Avello Publishing Journal Vol. 1, No. 1. 2011
The Sublime Void Ø
Jason Wakefield
DIONYSII LONGINI
DE
SUBLIMITATE
COMMENTARIUS
ceteraque, quae reperi potuere in ufum.
Cambridge University Library's rare books room houses an archive of ancient Greek and classical
Latin manuscripts (including repaired texts) containing the concept of the sublime in various
different forms. These publications are riddled with misprints, errata, typographical errors, dubious
pagination, and textual inconsistencies that makes one immediately question the authenticity of the
scribe's manuscript copy corrections against the examplars. This combined with the ambiguous
nature of the Phoenician roots of the aforementioned archaic Greek sources, throws doubt on the
validity of all the lexicography and philology that has been the measure of the concept of the
sublime thus far in Oxbridge classical scholarship. The historiography of the concept of the sublime
precedes any analytical interrogation, and after inspecting the fragments and parchments that forms
some of the referential material of works such as the text falsely attributed to Λογγῖνος (Longinus)
Περὶ ὕψους (On the Sublime)1, the paleography (παλαιός) potentially falsifies the subsequent rereadings and philosophical successors who have inherited the concept. Handling these concepts,
should be the same as handling the rare books themselves, using the greatest care, with book-rests
to protect the spines and book-weights to hold open the leaves. The conceptual rests being
structured with philology and the conceptual weights consisting of paleography. Attention needs to
1 'Any historical discussion of the sublime must take into account the fountain – head of all ideas on that subject – the
pseudo – Longinian treatise, Peri Hupsous, known for over two centuries as Longinus On the Sublime' (Monk 1960:
10).
1
be paid to the variations in font sizes, calligraphy and line-spacing between different copies of the
same folios.
Alain Badiou’s ontological project in L'être et l' événement (Being and Event) is structured
by an axiomatic form of mathematics catalyzed by the end of Plato's Parmenides and Book IV of
Aristotle's Physics. Clayton Crockett re-reads this ontology as an elaboration of the Kantian
sublime, in which the mathematical sublime is separated from the dynamical sublime in order to
extinguish subjectivity from being. It is important to preface Crockett's re-reading with an outline of
the mathematico-logical structure of Being and Event and a genealogy of the concept of the sublime
from works such as the text attributed by some classical philologists to Longinus. This structure is
a mathematical framework which presents nothing except the Multiple in the being qua being
discourse. Being qua being allows itself to be sutured in its void during this discourse. This
discourse must be distinguished from Kant's philosophical discourse because philosophy is
separated from ontology even though, paradoxically, the kernel of philosophy is ontology. This
kernel, as a meta-ontology, has its de-stratification as an evental occurrence of being. Badiou
asserts, in Meditation Seven, that the categories of Kant cannot help us grasp the multiple of
multiples. The ancient Greek reference material drawn upon by Badiou and Kant share an
ambiguity and potentially corruptive nature. Not only is the authorship of several key texts
ambiguous, but the variations between the translations of the texts themselves require a close reexamination of the original manuscripts.
The rarity of the availability of the original manuscripts of these thinkers ancient Greek
reference points puts the whole of Kant and Badiou's respective aesthetic, epistemological,
metaphysical and mathematico-ontological edifices at risk, as their core foundations are potentially
corrupt and false. Subtle textual differences and errata between source manuscripts can potentially
change the whole trajectory of Kant's (Burkean - inflected ) concept of the sublime and the
mathematical framework of Badiou's ontological enterprise. A re-reading and close examination of
the textual anomalies between the source texts not only sheds light on the potential of classical
philology to invalidate the entire subsequent discourse of modern philosophy from ancient Greece
to the modern day, but it also brings in to disrepute philosophy as a multi – lingual discipline. A
2
genealogical succession of errata is often embellished and further distorted through inconsistencies
and problematics of translation and interpretation. There is often a lack in Kant's 1790 Kritik der
Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgement) and Badiou's Being and Event of textual analysis and
juxtaposition between ancient Greek source material.2 A close, philological reading of the rare
manuscripts attributed to compiling the texts such as Plato's dialogue Parminides and Aristotle's
Φυσικῆς ἀκροάσεως (Physics) is lacking from Badiou in Being and Event. Badiou is meticulous in
his referencing of the translations of the texts he is using, but he does not take in to the
consideration the validity of the original manuscripts themselves. Subtle changes in syntax, nuance
and etymology between the original document or manuscript and every successive reproduction of
the ancient texts may potentially distort and falsify every subsequent reading. Greek phrases do
permeate Badiou's Being and Event, but there is no sustained comparison between the copies of the
nameless and forgotten Greek scribes who composed the original sources. The ambiguous origins
and foundations of Badious' entire discourse that are based on ancient Greek texts may perhaps
invalidate all the hypotheses reached in his magnum opus. If the fundamental sources are corrupt,
then a lot of the axiomatic formulae derived from the sources can not be authentically validated.
