The Colossal and Grotesque: The Aesthetics of German Orientalism in Kant and Hegel

Abstract

Germana places the discourse of German orientalism within the context of the epistemological, moral, theological, and political debates central to Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. He argues that an examination of Kant’s and Hegel’s aesthetics is revealing of the essentially gendered nature of this discourse and the anxiety at its basis. Both thinkers, he contends, articulate a narrative of the teleological progression of reason that was simultaneously a construction of modern European masculinity. The goal of this rational development is the elevation of human beings above the immediacy of nature and the senses, exemplified by women and the Orient. He concludes by placing this discourse within the historical context of Kant’s and Hegel’s struggles against the orientalist enthusiasm of the Sturm und Drang and Early Romanticism.