A review by mg2023
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke

4.0

Some words that come to mind when describing this book are: eloquent, overwhelming, thought-provoking, confusing, and "what have I just read?" On face value, the author seems to be merely defining and distinguishing the words, beautiful and sublime. The title is pretty self-explanatory and the book does what one would anticipate from it. But well into the book, it becomes clear that there must be a larger plot. Edmund Burke lays out our role in society and the way our passions work as in a congruence with the divine insertion of the innate capacity to perceive beauty and to be drawn to the Sublime - which is defined as a terrifying, awe-inspiring notion. The sublime is an experience that is so beyond the experience of the mundane 'beautiful' that it carries us away from the world of images and clarities to the world of feelings and intense emotions. Burke shows that our pleasures for what is beautiful (worldly) cannot come near the "delight" felt by the sublime (unworldly), Godly experience... The book has made me contemplate the standards of my taste and made me question the nature of my relationship to the most sublime being, God.