Abstract
In the chapter the focus on the process of affective transcending of their mundane lives and—simultaneously—finding such self-constructed acts of invention affectively overwhelming, are viewed as the key features of sensuality. This leads to the construction of the sublime that philosophers from eighteenth century onwards have tried to understand. The dynamic moves between the mundane and the sublime do not necessarily cross the border to the post-sublime domain. They remain episodic encounters with the awesome—turned into one or another form of hyper-generalization (grotesque, humor) for their returns to the mundane domain. The zone of the sublime is where most solutions for problems in the everyday life are being contemplated. Religious institutions of all varieties have skillfully set up specific places for support for these moves—in the forms of sacred rivers and forests, temples, synagogues, churches, and other shrines. Our secularized societies add to these art museums, concert halls, movie theatres, tourist spots, restaurants, schools, psychotherapists’ offices, and saunas. Persons are expected to navigate out of their everyday life contexts of home to encounter places that support their entrance into the zone of sublime—for subsequent return to the ordinary life. In that process the pleromatic generalization pathway leads the schematization processes, with hyper-generalized affective meaning fields providing solutions for the mundane issues. Not only are affective processes primary in the human mind, but their hierarchical integration leads us to understand the seemingly paradoxical unity of love and violence in any of our societies, and within the minds. This chapter gives the historical and philosophical background to the rest of the book.
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Notes
- 1.
vor- (Old German fora) indicating “before” (Kluge 1891, p. 379). If looking backwards in time one can refer to the “before” in the past (e.g., Vorgeschichte) but the time focus (this X, pre-X was before X).
- 2.
dar- (Old German dara) indicating “there” (Kluge 1891, p. 51). No time represented here.
- 3.
The example of the pyramids was used by Kant in 1766 (p. 6) referencing the travels by the Swedish explorer Fredrik Hasselqvist to Egypt in the 1750s, made available in German translation in 1762.
- 4.
In German original: “Das Schöne bereitet uns vor, etwas, die Natur ohne Interesse zu lieben; das Erhabene, es selbst wieder unser (sinnliches) Interesse hochzuschatzen” (Kant 1790/1922, p. 114)
- 5.
Examples of legalization of pornography in the public domain in different countries demonstrates. While before such legalization the encounter with a nude picture would trigger fascinated feeling of awe, then after legalization and public visibility of pornographic literature in public domain this becomes replaced by feeling of boredom or other forms of neutrality.
- 6.
In the 1860s the Paris Salon—major exhibition arena for artists—started again to accept pictured nudity if it was camouflaged in the legendary meaning frameworks of classical goddesses or gods. The realistic counter-move to that (see Fig. 1.2 above and all the work of Gustave Courbet in the 1860s) challenged that camouflage.
- 7.
Cabanel’s painting (Fig. 1.4) was institutionally appreciated in the Paris Salon when it was first exhibited in the year of its completion (1863) and was immediately purchased by Napoleon III for his personal collection. His critics were clear in their ideological opposition (“This goddess, drowned in a sea of milk, looks like a delicious dance-hall girl, but not of flesh and blood—that would be indecent—but made of a sort of pink and white marzipan” wrote Emile Zola—https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/paintings/the-birth-of-venus/).
- 8.
Panoramas of nature scenes are the frames that put the experiencer into the situation of impossibility to escape from it (Valsiner 2017b). Using the same Ganzheit-generating role of experience in mediated paintings operates on the generalizing practices of pleromatic kind that evolved in the evolution of the species.
- 9.
Cythera is an Ionian island where—by Greek legends—Aphrodite’s (Venus’) cult of love was located according to Greek legends.
- 10.
The painting became part of the Louvre collection in 1795, yet with ambivalent status. In the early nineteenth century, the curator at the Louvre was forced to place it in storage until 1816 in order to protect the painting from angry protesters. It was not until the 1830s that Watteau and the Rococo returned into fashion.
- 11.
The surrealist art forms include grotesque (Valsiner 2018b).
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Valsiner, J. (2020). Theory of the Dynamic Sublime. In: Sensuality in Human Living. SpringerBriefs in Psychology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41743-7_1
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