Patrícia Castello Branco

The German filmmaker Werner Herzog controversially associates “truth” and “reality” in film with Kant’s notion of the sublime by explicitly treating the sublime as a key element in developing his notion of ecstatic truth. I critically examine Herzog’s interpretation of Kant’s sublime and the relations he establishes between the sublime and his own key aesthetic notion of ecstatic truth. I examine how the sublime in Herzog’s films arises from encounters with the overwhelming force and power of nature experienced by his characters in the feature films and participants in the documentaries. I question whether Kant’s conception of the sublime is the one that best aligns with Herzog’s aesthetic aims and I contrast Kant’s transcendental sublime with what I describe as the physiological sublime of Edmund Burke. I draw some conclusions about the moral dimension of the sublime in the context of the relationship between humans and nature within the frame of contemporary ecological concerns.

Robert Ranisch’s and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner’s Post- and Transhumanism. An Introduction provides a broad background for anyone interested in the societal and philosophical repercussions of new technologies. As the title suggests, the volume specifically centers on the trans- and posthumanism debate, which, over the past two decades, has been focusing on the way our highly technological societies raise an entirely new set of questions that urge to be answered and discussed. Of particular importance to this debate is the necessity for new understandings about what it means to be human in a world where the traditional distinctions between human and non-human, technology and biology, as well as nature and culture, are becoming increasingly ambiguous.The book’s self-announced aim is to address the concepts of trans- and posthumanism, exploring their ‘common foundations, topics, and resources of influence’ , as a means to help clarify a ‘widespread conceptual confusion’ . This is a ..