Burke’s Aesthetics Formed the Core of His Politics

“Those who deal in political aesthetics have long noted that Burke’s aesthetics is the core ground of his outlook.”

“The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror.” Edmund Burke’s Enquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful is one of the most important works of aesthetics in philosophy. It is also indispensable for understanding Burke’s political views; as Stephen K. White has written, “Burke’s aesthetic reflections are crucial to a full understanding of his political conceptions.” The sublime, according to Burke, is the manifestation of the passion of raw astonishment, frenzied ecstasy, and zeal; it is large, and oftentimes terrorizing. The beautiful, by contrast, brings a calmness over the person which produces the passion of love; it is small, delicate, and intimately familiar.

There are several ways of understanding this most profound work of Burke’s thought. At one level, Burke carves out room for the sublime in human life and society. He recognizes the human need, drive, indeed, impulse, for the sublime and thinks society needs to have space for it. It is wrong, however, to think he celebrates and prefers the sublime. Burke most certainly does not. Rather, he prefers the beautiful but not at the exclusion of the sublime. Reading the Enquiry politically, Burke identifies the sublime with the despotic and powerful, “Besides these things which directly suggest the idea of danger, and those which produce a similar effect from a mechanical cause, I know of nothing sublime which is not some modification of power.” Moreover, “despotic governments…are founded on the passions of men.” Burke links aesthetics with politics in his treatise; after all, he identifies primal society as sublime and the “good society” as beautiful. One is founded on lust and the other on love.

It is sometimes a common trope to hear that Burke broke with his earlier radicalism when he came to oppose the French Revolution. At face value, this argument seems valid. He was “a radical,” a Whig, and a supporter of the American Revolution before 1789. Yet why, with the sudden and destructive emergence of the French Revolution, did Burke react so violently against the supposed radical political principles to which he subscribed? In short, he didn’t.