The Diogenes complex: sublime living in irrational times

From Kant to postmodernism the idea of the sublime was always tied with questions of ethics and politics. Kant saw the sublime as a proof that rationality triumphs over nature, validating law and judgement through the subjective experience of pleasure and pain. Lyotard saw in the sublime a symptom of a crisis at which rationality reaches its limit, and subjectivity is confronted with its own collapse. As this chapter will show, both these approaches are inadequate to account for the sublime in 21st century. The failure of liberal democracy and the rise of populist and fascist ideologies calls for a re-evaluation of the sublime as the dissolution of the symbolic order and the coming face to face with the alternative reality of the death drive. This chapter names this reality ‘The Diogenes Complex’, after the homeless beggar who made his form of existence the manifestation of his philosophical creed. Through his performative actions Diogenes has shown that reality is sublime because it is irreconcilable with rational logic and warned against the futility of trying to act rationally in irrational times.