The actual author of On the Sublime is unknown and approximately one third of the codex is
missing. Some scholars have wrongly attributed the treatise to Cassius Longinus and others to
Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The number of persons of this name Dionysius in the history of Greek
literature is vast and there is no certainty that there is only one literary Longinus either. The origins
of the concept of the sublime are ambiguous. A scholar embarking on a concrete analysis of the
early papyri, parchment, manuscripts and extant books containing the concept would need much
longer than the eighteen years it took Edmund Castell to compile his Lexicon Heptaglotton
Hebraicum, Chaldaicum, Syriacum, Samaritanum, Aethiopicum, Arabicum, et Persicum (1669).
This is because 'texts are not fixed' (McKitterick 2003: 97). Περὶ ὕψους is fluid and mobile, not just
at the time of writing, but in its production and publication.
2 The introduction to Being and Event cites Kant's salutation to the event of mathematics birth in the work of Thales
but provides no source or reference. Also of critical importance is 'of certain products that are expected to reveal
themselves at least in part to be a fine art, we say that they have no spirit, even though we find nothing to censure in
them as far as taste is concerned. A poem may be quite nice and elegant and yet have no spirit.' Kant Critique of
Judgement tr. Werner S. Pluhar. 1987. Cambridge: Hackett.
3
Crockett's forthcoming Deleuze Beyond Badiou: Ontology Multiplicity and the Event
suggests that ‘Badiou’s philosophy is quasi-Kantian insofar as it is obsessed with the conditions of
possibility for an event to occur, a pure irruption of novelty beyond being.’ My perspective diverges
slightly from the quasi – Kantian reading of Badiou, but retains some of the mathematically sublime
conclusion of Parmenides that all is one; as Being and Event is punctured with logical connectors,
relations linking variables, formulas containing parentheses / braces / square brackets, quantified
variables, free variables, assemblages of signs with strictly defined rules and the logical principle ex
falso sequitor quodlibet. Perhaps preceding the poetical, Hellenistic Longinus embroilment in the
dynamical sublime is the mathematical sublime as manifested in the void and the excess of the
sublime. To clarify, the void may seem incomprehensible as the void does not present anything or
have any elements.3 Yet this is the true essence of the sublime as the void is a subset of any set,
possessing its own subset, which is the void itself! One can intuitively grasp the mathematical
sublime in its universal inclusion because 'the void is an empty set, the null set Ø, which is “the
unpresentable point of being of any presentation' (Badiou 2005: 86). Despite Aristotle firmly
rejecting this hypothesis, this encounter with the mathematical sublime was as relevant to Longinus4
in the 1st century B.C as it is to Badiou today. Aristotle refused to separate the void from that of the
place, so in terms of inventio (invention), dispitio (arrangement), style and presentation (elocutio),
memoria (memory) and delivery (actio) there can be no unpresentable null set Ø of the void
presented because one cannot think in an empty place.
Crockett's Being a Sublime Event: A Critique of Alain Badiou's Magnum Opus5 suggests on
page nine that 'this inexistence indicates the place of the void, which is necessary for the
3 Tim Crane (Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge University) has a paper forthcoming in 2012 on the
problem of non-existence.
