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Edmund BurkeA Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1756A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Role of Pleasure and Pain the Arts
Early in his work, Edmund Burke severs the relationship between virtue and beauty. Classical beliefs about beauty always attached the two concepts, but Burke suggests that beauty has its own inherent markers that can be quantified and evaluated. Rather than goodness, pleasure and pain derived from sensory impressions give the individual information about beauty and the sublime. The more they engage with sensory experience, the more their understanding of beauty and the sublime develops. Furthermore, while other thinkers defined pleasure as the absence of pain and pain as the absence of pleasure, Burke rejects this neat dichotomy, writing, “there are positive pains and pleasures, which do not at all depend upon each other” (29).
Burke asserts that taste, for every human, is derived from an object’s association with pleasure or pain. Whether a person likes a work of art is directly associated with whether the art brings them pleasure. The pleasure one derives from a work of art does not only come from the beauty of art. Burke suggests that there are many ways that art can activate pleasure, as a human may find a work of art pleasing because it excites a part of the imagination or relates to something the person has previously imagined. However, beauty always brings pleasure. Burke later defines beauty and its qualities, as outlined in Beauty and the Sublime: Beauty elicits feelings of pleasure in the beholder, while the sublime elicits feelings of pleasure and pain through its association with awe and even terror.
The sublime can bring forward pleasure in its immensity and vastness. Consider, for example, looking up into the night sky. One may say that the experience of looking at the stars in the night sky is an experience of beauty. One is struck by the beauty of the glittering lights above. Burke, however, argued that this type of experience was one of the sublime, as the viewer is overtaken by the vastness and infinity of the sky. They feel awe and, to some degree, terror. The sublime is further developed by the contrast of light and dark in the sky. While standing beneath the blanket of the cosmos, the individual experiences both pleasure and pain. They feel the pleasure and immensity of the experience; they feel pain in the danger they feel by being confronted with their own smallness and position in an infinite universe. Both pain and pleasure thus provide texture to their experience, forming the basis of aesthetic appreciation in both nature and art.
Beauty and the Sublime
Throughout history, writers and thinkers have often been preoccupied with understanding and capturing beauty. Art was seen as an attempt to replicate and imitate the beauty found in nature and the human form. Shakespeare’s famous comparison, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate” (Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 18.” Lines 1-2), reflects the speaker’s search for natural equivalents for the beauty he finds in his loved one. Like Shakespeare, writers compared the beauty of individuals to the beauty they found in the world around them. When Lord Byron wrote, “She walks in beauty, like the night,” (Lord Byron. “She Walks in Beauty.” Line 1), he equated physical beauty with the overwhelming sensory impression left by the night sky. For these writers, the immensity of feeling they experience in nature is equated to the feelings of love they believe are elicited by the beauty of their partners. Burke, however, takes a different view of beauty and the sublime, drawing a careful distinction between the role of each in creating aesthetic experiences.
Burke defines beauty as inspiring feelings of calmness and pleasure. He attributes qualities such as smallness, smoothness, and delicacy to beauty. The experience of beauty is always reassuring and rooted in sensations of pleasure, with the reader or viewer feeling pleased by the aesthetics they encounter. Beauty, Burke claims, inevitably inspires feelings of love and affection: “The beautiful is founded on mere positive pleasure, and excites in the soul that feeling, which is called love” (128). As Burke discusses physical beauty, he rejects the idea that proportion contributes to overall beauty, preferring instead the beauties often found in variations and unexpected forms. He suggests that some people may be perfectly proportional and still lack beauty, while those with slight variations are made more beautiful by their distinction.
Unlike beauty, the sublime requires a mixture of pleasure and pain, making it naturally more complex. While beauty evokes feelings of pleasure, the sublime elicits ideas of pain without leading the individual directly into the experience of pain: “Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger […] or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime” (33, emphasis added). Burke argues that pain is a more powerful feeling than pleasure, meaning that the sublime is a more impactful aesthetic than beauty. The sublime brings viewers closer to the brink of danger, allowing them to peer over the edge and feel the vastness of the universe without ever falling into it. They experience the sublime rather than fear because the experience lacks immediate danger and is balanced by beauty. Burke considers the night sky an example of the sublime, inspiring a passion that evokes a sense of both pleasure and pain, light and darkness, beauty and ugliness. Burke views the sublime as coming closer to the divine nature of God, encompassing both the light and dark aspects of God’s character.
Aesthetics and Sensory Information
In John Locke’s foundational text, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the philosopher asserts that the development of a person’s sensory experience is the beginning of their intellectual journey. For Locke, all thoughts—including the most complex, existential musings—are born from what humans experience through their senses. This was a radical idea for the 17th century. Until Locke, most philosophers adhered to the idea of innatism—the belief that babies were born with a set of innate knowledge about life and existence. For example, the understanding that the self exists and that others exist is an example of innate knowledge. Locke challenged this idea, arguing that humans only know things that they learn through sensory information. As humans grow, they collect information through the senses. They learn about life and the world through the pain and pleasure they derive from these experiences. They then can contemplate the various patterns which emerge from the collected sensory impressions. Drawing upon Locke’s theory, Burke suggests that there are three components that contribute to a person’s taste: sensory impressions, imagination, and judgement.
Burke argues that the development of art is always based upon sensory experience. A person takes in information through the senses, and can then develop their sense of taste based on prior sensory experiences of pleasure: “There is in all men a sufficient remembrance of the original natural causes of pleasure, to enable them to bring all things offered to their senses to that standard, and to regulate their feelings and opinions by it” (17). An example of this can be found in walking through a garden. At first, the person may only notice larger aspects of the garden—how the walkways are designed or the overall color palate. The pleasure the person receives from this sensory impression will determine whether the person will develop a passion. The more they encounter and spend time in the garden, the more the person notices the subtle aspects of the garden—the shape and shade of the blooms, the balance and symmetry, etc. Burke suggests that if a person has bad taste, this simply means that the person needs to engage with more sensory experiences.
Burke claims that all humans have the same taste. Anyone who does not profess to love those objects which Burke would identify as being of good taste has not yet achieved the level of education and experience required to have full appreciation. Burke’s views that all humans have the same taste and that any other form of taste is indicative of that person’s ignorance are often pointed to as examples of his cultural and historical bias. His examples of the beautiful and the sublime are all Eurocentric examples, and Burke rejects any counter notions of attractiveness or taste.
After the acquisition of sensory knowledge, Burke proposes that people then apply their imagination to tinker with and alter the images and impressions they received through the senses. Burke asserts that no art can be created that is not, in some way, an imitation of sensory experience. Imitating something comes with its own development of pleasure. Then, a person applies judgement to their experiences and thoughts. A person’s taste evolves from the way a person’s judgement perceives and considers the work of the imagination.
