num_pages: 458
description: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime &amp; Beautiful is a 1757 treatise by Edmund Burke. It attracted the attention of such as Diderot &amp; Kant. According to Burke, the Beautiful is what is well-formed &amp; esthetically pleasing, whereas the Sublime is what has the power to compel &amp; destroy. The preference for the Sublime over the Beautiful was to mark the transition from the Neoclassical to the Romantic era.For Burke, the origins of ideas of the beautiful &amp; the sublime can be understood by means of causal structures. According to Aristotelian physics &amp; metaphysics, causation can be divided into formal, material, efficient &amp; 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 peculiarly 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 the passion of fear (especially 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 &amp; battled Satan, as expressed in Milton's Paradise Lost. Burke's was the 1st complete philosophical exposition for separating the beautiful &amp; the sublime into their own respective rational categories.
language: English
title: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
titlecomplete: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
genres: History, Classics, Theory, Philosophy, Essays, Gothic, 18th Century, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Art
ratings_count: 2269
publisher: University of Notre Dame Press (Notre Dame/London)