Burning ghost wrote: ↑October 8th, 2018, 12:20 pm
It’s worth looking at what “aesthetics” means in German too perhaps?
Yes, very worthwhile, I think.
The philosophical discipline of "Aesthetics" was created - strictly speaking - in 1735 by the German thinker, Alexander Baumgarten who introduced it in a scholarly thesis he had authored as
"episteme aisthetike"
which can be translated as the "science of sensible knowledge" or "the science of what is sensed and imagined."
For Baumgarten, the term "taste" ( as we still use it today in the context of assessments of artistic merit/value) meant the ability to judge according to the
senses, instead of according to the intellect (i.e. the mental processes of reason/logic), based on feelings (i.e.
bodily/visceral sensations) of pleasure or displeasure.
Baumgarten defined the goal of the new philosophical discipline ( "science") he had founded as follows...
"The aim of aesthetics is the perfection of sensible cognition as such, that is, beauty, while its imperfection as such, that is ugliness, is to be avoided."
In Britain during the 18th century, aesthetics ( as a field on enquiry in philosophy) was expanded to include a renewed focus on the study of an ancient aesthetic concept known as "the sublime" in addition to the concept of "beauty". The origin of the sublime as an aesthetic concept dates back to the work of Pseudo - Longinus in the 1St century AD, but there was an enthusiastic revival of interest in the concept among 18th century British philosophers such as:The Earl of Shaftsbury, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Thomas Reid, Joseph Addison and Alexander Gerard. The most detailed and influential philosophical account of the aesthetic sublime published during this time was that provided in 1756 by Edmund Burke in his seminal (and widely read) essay,
"A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful".Fourteen editions of "The Enquiry" were ultimately published and the imprint of Burke's conception of the sublime in this piece is clearly notable in the works of Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, ( all the more remarkable when one notes that Burke was only 19 years old when he wrote the essay).
Before proceeding to make the points I wish to make in this post, I will try to clarify as best I can, what was meant by the concept of "the sublime" as a concept in 18th century, Anglophone aesthetics, placing particular emphasis on how it was defined by its most original and compelling intellectual exponent, Edmund Burke. For those who might tend to think that Burke's account of the sublime, - because it dates back to the mid-1700s -, is likely to be of little relevance to the field of aesthetics today in the 21st century, I must point out that this is not the case at. In fact, the term "sublime", as it is currently used by contemporary, mainstream philosophers of art, still refers to the same essential aesthetic properties that Burke set down in "The Enquiry" in 1756.
The foremost quality of that which was said to be aesthetically sublime was
greatness, and, in particular, a greatness of the kind which was regarded as being so staggeringly monumental that it was - for all reasonable intents and purposes - beyond any possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation. Let me use some classic, traditional examples of the aesthetic sublime in the natural world to illustrate its meaning The sublime in nature refers to those "epic" things in the natural world that we observe to be tremendously,
incomprehensibly vast, in terms of their extraordinary great (physical) size or power, like, for example, gazing into a starry night sky and contemplating the boundless immensity of the Universe in terms of its spatial extent or temporal duration; standing on a beach on the East Coast of Australia at the water's edge and looking out upon the Pacific Ocean - pondering the inconceivable enormity of its full extent, witnessing the astonishingly great quantity of physical power that manifests itself in a natural phenomenon like the Niagara Falls and so on.
Burke , in his seminal essay on the aesthetic sublime asserted that the ruling principle of the sublime was
terror. What he meant by this is that
It would indeed be
absolutely terrifying to find oneself directly and immediately threatened by something sublime in nature, for example, to be cut adrift in a frail, tiny boat somewhere in the middle of the effectively "limitless", unimaginably extensive and massive Pacific Ocean, or to be hopelessly lost somewhere in the midst of the limitlessly stretching sands of the Sahara desert would be terrifying. Equally, to find oneself aboard a crude wooden raft that was that was about to go over the edge of the mighty Niagara Falls, or to be fatally trapped in the path of an oncoming 90 metre tidal wave (tsunami) would also be extraordinary terrifying experiences. These predicaments are terrifying because they are situations where one's life is immediately and directly threatened by the overwhelming physical magnitude and/or power of sublime phenomena in the natural world. Having said this, it is extremely important to point out that when Burke says the "ruling principle" of the sublime, he is
NOT thereby
identifying/equating the sublime with terror. He does NOT mean that the sublime - as an aesthetic concept - is equivalent to the emotion of terror. When that which is sublime does actually terrify and immediately threaten us ( as in the examples I have just sketched above of predicaments/circumstances where sublime natural phenomena would strike terror into our hearts by actually posing a direct and immediate threat to our lives), we would take away no aesthetic assessment from the experience at all, because sheer terror would simply overwhelms our capacity for judgement. When, however, we view sublime objects/phenomena from a safe vantage point, i.e; at a safe distance, or, more generally speaking, under any such conditions that prevent them from actually becoming an immediate ( and thereby genuinely terrifying) threat to our existence, they are, in fact, very often positively
"delightful".. Thus, Burke observes in "The Enquiry":
"
...at certain distances and with certain modifications, they -(i.e. the encounters we experience with that which is sublime, for example, with the sublime natural objects/phenomena I have mentioned above like the Pacific Ocean, giant tidal waves, Niagara Falls, the Sahara desert, etc) - may be, and they are delightful." At one point in "The Enquiry", Burke states that the experience of "delightful horror" is indeed "the most genuine effect and truest test of the sublime."
