4. Symbols of the Sublime: The Sea and the White Whale

2. Immanuel Kant’s Moral Sublime
So far I have given an account of Edmund Burke‟s philosophy of the sublime, which mirrors that of the majority of 18^th century writers, centred on emphasising the way extreme opposites can be mixed in producing sublimity. In the 19^th century however writers emphasised “the failure of understanding and reason to capture the infinity that [the sublime] invoked” (Battersby 2007, p.1). My first reason for using Immanuel Kant‟s philosophy as part of the theoretical framework to my thesis is because, writing at the end of the 18^th century, Kant serves as a gradual transition from this period to the 19^th century Romanticism (which I will examine in the succeeding chapter). The second reason is that Kant‟s aesthetics was very influential in both philosophical and literary circles at the time when Herman Melville was active as a writer.
Kant describes the sublime as an encounter between the „I‟ (i.e. ego, conscience, or the individual as a subject) and that which is capable of annihilating the „I‟ completely (Battersby 2007). As a defence mechanism, it is rational humanity that keeps the individual resolute when confronted with that which is capable of annihilating his or her conscience (Downard 2006). The Kantian sublime is presented as neither materialist nor wholly idealist. After the „dangerous‟ encounter, the sublime develops as the human mind enters the faculty of reason that transcends sensual, naturalistic, existence (Shaw 2006). This also suggests that Kant‟s sublime contains even more abstractness than Burke‟s.
Throughout Kant‟s works,⁶ the sublime is rendered into different modes. In §25 and §28 of the Critique of Judgement, Kant differentiates between the mathematically sublime (= that which is absolutely great in magnitude) and the dynamically sublime (= that which is absolutely great in power). Both modes however are categorised as representations of the sublime in nature. Kant implies that this natural sublime can also be experienced as a kind of admired (Kant 2004). As an antithesis to the natural sublime, Kant introduces the idea of the moral sublime. A simple example of the moral sublime is the feeling of benevolence towards an object (Merritt 2012). The underlying difference between the moral and natural sublime is that the former, the moral sublime, is something the subject (the individual) feels he or she should practice themselves; therefore, it is more than just admiration. Upon seeing a certain object, the individual is exhorted to practice greater beneficence, to be caring or even loving (Merritt 2012, p.47). Experiencing the natural sublime, on the other hand, does not prompt the individual to practice any sublime action or state of being because it is virtually beyond the individual‟s capability and/or will. One cannot be a lofty mountain or move like a strong and swift animal. The subject simply contemplates this matter in awe, that is, admiration. Thus, what Burke would call „terror‟, as a quality inherent in the sublime, is for Kant admiration which is not a component of the sublime but a reaction from the individual. Kant suggests it is not „real fear‟ that is involved when experiencing the sublime, but rather an attraction towards that which threatens to annihilate the ego (Battersby 2007, p.29). It is attractive because the sublime leads one to reflect on the infinite character of his or her own power of reasoning (Downard 2006).
Kant‟s account of the sublime is something that “is to be found in a formless object, so far as in it or by occasion of it boundlessness is represented” (Kant 2015, p.102). The sublime object may appear formless (a sea storm) or it may assume form (a giant whale) but due to its enormous size it is beyond human perception. All in all, the beholder is unable to “unify its elements […] in sense intuition” (Crawford 1974, p.99). However, the individual is aware of this inability. And this awareness indicates the existence of a higher faculty, something above both nature and imagination⁷ (Shaw 2006). Kant writes:
[W]e readily call these objects sublime, because they raise the energies of the soul above their accustomed height, and discover in us a faculty of resistance of a quite different kind, which gives us courage to measure ourselves against it is “transcendent to […] all determinations of nature” (Burnham 2000, p.99). Reason does not drives human beings to do as they want, this would be complying with the laws of nature, but to act as they should, which is in accordance with moral law (Shaw 2006, p.84). Kant‟s interpretation of the sublime as a kind of moral attainment instead of just being a „terror-sublime‟ is what distinguishes it from that of Burke‟s (Battersby 2007). When one encounters an object seemingly infinite in size or absolute in power, the beholder feels insignificant and powerless (Downard 2006). It is particularly the object which appears absolute in power that gives the beholder the feeling of being stripped of his or her own willpower. This feeling derives from the incapability of one‟s imagination to grasp the sublime; the mind is „forced‟ to make sense of the sublime, give it reason, regardless of how difficult the attempt may prove. Where imagination relinquishes, reason prevails. Kant summarises:
[Imagination and Reason] bring about a feeling that we possess pure self-subsistent Reason, or a faculty for the estimation of magnitude, whose pre-eminence can be made intuitively evident only by the inadequacy of that faculty [Imagination] which is itself unbounded in the presentation of magnitudes (of sensible objects). (Kant 2015, p.121; emphasis mine)
Kant reaches the conclusion that sublimity “does not reside in anything of nature, but only in our mind” as long as human beings are aware of their own „reasonable‟ thinking. The objects one deems sublime are therefore never truly sublime per se. It is by “supposing this Idea in ourselves” which makes the objects sublime. Finally, the individual transitions from admiring the natural sublime to „loving‟ it, which is the moral dimension and at the same time resembles a kind of transcendence from the physical to the metaphysical. This does not occur by seduction of the power of the sublime, but “by means of [Reason] which resides in us of judging [the sublime] fearlessly and of regarding our destination as sublime in respect of it” (Kant 2015, p.129).

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