Year: 2005
Type: article
Abstract: The publication of Edmund Burke's (1729-1797) A Philosophical Inquiry into the Sublime and Beaut((ul in 1757 and again with further crucial amendments in 1759 signals a critical shift in aesthetic theory in a multiplicity of ways.' Burke's book does not actually constitute the inaugural moment of the long debated eighteenth century aesthetic theory of the Sublime.Even worse, his version of the Sublime, under the scrutiny of contemporary research, is progressively emerging that it can not be indisputably established as the most philosophically profound approach to the issue.2 However, Burke is still recognised as the first major theorist of the Sublime.His account of it, in its display of such a high degree of precision and originality of explication, proved lo be one of Ihe Sublime's mosl historically resilient and influenlial moments.Consequently, Burke's Sublime features as the epi tome of this aesthetic theory not in the sense of an archetype but rather insofar as it happily benefited from the basic conceptual structures, so articulately la id down well before his arriva1.3 Expectedly, the multiple cognitive and discursive conlributions of Burke were quickly acknowledged and acclaimed by his contemporaries across Europe.4 A quick look through the enthusiastic reception of the book's first edition (1757) in I For the history ofthe treatise's two publications, the much earlicr writing ofthe picce as wcll as the critical additions and changes it underwent in ils sccond cdilion, scc T.
Author: Aris Sarafianos
Language: English
Topic: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1790437904