ABSTRACT
This chapter considers four post-Kantian theorists of the sublime namely: Arthur Schopenhauer, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. It engages with these theorists through the lens of four novels, two from the late nineteenth century and two from the early twentieth century, which seek to sustain, modify or refute a post-romantic conception of the sublime. In The End of the Line Neil Hertz cites, as illustration of the psychological effects of the sublime, 'a scholar's fear that we shall all be overwhelmed by the rising tide of academic publication'. The chapter shows how the dissolution of the ego in Schopenhauer's conception of the sublime bears comparison with Freud's account of the relations between Eros, the life instinct, and Thanatos, the death instinct. Freud's account of the death drive thus provides a compelling update on Schopenhauer's conception of the sublime as an affirmation of nullity.
