A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful by Edmund Burke

I had previously read parts of this in class in relation to the ideas of the sublime, but I wanted to read the whole thing, which turned out to be very historically interesting and sometimes funny (from a modern standpoint). This text is famous for having the most articulated (but not the earliest) explanation of the concept of the 'sublime', which was crucial to the development of Romanticism. It is fascinating as a record of the ways of thinking at the time (1750s), especially the introduction, which concerns taste. The modern idea of individual taste had not yet been born, and Burke takes it for granted that there is one fixed concept of Taste, and lack of it is due to either insufficient knowledge or insufficient refinement. I found it very hard to keep this concept in mind while reading, and had to go back and keep reminding myself of it. The section on beauty was very funny, as Burke just takes his own personal opinions and makes them law, often using phrases like 'no man would disagree.' One of my favourite parts is that he identifies 'smoothness' as the second most important component of beauty (after small size), but this fixation is pretty clearly personal. Obviously, unfortunate attitude towards women, such as stating that their fragility or even illness makes them beautiful, but what can one expect? For something having the terrifying (to me) word 'philosophical' in the title, this was an easy read, because all of the reasoning was easy to follow (the syntax and word usage are a little confusing at times). But mostly I enjoyed the slightly illogical (in historical hindsight) arguments and rereading Burke's definition of the sublime.