Before continuing I should mention that in his aesthetics, Burke conceptually distinguishes "delight" from "pleasure"; he stipulates that "delight expresses the sensation which accompanies the removal of pain or danger" and that unlike pleasure, "delight" is a passion of "
solid, strong and severe nature."Whereas Burke describes pleasure as having an indolent and voluptuous nature, delight, in contrast, is a sensation enlivens/stimulates in the subject a sense of fortitude, exaltation and "exertion"; it is not merely passive relief.
That we take delight in terror - that we are naturally fit to experience the sublime - is evidence for Burke that we do indeed live in an enchanted world commanded by an awful power that will forever remain incomprehensible to us. When we draw our attention to this awful, "almighty power", Burke writes, "we shrink into the minuteness of our own nature and are, in a manner, annihilated before it" ( "It", for Burke, was, BTW, the God of Christianity)...and..."If we rejoice, we rejoice with trembling." This experience of "salutary fear" or "delightful horror" which is a fundamental sine qua non attribute of the sublime is, Burke declares, also the essence of all "true religion".
To continue. The
passion that Burke identifies with the sublime is first and foremost "
astonishment", by which he means a shocking or disruptive incapacitation of reason. Its secondary effects are "
admiration, reverence and respect." Thus, Burke's conceptualisation of the sublime led him to identify an instinctive and ennobling delight that human beings (Freely ) take in their own subordination. This core idea appears in different articulations across the breadth of Burke's work in the form of evocative and seemingly paradoxical phrases such as : "proud submission"; "dignified obedience"; "spirit of exalted freedom" in the face of "servitude"; "voluntary inequality and dependence" and even " "free bondage". The notion plays a pivotal role in Burke's Conservative political philosophy, in particular with respect to his views on such themes as legitimate authority in the State and the meaning of social order, the traditional principles prescription and privilege, the hierarchical ranking of social classes as a natural phenomena, the concept of "organic society" and so on. The influence Burke's concept of the sublime in aesthetic played in his political theorising is a fascinating issue though In this post I am chiefly interested in the religious implications of the sublime, (and I will discuss this issue further in due course below.)
What I would like to do now is use a particular example, namely, what is referred to by certain critics working in the field of modern aesthetics as the "Nuclear Sublime", to precis some of the key ideas I have presented thus far in my attempt to provide as clear and correct an account of the concept of the sublime as possible.
I think we can obtain a very clear and accurate insight into the nature of the aesthetic sublime through reading the testimonies of persons who have, in the past, witnessed first hand the detonation of nuclear bombs from a safe distance. The world's first atomic bomb test took place in the United States in 1945 at Alamogordo in the New Mexico desert under the supervision J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was the director of the operation was referred to as "The Trinity Project". The test was, as you probably know, successful, and here is how one high-ranking military eyewitness - Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell - described the experience of watching the nuclear bomb explode...
"The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, stupendous, beautiful and terrifying... the whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun...It lighted every peak, crevasse and ridge of the nearby mountain range with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described, but must be seen to be imagined. It was that beauty the great poets dream about but describe most poorly and inadequately...Thirty seconds after the explosion came...the strong, sustained, awesome roar, which warned of doomsday and made us feel that we puny things were blasphemous to dare tamper with forces heretofore reserved to The Almighty...Words are inadequate tools for acquainting those not present with the physical, mental and psychological effects. It had to be witnessed to be realised."
Another witness present that day at the "Trinity Project" nuclear bomb test was William Lane, a correspondent from "T
he New York Times", when he saw the atom bomb explode, Lane, said...
"In that moment hung eternity, time stood still. Space contracted to a pinpoint...One felt as though he had been privileged to witness the Birth of the World - to be present at the moment of creation when God said 'Let there be Light'."
