The beauty of the Sublime
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING
What is the most beautiful thing? What is the most beautiful experience we can have?
I’ve been interested by how “beauty” or “art” is defined, or how we can quantify our experience of them. Beauty is felt to be important to the flourishing of our life. Vonnegut has said beauty and the arts may not always be a way of making a living, but they are a way of living, or our modus vivandi.[1] As integral as beauty is to our life, it seems like such a subjective experience. Philosophers have long tried to quantify or explain beauty and our experience of it. An entire branch of philosophy –“aesthetics” aims to explain beauty. Many have tried to give a cogent answer to the perplexing experience of beauty and I’m going to attempt to add to this.
This post will aim to give some of my personal insights on what the experience of beauty is like and what I believe to be the most beautiful experience. I’ll describe what that experience feels like, cite other thinkers and demonstrate why these experiences are a common experience to all of us.
I’ll start with answering the question –The most beautiful thing and most beautiful experience we can have is “the Sublime”. Even if you know what that is, I think I add my own spin on things below, so please read further!
WHAT IS THE SUBLIME?
It’s much easier to show what the Sublime is rather than talk about it. Showing what the Sublime is will set the groundwork to further elaborating on experience in words. Like the principal rule of movie-filmmaking “showing and not telling”, I hope this allows you to feel and see the experience first. Engaging in later discussion in words will then hopefully allow a better, more cohesive understanding of the experience. So take these next pictures in and feel as if you are physically present in the setting of each one –
Spot the difference in the following pictures:
1. The Sagrada Familia vs. a House in Amsterdam[2]
2. The mountains vs. a garden
3. Painting “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” and a personal photo vs. a portrait[3]
I think it’s pretty easy to see how these different pictures make us feel. Each of the contrasting pictures can be considered to be beautiful. However, one would usually say that in one of the pictures vs. the other –is larger and grander, and by contrast makes us feel smaller. Although that would be an apt description on what the sublime is and how we experience it, it does go a bit deeper than that.
The word ‘sublime’ is defined as an adjective describing “excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration and awe” (Oxford dictionary). The etymology of the word sublime comes from the Latin words: “sub” and “limen”. Sub, is the prefix of words meaning “under” or “below” (i.e. subterranean), but can also mean “up from under” or “upwards”. “Limen” means “threshold”, which we get the word “lintel” (the top of a window, where the bottom of the window is the windowsill). Sublime then means, up from under the door, and draws the viewer to gaze upwards[4].
PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF THE SUBLIME
The feeling of the Sublime is a fundamental human experience we all have felt. Yet the feeling is difficult to describe, elusive, and powerful. In the “Philosophize This!” podcast episode #60 “Kant pt. 5 –The Sublime”, host Stephen West starts off by stating “I have no idea what we’re talking about here…but this mystery has captivated men their entire lives”[5]. Diaries, poems, and books have been written by people on their search for these sublime experiences (e.g. Leaves of Grass –Walt Whitman, or any alpinist/mountaineer/adventurer). I’m going to share some of my personal experiences and stories friends have shared on encountering the Sublime. Here are a couple examples:
Rock Climbing[6] –The activity of mountain climbing/rock climbing is sure to have one experience the Sublime. Perhaps this is why it is sought after by adventure seekers, thought of by many as a spiritual experience, and even loved by Viktor Frankl himself[7]. I remember sport climbing up a rock face in Tobermory Ontario’s White Bluffs. I hadn’t had too much experience sport climbing outdoors and was scared witless climbing up the face. I reached the top over the lip of the edge and clipped into the final anchors, my belayer out of sight –I realized that I was all alone on the wall. Breathing heavily I turned around and saw the pine trees before me and the vast Georgian bay ahead, stretched far in the horizon. I realized I was so small and alone. Alone on the vast wall surrounded by a vast bay.
