Dal sublime al mostruoso. Due letture kantiane

Abstract

The article explores the closeness of the theme of the monstrous to the concept of the sublime, first of all linking them as moments that challenge our cognitive possibilities, starting from these two aspects: the feeling of fear and the rupture of the ordinary representative scheme of the subject. Among the many revivals and interpretations of the Third Critique and of Kant's sublime, two authors of the French twentieth century – Gilles Deleuze and Jean-François Lyotard – bring together the sublime and the monstrous, radicalizing their epistemological scope, making them not only a cognitive possibility, but a necessary condition for the emergence of thought.