The Egalitarian Sublime - James Williams

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Résumé :
A new, egalitarian, process philosophy of the sublime We call sublime those things and experiences supposed to be the very best. What if the best encourages the worst? What if the best leads to inequality and exploitation? Against unjust legacies of the traditional sublime James Williams defends an anarchist sublime: multiple, self-destructive and temporary, opposed to any idea of highest value to be shared by all, but always imposed on the powerless. He criticises the sublime, over its long history and in recent returns to sublime nature and technologies. Deploying a new critical method, Williams shows how the sublime has always led to inequality, even where it underpins ideas of cosmopolitan enlightenment and even when refined by Burke, Kant, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Zizek. James Williams is Honorary Professor in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University.

Biographie:

James Williams is Honorary Professor of Philosophy and member of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization at Deakin University. He has published widely on contemporary French philosophy and is currently working on a critique of the idea of extended mind from the point of view of process philosophy.

Sommaire:
1. Introduction; 2. Microcritique and the Sublime; i. Between Historical Objectivity and Radical Innovation; ii. Microhistory; iii. Method and the Problem of Exclusion; iv. Patterns of Fragments; 3. Nietzsche Against the Egalitarian Sublime; i. Only for the Few; ii. The sublime as Effect; iii. Untimely, Sublime; iv. Sublime Individuals Against Cohesive Communities; v. Through the Few, but for the Many?; vi. Individuals and Masses; 4. The Return to the Sublime; i. The Search for Value; ii. Nostalgic Social Sublime; iii. Diagrams of the Technological Sublime; iv. The Environmental Sublime; 5. Sublime Miseries; i. From High to Low; ii. Kant: Equality in Universality; iii. Schopenhauer's Sublime Consolations; iv. Zizek: A Depressing Lesson About Horror and Suffering; v. The Abject and Egalitarian Sublime; 6. Defining the Egalitarian Sublime; i. The Sublime and Egalitarian Politics; ii. Unequal by Definition; iii. Not After the Sublime; 7. Conclusion: The Sublime as Crisis; Bibliography; Notes.