Vision of the Sublime

Gazing up into the heavens dotted with innumerable stars, who wouldn’t be moved by its manifestation or mystified by its expanse? Standing before the open vastness of the ocean or magnificent sight of snow capped Himalayas, how wouldn’t one feel that sudden surge of emotions aroused from deep within? Who wouldn’t be exalted, discovering the irresistible simplicity and beauty of a mathematical idea? Who wouldn’t get smitten by the utter brilliance of an artistic or musical work?

Sense of Sublime, as the above situations bespeak of, and its very nature is a fascinating subject in philosophy and psychology. We would discuss some of its dimensions.

The sense of sublime, primitive in its existence and central to human experience, would manifests itself in all such contexts described. As Grant Allen in his work The Origin of the Sublime puts it– “There is perhaps no feeling in nature more strangely compounded and more indefinably singular than that we call sense of Sublime”. It is inexplicable feeling blended with awe and unspeakable joy, fear of something mysterious, or veneration for something profound.  This experience of sublime may be evoked in all pursuit of religion, philosophy, science, arts etc. Nobody is left untouched by this experience. This is how precisely Erwin Chargaff, famous biologist whose contribution in understanding of the structure of DNA was not acknowledged by Nobel Committee, reflects this emotion in his article in Journal Nature –

“It is the sense of mystery that, in my opinion, drives the true scientist; the same blind force, blindly seeing, deafly hearing, unconsciously remembering, that drives the larva into the butterfly.  If [the scientist] has not experienced, at least a few times in his life, this cold shudder down his spine, this confrontation with an immense invisible face whose breath moves him to tears, he is not a scientist.”

What Chagraff delineates as “confrontation with an immense invisible face whose breath moves him to tears” is what we define the moments of sublime.

Philosophers and psychologists have tried to conceptualize this state of mind as “Aesthetic Appreciation”. Edmund Burke’s famous treatise, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of The Sublime and Beautiful, was a breakthrough in the uniting idea of sublime in philosophy with psychology. In his work, he posits that the effect caused by the great and sublime is ‘Astonishment’ and can be reckoned as ‘of the highest degree’; while others are its inferior effects such as reverence, admiration and respect. According to evolutionary biologists Keltner & Haidt, ‘Awe’ as an experience can include –

 “Both a perceived vastness (whether of power or magnitude) and a need for accommodation, which is an inability to assimilate an experience into current mental structure.”

We can clearly identify this definition of ‘Awe’ with our subjective experience. When we are confronted with objects of physical grandeur, supreme works of arts and science, or religious or philosophical ideas, a sudden awareness dawns which transcends our current understanding of the nature of things, followed by an emergent overwhelmingness, so overpowering that our mental faculty is at loss to accommodate its sheer depth, mystery or might.

There has always been a clear debate amongst early philosophers either to associate or discern the Sublime from Beautiful. M a r k o U r š i č * in his essay, Sublimity of the Sky from Kant to Sayantana and beyond, examines this difference as given by Emmanuel Kant in his treatise Critique of Judgment (1790)–

“The Beautiful in nature is the question of the form of the object, and this consists in limitation, whereas the Sublime is to be found in an object devoid of the form, so far as it immediately involves, or by its presence provokes a representation of limitlessness, yet with a superadded thought of its totality”

What it means is that our perception of beautiful exists as an aesthetic idea in our mind and is not a characteristic of the object being perceived. It is a concept in the mind of the subject and is intuitive in nature. It cannot be given an adequate perception that would realize the cognitive whole symbolized in the concept.  This wholeness of cognition in the concept transcends all possible experiences and hence by virtue of this limitation of mind to perceive that experience it cannot become recognition.  However, the argument takes a deviation when Kant says that the whole could exist as the “general without concept” in the “aesthetic idea” given to the subject of the perception. Hence this is an experience subjective which pleases “in general and without a concept”.

Sublime, according to Kant, exists as an “aesthetic idea” in the mind, and these aesthetic idea coveys the idea of infinity or limitlessness in a more cognitive form i.e. the wholeness in the cognition could be recognized in the aesthetic idea.  Sublime is more inner than the beautiful.

Kant also discerns between “mathematical” and “Dynamical” sublimes in nature. Mathematical sublime happens by the immeasurableness of the sublime such as the night sky or the cosmos which overwhelms our imaginations capacity to comprehend it or hold it. This inadequacy in our “faculty of senses” evidences its “smallness”. “Dynamical sublime purely refers to immeasurableness of the might of nature. We might experience fear by stormy ocean, thunderous clouds or volcanoes while knowing ourselves that we are safe and hence without being afraid. While the above analysis is more inclined towards sublime in nature, it is equally applicable to the sublime in arts or sciences. 

One depiction which comes very close to the idea of sublime is the scene from the movie “Contact” based on novel by Carl Sagan where Ellie, the protagonist, is transported with her alien aircraft via a series of wormholes to far reaches of the cosmos. The sequence is breathtaking in its depiction as it shows her journey through space-time continuum which culminates into a sublime moment when she encounters with spectacular view of the cosmos. 

When she returns she has no evidence to prove what she had been through. And when she is asked to prove the experience, in its response she says something which would only reinforce what has been discussed earlier

- I had an experience. I can't prove it. I can't even explain it. All I can tell you is that everything I know as a human being, everything I am, tells me that it was real. I was given something wonderful. Something that changed me. A vision of the universe that made it overwhelmingly clear just how tiny and insignificant and at the same time how rare and precious we all are. A vision that tells us we belong to something greater than ourselves that we're not - that none of us is alone.

Truely, Sublime is a visceral feeling indescribable in words.