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A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke
david_rhee's review against another edition
2.0
As important as John Locke is to philosophy, his influence is sure to lead to the production of books like Burke's work on aesthetics. The reader is warned early at least. Burke proposes to outline aesthetics in scientific fashion because he truly believes its components must fall into line as the dictates of Reason do. *cringe* Just as Locke believed morality and ethics would be broken down into perfectly mapped out sciences if we just stopped and properly defined our "clear and distinct terms," Burke proceeds to catalog the aesthetic buzzwords that we can't go without. Look, Locke's moral science didn't happen. So this ain't happening either. Think Hume's book on morality. You're not getting any philosophical enquiry. You're getting a handbook.
Kant's treatment of the sublime in Critique of Judgment makes any of Burke's attempt on the same useless (no big shame, it is Kant, I guess). Burke's idea of beauty runs like a checklist. He only looks at constituents and comments hardly at all on the integration of those parts. Barely anything on the subjective either which is ridiculous in aesthetics...he acknowledges only subjective "sensibility" which is just degree of awareness of the checklist items. The work never goes any deeper. The reader can only hope to hit upon a departure point for his or her own aesthetic reflections at best.
Kant's treatment of the sublime in Critique of Judgment makes any of Burke's attempt on the same useless (no big shame, it is Kant, I guess). Burke's idea of beauty runs like a checklist. He only looks at constituents and comments hardly at all on the integration of those parts. Barely anything on the subjective either which is ridiculous in aesthetics...he acknowledges only subjective "sensibility" which is just degree of awareness of the checklist items. The work never goes any deeper. The reader can only hope to hit upon a departure point for his or her own aesthetic reflections at best.
caterpillarnotebooks's review against another edition
... wow... he sure wrote these words!
virtualmima's review against another edition
3.0
It's too bad that aesthetics as a philosophy is not taken very seriously at all when art has a stronger connection to life than the majority of science. In the West art is mindlessly dismissed as a mere hobby or source of entertainment. The casual disconnected consumer believes either in the relativism of aesthetics or some archaic view of Forms. Edmund Burke initiated the break from these antiquated views and like many other thinkers of his time he gravitated towards lazy categorical thinking because it was more important to introduce the subject and question commonly accepted ideas for future thinkers to expand upon than it was to identify the full truth. This never really happened, and even two centuries later people like Croce and Artaud were only slightly ahead of where Burke left off.
I find myself mostly in agreement with what Burke says of the sublime; simplistic as his ideas may be they form a strong backbone for further exploration in that subject. Where I differ from him most is in his conception of the beautiful. I do find it productive to distinguish the sublime from the beautiful but his analysis of the beautiful suffers from much of the same problems as the formulaic approach he criticizes. After emphasizing for so long that beauty cannot be measured by proportion and other such qualities, he says that smallness, smoothness, and fragility among other qualities are what make something beautiful. For one I think he's conflating "beautiful" with "cute" but even so these are not generally true. Even defining beauty as he does, he should be saying what it is not, so if something is beautiful/cute it is not big, not rough and wrinkled, and not tough. Otherwise we'd have to say that insects are beautiful, as are turds and pebbles. Even with humans, there are so many ugly babies. What surprises me is that someone living in the baroque age would be describing beauty as something small, smooth, and simple when all of the baroque and rococo art and architecture of the era were full of lush, complex designs intended to maximize pleasure. In distinguishing beauty from the sublime I would place more emphasis on feeling than form. In form they may follow much of the same rules, but if the sublime embodies terror, the beautiful suspends time to create a state of ecstasy.
I find myself mostly in agreement with what Burke says of the sublime; simplistic as his ideas may be they form a strong backbone for further exploration in that subject. Where I differ from him most is in his conception of the beautiful. I do find it productive to distinguish the sublime from the beautiful but his analysis of the beautiful suffers from much of the same problems as the formulaic approach he criticizes. After emphasizing for so long that beauty cannot be measured by proportion and other such qualities, he says that smallness, smoothness, and fragility among other qualities are what make something beautiful. For one I think he's conflating "beautiful" with "cute" but even so these are not generally true. Even defining beauty as he does, he should be saying what it is not, so if something is beautiful/cute it is not big, not rough and wrinkled, and not tough. Otherwise we'd have to say that insects are beautiful, as are turds and pebbles. Even with humans, there are so many ugly babies. What surprises me is that someone living in the baroque age would be describing beauty as something small, smooth, and simple when all of the baroque and rococo art and architecture of the era were full of lush, complex designs intended to maximize pleasure. In distinguishing beauty from the sublime I would place more emphasis on feeling than form. In form they may follow much of the same rules, but if the sublime embodies terror, the beautiful suspends time to create a state of ecstasy.
chloeliana's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
Interesting concepts but veers dangerously close to overt misogyny and racism in some areas. Still an important book for laying the foundation for Romanticism and beyond, but must be taken with a pinch of salt.
kingofspain93's review against another edition
5.0
if Burke at many points fails in his task, it must be admitted that he only does so after overcoming the absurd difficulty of its having first been begun