ABSTRACT

Aesthetics, according to Jean-Francois Lyotard, is characteristic of a particular era and mode of thinking that is associated closely with the Enlightenment and romanticism. Aesthetics is thus linked to subjectivity, and subjectivity, in turn, is linked to a very particular arrangement of time. Contrary to the tendency to speak, perhaps a little too quickly, of the 'postmodern' sublime, this 'contradictory feeling' must, at least initially, be understood as a part of 'modern' aesthetics. The 'sublime' as a category of artistic sensibility may well be what is unique to modern aesthetics; but the subject for whom that aesthetics was written faces annihilation in the moment of the sublime. In aesthetic comprehension, however, which is a unifying operation, temporality is experienced in a non-linear fashion. As an aesthetic judgement, the sublime is subjective, which is to say that it contributes nothing to knowledge of the object itself and so cannot lead cognition astray.