Edmaund Burke
On a superficial
view we may seem to differ very widely from each other in our reasonings, and
no less in our pleasures; but, notwithstanding this difference, which I think
to be rather apparent than real, it is probable that the standard both of
reason and taste is the same in all human creatures.
[A Philosophical Inquiry In to the
Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Edmund Burke]
With Edmund
Burke there is a shift from an ontological, mimetic and objective approach to
literature to an epistemological, pragmatic and subjective approach. Ontology means in Greek ‘the study of
being’. Ontology concerns itself with
determining the essence of things whether that essence being natural or
supernatural. Mimetic theories are those
that are concerned with the relationship between the poem and the
universe. Mimetic theories are
ontological in their approach because they are interested in what the poem
is. For them poem is an imitation. Aristotle’s goal to define precisely the
proper nature and essence of a well constructed plot makes it an ontological
concern.
The
Platonic-Aristotelian debate over mimesis is really a debate over the
ontological status of a work of art. They both are asking ‘what’s a poem’. According to Aristotle a poem possesses its
own substance and integrity’. For, Plato
poem is just a shadow. The debate is
again over the ontological status of a poem.
Although the neo-classical theory is partly pragmatic because it is
concerned with the response of the audience, it still works within a
philosophical framework that is essentially ontological; the theorists are
still trying to figure out what a poem is.
The rules of
decorum laid down by Horace, Dryden and Pope are less concerned with audience’
response than with what a poem should.
Even Longinus who does define the sublime partly in terms of its effect,
is actually concerned with the actual, physical, metaphorical and linguistic
qualities of a sublime poem.
Neo-classical theorists are interested in audience response but the
audience’s response functions as only one criterion of what makes a work of art
great. They are still more interested in
the thingness of a poem. When contrast ontology with epistemology
(study of knowing). Epistemology is
concerned not with the thingness of
things but with how we know and proceed with that thingness.
Pragmatic
theories in their purest form are epistemological because we are interested in
how the audience knows, receives and perceives what they are looking at. Epistemological theorists seek to explore not
just whether or not a poem pleases. They
want more than that. They want to study
the mental processes by which that pleasure is perceived and known.
For the true
epistemological pragmatist beauty does not so much define a quality that
inheres in a given poem or painting. As
it describes a certain kind of mental response that are created within the mind
of the person who experiences that poem otr painting. Being only interested in the painting is
ontological, whereas the interest in the mental response to that painting is
epistemological. For an epistemologist
beauty does not reside in the painting but beauty is in the very way one
percieves that painting. Beauty resides
in the mind.
At the core of
all epistemology and any theory that is epistemological we have got to make a
distinction between subject and object.
In Burke and German philosophy a subject is a conscious self that
percieves. An object is an unconscious
thing that doesnot percieve but is rather percieved. When epistemologists define their response to
art as purely subjective what they mean is that the experience of art has
nothing to do with the poetic object but exists wholly in the mind of the
subject. This philososophicsl use ofb
the word ‘subjective’ shouldn’t be confused with its modern use to signify a
person’s relativistic belief.
Philosophically speaking if we speak of an aesthetic response we mean an
epistemological, pragmatic and subjective response. Aestheticians want to set up standards for
these subjective responses.
Burke’s Enquiry
In his work, A
Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,
Burke lays the groud work for understanding how we percieve both art and
greater world around us. For Burke the
ground work and means of all perception is the senses. Burke can be called an empiricist- knowledge
comes through senses or experience. He
believes that all of us have equal access to sense perception. The senses are the great originals of all our
ideas. Therefore it is possible to
arrive at a universal principle of judgement, -eventhough judgement is
subjective- because it all happens via the senses and we all have access to the
senses. Therefore we can set down
universal standards of judgement.
Universal-subjective seems to be a paradox but Burke believes that fixed
laws are possible in aesthetics, literary criticism and the like.
From universal sense experience to
universal principle of taste
According to
Burke all people percieves external objects in the same way. We all recognise that sugar issweet and
tobacco is bitter. We find more natural
pleasure in sweet that in the bitter.
Habits can make you prefer tobacco to sugar. But habits can never abolish our knowledge
that tobacco is not sweet and sugar is not bitter. The senses are the base. The power of imagination and judgement are
based on senses. Senses are at the
botttom, radiating out of senses are imagination and judgement. Imagination is also called sensibility.
