Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke was an Irish-born writer and statesman, educated at Trinity College Dublin, who became a long-serving member of the British Parliament. His early Philosophical Enquiry distinguished the sublime from the beautiful, rooting the sublime in a delight in terror experienced from safety. His later Reflections on the Revolution in France made him a founding figure of modern conservative political thought.

Key ideas

• The sublime and the beautiful are distinct and even opposed aesthetic categories.
• The sublime arises from ideas of pain and danger experienced at a safe distance.
• Beauty is grounded in qualities that inspire love, such as smallness, smoothness and delicacy.
• Political institutions embody inherited wisdom that abstract reasoning should not lightly overturn.

Major works

• A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)
• A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)
• Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

In the conversation

• Question What’s the difference between Kant’s “mathematical” and “dynamical” sublime? Fajar Nugroho · 4 replies
• Discussion Why trekkers weep at the top of the Thorong La, and whether Kant would understand Nima Tsering Gurung · 4 replies
• Question Arjuna sees the universal form and begs it to stop. Is that the sublime, or something else? Rohan Desai · 4 replies