So, the kind of perfection that one might reasonably expect within the domain of techne rhetorike (something between the art and the technique of rhetoric) isn’t necessarily a desirable attribute for matters sublime in feeling. Longinus went so far as to propose inversions of “natural” syntax as examples of sublime effect. As for Boileau, in the preface he wrote in 1674 for Longinus’ text, in addenda of 1683 and 1701, and elsewhere, he finalized the previous tentative break with the classical institution of techne. The sublime, he demonstrated, cannot be taught, and didactics are thus powerless in this respect; the sublime is not linked to rules that can be determined through poetics; the sublime requires only that the speaker or listener have conceptual range, taste, and the ability “to sense what the whole world senses first.” Boileau was therefore in accord with Père Bouhours when, in 1671, he declared that beauty demands more than just a respect for rules, that it requires a further “je ne sais quoi,” call it genius if you will, or something “incomprehensible and inexplicable,” a “gift from God,” a fundamentally “hidden” phenomenon that can be recognized only by its effects on a selected individual. And in the polemic that set him against Pierre Daniel Huet, over the issue of whether the Bible’s fiat Lux, et Lux fuit (let there be light, and there was light) is sublime, as Longinus thought it was, Boileau referred to the opinion of the Jansenists of Port Royal, in particular to le Maître de Saci; the Jansensists are masters when it comes to matters of hidden significance, of silence that talks, of feeling that transcends reason, and finally of openness to Is it happening? .

At stake in these poetic-theological debates is the status of works of art. Are they copies of some ideal model? Can contemplation of some of the more perfect examples yield rules of creation that determine their success, persuasiveness, or pleasurability? Can understanding in fact triumph through this kind of contemplation? By concentrating on the sublime and indeterminacy while meditating on works of art, techne and related institutions such as the academics and schools, mentors and disciples, taste, and the enlightened public of princes and courtiers, undergo a major mutation. The purpose and even the destiny of artworks is questioned. The dominance of techne placed works of art under multiple regulations––that of the studio mode, the schools and academies, shared taste among the aristocracy, a finiteness in art that had to do with illustrating the glory of a name, divine or human, and attaching to it the perfection of a cardinal virtue. The idea of the sublime put all of this harmony into disarray.

To amplify the characteristics of this disarray: under Denis Diderot’s pen techne becomes “the little technique,” and the artist is no longer guided by a culture that made him the object and master of a message of glory. Instead, he has become the genius, an involuntary receptacle of inspiration which comes to him from some “je ne sais quoi.” Public judgement no longer relies on the traditional criteria of shared pleasures, and individuals unknown to artists (the “people”) read books, wander through exhibition galleries, crowd into theaters and concert halls, and are prey to unpredictable feelings of shock, admiration, contempt, or indifference. The question is no longer to please a public by bringing it into a process of identification and glorification, but to surprise it. “The sublime,” wrote Boileau, “really isn’t something that tenders its own proofs and demonstrations, but a marvelousness that seizes, strikes, and inflicts sensation.” Even imperfections––aberrations of taste, ugliness––play a role in this shock appeal. Art would no longer imitate nature but would create a whole other world, eine Zwischenwelt (a between world), as Paul Klee would later say, eine Nebenwelt (a side world), one could say, where monstrosity and malformation have rights because of sublime potential. (Forgive this simplification.)

One can find traces of the sublime, foreshadowings of this modern transformation, well before modern times––in medieval esthetics, for instance, like those of the religious order the Victorines. Precedents suggest how thoughts on art would no longer have much bearing on the dispatch of artworks, whom we would leave to the solitude of genius, but on the recipients of these artworks. It would henceforth become necessary to analyze the ways in which audiences could be affected, how the recipient receives and experiences works of art, and how works of art are judged. This is how esthetics, the analysis of the amateur’s feelings, came to replace poetics and rhetoric, which were didactic forms intended specifically for the artist. The question was no longer: how does one make art? but: what does it mean to experience art? Any analysis of this last question brings us back to the subject of indeterminacy.