Cosmological Aesthetics through the Kantian Sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian [Hardcover]

Erman Kaplama explores the principle of transition (?bergang) from metaphysics to physics developed by Kant in his unfinished magnum opus, Opus Postumum. Drawing on the Heraclitean logos and Kants notions of sense-intuition (Anschauung) and reflective judgment, Kaplama interprets transition as an aesthetic principle. He revises the idea of nature (phusis) as the principle of motion referring to Heraclitus cosmology as well as Heideggers and Nietzsches lectures on the pre-Socratics. Kaplama compares the Kantian sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian as aesthetic theories representing the transition from the sensible to supersensible and as cosmological theories that consider human nature (ethos) as an extension of nature. In light of such Nietzschean notions as the eternal recurrence and will to power, the Dionysian is shown to trigger the transition by which nature and art are redefined. Finally, Cosmological Aesthetics employs the principles of transition and motion to analyze Van Goghs Starry Night in an excursus.Erman Kaplama is currently lecturing in philosophy, ethics, and governance at the University of the South Pacific. He was previously the Head of School of Social Sciences and assistant professor at Fiji National University. He holds a PhD in humanities and cultural studies from the University of Londons Birkbeck College, an MSc in political theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BA in political science from Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.This is a deeply impressive book. Well-researched and argued, it proposes nothing less than a principle of motion/transition that operates prior to the object/subjector phenomena/noumenasplit. . . . There are many highly original parts. . . . For myself, however, the excursus is the most exciting and compelling part of this work. I am very taken with the image of the spiral, and, indeed, with the reading of Van Goghs Starry Night. . . . Indeed, there are parts here that are beaulS