In Lyotard’s reading Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, he explains how critical thought exists within an infinite amount of creativity with no principles but in search of them. Lyotard understands the Kantian sublime as a way to comply with the standards that critically analyze postmodernism using deconstruction. Kant differentiated the sublime between the vastness and greatness and the dynamic sublime. The vastness sublime is so great we can’t just use our senses like we normally do; it requires us to heighten our senses beyond comprehension. The dynamic sublime is the way in which rationalizes things and his perceptions.
Lyotard describes the boundlessness of the imagination and reason as a ‘differend’ and this is ‘to be found at the heart of sublime feeling: at the encounter of two absolutes equally present to thought, the absolute whole when it conceives, the absolutely measured when it presents.’ (Lyotard) Our imagination understands forms and measures while reason understands something without form of an infinite nature of something. There is a separation of imagination and reason and when we use the ‘enigmatic’ power of critical thought we can reflectively judge something. Kant's presentation of the sublime has been taken up by Lyotard and he explores different ways of finding a philosophical understanding of different artworks. Through Longinus and Burke we can explore the pre-modern and modern conceptions of the sublime and through all these critiques we can draw different manifestations of the sublime in art.
Kant questions how can someone judge an object before knowing how to properly judge that object and how do they know what proper judging is? Longinus in part of his critique implies that man can go beyond his limitations as a human being by experiencing emotions and language. The art or technical talents was described, as the human while the sublime was something that escaped our experience of art. ‘Sublimity consists in a