Sublime Diplomacy: Byzantine, Early Modern, Contemporary

There are three main periods when the sublime has been theorised: antiquity, the 18th century, and the present. Using exemplary texts from each period as our baseline, to what extent may we say that diplomacy is sublime by the lights of their own contemporary standards? To put the issue differently, to what extent do different epistemes produce compatible theories of the sublime and diplomatic practices? The first main part reads Byzantine diplomacy as sublime in the sense discussed by Longinos in Peri hupsus. The key was to sublimate barbarian envoys to the glory of the Empire and, ultimately, God by stimulating and if possible overwhelming all their senses. The second part reads early modern diplomacy against Edmund Burke's 'On the sublime and beautiful'. The conclusion is that diplomacy is sublime in that it keeps imminent terror away. The third part of the paper draws on Jean-François Lyotard's theory of the sublime. Contemporary diplomacy is not sublime in the narrow sense given by Lyotard, that it may produce something qualitatively new, but it is sublime in the weaker sense that its task emerges as seemingly infinite. I conclude that contemporary diplomacy's claim to being sublime is increased by its lingering ability to produce sublime effects in the Byzantine and Burkean senses.