Lane also witnessed the detonation of the "Baker" atomic bomb in the Bikini Atoll a year later in 1946 and reported that this explosion produced...
"...
a gigantic dome of water, white, beautiful, terror-inspiring", it was he said, "
one of the most splendid, spectacular and awe-inspiring sights ever seen by man on the planet."
Victor Weisskopt, a major consultant physicist working on Oppenheimer's "Trinity Project", watched the atomic test at Alamogordo from base camp because he said he "
wanted to experience the full impact of the blast." Like many others who witnessed the nuclear test that day, Weisskopf described the effect of the explosion as : mesmerising, dazzling, striking, rapturous, unforgettable, incomprehensible and ineffable. The sight, he says - again re-echoing the sentiments of many other eye-witnesses that day - evoked the experience of an uncanny communion/comingling of
"both the beautiful and the terrible". As he saw the fireball rise, he described a blue halo that he said reminded him, "
in spite of an inner resistance to such an analogy, of a painting by the medieval master, Matthias Grunwald. Part of the altar piece at Colmar, the painting depicts Jesus in the middle of a bright yellow ascending sphere surrounded by a blue halo. The explosion of an atomic bomb and the resurrection of Christ - what a paradoxical and disturbing association !"
[/i]
In these descriptions above, and in the many other efforts that individuals have made to try and record in words the experience of seeing a nuclear bomb being detonated, Edmund Burke would instantly recognise the distinctive hallmark symptoms of the aesthetic sublime. The terminology leaves no doubt...
* "magnificent, beautiful stupendous, staggering and awe-inspiring"
* "both greatly terrifying and greatly beautiful"
* astonishing, astounding, spectacular, bedazzling and rapturous"
* unforgettable and ineffable
* "like the divine splendour of the Mighty One"
* incomprehensible and unintelligible - beyond the grasp of rational/logical cognition
* inspiring a "feeling of dread mixed with veneration, reverence, gratitude or respectful fear."
* evoking a "sense of solemn sancity and reverential wonder tinged with fear."
* the experience of "horror and sacred awe."
* having "monumental size and power"
The boundless night sky is another textbook example of the sublime in nature. HAN refers to Emerson's account of how he was affected by gazing up into into the heavens in the quiet stillness of the countryside...
Hereandnow wrote: ↑October 8th, 2018, 11:48 am"... at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, Note I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration.I am glad to the brink of fear.... Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign... Standing on the bare ground, Note -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am a part or particle of God... I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty.
Note how Emerson reports that he feels "
glad to the brink of fear" as he looks up into the "infinite" heavens above him; the phase evokes a sensual experience that is, I think, patently analogous to Burke's feeling of "
delightful horror" ( or "salutary fear"), a feeling/sensation which was, as I mentioned above, what he considered to be "
the most genuine effect and truest test of the sublime." note as well the following terms Emerson uses in this passage, namely: "
perfect exhilaration", which I take to connote an experience of profoundly delightful exaltation or (even of exquisite rapture/ravishment); "infinite space" -an allusion to inconceivably vast spatial extension that characterises sublime phenomena in nature; "uncontained (i.e. boundless/limitless) and immortal (eternal) beauty" - another reference to the sublime quality of incalculable/immeasurable temporal and spatial greatness; "
all mean egoism vanishes...I am nothing" consider the striking parallel between this comment and Burke's assertion that, in experiencing the sublime,
"We shrink into the minuteness of our own nature and are, in a manner annihilated before it." Finally, r I mentioned above that the experience of "
salutary fear" ( "delightful horror") was regarded by Burke to be both a fundamental affection of the aesthetic sublime and the essence of "all true religion", note how Emerson ( in the paragraph of his text HAN quotes") associates the feeling he has of being "glad to the brink of fear" with religious sentiments that are expressed in the same paragraph of text , namely: "
Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign" and "
the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am a part or particle of God."
Now that I have provided what I hope is a reasonably comprehensive definition of the concept of the sublime in aesthetics, I would like to respond to some comments that Mr HAN made in his recent (October 8th) post on this tread in response to my claim that in mindfully gazing up into the sublimity of the boundless night sky on a still, quiet evening from a vantage point somewhere within an isolated , natural rural setting, we literally sense the presence of God, and that this is an incontrovertible, indubitable fact. (NB: I define "God" to be an infinite, eternal, immaterial, supernatural, necessary, - i.e. non-contingent) -, unchanging, unitary Being who is endowed with such attributes as we term perfect/ideal/absolute Beauty, Love, Moral Virtue and Truth.)
