Kaplama E. Cosmological Aesthetics through the Kantian Sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian

University Press of America, Inc., 2013. — 222 p. — ISBN: 0761861564.Erman Kaplama explores the principle of transition (Übergang) from metaphysics to physics developed by Kant in his unfinished magnum opus, Opus Postumum. Drawing on the Heraclitean logos and Kant’s 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 Heidegger’s and Nietzsche’s 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 Gogh’s Starry Night in an excursus.Chapter One On “Transition” as one of the Founding Principles of Cosmological
Aesthetics and its Applications in the Kantian Sublime and Nietzschean
Dionysian
Chapter Two On “Motion” as one of the Founding Principles of Cosmological
Aesthetics with Regards to the Heraclitean, Kantian and Nietzschean Cosmology
Excursus A Cosmological-Aesthetic Analysis of Van Gogh’s Starry Night