Sublime (philosophy) - Definition and Overview

The sublime (from the Latin sublimis (exalted)), refers in aesthetics to the quality of transcendent greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual or artistic. The term especially references a greatness with which nothing else can be compared and which is beyond all possibility of calculation or measurement.

The first study of the value of the sublime is the treatise ascribed to Longinus (literature): On the Sublime. Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant both investigated the subject (compare Burke’s Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, 1756) and both distinguished the sublime from the beautiful. Later writers tend to include the sublime in the beautiful.

The Romantics were essentially preoccupied by the sublime and especially by the sublime in Nature.

It is a frequently exploited theme in the paintings of John Constable and William Turner, who tried to reach and grasp the essence of the sublime through experimentation.