Introduction

Abstract

The concept of the sublime has fallen out of favour. Over the last decades, the topic of the sublime has been sadly neglected by analytical philosophers and shamefully abused by poststructuralist thinkers. Many Anglo-American philosophers have judged the sublime to be an outmoded concept with nothing more than historical significance, whilst many poststructuralist approaches have turned it into a concept which is only vaguely reminiscent of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century original, and have used it merely to fit their postmodernist agenda, thus tarnishing its universal aesthetic value. The present book argues that a return to and revision of Arthur Schopenhauer’s subtle and highly-sophisticated theory of the sublime offers an invaluable contribution to a much-needed re-appraisal of this important aesthetic concept.