Abstract
In the present article I analyze the absence of the sublime feeling in the philosophy of Dewey as condensed in this question: What does it mean to human formation the claim that Dewey ignored the sublime? I start off by presenting the absence of the sublime feeling in Dewey’s philosophy. Then, I present the Kantian sublime and its influence on modern projects of emancipation, especially the educational project in the American Bildung based on the naturalization of Hegel’s objective idealism. Next, I present the Kantian sublime as thought in political and educational terms by Lyotard to discuss human formation and the current crisis of democracy. At stake is the dispute between emotions without reasoning in the search for a purpose to politics and education based on the amplified public space created by social media: fanaticism and ignorance. I argue that by means of ignorance we can bring into existence a purpose to the human formation as an ethics of life against the present fanaticism.
Keywords
sublime; Bildung; ignorância; John Dewey; Jean-François Lyotard