A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that focuses on the arts, beauty, sensory perception, and taste. Prior to Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, most thinkers adhered to a classical understanding of the arts and beauty. Burke proposed a new way of thinking about aesthetics—as the reaction of pleasure and pain associated with beauty and the sublime.

In his work, Burke attempts to define beauty according to its qualities. He associates beauty directly with the development of pleasure through sensory experience. Beauty has specific markers that separate it from the sublime, such as fragility, delicacy, elegance, and smoothness.

Delight is a type of relative pleasure. Burke asserts that delight occurs when a pain has been removed or taken away from the individual. This differs from the “positive pleasure” that is derived from good taste and aesthetics.