The sublime and the liberal politics: on the genealogy of liberal political and aesthetical sensuality in the social metaphysics of Kant

Annotation

The article is dedicated to Kant’s representation of the genealogy of liberal sensuality reproduced within the framework of yielding the liberal state of mind, which we take as a leading political and aesthetical phenomenon of the world of modernism. Based on the collection of respective works of Kant (“The Critique of Judgement”, “The Conflict of the Faculties”, “Metaphysics of Morals” etc.), we analyze the aporias emerging within the transition from the principles of law to the rightful political action, the estimation of moral grounds of the possibility of such a transition, and, fore and foremost, the aesthetic context wherein it occurs. We also demonstrated the complicated relations between Kant’s description of this issue and the attempt of its solving by Hannah Arendt, whose conception determines the modern liberal approaches to the practice of revolutionary action and formulation of the principles of liberal geopolitics. In this aspect, we scrutinize the Kantian distinction of the politically engaged sensualism from the standpoint of the triple structure of sensual representation of principles of morality within the politically judging and acting subject: the superstition – the sublime – the enthusiasm.

Keywords

theory of liberalism, sublime, superstition, enthusiasm, war, law, morality, politics, moral community.

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