Abstract

Writing On the Sublime and Beautiful, Edmund Burke tells us the ideas most capable of making an impression are those related to self-preservation and society. Such ideas are bound to our passions. Passions belonging to self-preservation turn on pain or danger.1 Those belonging to society do as well, although in this work, Burke dwells exclusively on pain. Because he tells us the king of terrors is death, we might infer pain is inferior to danger, the latter more formidable. We experience delight in both when they are remote and do not affect us. But this delight, or indeed pleasure of any kind, is less powerful in terms of passion. Possibly for this reason Burke declines to qualify delight or pleasure as a source...