The process of humanization and the interhuman moments of the sublime
The process of humanization and the interhuman moments of the sublime

Summary/Abstract: This paper studies the relation between the process of humanization and the sublime. Already from Kant’s third Critique, one can notice the connection between aesthetic experience and the moral self, therefore, this will be our starting point. Furthermore, psychoanalytical theories will be used also, namely the ones coming from Donald Winnicott, Daniel Stern and Gro Trolldalen. Winnicott’s mirror-stage will be of particular use to us, because of his theory of the mother’s mirroring the infant’s self, which allows the child to engage in a creative way of living. Stern’s affect attunement, the moments of meeting and vitality affects will be taken as a unitary theory, which explains, in our view, the process of humanization of the infant. Nevertheless, Trolldalen’s analysis of musical interplay will once again strengthen our thesis, namely the relationship between aesthetic experience and the ethical inter(actions). The whole purpose of this paper is to introduce, via Stern’s thematization of the infant’s interpersonal world, the notion of the interhuman moments of the sublime. Shortly said, these are the Kairotic moments (instants) of the sublime, which are to be found among human interactions, especially in the case of early mother-infant dyadic exchanges. This paper tries to establish a possible relation between psychoanalysis and phenomenology.

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