Robert R. Clewis

I emphasize the harmony between the sublime and the underlying concept of the purposiveness of nature, i.e. that the sublime is purposive through its initial contrapurposiveness. One favorable outcome of this reading is that it locates further unity in the Critique of Judgment, e.g. it helps make sense of why, besides historical reasons, Kant may have turned to the sublime in the first place in the “Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment” (Part One of the CJ). I question some prominent readings of Kant’s theory, e.g. that as a mere ‘appendix’ to his theory of nature, Kant’s account of the sublime has little connection to his project’s main aims. The place of the sublime is thus near the middle.

This article identifies three distinct temporal notions in Hume’s aesthetics: passing the test of time, repeated viewing of a work, and the personal aging of the critic. It applies these ideas to the evaluation and enjoyment of films. It characterizes positive, negative, and ambivalent film aging, which are associated with nostalgia, boredom, and comic amusement, respectively, and which bear on our enjoyment, not evaluation, of film. The paper discusses Allen’s Zelig, Antonioni’s La Notte, Cameron’s The Terminator, Lucas’s Star Wars, Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and Renoir’s La Règle du Jeu.

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.