solger, Hegel, Jean Paul) as well as some more recent discussions (Nietzsche, Lyotard, Adorno, Zizek). It will also ask whether the concept of the sublime can still play an important role today, or, if not, then what has taken its place. We will deal not only with theories of the sublime but also with works of art and literature, architecture and music.
Students of philosophy as well as from various fields in the humanities are most welcome. We will provide a semester apparatus with relevant digitized texts on Blackboard.
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