Kant and The Sublime

Kant defines the experience of the Sublime as the inadequacy of finite subjective Imagination to infinitude. Because the Sublime thus belittles the subject, it is painful, but insofar as it forces resort to Reason, it is enriching. But, despite its constructiveness in cultivating Reason, Kant regards its systematic significance as only supplemental to that of Beauty. Now, regardless of his stated explanation for that subordination, the Sublime is subversive to the theological agenda of the Critique of Judgement. For, the ultimate agenda of the work is to demonstrate how a Rational being can hope for divinely-caused deserved Happiness, whereas the experience of the Sublime is the promotion of Reason in unhappy circumstances. Abstracted from such theological commitments, Kant's treatment of the Sublime might have taken a different course. He might have proposed that Vitality is a characteristic of any great Art, defined Vitality as 'having a life of its own', and elaborated on the latter as 'existing independently of the context of the Artwork'. He then might have noticed that the context of an Artwork is finite, a book, a score, a stage, a frame, etc., and have thus proceeded to argue that existingly independently of the context is to exceed it infinitely. In other words, with a different theological agenda, Kant might have attempted to demonstrate how all great Art is Sublime.