4
H.L Havell's translation of Longinus On the Sublime follows that of Jahn (Bonn, 1867), revised by Vahlen,
and republished in 1884. Parallels can be drawn between Aristotle's emotion-charged axiom that 'being is said in several
manners' and Cicero's mastery of narrative, stasis and ethos:
In his first oration against Catiline, for example Cicero abandoned convention and opened with a
series of emotion-charged questions rather than with a calm exordium: Quo usque tandem abutere, Catiline,
patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? - “How long Catiline, will you abuse our
patience? How long will that madness of yours continue to mock us?” (I. 1). In addition, he, more so than any
of his contemporaries, was a master not only of narrative and stasis but also of ethos, which he used effectively
in two ways – to portray his clients in the most favourable terms and demolish the characters of his
adversaries.' (Havell 1890: 293)
5
4
This Avello Journal article is a chapter from a larger book project on Deleuze and Badiou, that reads Badiou’s
constitution of an evental site. An evental site inaugurates a form of historicity.' The concept of the
sublime, in its mathematical incarnation, perhaps has a historicity which can be traced through a
succession of textual events joined together like the relations linking variables in equations. This is
embedded deeply and implicitly in the poetics of the lost pages of the treatises concerning
sublimity. These lost, forgotten pages form the void-set marked by the name Ø. Yet they remain
included within our genealogy of the concept of the mathematical sublime. The poetical aspect of
this connection between the sublime Ø and its genealogy is at the crux of my argument.6
'The void is included in everything' (Badiou 2005: 87). The void left by the missing pages of the
treatises on the sublime is in a position of universal inclusion. Despite two thirds of the Longinus
On the Sublime manuscript being missing, we should not forget it is an element of the multiple
readings throughout the history of meditations on the sublime from the pre-Socratics to Badiou.
This adds weight to the sublime void in 'things unsaid have sometimes a greater affect than said'
Πίνδαρος (Pindar) and 'on this occasion I assumed a part of your eloquence, for I said nothing'
(Cicero).
In the copy of Aristologia Pindarica by Πίνδαρος (Pindar) in Cambridge University Library's
rare book room, repaired in 1936, there seems to be four pages missing. The remaining pages are
mis-numbered, with broken text on line 16 of page 9 with slightly different fonts and sizes. The text
fluctuates between Greek and Latin verse, leaving one with the impression that when the original
data is examined from where the concept of the sublime in lyric poetry originated, there is little
concrete consistency and authenticity. This is because much of this lyric poetry is based on papyri
and fragments of single leafs of parchment codex that have critical signs more commonly found in
critique of Deleuze in Gilles Deleuze: The Clamor of Being and criticizes it, in order to open up Crockett's own
interpretation of Deleuze. See Clayton Crockett, Deleuze Beyond Badiou: Ontology, Multiplicity and Event (New York:
Columbia University Press, forthcoming).
6
Horace Ars Poetica:
title remains a significant obstacle, creating problems for readers over the centuries because it
necessarily engenders the expectation of a treatise along the lines of Aristotle's Technê Rhêtorikê. At the heart
of this issue is the word “ars.” The Indo – European root of ars, means to join closely, to fit. [...] The Greek
equivalent is arti, meaning “just” or “exactly,” and artios, meaning “suitable,” complete, or exactly fitted.”
How these words were used in early Greek is uncertain, but we find Homer using artios in both the Iliad and
the Odyssey to signify speaking to a specific purpose. (Iliad, 14.92; Odyssey, 8.240). (Williams 2009: 384)
5
Greek texts rather than Latin literary papyri. 7Unless figures such as Burke and Kant have actually
travelled to libraries such as those of Cambridge, St. Mark (Venice)8 and the Vatican City9 to
consult the original manuscripts of their sources, it is plausible that they have misunderstood the
concepts of the dynamical sublime and / or the mathematical sublime. As Kant never strayed further
than a few miles from his home town of Königsberg, it is unlikely he ever attempted to validate all
his sources or properly checked Burke's sources to add weight to his Kritik der Urteilskraft.
