LECONS SUR L'ANALYTIQUE DU SUBLIME - KANT, CRITIQUE DE LA FACULTE DE JUGER, 23-29

The Analytic of the Sublime occupies a modest place in Kant's Critique of Judgment (Critique de la faculté de juger), in which it appears without any justification. However, this text is so dense and at times even so unpredictable, that not only is it one of the most challenging to grasp of Kant's corpus of writings, but commentaries often tend to simplify or disregard it.

This Analytic, however, paves the way for a critical aesthetic radically different from that of taste. It heralds an alternative way of categorising and evaluating works of art and literature. Post-Kantian thought and Romanticism both understood and stifled its obscure message. The sole goal of these lessons is to attempt to explain the Analytic text. Lyotard explores it from within, based almost exclusively on the three Kantian Critiques. He is less concerned with the system Kant had envisaged than with the thought behind his research. He is trying to revitalise the purpose dominating this text: a violent différend may arise between the powers of thought; the sublime is the feeling which makes the latter aware of the former.

Jean-François Lyotard, who was born in Versailles on 10 August 1924 and died in Paris on 21 April 1998, was a French philosopher associated with post-structuralism. He is particularly known for his critical use of the post-modern concept. His works published by Éditions Klincksieck are: Discours, Figure (2002); Rudiments païens (2011); and (on his thought), Lyotard à Nanterre (2010).

Philosophe.