Dialectic of the real and the ideal in the sublime and the inferior

It is precisely because the sublime is derived not from the abstract power itself as quantity, but from the particular ratio of quantity and quality, it is subordinated to the common for all aesthetic phenomena dialectics of the real and the ideal. Only in this light can the aesthetic impact of the quantity be explained. The historical process of man's struggle with nature has made people from the very beginning appreciate the power, power, and nature, and nature. In fact, the pagan worship of the natural elements was a consequence of the fact that one realized their infinite power as compared to his own vain possibilities. Of course, he dreamed of seeing himself even more powerful, for only by this condition he could cope with nature, subordinate it, and become a slave to its lord. One could achieve this goal initially - alas, only in the field of fantasy. Helpless in the real fight with nature, he was equal to it in myth, legend, fairy tale, epic, where he attributed superhuman magic and was portrayed as a metamorphosis of spectacular and mighty natural phenomena, not as a small rival and antagonist; and the magical ritual, the spells, the prayers should give him real power over nature. This power was, of course, illusory, but the admiration of the power of nature, the admiration for its great destructive and creative power, and its deification, led to the fact that these qualities were an important and essential feature of the social ideal, and hence their original divorced religious, moral and aesthetic assessment. Even after mankind overwhelmed the religious-mythological understanding of the world and started on the path of sober, scientific knowledge, the ideal of the public preserved the dream of such a power of man that would allow him to transform our planet, change the climate and finally subdued space expansions. Accordingly, the value perception of the quantity is cleansed by religious impurities and becomes purely aesthetic, since it is a perception of the sublime in nature, and morally aesthetic, because the bearer of greatness is man.

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While the idealization of the creative power of nature was of a religious-mystical character, it seemed to people that the energy of the natural elements revealed the omnipotence of God. Religious art with a great artistic conviction used this understanding of the sublime - not accidentally, in ancient India, in ancient Egypt, and in medieval Europe, architecture, as if competing with nature, created colossal temples, pyramids, tombs, cathedrals , and sculpture and painting sought for the same effect of immense, colossal and superhuman proportions in the images of the deity. The art of this era is a deeply characteristic kind of "cult of size", "aestheticization of the magnitude", a conscious highlighting of the contrast between the small and the weak, and the spectacular and omnipotent images of God and the God's home. And when humanity ceases to mystify nature, it has seen the sublime in itself, its incremental power, appreciating it aesthetically precisely because man's dream of his own power is an important element of the ideal. The very etymology of the notions of "exalted" and "inferior" speaks of coming from the ancient antiquity, but retaining its meaning, and in our times connecting the physical peak with what people aspire to in their lives they dream of, and to the physical strata - with what they want to overcome, from which they want to be released, because the upward movement is overcoming the power of gravitation, the pursuit of light and sun, freedom from the power of the earth, the slave stance to the "lowlands". Life grows and strives up, the dead falls and sinks down. It is no wonder that the religious-mythological creature settled the gods "up" - at Olympus or in the heavens, but the unclean power - in the underground kingdom, in the grave. This explains the aesthetization of quantity in nature. As for the sublime in man, it is even more obvious here that physical power acquires aesthetic value as it expresses the social ideals of the people. At first, while the basic meaning of human existence was determined by the primitive physical struggle with nature, the exalted character attributed to the characters of folk epic and fairy tale their mighty power, regardless of whether it was the bearer of the good or the evil beginning. But the more progress weakened the significance of gross physical force, pointing to values of spiritual, moral, and then political, values, the more sublime associated with the latter. Now in the aesthetic consciousness of mankind, sublimity is not as an attribute of enormous growth or extraordinary muscular power, but as an aesthetic quality of the power of character, the power of the spirit, the moral "growth." When a person performs something heroic, sacrificing their personal interests, their personal happiness in the interests of the class, the state, the people, and humanity - then his life and deeds become sublime. That is why the sublime in man is heroic.

The dialectic inherent in the aesthetic consciousness of the relative and absolute acts in the sphere of the sublime. When, in the perception of the sublime, the universal human, the absolute moment disappears, these ideas turn out to be false, distorted. As relative as the views of the sublime, formed in the consciousness of one or another class at one time or another, they are true only to the extent that they contain the moment of the absolute, are not the selfish interests of a person or even of a class, but of the whole-nation, all-human ideals.