Rather than enter in to an argument pro or contra Longinus on Caecilius' prejudice against Plato
de rerum natura, I will open three copies of Virgil's Aeneid I encountered in the rare books room of
the UL. 10 Two of these copies are two volumes of the Strahan (1767) translation, the other is the
Beresford (1794) translation. Volume one and two have variations between the calligraphy and line
spacing but this is not as important as the content of the text itself in Book VII:
The Beresford :
To turn the Trojan King : Aye:- fate forbids. - might
Pallas burn the archive fleet,
and whelm its warriors In wave
by one man's fault Enwrath'd the
frenzies of Oileus' Son? (Virgil: 1794)
The Strahan:
The Trojan King from Latian Shores?
For why? The fates forbid. And could
7 If we turn to Fragmentum litergicum we find uncertain origins and African symptoms. 'The liturgy is manifestly a
translation from the Greek' (E.A Lowe).
8 The Venetus A is the oldest existing copy of Homer's Iliad and it is housed in this library built in the 1500's.
9 Several key pre – Caroline manuscripts are housed here 'The codex palatinus of Virgil is one of the oldest in
existence' (Lowe: xiii).
10 Cambridge University's main library. I also consulted the Seeley Historical library and English Faculty library on
their Sidgwick site.
6
Minerva burn the Grecian fleet, and
plunge amid the waves
The Greeks themselves, for one mans fault,
for crimes Oilean Ajax only dust attempt? (Virgil: 1767)
These very subtle differences can change the whole course of one's thought, depending on the
translation at hand. The several different versions of Longinus On the Sublime I encountered in the
rare books room are a lot less subtle in their errata / differences but the principle remains the same
when formulating a concrete aesthetic theory (in Kant's case) or a mathematical theory (in Badiou's
case). The founding axiomatic principles are in danger both aesthetically and mathematically. Let us
put down these tangible pieces of papyri and parchment read by Demosthenes, Plato, Homer and
Virgil and turn to the abstract parts of Kant's dynamical sublime. It is here where empiricism is
played off against transcendentalism and a glimpse of Wordsworth's tranquil sublime11 appears
playing empiricism off against empiricism. Crockett argues that 'Kant is already conflating the
dynamical sublime with the mathematical sublime in his discussion of the mathematical sublime'.
My suggestion is that this is true, but not in the sense of any confusion on Kant's part, but rather in a
deliberate sense in the way that Wordsworth plays empiricism off empiricism. Kant's project is an
epistemological one, even though he follows Aristotle's aesthetic configuration of forms. Beauty
resides in the subject, not the object, even though it sounds like Kant is discussing the object in his
distinctions between the quantitative sublime / qualitative sublime and pure beauty / dependent
beauty.
Man kann das Vermögen der Erkenntnis aus Prinzipien a priori die reine
Vernunft, und die Untersuchung der Möglichkeit und Grenzen derselben überhaupt
die Kritik der reinen Vernunft nennen : ob man gleich unter diesem Vermögen nur
die Vernunft in ihremtheoretischen Gebrauche versteht, wie es auch in dem ersten
Werke unter jener Benennung geschehen ist, ohne noch ihr Vermögen, als
11 See Ferguson 1992: 143. Also, as feminists, let us remember the importance of Dorothy Wordworth's place in
English literature. Even though she almost wrote almost no prose for publication, her journals show an intense
understanding of the sublime in nature that rivals the poetry of her brother.