The Ocean –A friend recounted that the first time he was on a cruise ship it was a strange feeling. Being on the open sea and not being able to see any shoreline. One realizes with the setting sun that the world is quiet and vast and if he were to fall into the water, it would not make a sound, barely a ripple. He was small in front of the massive ocean and the beauty of the setting sun.
DRAWN UPWARDS
Edmund Burke, the 18th century Anglo-Irish statesman was one of the first philosophers to write an in-depth analysis of the sublime in his 1757 treatise “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”. To Burke, the Sublime causes “astonishment; and astonishment is the state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror”. The Sublime causes the mind to be “entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other”.[8] Much of Burke’s theory of the sublime revolves around the concept of terror. He further writes that “no passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear...fear being an apprehension of pain or death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain”.
Burke opens his treatise with the following, “when danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience”. Burke recognizes that there is a limit to which terror is not pleasing, but I think he fails to fully understand why that is the case, or what that limit is. In Part III and IV of his treatise he talks about why common things are beautiful (proportions and imperfections etc.) and why terror can be a cause of pleasure, but none of these examples explain what this limit is.
In sum, Burke’s treatise is effective in having the reader understand the upwards motion of the Sublime. We understand that there are painful experiences that are beautiful in their own way. Burke, focuses on the enormity of nature, the sweetness of melancholy, the peace of solitude, and the awe of powerful structures dwarfing us, but he cannot give a cogent explanation on the ‘limit’ of what makes these feelings pleasurable.
DRAWN INWARDS
Where Burke had a limited explanation on the pleasure of beauty in the Sublime, philosopher Immanuel Kant adds to his philosophy in his 1764 book, “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime”. So what does Kant say that adds to Burke’s understanding?
Kant adds that the Sublime is felt when we experience fear without being completely afraid. He writes:
“the irresistibility of (nature’s) power certainly makes us, considered as natural beings, recognize our physical powerlessness, but at the same time it reveals a capacity for judging ourselves as independent of nature and a superiority over nature…whereby the humanity in our person remains undemeaned even though the human being must submit to that dominion”[9].
Kant is saying here that we are in a paradoxical position. When we are fearful over the enormity of nature and power but still conscious to understand and reflect about our status we can experience the Sublime. This experience of fear can be a fine line. We can observe the power of thunder and a volcano –but draw too close and we lose our consciousness of our personal observation of the power. We will be consumed by the power which is greater than us; our lives will be at risk. The very conscious act of understanding that we are able to appreciate such higher power underscores that we are “independent of nature” and “superior” to it. However, knowing that we are below greater things we must “submit to that dominion” –this is why the feeling of the appreciation of the Sublime is paradoxical.
Kant further explains what Burke could not –by relating the experience of looking upward to the feeling of looking inward. That when we see the Sublime we are reflective, introspective and conscious of our very self. It is like an out of body experience. We recognize that our being is experiencing the magnitude of what is before us while being dwarfed by what is before us. We are drawn upward and inward. We are small yet we are large.
This inward drawing of consciousness is important because it recognizes that the self is a powerful and unique individual though the self is small and weak. In Earnest Becker’s Pulitzer Prize winning 1974 book “The Denial of Death” he writes on how humankind is cognizant of their splendid uniqueness:
"We might call this existential paradox the condition of individuality within finitude. Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this etheraelity, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature, as the Renaissance thinkers knew. Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it.”[10]
Becker acknowledges that as a self we are hopelessly stuck out of nature. We understand our great uniqueness but also understand our powerlessness. It is the recognition of the uniqueness of man that the feeling of beauty and sublimity interacts with. Without this acknowledgement of the self as an individual, and a unique and purposeful individual, the interaction of beauty will never exist.
