A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful

De: Edmund Burke

Narrado por: Matt Addis

In A Philosophical Enquiry, Edmund Burke sets out to define the nature of beauty and sublimity, and establish an objective criterion for discussing aesthetics. His definition of beauty as rooted in pleasure and sexuality, and the sublime in pain and survival, aligned him with the empiricists John Locke and David Hume, as he replaced the metaphysics of Plato's aesthetics with a psychological and physiological perspective.

According to Burke, the sublime and the beautiful are experiences that can be explained by biological and sensual factors; thus he proceeds to explain how smooth lines, sweet tastes and middle frequencies of sound can be considered beautiful, and the terror created by high mountains and dark forests can be sublime.

These revolutionary ideas ushered in the age of Romanticism, and the Gothic genre of novels, with their delight in horror and fright, and continue to influence aesthetic theories today.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2020 Edmund Burke (P)2020 Naxos AudioBooks

Burke on the perceived nature of aesthetics on us.

Edmund Burke is known as the founding father of the political philosophy of modern conservatism, this work is extremely conservative in nature, modern politicians ought to be as smart as the Anglo-Irish statesman & philosopher, essentially Burke was an 18th-century philosopher king as the ancient Greeks suggested should be the aristocratic ruling class. This work highlights paradoxically both the personal subjective preferences of the observer of some works of art, etc. While also the objective criterion of what can categorize something as aesthetically pleasing & good to our individual senses (ie touch, taste, visual & mental happiness it may bring us) essentially beauty brings us pleasure or joy in smaller & more fleeting ways, whereas we may be affected by sublimity because the sublime transcends mere beauty itself onto our senses, the sublime tends to magnify our imagination because of our minds inability to fully grasp its vastness or possibly the power of a feature within nature like the awe invocation looking upon the Grand Canyon or the awe that seeing Victoria Falls, the waterfall located between Zambia & Zimbabwe, the nature of the sublime helps to reorient our thoughts by overwhelming us by feeling or more accurately recognizing how insignificant & small we are in this world.
* May I plea with Audible, please if you could somehow get the audiobook version of Edmund Burke’s first work from 1756 “A Vindication of Natural Society ?” *

Beauty Not in the Eye of the Beholder

This is an excellent reading of Burke's "Enquiry" and, at 6 hours in length, one can listen to it in a day, or in a couple of sittings. Although Burke's ideas about beauty appear both dated and rigidly binary, rigid particularly in terms of gender, his ideas are presented with wonderful candor and force, and they nevertheless seem to explain much about the psychology of representation in Western culture. His theory of the sublime explains much, and it is important to how we have come to relate to the natural world. The "Enquiry" thus forms much more than just a good introduction to aesthetics, or the philosophy of beauty, Indeed, in this audio-book you will also find a theory of depression and how to cure it through strenuous exercise. Much recommended for a long walk on the beach or a climb up a mountain.

Ought to be read more

If Burke were read more in public schools, our society would not be so messed up.