According to
Burke imagination or sensibility takes the raw material offered it by sense
perception and then recombines that material in a new way. Although the imagination can be quite
inventive it cannot produce anything new.
It can only vary what is given it by the senses. So whatever affects our imagination
powerfully, whatever brings us pleasure or pain must have similar effect on all
men. Though it is a huge assumption it
is central to Bruke and the epistemological aesthetic project. If so we all should take pleasure and pain in
the same things. Therefore though we
perceive things separately somehow we all perceive them the same.
Both
imagination and judgment are based on senses.
Imagination is linked primarily to immediate perceptions and has about
it an almost child like quality.
Imagination is direct, intuitive and child like. Judgment is a higher critical faculty that is
closely linked to reason. Judgment is
gained through an increasing understanding brought about by a long close study
of the object of sensation. Still the judgment
rest in the senses and therefore judgment also share common nature. Based on judgment and imagination there is
‘taste’ or ‘aesthetic taste’. Since
taste is based on imagination and judgment which are based on the senses taste
too must be common to all men. But there
are exceptions according to Burke. If
our imagination or judgment is bad or deficient it will affect our taste. For Burke there are some people whose natures
are blunt and cold. These people are
deficient in imagination or sensibility.
Sometimes these people have weakened their imaginative facilities through
hedonism or avarice. If our imagination
is blunted we will end up suffering from a lack
of taste. That is to be
distinguished from people that are deficient in judgment. If one is deficient in judgment one will have
bad taste. Lack of taste or no taste is the result of
deficiency in imagination.
Taste
according to Burke differs from person to person not in kind but in
degree. The principles of taste operate
the same in all men, but the end result may not be the same. Some men due to a keener sensibility
(imagination) or greater knowledge and discernment have a fuller or more
refined sense of taste. Burke is at the
same time democratic and highly elitist.
Imagination
tends toward synthesis whereas judgment tends toward analysis. Imagination brings things together; it
discovers and even creates unity in the midst of differences. Judgment is more
analytical. It discerns subtle
distinction in what appears to be uniform.
Although burke asserts that sensibility is essential to taste Burke
finally gives preferences to judgment as the true foundation of taste.
The sublime and the beautiful
Burke defines the sublime and the beautiful
in totally epistemological terms. For
Burke beautiful and sublimity are not qualities of the object rather they are
faculties of perception that can be categorised. The sublime and the beautiful is something
that happens in the observer, not in the painting or the poem. Burke defines sublime as that which inspires
in us feeling of terror (1992, p340).
Sublimity is defined by the impact that has on us by the way we percieve
it subjectively and epistemologically.
Dark, gloomy and massive objects invoking us an overwhelming feeling of
power and infinity. Terror produces
within us a mental, emotional response that Burke calls astonishment. The sublime has this effect on us. In that moment everything is suspended and
our mind is totally filled by an object or thought. For Burke, the sublime is not only experienced through our eye and
our ear it is also experienced through the senses of taste, smell and
touch. There are such things as sublime
sounds or sublime taste. We can percieve
the sublime through all the fiv of our senses.
Indeed such
sublimity is a mental experience, it manifests itself in our body by causing
our hands to clench and our musceles to construct. To be sublime there cannot be actual terror;
if we were really in danger that is not the sublime but that is just
terror. On the other hand the beautiful
is that which inspires in us sentiments of tenderness and affection. So whereas the sublime is more masculine and
is closely allied to pain the beautiful is more feminineand is linked to
pleasure and love. Beauty like sublimity
can be percieved by all the senses.
The
cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment. And this may arise from a
natural weakness of understanding; (in whatever the strength of that faculty
may consist), or, which is much more commonly the case, it may arise from a
want of a proper and well-directed exercise, which a:lone can make it strong
and ready. Besides, that ignorance, inattention, prejudice, rashness, levity,
obstinacy, in short, all those passions, and all those vices, which pervert the
judgment in other matters, prejudice it no less in this its more refined and elegant
province. These causes produce different opinions upon everything which is an
object of the understanding, without inducing us to suppose that there are no
settled principles of reason.
[A Philosophical Inquiry In to the
Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Edmund Burke]