scholarly journals The Sublime

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-85
Author(s):  
Karzan A. Mahmood
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Natural Laws ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Way ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

This paper aims at analysing the concept of the sublime, which is a pioneering concept of the English Romantics poetry, in relation to the French revolution in the works of Edmund Burke. Burke, unlike all other thinkers who view sublimity as a delightful and elevating feeling, perceives sublimity as an element of dangerous and terrifying incidents and objects mainly in relation with the great incident of the French Revolution. Hence, the paper concentrates on that essential metamorphosis in the content of the concept from progression to regression in the concept of sublime. Burke himself witnessed the revolution in France and propounded his philosophical viewpoints revolving around the notion of the sublime. He contended that the sublimity is whatsoever that brings about terror or is what terrifies the subjects. From this, he concluded that the French revolution was sublime because it was dangerous and threatened the natural laws and order, religion and God’s genuine sublime, traditions and constitution. In this paper, in addition, his ideas to illustrate sublime will ultimately, to some degree, be evaluated and criticised. The second part will be dedicated to demonstrating the aesthetics nature and aspect of the concept of the sublime. While the third part will display the relation of the concept, the way it is exhibited in chapter two, in relation to the great revolution in France.

The aesthetics of Burke’s constitutionalism: A dialectical reading

2020 ◽  
pp. 019145372091314
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Rustighi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Partial Representation ◽  
Constitutional Thought ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

I propose taking the beautiful and the sublime in Edmund Burke not just as aesthetic but also as theoretical categories which can help us read his constitutional thought in dialectical terms. I suggest indeed that his usage of these categories in the Reflections on the Revolution in France points to a consistently held argument concerning the aporias of early-modern contractarian theories and their influence on the French Revolution. My hypothesis is that for Burke the Revolution is unable to think of any concrete relation between beauty and sublimity, insofar as they can be associated, respectively, with particularity and universality. Furthermore, I underscore how Burke’s defence of partial representation against contractarian representation aims to overcome this impasse. My goal is to demonstrate that Burke raises decisive questions as to the intrinsically anti-democratic effects of the contractarian concept of democracy and is still useful to confront the contemporary crisis of democratic participation.

HOW TO WRITE ABOUT INFLUENCE: ASSESSING EDMUND BURKE'S CONSERVATIVE LEGACIES

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-505
Author(s):  
CLAIRE RYDELL ARCENAS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Open Question ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Edmund Burke is difficult to classify. Born in Ireland in 1730, he entered parliament in 1765 having already achieved literary distinction for several philosophical works, including On the origins of the sublime and beautiful (1757). His subsequent career as a Whig statesman, politician, and reformer spanned the tumultuous decades of the late eighteenth century and culminated, less than a decade before his death, in his famous polemic against the French Revolution, Reflections on the revolution in France (1790). Over the course of his life, Burke opined with such frequency on so many topics that the nature of his ‘philosophy’ remains an open question, and scholars continue to offer strikingly different interpretations of his life and legacies. ‘Burke's legacy to history’, historian Richard Bourke summarized, ‘has been a complicated affair’.

Coleridge on Science, Philosophy, and Poetry: Their Relation to Religion

1959 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucyle Werkmeister
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Mathematical Problem ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Science Philosophy ◽  
David Hartley ◽  
The French Revolution

In 1791, when he was eighteen years of age, Coleridge came across Burke's A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Although he was sufficiently interested to read the essay, he was not impressed by it. In fact, if one is to judge his reaction by the jeu d'esprit, “Mathematical Problem,” it was chiefly one of amusement. Although he went on to read Burke's other essays, he was attracted by the character of the author and the style of his writing rather than by his point of view; for, certainly a young man who was an avowed disciple of David Hartley, a champion of the French Revolution, and the originator of Pantisocracy could find little comfort in the works of Edmund Burke. But the zeal for Hartley, the French Revolution, and Pantisocracy was short-lived; and by 1796 Coleridge had turned, a “thought-bewilder'd man,” to a reading of Bishop Berkeley.The influence of Berkeley, especially of the later Platonic Berkeley, began to show in his work almost at once; the influence of Burke continued to lag. Out of his reflections on Berkeley, however, came a new admiration for Burke, particularly for his Philosophical Inquiry; and, from the combined teachings of the two, Coleridge ultimately derived suggestions for a theology broad enough to account for and to give meaning and purpose to all human activities. I should like here to indicate briefly the use he made of these suggestions with respect to science, philosophy, and poetry. I do not mean to imply that there were no other influences at work in the formulation of his views; but I do submit that these two influences are basic and that Coleridge's position can be adequately understood only in terms of them.