THE OVERTURNING OF THE CONCEPT OF BEAUTY
Why is the Sublime such a stark contrast to our usual understanding of beauty? What distinguishes this aesthetic to what is commonly known to be beautiful? Likely the oldest and most timeless of theories, it would be beneficial to reference Plato/Socrates’ understanding of aesthetics. In his theory, Plato notes that there are universals, or Forms, which make up the constructs of reality. Forms such as beauty, courage, justice, piety etc. are to be sought after by humans[11]. To Plato beauty is something that moves beyond the world, physical structures are a reflection of a metaphysical and an ideal reality to be sought.
By contrast to Plato’s theory, it becomes clear that the existential nature of the Sublime interacts on a far greater level personally with the observer. Beauty is not just some far off concept to be grasped, but the Sublime is something to be experienced. When we feel the Sublime we are able to look inwards and understand ourselves. This is while looking outwards and understanding that there are greater things which are to be grasped. The static nature of the beautiful is overturned. The beauty has come down and interacted with us and us with it.[12]
THE SUBLIME IN THE EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE
I’ve established in the “personal experiences of the sublime” that we all seek such powerful experiences of the Sublime. Whether on the getaway to nature, visiting different cultures, mountain climbing, hiking etc. –it’s a chase and a reminder that outside our corporate job lives there are greater things. But how can we experience the Sublime in the everyday life, and is that even possible?
C.S. Lewis in his book “Surprised by Joy” (1955) writes:
“It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what?...Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse... withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased”
Pascal, philosopher and mathematician writes in his Pensées:
“When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then.” (Pensées, Sec III. 205)
Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher writes in his “Concept of Anxiety” (1844):
“Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eyes as in the abyss . . . Hence, anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
These quotes at first appear unrelated but they have some commonalities that I will try to explain.
Lewis understands that the experience of the Sublime is elusive. It is a feeling where one has he is not sure what it is and will long for it again. It is a joyful and contemplative experience. Similar to all the feelings described by Burke we can feel the sublime in various day to day experiences, we just have to pause and think of the enormity of the world. For example, I can imagine when one experiences the birth of their child, understanding that the child has greater potential, able to surpass the failings of the father/mother. In this way the parent acknowledges the infinite future before them and is conscious of their own self, acting on the present. As Hector said of his son in Homer’s Iliad “grant that this my child may be even as myself…then may one say of him as he comes from battle ‘the son is far better than the father’”. Or when one feels the heat of the sun on their skin and becomes aware of how amazing the sensation is and that he is conscious of this sensation. One is conscious of being alive with greater things around him. In this way one can experience the sublime.
Pascal, similar to Lewis understands that when we pause to think of the infinite nature of the universe it is a frightening thing. One is engulfed in the enormity of it. The enormity of our ignorance. But we understand that we are conscious of this thinking and we are unique, we are “here rather than there”.
Kierkegaard here speaks about the infinity of the self. How before us there are divergent roads stretching into an abyss. The infinite path before us is dizzying and is sure to cause anxiety. But the solution to this is to become a self, to acknowledge the infinite and choose the path we are called to. Kierkegaard writes later in his 1849 “the Sickness unto Death”, “to be a self, is the greatest concession made to man, but at the same time it is eternity’s demand upon him”.
We’ve likely experienced all these feelings of joy, pain, and fear in our day to day lives. When we pause to think of these experiences as a gift and appreciate the vastness before us and our own individual uniqueness we may experience the feeling of the beauty of the Sublime.
RELIGION/ CHRISTIANITY AND THE SUBLIME
The protagonist in Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot” has a popular quotation where he states “I believe the world will be saved by beauty”. But when has beauty saved anything? What has beauty saved? In S2E2 of Netflix’s “Explained –Beauty” the host explains that beauty is powerful as it interacts with our self at the most fundamental level.