7
praktische Vernunft, nach ihren besonderen Prinzipien in Untersuchung ziehen zu
wollen. (Kant: 1790)
To summarize my argument thus far, the faculty of knowledge concerning the concept of the
sublime up to and including Badiou, is based on faulty a priori principles. We can not call the
fictional Platonic dialogues of Parmenides 'pure reason.' The theoretical deployment of Έλληνες
(Greek) and lingua latīna poetry with mathematics does not constitute solid a priori knowledge for
the formation of the concept of the sublime in what Kant describes as pure reason. It is on this basis
that one would have to add Kant to the company of Hegel in what Lacan and (Badiou's friend)
Žižek call the most sublime of hysterics. 'In other words, Hegel's philosophical discourse is centered
on $ as the gap between Δ/a and S/S1 —> S'/S2, the subject as the dynamic, productive moment of
negativity made possible by the unsuturable parallax splits rupturing consciousness from within'
(Johnston 2008: 264). There is a twist to this Lacanian matheme which can be applied to this article,
not to diagnose the weaknesses in the Kantian critical – transcendental framework, or to separate
the link between the Lacanian Real and the Kantian thing-in-itself of Žižek's The Sublime Object of
Ideology but in derailing Δ/a into S/S1 —> S'/S2. To clarify, my argument is moving from the
particular immediacy of the original source texts themselves into the universal, generic concepts of
theorists of the sublime.
The concept of the sublime is well worn from centuries of agreements, disagreements and
determinations. One of Deleuze's interventions on Kant's Critique of Judgement is called The Idea
of Genesis in Kant's Aesthetics. 12 The Elizabeth Rottenberg translation of Lyotard's Lessons on the
Analytic of the Sublime is much more substantial however and relates to Badiou directly in the
pages stating that the infinite is thinkable as a whole. To be specific, it is Badiou's contemplation of
Parmenides thought that all is one that ties their mathematical approach to the sublime together.
12 Deleuze (2004) Desert Islands and other texts 1953-74. Semiotext(e).
8
Permit me a return to Badiou's void-set marked by the name Ø, and how this gap can used to
articulate the blanks in memory caused by the sublime affects of a combination of sex, drugs and
rock 'n' roll. If we consider an excess of the mathematical sublime in terms of a surplus of cash
currency, combined with the mathematical formula of the void as a drug – induced lack of
consciousness, we have a new playing ground for the concept of the sublime. This may seem
theoretically vacuous, but that is the whole point of the void in Badiou's mathematics. If we think
of the sublime as a mathematical synthesis of the drug - induced void and excess of finances, then
we have new terrain to explore. This is perhaps the terrain of the underworld's capo di tutti capi13
and not the terrain of the classical philologist. Bizarrely, the two sometimes share the same
existential framework, within a space of what Deleuze14 and Guattari call deterritorialisation. This
existential framework does not have its foundations in the strange, quasi- Kantian defense that the
SS Obersturmbannführer Eichmann gave in his trial for helping organize the holocaust, or in the
Heideggerian silence on the holocaust, but in the book that Nietzsche did not write but his sister
published from his notes she named The Will to Power. 15
The will to power for the pursuit of the mathematically sublime is perhaps what elevates
soldiers to capos in the Sicilian mafia hierarchy. La Cosa Nostra emerged in the mid-nineteenth
century around the same time as Nietzsche's birth, perhaps then we can posit the mathematically
sublime as an ideological reaction to the rise of capitalism during this era. In 1867 Marx published
Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Capital). This is a Hegelian approach to analyzing
business, money, profit, commodities and wage labour. The spiritual, idealist sense of the absolute
13 Italian: Boss of all bosses.
14 See Deleuze & Guattari's Anti-Oedipus and Heymans' Deleuze & Guattari's Becoming-Animal and the Romantic
Discourse of the Sublime.
15 The question remains as to how many aphorisms are missing and how many have been doctored out of the 1, 067
published in the second edition of The Will to Power (1906).
9
is replaced with the material capitalist exploitation. Badiou's was taught by the famous Marxist
Althusser 16in 1967, thus this is not a digression from my preliminary argument.
