A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful: Edmund Burke

Since time immemorial, art has always been a product of man’s emotional and intellectual connection with the world. The primary aim of art is to create a message that will either trigger an inexplicable consciousness within the spirits of its audience, or provoke wisdom among the minds of the curious persons. Owing to its deep-rooted role for man, art has long been explored in several manners, with some scholars pursuing the mere aspects of art, while some take on deep comparative examinations. However, the act of connecting ancient art to contemporary art is not, as easy as taking into account, the time both came into existence. More so, how current artists perceive the ancient art, and how it influences their current works. There is a more precise, more diverse approach in understanding how ancient art measure up to the contemporary ones. The overall purpose of this research paper is to gain insight of the perception and attitude towards ancient art among current artists. To understand and complete this research topic, the paper will offer deep research, which will also include interviewing current artists with an aim of completing the set objectives. Nonetheless, current artists have the obligation to appreciate ancient art, so as to develop the act of appreciating art works in the society, including the works of current artists.

The artist Willy Nus displays the sublime in his painting Transporting Large Heated Workpiece, which he completed in 1910 (Türk, 2003, p. 196). Nus’ work shows several men pushing and pulling a cart on rails carrying a hot steam workpiece from inside the preheater unit. The painting’s emphasis is on the hot glowing steel workpiece and the open furnace, both of which illuminate the workers as well as most of the background. The workpiece’s terminus is the forge hammer, which appears to be steam-powered because it creates large clouds of steam that fill in a portion of the background. Also, the sublime is artistically depicted by the German artist Leonhard Sandrock in his work At the Forge (Türk, 2003, p. 195). The painting shows men using a forging press that is capable of producing workpieces that weigh anywhere from five to fifteen tons. The forge press is reducing the size of a large, smoldering, glowing workpiece. The workpiece is being held off the ground by two chain loops that are attached to pulleys, which are supported by two service cranes (Türk, 2003, p. 195). The painting’s emphasis is directed to the glowing workpiece by the workpiece being brighter than its immediate surroundings, which creates contrast and draws the viewer’s attention to

For as long as it has been in existence, the arts have been utilised to reflect, represent and review change and transformation within society, whether it be through art, literature, music or poetry. The ideas and expressions of the arts of the Romantic period were inspired by and formed around the Romantic’s experiences of social injustice, inequality and political turmoil. Political and economic developments and events such as the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the end of the Enlightenment period and the increased ideology of Capitalism were the primary source of inspiration for the Romantics, as they conveyed their ideas and thoughts on society through the arts. They expressed and portrayed a wide variety of things through their art, whether it be inequality in society, their feelings and thoughts on the state of politics, beauty, nature, sexuality and pleasure and animals. The Romantic movement was, in a sense, almost an act of rebellion against the typical confines and norms that society typically demands as it gave a voice and a platform to opinions that could be considered unconventional, tackled issues such as inequality and prejudice, normalised many topics that were considered to be taboo and encouraged things such as questioning dominant ideologies that dictated society, such as religion and the government. The works of art and literature produced by the Romantics portrayed somewhat of a utopian society in which inequality and exploitation ceased to

Thesis – Expanding on the philosophical and artistic renderings of the sublime through different art periods in an attempt to better understand the huge concept of the sublime and draw similarities and differences behind the intent of the sublime works throughout the different art periods.

The greatest initial collapse of the Enlightenment ideals occurred at the beginning of the 19th century. It was associated with the realization of the limitations of the mechanical-mathematical view of the world and a number of social upheavals, including the bloody French Revolution, which gave birth to dictatorship and terror. These forced to question the possibility of a “social contract.” Moreover, the awareness of the inhumanity of the capitalist system tarnished the ideals of absolute reason and progress. Gradually, the belief in progress and the human mind gave way to pessimism. The paper will assess the rationality of Enlightenment and its perception in the modern world.

