Outside Reading, Lindsey Ceniviva

The word sublime has been an ongoing topic throughout this course. It is difficult to explain and yet everyone has experienced it in one way or another. It is defined as the quality of greatness or vast magnitude, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical or artistic. It is the feeling of awe and astonishment, while experiencing a feeling of fear and uncertainness. The sublime is a greatness in which nothing else can be compared, often used to describe nature and the wilderness. There are many originations for the term sublime and each are very similar in that they represent something majestic and unmeasurable. The German Philosophy of sublime began with a man named Immanuel Kant. He used the term to describe one of his subject's mental states. He noted that beauty "is connected with the form of the object". He divides the sublime into two categories, the mathematical in which the notion of absolute greatness not inhibited with ideas of limitations and the dynamical category in which sublime is "nature considered in an aesthetic judgment as might that has no dominion over us". I believe he has come up with the most outstanding and appropriate description of the sublime. It bring the entire meaning together ever so beautifully. He said that sublime is ultimately "supersensible substrate," underlying both nature and thought, on which true sublimity is located.