What we have in the formation of the Sicilian mafia is a combination of the Marxist recognition
of the importance of the transformation of money into capital and the accumulation of capital with
Nietzsche's sister's thirst for power. 'Famous pictures feature Hitler looking admiringly upon a bust
of (a then deceased Nietzsche), and one of the aged Elisabeth beaming with Hitler by her side'
(Acampora & Ansell-Pearson 2011: 3). Using the organized criminal network of the Sicilian mafia
as our model, perhaps we can draw a parallel between this and what the avid – Nietzsche reader
Heidegger terms a community of people [Volk] who preserve authentic self – hood. Each member of
the mafia becomes a self-made-man when they are promoted to the position of Capo, however they
remain at the mercy and under orders of the wider family. Michele Zagaria, one of the top mafia
bosses in the Naples region of Italy was arrested a few weeks ago after evading capture for sixteen
years. The irony of this is that during his time avoiding the Italian authorities he helped contract the
construction of a prison! Zagaria ran his clan like a dictatorship, much like the Volk of the Third
Reich was organized and controlled. The psycho-pathological forces at work within the Italian
forms of mafia organization share elements of the Nietzschean will and the Heideggerian
acceptance of the finite nature of time. This gangster orientation towards the mathematical sublime,
misuses and abuses the intentions of Nietzsche's will-to-power17 and Heidegger's being-towardsdeath.
Here, the image of Cuba we get from someone like Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (his 'dirty Havana
trilogy') is revealing: the Cuban 'being' as opposed to the revolutionary Event – the daily
struggle for survival, the escape into violent promiscuous sex, seizing the day without
16 See Kaufman's The Desire Called Mao: Badiou and the Legacy of Libidinal Economy. 2007. Postmodern
Culture.Vol. 18. No 1. This essay explores the synthesis of Marxist economic theory with Freudo – Lyotardian
libidinal currents. In terms of painting and Kantian aesthetics, Lyotard answers the question of what is
postmodernism with positing 'Thou shalt not make graven images' (Exodus) as the most sublime passage in the
Bible. (Lyotard 1979: 78).
17 See Rüdiger Bittner's Nietzsche: Writings from the Late Notebooks (2003) for some of the suppressed manuscripts
that have remained unavailable in English for several decades.
10
future-oriented projects. This obscene inertia is the 'truth' of the revolutionary Sublime.
(Žižek 2002: 8)
In a footnote to this point on the revolutionary sublime, Žižek claims that 'the proof of true fidelity
to a leader is not that one is ready to take a bullet for him; over and above this, one must be able to
take a bullet from him.' This highlights the obscenity of the revolutionary aspect of La Cosa Nostra
in the nineteenth century in its antipathy towards the Italian government, where we have the
rebellious mafia opposed to to the supreme authority of the State. This obscenity has an element
of irony and hypocrisy, as we see in the figure of Mussollini, Head of Governement [Capo del
Governo], the same abuse, misuses and distortions of the Nietzschean will-to-power that is inherent
in the struggles of the Capo di tutti capi of La Cosa Nostra against the state.
Hitler personally bequeathed a collected works of Nietzsche's to Mussolini at the Brenner Pass in
1938. Using Badiou's terminology, this happened outside of being-qua-being, in an event of
absolutely contingency. What if we stretch this event in another direction, in the direction of the
void – set Ø, where we have two heads of state, who if reduced to an emptiness masked by
symbolic inter-subjective relations, are in themselves a nothingness. This is not a nothingness in the
sense of Sartre's L'Être et le néant, but in the Žižekian sense of The Sublime Object of Ideology:
However, this is not all; if it were, the subject could be reduced to an empty place in which
his or her whole content is procured by others, by the symbolic network of intersubjective
relations. I am in myself a nothingness, the positive content of myself is what I am for
others. (Žižek 1989: 46)
There is a sublimity inherent in this void of nothingness. This sublimity is in the awe it inspires in
others, much like the hand-written musical notation of Nietzsche and his friend (turned enemy)
Wagner. Individual notes have no aural affect18 with out an audience to perceive it, however a
composition of notes, with an audience, leads to music festivals and events such as the Bayrether
18 For fascinating research on the rhythmics of the voice (drawing upon Braidotti and Herzog) see Milla Tiainen's
publications as a guide to new approaches to the concepts of the beautiful and the sublime.