Hereandnow wrote: ↑October 8th, 2018, 11:48 am
There are countless others. I could write my own. It is extravagant talk, and rightly so, but it leaves the inquirer with nothing but questions, after all, all of this is belongs to loose thinking, and because of this it fails to advance the experience objectively. The history of serious human thinking about religion is long and often absurd. The hard part is to give credence, that is, justification, to these interpretative challenges. Emerson and the like can take a person, if so inclined, into the rabbit hole, but two questions remain: how deep can you go, and what, exactly, IS this rabbit hole and how can I clarify this to my discriminating understanding and not just start believing dogmatically in a lot of nonsense? Feelings of the holy, the divine presence, God's grace, redemption, are not self interpreting, for interpretation is always in language and language bearing agencies like us inevitably pervert the discussion.
My take on this is, yes, I am a "transparent eyeball" and feel "the presence of God" but what does this mean? The answer is that it is not reducible to anything else IN language, so the saying requires one to put language aside. But let's look at the nature of such a thing and perhaps we can get closer to explaining the actual event, and in the explaining we become more deeply engaged because it is the tacit explanatory world of interpretation that we are always in that works to inhibit making progress. THIS is where philosophy steps in. My thinking is that philosophy has one purpose, and that is liberation through inquiry. Philosophy is about basic questions and assumptions, the ones that are always already there and fill the perceiving mind with presuppositions that give form and meaning to the world ANTECEDENT TO the perception. This is called dogma, or, what Kierkegaard calls dogma, and i agree. Ask a thousand times what a tree is, read Kant, and a dozen other ontologists and antiontologists, then you will reroute your answer, reconfigure the concepts, and come out looking at trees and everything else very differently. And the intimations of immortality you had at the outset can become transcendental enlightenment, for what stands between an actual person and apprehension of actuality is a firmly entrenched familiarity, a reified familiarity, which is, what Heidegger thought, as I read him, human beings "are". He was mistaken, I think. Emerson was right, as was Dionysius the Areopagite and others; it's just that they couldn't say why they were right. This is what philosophy, or jnana yoga, is for.
I think Burke is right when he argues (as I mentioned above) that the fact we take delight in horror, i.e; the fact that we are naturally fit to experience the sublime provide solid evidence that we do indeed live in an enchanted world as subjects commanded by an awesome, almighty supernatural (divine) power. A transcendent power that will remain forever incomprehensible to us. I think it is solid evidence because Burke's aesthetic theory is not rooted in custom or tradition, but rather in the shared sensory apparatus of all human beings. "We do and must suppose", Burke writes, that "since the physical organs have the same conformation the same sensation must be common to them". In other words, because we all possess tongues, for example, that are physically alike, we all experience the taste of sugar to be sweet and lemon juice to be sour, likewise because normally formed human eyes all have the same biological/anatomical structure and function in the same manner (physiologically), when we look up - a la Emerson - into the boundless, starry night sky, what we see ( i.e our visual perception of what we are gazing at, is essentially the same, and thus it evokes an experience of the same sensations/feelings/passions). Burke, by firmly anchoring aesthetic judgement in a uniform and corporeal response to physical sensation manages, -successfully IMO -, to validly establish a solid , objective foundation for the legislation of taste. Burke avoids the pitfalls of subjectivism, he does not place beauty and the sublime "in the eye of the beholder" and thereby rescues aesthetics from being relegated to the realm of unreliable whims and fancies.
I am certain, HAN, that agreements in sensation are far stronger than tenuous agreements in philosophical ideas or opinions, and Burke is right to argue that these judgements are legitimated by the fact they are firmly grounded in automatic natural responses of the human body's innate sense perceptual apparatus to the stimuli it receives from the external environment. "
The cause of feelings arises from the mechanical structure of our bodies", Burke writes,
"from the natural frame and constitution of our minds", not from the uncertain dictates of our "
reasoning faculty". Given this, I believe that the sensible knowledge we gain of the existence of God when we experience profoundly sublime natural phenomena can be trusted as veridicious, and thus it renders the need for any philosophical enquiry into the matter redundant. When Emerson declared he felt the presence of God when he experienced of the sublime in nature, he was right; the God he refers to does indeed exist, the intuitive sensible knowledge of God provided by his witnessing the sublime is indubitable and does not need to justify its veracity in terms of any kind of philosophical logic - chopping or abstract process of rational argumentation.
Let me conclude with a final quote from Burke's "Enquiry...
"Whenever the wisdom of our Creator ( God) intended that we should be affected with any thing, He dis not confide the execution of his design to the languid and precarious operation of of reason,"..." but endowed it with powers and properties that... captivate the soul before the intellect is ready either to join with them or to oppose them."
Regards
Dachshund
)
- By Sy Borg
- By thrasymachus