Sublime Wonder

I've been reading Longinus, Burke, Kant, and Schopenhauer and thinking about the sublime. A very dangerous endeavor. Since wonder has much in common with the sublime, however, I think it's important to work through some of the similarities and differences between the two. This post is a bit long and uneven because I'm still mulling over some of the issues.

Theorists of the sublime differ in the exact effect of the sublime, yet for all of them, the sublime causes us to either look or move upward. Longinus explains, for example, sublime produces “not persuasion but transport” (ekstasis). Burke’s explanation of the effects of the sublime is the opposite; while looking upward to something of great magnitude, the subject is not lifted up but rather pressed down: “But whilst we contemplate so vast an object, under the arm, as it were, of almighty power, and invested upon every side with omnipresence, we shrink into the minuteness of our own nature, and are, in a manner, annihilated before him.” Kant revises this, suggesting that while the subject does indeed fill overwhelmed, at the same time, the imagination rises to meet the challenge that reason could not meet. As a result, the sublime is both a displeasure and “also a pleasure, aroused by the fact that this very judgment, namely, that even the greatest power of sensibility is inadequate, is in harmony with rational ideas, insofar as striving toward them is still a law for us.” The sublime thus “elevates our imagination.” Indeed, for Kant, the subject is elevated even above nature: “we found in our mind a superiority over nature itself in its immensity…though the irresistibility of nature’s might makes us, considered as natural beings, recognize our physical impotence, it reveals in us at the same time an ability to judge ourselves independent of nature, and reveals in us a superiority over nature that is the basis of a self-preservation quite different in kind from the one that can be assailed and endangered by nature outside us. This keeps the humanity in our person from being degraded.”

Schopenhauer has a similar view, explaining that the sublime “is occasioned…by the sight of a power threatening the individual with annihilation, incomparably superior to him.” While it crushes the individual, the sublime concurrently uplifts the spirit: “But at the same time there rises against such a specter of our own nullity, against such a lying impossibility, the immediate consciousness that indeed all these worlds exist only in a presentation to us…The magnitude of the world that previously caused us unrest now rests within us; our dependence upon it is nullified by its dependence upon us.” He differs slightly from Kant’s view because he does not see aesthetic judgment giving the subject a feeling of superiority; rather, the subject sheds its will and confronts what he calls presentation in its pure form, explaining that the subject becomes ““one with the world and thus not crushed, but lifted up, by its immensity.” Related to the feeling of being suspended, another similarity between the effect of the sublime and of wonder is a sense of enchantment. Longinus calls it “enthrallment.” While both the sublime and wonder involve a moment of arrest or freezing, however, the sublime has to do with upward momentum or upward looking, whereas wonder has to do with looking ahead.

The enthrallment and arrest effected by both wonder and the sublime also cause them both to temporarily suspend critical faculties. Burke explains, “The mind is hurried out of itself, by a croud of great and confused images; which affect because they are crouded and confused.” Indeed, this feeling of arrest in the sublime is so powerful that it can paralyze: “The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is Astonishment; and astonishment is the state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admiration, reverence and respect.” The difference is, wonder is intimately wrapped up with the desire to know and often prompts analysis or further inquiry.

Another link between the sublime and wonder is that they both border on the ridiculous or bathetic. At the opposite pole, another connection between wonder and the sublime is that both are dangerous and require tempering. These very different characteristics point to another link between wonder and the sublime: that they both deal in paradoxes, in contradictions somehow united.

Now, here is an area that tangles my thoughts up more quickly than my cat does to a ball of yarn. Pleasure. Nobody seems to agree about the role of pleasure in the sublime. Longinus says that passion and pleasure can cause the sublime, but it can also be “independent of passion” as long as there is dignity and elevation. Burke argues that the sublime causes delight, not pleasure, and he characterizes delight as the “removal of pain or danger.” Such delight arises out of the passion for self-preservation: “they are delightful when we have an idea of pain and danger, without being actually in such circumstances.” As much as Kant tries to deny his similarity to Burke in this case, his pleasure in the sublime sounds awfully familiar. He argues, “the liking for the sublime contains not so much a positive pleasure as rather admiration and respect, and so should be called a negative pleasure.” Kant’s liking here does not derive out of self-preservation, but rather admiration; in fact, Kant’s version of aesthetic pleasure is disinterested and lacks purpose; yet it is like Burke’s delight in that it is not a “positive pleasure.”

While I cannot iron out these discrepancies, I’m interested in how pleasure fits in with wonder. Kent Cartwright has me nearly convinced that wonder is always associated with pleasure because it is a feeling of being connected in some way with greatness. In a way, this idea makes sense because, as with sublimity, wonder is an encounter with greatness, with something of magnitude. Whereas the sublime is a terrifying experience that in some way makes the subject painfully aware of her smallness and limited nature, wonder causes her to feel aware of her relationship with that greatness. Further, wonder is generally connected with the desire to learn more and often prompts further inquiry, thus emphasizing the power of the subject’s intellect. Such acknowledgement of the capacity of the individual offers another kind of pleasure, though this might be more of an after-effect of wonder rather than an experience with wonder itself.

An important difference between wonder and the sublime is that wonder is always a response to newness, surprise, or the unexpected; the sublime, while it may be provoked by novelty, does not require it. Indeed, Longinus even derides novelty as something that interferes with the sublime: “All these ugly and parasitical growths arise in literature from a single cause, that pursuit of novelty in the expression of ideas which may be regarded as the fashionable craze of the day.” As a result, the same wondrous encounter cannot be repeated. A sublime passage in Milton, for example (hey, everyone who talks about the sublime uses him, why not me?), is always sublime; a passage in Shakespeare might capture or aesthetically reproduce a moment of wonder, but it is not wondrous itself. Or attending a second performance of a play that has a moment of wondrous spectacle might result in curiosity (a feeling of how did they do that?, for example), but once it is expected, familiar, or understood, it is not wonder anymore. An important exception to this is an encounter with something incomprehensible, incredible, or unresolvable, as in repeated experiences with the sacrament of the Eucharist for a devout believer. I think that moments like this—often involving contact with some divine force—demonstrate where the sublime and the wondrous overlap. Burke gives us the example of David’s abjection before God: “we cannot but shudder at a power which can confer benefits of such might importance. When the prophet David contemplated the wonders of wisdom and power, which are displayed in the economy of man, he seems to be struck with a sort of divine horror, and cries out, fearfully and wonderfully am I made!”

Another distinction between wonder and the sublime is that the sublime is universal, whereas wonder can be very particular. My example of the Eucharist might serve here as well.

Theorists of the sublime have conflicted attitudes about wonder. Generally, they denigrate it, linking it to superstition and stupidity or lack of reflection. It is thus not as great as the sublime. Other times, however, they link wonder to genius, as when Schopenhauer argues, “Because genius mirrors clear essence of the world, it seeks constant wonder.” Schopenhauer goes on to relate wonder to restlessness, something I’d like to consider in later readings: “This is the explanation of the liveliness to the point of restlessness in individuals of genius, the present rarely being able to satisfy them because it does not fill their consciousness. This gives them that character of unresting endeavor, that ceaseless search for objects that are new and worthy of regard.” Schopenhauer actually suggests that wonder, in art at least, is a quality of the sublime (or perhaps one of its effects): “It is also that blessed state of will-less perception, finally, that spreads so wondrous a magic over the past and distant places and depicts them in so very flattering a light, by way of a kind of self-deception.” This idea brings me to a final reflection for this already too long post, that sublime is an aesthetic response or experience, and wonder is not. What, then, is it?