11
Festspiele. 19 This has a direct relationship to the political manifestation of the Fōrster-NietzschoHeideggerian existentialism of the will-to-power's ideological place in the Hitler / Mussolini
meeting (as a Badiouan event) on the Brenner Pass. Paradoxically, as a singular, isolated event there
is no significance or rupture in the set, but as a symbolic event it is a void Ø in the ethical course of
1938's political landscape. This philosophico-mathematical nexus, dances to the rhythms and songs
of Wagner, who was one of the more favored composers of both Mussolini and Hitler. The
sublimity inherent in this void of nothingness is, in Burke's analysis, the terror and horror of the Ø.
In conclusion, Parmenides' notion of all is one might have a theological parallel in Blake's All
Religions Are One. 20Here Blake21 speaks of all sects of philosophy coming from the poetic genius,
adapted to the weaknesses of the individual. Parmenides22 typology of hypotheses is an
epistemological weakness of his incomprehension of the revolutionary, mathematical and
dynamical sublime. The beautiful, Kantian thrill that comes over us at the idea of the sublime, can
fill the void Ø in its representation; even if the object is coarse or barbaric, as when it is represented
aesthetically (such as in Blake's illuminated printing or in the figure of death, as Milton articulates
it) we feel magnitudo reverenda intensely. 'Nature's sublimity, however, gives way to the sublimity
of the post – Fordist city in a striking scene in which Alex briefly enters the city limits of Los
Angeles' (Nilges 2008: 59). This intensity which inspires awe is often due to our lack of
apprehensio of the sublime, hence the need for the void Ø to describe the gap.
Into the Wild (2007) is not the non – fiction text adapted to film that we shall cease our
genealogy of the sublime with. Mr. Nice (2010) adapted from the autobiography of the Welsh
19 Annual music festival held in Bayreuth, Germany. In the epigrams and interludes of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and
Evil makes use of Italian in specifically musical terms. On the ontological significance of music and decadence see
Christoph Cox Nietzsche, Dionysus, and the Ontology of Music in Ansell Pearson ed. A Companion to Nietzsche.
Oxford: Blackwell 2006. & Ellis Benson Pious Nietzsche Decadence and Dionysian Faith Bloomington: Indiana
University Press 2008.
20
See Yovel's (1998) Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews for ideas on the religion of sublimity.
Pennsylvania University Press.
21 Art, immanence and transcendence can be found in Colebrook's Blake, Deleuzian Aesthetics, and the Digital.
Continuum. Forthcoming 12/1/2012.
22 For Parmenides the Absoluteness of Being is the fundamental principle of philosophy, see Zhang Shiying's chapter
in Alain Badiou's The Rational Kernel of the Hegelian Dialectic (2011). ed. & tr. Tzuchien Tho. Victoria: RePress.
12
underworld legend / former MI6 agent Howard Marks is our conclusive point of departure. Marks,
whilst considering a switch from physics to philosophy for his Oxford University Masters degree23
had an idea which later culminated in the thought that 'I found no one completely understood moral
philosophy and that non-comprehension was by no means a bar to contribution' (Marks 1998: 46).
This sublime non – comprehension has many folds and pleats that ordain my leading article. In the
interest of precision and lucidity, one will refine and compress these folds in to a single epiphany.
Marks was elected to organize the musical entertainment for his Commemorative Ball, a year after
the Rolling Stones where booked by Magdalen College just before they became rock 'n' roll
superstars. Marks response to this election was to book the Kinks whilst he and his friends filled
Oxford with cannabis smoke. The intoxication of cannabis creates a void Ø in the fabric of one's
consciousness. This is a sublime puncture in the Leibnizian coherence of Marks mind from nights
tripping out on LSD and smoking cannabis. On another physiological level, stage-fright is the
closest feeling Marks now receives in comparison to the orgasmic experience of the sublime that he
used to feel crossing international borders with tons of smuggled cannabis.
23 After reading Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, Marks returned to Oxford to study History and
Philosophy of Science. He was taught by Dummett a fellow of All Souls who later became Oxford's Wykeham
Professor of Logic.
