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

In Part 2, Burke begins breaking down the sublime to better understand it. He considers the different ways the sublime manifests as feeling in its connection to other ideas. The sublime in nature often leads to astonishment, the feeling that the soul has been suspended with some feelings of horror. The sublime may also be connected to terror. Since pain has a more powerful effect than pleasure, the sublime is a more powerful component of aesthetics than beauty.

Obscurity plays an important role in the sublime. All terror and fear require something to be obscured: “When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of apprehension vanishes” (48). Burke points to the ways churches in different religions create reverence by curating dark spaces. The obscurity of these spaces creates uncertainty and feelings of the sublime. Some artists believe that to make something engaging, or something that successfully affects the imagination, they must increase the clarity of the art. Burke suggests that this is a mistake.