The Marginalization of the sublime in hegelian aesthetics

Abstract

In Lectures on Aesthetics (1989), Hegel not only marginalizes the concept of the sublime by giving it scant space, but also refers to it as a low and grotesque notion. In Hegel there is no balanced dialogue between the beautiful and the sublime, rather the beautiful is the only and undisputed protagonist, while sublimity is positioned as a minor accident, a footnote in the different configurations of the developtment of the concept of the beautiful. Given that in Hegelian aesthetics the sublime is approached in an exceptional and  unconventional way –if we compare it with any of the aesthetics theories of the 18th and 19th centuries-, and little importance is attached to it, this paper intends to account for what were our author´s motives for such a treatment of the concept. The main argument is base don showing that the Hegelian marginalization of the sublime is due to the dialectical role that this category has in the conceptual deployment of the beautiful in its historical dynamism.