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Qi Wang

Abstract

Different from Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy's reinterpretation of the concept of the sublime highlights its functions of combatting metaphysical totality, defending difference and witnessing the un-presentable. What Nancy does is not only to rethink the "presentation" and "limit" of the sublime, but also to reflect on the end of art, the relationship between imagination and the sublime, the sublime offering and so on. Nancy divides Immanuel Kant's aesthetic schema into two paradigms — "aesthetics sublates philosophy" and "philosophy sublates aesthetics" — and believes that neither accurately demonstrates the essential state of being in the postmodern condition. Nancy incorporates Lyotard's time with Derrida's espacement and synthesizes his own thought of "exposition", "de-limitation" and "offering" into the concept of the sublime. He emphasizes more on the sublime and the generativity, dynamics, transcendence and imperfectability of the sublime sense and moves it outside the frame of aesthetic form to become a fundamental issue with more existential concern. Nancy's reinterpretation of the sublime is not only a deconstruction of traditional metaphysics, but also the re-examination of German idealism, as well as the continuation and development of the postmodern sublime, and thus of great significance for the reflection on the existential status of human in the postmodern condition.

First Page

204

Last Page

211

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