Difficult, Dry Essays On The Sublime
he sublime, with the feelings of awe, terror, and majesty it evokes, has long been a subject of philosophical and artistic reflection. This recent book from Cambridge University Press, "The Sublime: From Antiquity to the Present"(2012) consists of fifteen new scholarly essays on the philosophical history of the sublime and on perspectives on the sublime from various disciplines. The volume originated in a seminar "Aesthetics of the Scottish Enlightenment and Beyond" held in 2007 at St. Andrews University,Scotland. Timothy Costelloe, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of William and Mary, edited the volume and contributed one of the essays.
Discussions of the sublime focus on three figures. The first is the ancient philosopher Longinus who wrote a treatise on the sublime in either the first or third century A.D. (Scholars are unsure about the time.) Longinus tended to see the sublime primarily as a high, elevated literary style. Many centuries later, the British philosopher and political thinker Edmund Burke wrote an important book on the sublime, in which he contrasted it with the beautiful. Burke viewed the sublime empirically and psychologically. Then the great philosopher Immanuel Kant, influenced by Burke, developed his own view of the sublime both in his early writings and in his late work the "Critique of Judgment". The sublime plays an important role in the edifice of Kant's critical philosophy. The interplay of the work of these three thinkers on the sublime is an important theme of this volume.
The book is divided into two parts. Part One, titled "A Philosophical History of the Sublime" begins with three separate essays on Longinus, Burke, and Kant. These essays will be of basic interest to readers new to the subject. The remaining five essays in this part cover other more specialized terrain. There are two essays on other British authors in addition to Burke and on their competing understandings of the sublime. The first modern translation of Longinus took place in pre-Revolutionary France, and an essay explores the appearance of the sublime in French art and letters prior to the historical translation. An essay by Paul Guyer explores the sublime in German philosophy following Kant, while the final essay in this part discusses postmodern attempts to understand the sublime.
Part two of the book, "Disciplinary and Other Perspectives" includes some additional philosophical history in its seven essays while examining as well how the sublime has been reflected in various types of endeavor. The opening essay explores how the sublime was reflected in Dutch art and thought. This was a fascinating essay on thinkers that most readers are likely to find entirely unfamiliar. An essay "The First American Sublime" discusses figures such as Thomas Jefferson, James Bartram, Thomas Cole, Fennimore Cooper, among others. The next two essays, "The Environmental Sublime" and "Religion and the Sublime" offer good introductory overviews, or reviews, of the history of the sublime and discuss well the importance of the sublime to their respective subjects, environmental studies and religion. The final three essays cover the sublime in British Romantic poetry, with specific attention to Wordsworth and Bryon, the sublime in the fine arts, particularly music, and the sublime in architecture.
This volume has its strengths and its weaknesses. On a technical level, the print is small, crammed tightly on the page and difficult to read at long stretches. The essays vary in quality and in readability, as is the case in almost any anthology. In the "Acknowledgements" with which the book opens,Costelloe writes: "Whether the chapters bear any marks of the great sublime they draw is for the reader to decide." Too many of the essays here are dry and overly pedantic, at least for lay readers. They are difficult and not particularly well written at times. They stimulate only with difficulty and in part the thought and further reflection the book wants to encourage.
The essays are also scholarly, well-documented and informative. On reading the book, I found I knew more about the sublime and its history than I did before I began. For readers wanting to learn, perseverance is rewarded. The essays on Longinus, Burke, and Kant, and some of the essays in Part Two were relatively accessible and helped my understanding. I was also pleased to see a book of this scholarly caliber offered through the Vine program. The audience for this book is limited.
Thus, even though not entirely successful, this book deserves respect. I would not have read the book without the incentive offered by the Vine program. I learned something of the uses of the sublime, which had been before a gap in my philosophical background. Readers with a strong interest and background in philosophy and in aesthetics will likely benefit from this book.
Robin Friedman
