A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful 2/e (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Burke, Edmund

Softcover

ISBN 10: 019966871X ISBN 13: 9780199668717

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2015

Synopsis

'Pain and pleasure are simple ideas, incapable of definition.'

In 1757 the 27-year-old Edmund Burke argued that our aesthetic responses are experienced as pure emotional arousal, unencumbered by intellectual considerations. In so doing he overturned the Platonic tradition in aesthetics that had prevailed from antiquity until the eighteenth century, and replaced metaphysics with psychology and even physiology as the basis for the subject. Burke's theory of beauty encompasses the female form, nature, art, and poetry, and he analyses our delight in sublime effects that thrill and excite us. His revolution in method continues to have repercussions in the aesthetic theories of today, and his revolution in sensibility has paved the way for literary and artistic movements from the Gothic novel through Romanticism, twentieth-century painting, and beyond.

In this new edition Paul Guyer conducts the reader through Burke's Enquiry, focusing on its place in the history of aesthetics and highlighting its innovations, as well as its influence on many subsequent authors from Kant and Schiller to Ruskin and Nietzsche.

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About this title

Review

Burke's 'Enquiry' is essential reading on aesthetics. Paul Guyer's new edition helps the reader get the most out of the text, with a clear and thought-provoking introduction and excellent notes. (Minerva, Lucia Marchini)

About the Author

Paul Guyer is a Research Prize Winner of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the author of nine books on Immanuel Kant. He has edited and translated four works by Kant, and his recent publication is A History of Modern Aesthetics in three volumes (CUP, 2014).

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 019966871X
• ISBN 13: 9780199668717
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Guyer Paul