Robert R. Clewis

Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgement, a seminal work in the history of aesthetics, contains some puzzling passages about mime and gesture. This article examines these references as well as Kant’s claims about commedia dell’arte, considering his remarks in the cultural and intellectual context of eighteenth-century Prussia. It proposes that looking at Kant’s minor publications and texts such as his lectures on anthropology can help us better understand these passages as well as his broader account of the arts and aesthetic theory. Conversely, Kant’s aesthetic theory can clarify his remarks on mime and commedia dell’arte. The analysis shows that Kant’s thoughts on mime and commedia are expressed in terms of his evolving account of aesthetic pleasure: from the early focus on the principle of sensible comprehension to the mature account of the free play of the imagination and understanding. In short, Kant’s aesthetic theory clarifies his remarks on mime, pantomime, and commedia, and those remarks in turn illustrate aspects of his aesthetic theory.

_ Kant and the Feeling of Lif_e positions Kant's concept of life as a guiding thread for understanding not only Kant's approach to aesthetics and teleology but the underlying unity of the _Critique of Judgment_ itself. The "feeling of life," which Kant describes as affecting us in various ways—as animating, enlivening, and quickening the mind—lies at the heart of Kant's philosophical project, but it has remained understudied for a theme of such centrality. This volume brings together, for the first time, essays focused on the topic of life in Kant's work, providing a wealth of perspectives and analyses ranging from the _Critique of Judgment_ to Kant's early aesthetics, his social and political philosophy, his work connected to the body and health, and his moral theory.

This essay engages Diarmuid Costello’s Aesthetics after Modernism while critically reasserting the case against conceptualism in art. Costello’s attempt to reconcile formalism with conceptualist aesthetics is acknowledged as rigorous and valuable, but I argue that the proposed synthesis risks diluting the distinctive power of visual forms. Conceptual and Readymade art, though often framed as extending Kantian “aesthetic ideas,” are in practice too easily exhausted by their reducible concepts, lacking the inexhaustibility of form-based aesthetic experience. Against the linguistic turn in philosophy of art, I maintain that the privileging of cognition, language, and meaning has marginalized the richness of visual and perceptual experience. Drawing on Greenberg, Pater, and Lessing, I emphasize medium-specificity, the irreducibility of form, and the depth of aesthetic judgment beyond conceptual content. Whereas Costello is willing to integrate conceptuality into aesthetics, I contend that reconciliation lies instead in reaffirming the primacy of perceptual and formal dimensions, which surpass meaning and resist linguistic reduction. In today’s visual age, saturated by screens and images, the philosophy of art must return to the autonomy and depth of visual forms, rather than apologetically absorbing conceptualism.

A widespread view denies that there is a concept of the sublime in Chinese thought and philosophical aesthetics. This denial is a mistake. We examine texts and artworks that indicate that the experience of the sublime can be found in Chinese aesthetics and theories of art and aesthetic experience. To show this, we first present an overview of the sublime extracted from western writers: we describe the sublime experience’s structure, objects, and status as a mixed (but ultimately pleasant) experience. These themes are then taken as a guide for the analysis of Chinese terms relating to the sublime (such as chónggāo 崇高). We then examine Chinese sources from both the classical and late modern periods. Moreover, we respond to two objections. We conclude that the sublime is not confined to western or European experiences or to movements within those traditions, such as Romanticism.

Can painting evoke an experience of the sublime, understood in the terms adopted by Kant in the _Critique of the Power of Judgment_? I will present three considerations that imply that painting cannot evoke the Kantian sublime. I will then point out some problems related to each consideration. I will explain how some paintings can evoke an experience of the sublime, even when painting is understood in terms of the eighteenth-century European context. In this way, I intend to show the real possibility of the Kantian sublime as a reaction to pictorial art.