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Full Idea
Exaltation of the Sublime is the struggle to maintain will-less knowing in the face of a threat to the human will. The Sublime contains an awful beauty and a delightful terror because it includes a threat to human existence.
Gist of Idea
The Sublime fights for will-less knowing, when faced with a beautiful threat to humanity
Source
report of Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Idea [1819], I 201-7) by Peter B. Lewis - Schopenhauer 5
Book Ref
Lewis, Peter B.: 'Schopenhauer' [Reaktion Books 2012], p.116
A Reaction
Can you experience the Sublime when looking down a microscope? Can a mere theory in cosmology be sublime? Can a supposed perception of the Sublime ever be incorrect? We no longer worry about these questions, it seems.
Related Idea
Idea 21924 As the subject of willing I am wretched, but absorption in knowledge is bliss [Schopenhauer]
| 22046 | The mathematical sublime is immeasurable greatness; the dynamical sublime is overpowering [Kant, by Pinkard] |
| 21458 | The sublime is a moral experience [Kant, by Gardner] |
| 21928 | The Sublime fights for will-less knowing, when faced with a beautiful threat to humanity [Schopenhauer, by Lewis,PB] |
| 24087 | People who miss beauty seek the sublime, where even the ugly shows its 'beauty' [Nietzsche] |
| 24091 | The sublimity of nature which dwarfs us was a human creation [Nietzsche] |
| 20430 | In life we neglect 'cosmic emotion', but it matters, and art brings it to the fore [Fry] |
| 23923 | Visual form can create a sublime mental state [Bell,C] |
| 23758 | Beauty is an attractive mystery, leaving nothing to be desired [Weil] |
| 23070 | We morally dissolve if we spend time with excessive beauty [Cioran] |
| 20386 | The sublime is negative in awareness of insignificance, and positive in showing understanding [Davies,S] |
| 24175 | Accounts of sublimity differ over whether we learn something good about ourselves [Cochrane] |