Abstract

This interesting and important contribution to scholarship on Kant’s account of sublime feeling develops an argument that the author first makes in an article, “Kant’s Consistency Regarding the Regime Change in France” (Philosophy and Social Criticism 32 [2006]: 443–60). The heart of the argument, presented in chapters 2 through 5, concludes that aesthetic enthusiasm (Enthusiasm, which Clewis distinguishes from Schwärmerei, or fanaticism) is a kind of sublime feeling, which can indirectly support morality and thus elicit an interest of reason (as Kant claims the beautiful does). In chapter 6, Clewis uses the foregoing analysis to resolve an apparent inconsistency between Kant’s remarks on the enthusiasm of ..