This critical analysis effectively describes and interpret the artwork of Christo Javacheff and his wife and co-worker Jeanne-Claude, where four areas are to be assessed; the use of colour, light illusion, use of material and the paradoxical perceptions of the monumental installations. The aesthetics of the work such as line, shape, form and colour impact the nature and feelings around the work in a way that changes our perceptions on art and architecture in life as a whole. There is a connection to many of Juan Pallasmaa’s theories in his book “The Eyes of the Skin”, which can be applied to Christo’s majestic installations. Pallasmaa makes it clear that architecture and artwork have a strong impact on enhancement of one’s own life and morals when he explains how “architecture has to address all the senses simultaneously and fuse our image of self with our experience of the world” (Pallasmaa p. 11). This statement reflects on the work of Christo Javacheff, an Bulgarian-American artist, born in 1935, where his purpose is to work with authentic objects and spaces in order to absorb all kind of interpretation (Kavass p.152) Wrapping objects and marking areas with fabric is to be Christo

Of the Standard of Taste provides the notion that the feeling of pleasure is based on praise. Hume uses his paradox to explore the feeling beauty captures

Burke's sublime is separated into distinct categories. He categorizes objects of experience by the way in which they impact the senses. Burke associates qualities of "balance," "smoothness," "delicacy" and "color" with the beautiful, while he speaks of the sublime in terms such as "vastness" and "terror" (Burke, 325). Instead Kant dissevers the sublime into the mathematical and the dynamical, where in the mathematical aesthetical comprehension are not a consciousness of a mere more preponderant unit, but the notion of absolute greatness not inhibited with conceptions of constraints. The dynamically sublime is nature considered in an aesthetic judgment as might that has no ascendancy over us and an object can engender a fearfulness without

The Enlightenment and Romanic Ages produced numerous masterpieces in art, music, architecture, and literature which people still enjoy today. These opus magnums along with the philosophies during the two periods are reflections of the developments in world events and cultural patterns. This paper will present two pieces of art, music, architecture, literature, and philosophy from the Enlightenment and Romanic Ages that best represents the developments patterns from that time.

I will first explain Kant’s position on beauty’s objectivity, followed by his discussion of what it consists of and how the aesthetic judgements of beauty are made. I will then explain his argument regarding the sublime’s objectivity, followed by his explanation on the differing types of sublime, the mathematical and dynamic. Following this will be a transition to Burke’s description of the sublime and its objectivity, after which his argument regarding beauty’s components and objectivity will

This book tackles on the evolution of art dating back to cave art into modernism. It not only discusses about the aesthetic appeal of art but rather it a wide variety of art form such as literature, art, music, architecture and also designing. The author also showed the chronological order of how art itself evolve from figures found in caves, turning into different various art style. The authors also conclude that rather than to explore the field of art through major themes or historical parts, what he did is he combined the two which is called the combination of thematic and chronological approach. In the first few chapters of the book the authors deal with the difference of romanticism to classicism, bits by bits starting from the fifth-century

    "Sublime refers to an aesthetic value in which the primary factor is the presence or suggestion of transcendent vastness or greatness, as of power, heroism, extent in space or time"(Internet Encyclopedia).  This essay will explore different levels of Romanticism's sublime style in Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Herman Melville's Billy Budd. The essay will particularly focus on how the writers incorporate the spiritual and the terror aspects of the sublime into their work.

"Beauty. Impossible to define it psychologically, because of the fullness of the aesthetic contemplation. (Panichas, p. 421, 422)

The mathematical sublime is arranged in the disappointment of the imagination to grasp characteristic protests that seem endless and shapeless, or show up "completely incredible". This imaginative disappointment is then recovered through the delight taken in reason's declaration of the idea of interminability. In this move the staff of reason substantiates itself better than our error prone sensible self. In the dynamical sublime there is the feeling of demolition of the sensible self as the imagination ability tries to grasp a tremendous may. This force of nature undermines us however through the resistance of motivation to such sensible obliteration, the subject feels a delight and a feeling of the human moral vocation. This energy about moral feeling through presentation to the sublime creates moral character. Kant had built up the qualification between a protest of craftsmanship as a material esteem subject to the traditions of society and the supernatural state of the judgment of taste as a "refined" esteem in the suggestions of his Idea of A Universal History (1784). The Mathematical Sublime is understood as forces of nature or natural that will affect every human power. Usually that we know forces of nature is matter that cannot we overcome by hook or by crook. Because it is natural matter that born around we make us feel satisfied when near with forces of nature. Firman Allah S.W.T :

The first three weeks of this course have focused on 18th century political and aesthetic treatises, on what we would call Enlightenment thinking. Use Kant’s definition of ‘enlightenment’ in his essay “What is Enlightenment,” and evidence from his speeches in the trial of Warren Hastings, to argue whether Burke is actually an enlightened thinker.