Overview

We call sublime those things and experiences supposed to be the very best. But what if the best actually leads to inequality and exploitation? Williams critiques the sublime over its long history and in recent returns to sublime nature and technologies. Deploying a new critical method that draws on process philosophy, he shows how the sublime has always led to inequality. This holds true even where it underpins ideas of cosmopolitan enlightenment, and even when refined by Burke, Kant, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Zizek. Against the unjust legacies of the traditional sublime, James Williams defends a new, 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.

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9781474439114

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Reviews

"In this exceptional work James Williams provides a fresh and wide-ranging examination of the sublime. He provides a series of valuable insights into classical modern theories of the sublime, such as we find in Burke, Kant and Schopenhauer, but he also sheds much light on figurations of the sublime we encounter in provocative thinkers such as Nietzsche and Zizek. With this book Williams demonstrates that he is one of the finest philosophical minds of his generation, a truly original and uniquely critical voice. The book is highly instructive and will appeal to students and scholars in philosophy and across the humanities. I cannot recommend it highly enough.-- ""Keith Ansell-Pearson, University of Warwick"""

Author Information

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.

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