A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful - Wikipedia A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search On the Sublime and Beautiful A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful. Author Edmund Burke Original title A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful Country Great Britain Publication date 1757 Text On the Sublime and Beautiful at Wikisource A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful is a 1757 treatise on aesthetics written by Edmund Burke. It was the first complete philosophical exposition for separating the beautiful and the sublime into their own respective rational categories. It attracted the attention of prominent thinkers such as Denis Diderot and Immanuel Kant. Contents 1 Summary 2 Kant's comments 3 Notes 4 References 5 External links Summary[edit] According to Burke, the Beautiful is that which is well-formed and aesthetically pleasing, whereas the Sublime is that which has the power to compel and destroy us. The preference for the Sublime over the Beautiful was to mark the transition from the Neoclassical to the Romantic era. The origins of our ideas of the beautiful and the sublime, for Burke, can be understood by means of their causal structures. According to Aristotelian physics and metaphysics, causation can be divided into formal, material, efficient and final causes. The formal cause of beauty is the passion of love; the material cause concerns aspects of certain objects such as smallness, smoothness, delicacy, etc.; the efficient cause is the calming of our nerves; the final cause is God's providence. What is most peculiar and original to Burke's view of beauty is that it cannot be understood by the traditional bases of beauty: proportion, fitness, or perfection. The sublime also has a causal structure that is unlike that of beauty. Its formal cause is thus the passion of fear (especially the fear of death); the material cause is equally aspects of certain objects such as vastness, infinity, magnificence, etc.; its efficient cause is the tension of our nerves; the final cause is God having created and battled Satan, as expressed in John Milton's great epic Paradise Lost. Kant's comments[edit] Immanuel Kant critiqued Burke for not understanding the causes of the mental effects that occur in the experience of the beautiful or the sublime. According to Kant, Burke merely gathered data so that some future thinker could explain them. "To make psychological observations, as Burke did in his treatise on the beautiful and the sublime, thus to assemble material for the systematic connection of empirical rules in the future without aiming to understand them, is probably the sole true duty of empirical psychology, which can hardly even aspire to rank as a philosophical science." - Immanuel Kant, First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, X.[1] Notes[edit] ^ Kant, Immanuel, First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, Library of Liberal Arts, 146, Bobbs-Merril Co., 1965 References[edit] Vermeir, Koen and Funk Deckard, Michael (eds.) The Science of Sensibility: Reading Burke's Philosophical Enquiry (International Archives of the History of Ideas, Vol. 206) (Springer, 2012) Doran, Robert. The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2015. External links[edit] Wikisource has original text related to this article: On the Sublime and Beautiful Complete text online v t e Edmund Burke Works A Vindication of Natural Society (1756) A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770) "On American Taxation" (1774) Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791) Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795) Letters on a Regicide Peace (1796) Related Impeachment of Warren Hastings Royal Bounty Fund The Club Religious thought Richard Burke Jr. (son) Edmund Burke (Thomas statue) Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=A_Philosophical_Enquiry_into_the_Origin_of_Our_Ideas_of_the_Sublime_and_Beautiful&oldid=998785846" Categories: Aesthetics literature Works by Edmund Burke 1757 works Modern philosophical literature Hidden categories: Articles that link to Wikisource Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version Languages Български Español Français Italiano Македонски Русский Suomi Тоҷикӣ 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 7 January 2021, at 01:13 (UTC). Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Contact Wikipedia Mobile view Developers Statistics Cookie statement