The “Patriot” Curés of 1789 and the “Constitutional” Curés of 1791: A Comparison

1985 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 473-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward A. Allen
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Personal Contact ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Church ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Most historians of the French Revolution accept the now familiar contention that village curés and vicaires sided with the Third Estate in 1789, presumably out of class solidarity born of common origins and personal contact with the sad lot of ordinary people. Historians also agree that most of these “patriot” curiés (as those who supported reforms and the Third Estate in 1789 called themselves) later deserted the Revolution once it became clear that what the Third had in mind included sweeping restraints on the once vaunted power and property of the church and on the spiritual autonomy and authority of the French clergy.

The Debate over Theory Before Malthus and Ricardo

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-66
Author(s):  
Ryan Walter
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
The Political ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter establishes a new context for reading the political economy of Malthus and Ricardo. It is the extended debate over the role of theory and practice in politics and political reform, a contest that Edmund Burke launched by publishing his hostile response to the French Revolution, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). In attempting to defend theory, both Mackintosh and Stewart engaged in sophisticated rhetoric that attempted to portray Burke’s veneration of custom and usage as philosophically naïve at the same time as they insisted on the necessity of theory for a science of politics. It is in these defensive postures that both Mackintosh and Stewart came to articulate the idea of a ‘theorist’ of politics.

The French Revolution Controversy

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-120
Author(s):  
Susan Marks
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Mary Wollstonecraft ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
The Political ◽  
Thomas Paine ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

The rights of man ‘arrived’ in England, in the sense of beginning to circulate in public discourse and becoming a topic on which people staked out positions, during the final decade of the eighteenth century. The context was debate over the significance of the French Revolution for England (the ‘Revolution controversy’). This chapter initiates discussion of the contested meaning of the rights of man in that debate, examining contributions by Richard Price, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine. A vision of the rights of man emerges as the rights of the living to control the political community of which those latter are a part.

The Crucible of Democracy: The French Revolution

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Hobson
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
International Society ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
International Context ◽  
Political Force ◽  
Ancient Regime ◽  
The Way ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter considers the monumental French Revolution, when fundamental changes in the nature of international politics intersected with the modern appearance of democracy as a political force. The chapter examines in depth the way the concept of democracy was used and contested during the revolution, and how two conceptions of popular sovereignty emerged. These developments directly challenged an international society composed of monarchs, and ultimately manifested themselves in the revolutionary wars. Revolutionary changes within France are considered in reference to the international context of ancient regime Europe, arguing that France became both ‘behaviourally’ and ‘ontologically’ dangerous to the existing order.

The Revolution That Stopped Too Soon

2019 ◽  
pp. 339-354
Author(s):  
Jay Bergman
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bourbon Restoration ◽  
Important Purpose ◽  
The Way ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Neither Marx nor Lenin wrote much about the Revolution of 1830. This was largely because the revolution stopped too soon, thereby merely ratifying changes within the bourgeoisie instead of replacing the capitalist system (that existed to benefit the bourgeoisie) with a proletarian one. In the way the Bolsheviks explained it, the bourgeoisie split in the 1820s into more prosperous elements favouring the continuation of the Bourbon Restoration and less affluent ones that in 1830 were able to install the so-called Orléanists in power. This split, which continued, ensured the latter’s quick demise. But the proletariat was still too small and too weak and insufficiently radical politically to succeed it. However, despite its limited consequences, the Revolution of 1830 served the enormously important purpose of showing that the French Revolution, while sui generis in many ways, was also the first in a series of revolutions in the history of France that together constituted a genuine tradition of revolution.

Reflections on the Revolution in France

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund Burke
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Political Thinker ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Edmund Burke was the dominant political thinker of the last quarter of the eighteenth century in England. His reputation depends less on his role as a practising politician than on his ability to set contemporary problems within a wider context of political theory. Above all, he commented on change. He tried to teach lessons about how change should be managed, what limits should not be transgressed, and what should be reverently preserved. Burke’s generation was much in need of advice on these matters. The Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution, and catastrophically, the French Revolution presented challenges of terrible proportions. They could promise paradise or threaten anarchy. Burke was acutely aware of how high the stakes were. The Reflections on the Revolution in France was a dire warning of the consequences that would follow the mismanagement of change.

The Revolutionizing of the Revolution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. R. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
French Government ◽  
Thing In Itself ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

In 1792, the French Revolution became a thing in itself, an uncontrollable force that might eventually spend itself but which no one could direct or guide. The governments set up in Paris in the following years all faced the problem of holding together against forces more revolutionary than themselves. This chapter distinguishes two such forces for analytical purposes. There was a popular upheaval, an upsurge from below, sans-culottisme, which occurred only in France. Second, there was the “international” revolutionary agitation, which was not international in any strict sense, but only concurrent within the boundaries of various states as then organized. From the French point of view these were the “foreign” revolutionaries or sympathizers. The most radical of the “foreign” revolutionaries were seldom more than advanced political democrats. Repeatedly, however, from 1792 to 1799, these two forces tended to converge into one force in opposition to the French government of the moment.

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