Logic of aesthetic power. Form and performativity of art in Peri Hupsous

This article proposes a re-reading of the Pseudo-Longinus treaty, Peri Hupsous (On the Sublime), to highlight one of its philosophical issues whose interest appears particularly current. In the course of his conceptualization of the sublime, while the ancient author produces a definition of the high poetry, he questions above all the power of the works of art in an immanent manner, independently of any subjective reception. Yet this thought of aesthetic power goes hand in hand with a conception of art that rejects any dualism of form in order to grasp the work as a paradoxical and intimately coherent unit. Our hypothesis is that through this adequacy of power to the very logic of the poiesis, Pseudo-Longinus gives us to read nothing less than a first formulation of what we would call in a contemporary vocabulary the performativity of art. This article attempts to identify what are the conditions for such a performativity, extended from the discourse to aesthetics in general.