13
Appendix
Edward Elgar added an orchestral score to Jerusalem, the hymn that Charles Parry set to music and derived from
William Blake's 1804 Preface to Milton. In juxtaposition with the divine malice Nietzsche showed to the paradigmatic
pathological horror of Wagner in The Case of Wagner: A Musicians' Problem (1888), here instead we have the ethically
beautiful and the sublime, filling the void – set Ø.
14
Bibliography
Acampora, C. D. & Pearson, K. A. 2011. Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. Continuum.
Badiou, A. 1988. L'être et l' événement (Being and Event) London & New York : Continuum.
2005.
Blake, W. 1926. The Prophetic Writings intr. D.J Sloss & J.P.R Wallis. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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Buchanan, I. 1998. Deleuze and Guattari's Anti – Oedipus. London: Continuum.
Burke, E. 1998. On the Sublime and the Beautiful London: Penguin.
Crockett, C. Deleuze Beyond Badiou: Ontology, Multiplicity and the Event. New York: Columbia
University Press, forthcoming.
Crockett, C. A Theology of the Sublime. London: Routledge, 2001.
Deleuze, G. Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties, tr. Hugh Tomlinson and
Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Ferguson, F. 1992. Solitude and the Sublime: Romanticism and the Aesthetics of Individuation. New
York & London: Routledge.
Johnston, A. 2008. Žižek's Ontology a Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity.
Northwestern University Press.
Kant, I. 1987. Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgement). (1790) tr. W. S. Pluhar. Cambridge:
Hackett.
Kant, I. 1974. Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of
View) tr. Mary J. Gregor. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Leibniz, G. W. 2007. Theodicy BiblioBazaar.
Longinus. 1870. An Essay on the Sublime tr. H. A. Giles. London: J. Cornish & Sons.
Longinus. 1871. An Essay on the Sublime tr. J. M King. London. UL Rare Book Classmark: Sc.
14.26 (Not borrowable).
Longinus. 1694. Dionysiou Longinou Peri Hupsous Trajecto ad Rhenum: Ex Officinâ Francisci
Halma. UL Rare Book Classmark: Z.9.22. (Not borrowable).
Lowe, E. A. 1972. Latini Antiquires A Paleographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts prior to the
Ninth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Lyotard, J.F. 1991. Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime. tr. E. Rottenberg. Stanford University
Press.
Lyotard, J.F. 1979. La Condition Postmoderne: Rapport sur le Saviour. Les Editions de Minuit.
Marks, Howard. 1998. Mr. Nice. London: Vintage.
Monk, S. H. 1960. The Sublime – A Study of Critical Theories in XVIII – Century England
University of Michigan Press.
Mussolini, R. 2006. Duce, Mio Padre (My Father, il Duce: a memoir by Mussolini's son) tr. A.
Stojanovic. Milan : RCS Libri S.P.A.
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McKitterick, D. Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order 1450-1830 Cambridge University
Press.
Nilges, M. 2008. The Anti-Anti-Oedipus Mediations Journal of the Marxist Literary Group. Volume
23, No. 2.
Parry, H. C. & Blake, W. 1916. Jerusalem. London: J Curwen & Sons.
Pindar. 1556. Aristologia Pindarica Basileae. UL Rare Book Classmark Y.3.24. (Not borrowable).
Sweet, H. 1971. The Epinal Glossary Latin and Old English of the Eighth Century (photolithographed from the original ms. by W. Griggs). London: Trübner and co.
Tiainen, M. 2005. Säveltäjän Sijainnit (Locating the Composer). Jyväskylän Yliopisto.
Virgil. 1767. Aeneid. tr. Strahan, A. London: A.Miller & T. Cadell. UL Rare Book Classmark:
7700.d.651 – 651. (Not borrowable).
Virgil. 1794. Aeneid. tr. Beresford, J. UL Rare Book Classmark: Ff.11.45. (Not borrowable).
Žižek, S. 2002. Welcome to the Desert of the Real! Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates.
London & New York: Verso.
Žižek, S. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London & New York: Verso.
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