As humans, our base longing is to belong, to be understood. However, Proverbs 14:10 writes that “the heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy.” We understand that we are unique, stuck out of nature, but feel utterly alone in nature, no one shares our joy or bitterness. Becker writes that the self has a symbolic self (as opposed to just a physical self) that desires to extend through time and deny death. Where our lives are finite and a vapor, the piling of our accomplishments and careers are our feeble attempts to build a lasting name/identity. Becker acknowledges that most religions in their granting of the afterlife are an attempt to provide a catharsis to the finitude of life. Religion provides eternal life and a name. However, I think that there are parts of the Christian religion and its relationship to the sublime which I have found interesting. Simply, the Christian religion interacts with the feeling of the Sublime and its beauty. It helps us understand our splendid uniqueness and the vastness of the infinite and God before us.
There are some religions where we are to submit. The infinite drowns out our individual uniqueness and consciousness. Recall the Greek myths; the common person has no significance amongst the gods. Man is small, and he is only small, and the gods care little about man.
Other religions (i.e. Eastern) would have us think that we are all divine, and in that sense we are all part of the infinite. The infinite is no longer unique. The infinite has no power as everything is infinite. Nothing is really worth looking up to because everything is part of the divine. The goal of the individual is to drown himself out in the infinite. Man is to have no individual uniqueness or consciousness.
Christianity affirms the uniqueness of man while simultaneously giving credence to the power of the infinite. Psalm 8:4 writes “what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” Man is unique, has a face and a name, is splendid and there is an acknowledgement of his uniqueness. Yet man also understands that he is food for worms (Job 1:21 –“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart”). The Christian God, through the person of Jesus, allows one to approach God/the infinite and not be incinerated by God’s power. Isaiah the prophet fears that as he is a man of unclean lips and as his eyes have seen God he will be burned up. However, a burning coal (interpreted as a symbol of Jesus, an intercessor who takes our sins away before God –a glowing hot heavenly object) takes away his guilt (IS 6:6).
In this reasoning, man stands before God/the infinite and understands the enormity before him, understands the conscious uniqueness of the self, and because he is safe (as his guilt has been taken away) he is able to see God. God as the infinite Sublime interacts with man. Man has a lasting consciousness, a face, and a name before God. Perhaps this is why the Christian religion is so powerful philosophically. It speaks to us on a fundamental human level, shows us beauty, and absolves our longing to be understood. And so in this manner beauty has saved the world. Dostoevsky would be proven correct.
CLOSING
These thoughts have been long on my mind but I’ve failed to put them on paper for a while. This is a longer version of what I presented briefly in Scarborough Chinese Baptist Church (SCBC) on June 1st, 2020 on the topic of art and worship[13]. I am thankful for all the experiences I’ve had of the sublime and friends I’ve shared them with. I am also grateful for Steven R. Guthrie PhD for his book “Creator Spirit –The Holy Spirit and the Art of becoming Human”. Before reading his book I thought I was alone with these thoughts but I was surprised that others have already developed such structured aesthetic philosophy, and further –and more importantly –aesthetic philosophy and its relationship to pneumatology. For greater, more researched, and better insight please read his book.
This post was rather long and I did not argue for the efficacy of beauty and its utility. I had assumed that this is self-evident. Also, similar to previous posts, I am no philosopher and am by no means an expert in of the subject matter discussed. I’ve probably gotten a lot of things wrong, and I try to add my own insights from what I’ve read. If there are any mistakes here, please do correct me. I always love a good conversation. Also, I’d like to highlight these are my thoughts and opinions, they may not be right, nor do I ask all to agree.
May this morsel of whatever knowledge is here push you to look upwards and inwards.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country “The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
[2] All free photos are sourced from unsplash.com. [1] There is really no place like the Sagrada Familia. Unlike many cathedrals which may be dull on the inside and marvelous on the outside –the Sagrada Familia is strikingly beautiful on the inside. The stain glass and white marble illuminates the entire space. The pillars branch out like a canopy of a great forest. And the scale too, one is really small in such a space. I’d imagine it to be what heaven is like. It is one of the architectural buildings where I’ve experienced the Sublime and would want to be back. [2] Angel’s landing (not really a mountain) is a strenuous 5 mile hike with 1,488 feet of elevation. It goes over two peaks and the views are marvelous. I hiked it in 2017 and realized my cardio was terrible. [3] Casper David Friedrich’s painting, “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” (1817) is a classic painting many reference to depict the Sublime. The Wikipedia page has this very picture on the page of “Sublime (philosophy)”. The second image is a picture of me on top after climbing a large boulder in Bishop California. The mountain breeze was chilly and refreshing. There is something about taking pictures of our backs against a grand landscape and why it is a portrayal of the Sublime. Read the next footnote on the explanation on why this is the case.
[3] After reading the whole article it would be easy to see why a picture of a person’s back against a large landscape depicts the Sublime. If still not getting it, I will explain. The large landscape in front of the observer contrasts how small the observer is against the backdrop. The observer is given a third person status. Almost like an out of body experience –the individual is recognized as a unique and conscious being. The individual is centered usually making him/her of importance. Although one intuitively knows that the landscape is far greater and more powerful the individual is given a unique power and identity in the landscape. And now you know why such pictures taken from behind are so popular on Instagram!
[4] Sourced from this great video breakdown from YouTube channel Alliterative “Sublime: The Aesthetics & Origins of Romanticism” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au-z2jVaTNk
[5] https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/episode-60-transcript
[6] The two pictures of myself were taken by a friend and far more professional/experienced climber Alan Tom. Check his photography here: https://www.instagram.com/alan.tom_/
[7] Man’ Search for Meaning –Afterword (2006 Edition) by William J. Winslade. Viktor Frankl –is an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor and the developer of Logotherapy. Logotherapy is the psychological theory that humans are driven by seeking meaning and this meaning when found can make Man overcome any circumstance (i.e. Nazi concentration camps).
[8] A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757, PART II
[9] Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime 1764, Part 28, pg. 261-262 (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-aesthetics/#2.7)
[10] Becker’s book is one of the most profound books I have read in my life. The 336 page book is worth reading just for a couple pages that are eye-opening. Becker’s elucidation on the human condition is unique and builds on the philosophy Søren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, and Otto Rank. He is capable of extracting valid points from his forbearers and understands/discards where their research was biased and incorrect.
[11] Referenced in previous blog post: See (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-metaphysics/#6 ), Section 1, “Background to Plato’s Metaphysics”. Or also Plato’s “The Republic” Translated by Benjamin Jowett for another example. Plato writes in a dialogue by his mentor Socrates regarding the ideal function of a city. The ideal city would adopt the Form of Justice. He writes, “we thought that in a State which is ordered with a view to the good of the whole we should be most likely to find Justice, and in the ill-ordered State injustice: and, having found them, we might then decide which of the two is the happier.”
[12] I’ve thought long over this description and have come to this understanding. As someone who has experienced the sublime and longs after such experiences but also agrees in many cases with Plato’s theory I think one can come to appreciate both. Theologian Steven Guthrie in his seminal text “Creator Spirit –The Holy Spirit and the Art of Becoming Human” (2011) notes that the Sublime is where man “apprehends that which exceeds comprehension. The philosopher values the sublime as the moment when we are confronted with incomprehensibility itself. In meeting the sublime we do not stand in the presence of what is beyond us; rather, we experience the absence that is beyond us”. I agree that the feeling can be interpreted in such a way and may pose some problems theologically –where one would question if there is anything beyond the infinite. However, theologically, there a wonder to God which cannot be comprehended (ROM 11:33). It is conceivable that the Sublime adds to Plato’s theory by asserting that the form of beauty is infinitely beyond us an out of reach –yet by some revelation and experience we have glimpses of this beauty. The beauty interacts with us revealing much about ourselves.
[13] Video link here: https://youtu.be/fVpFpHhlj5A?t=1430 I start speaking at 23:50 of the video. It is a very reduced version of this article I’ve written here so don’t expect too much!