Response: Music, image and the sublime

At the end of ‘Passion and striving: The language of emotion and political hierarchy’, Susan James discusses Burke’s concept of the sublime, tracing its origins in his criticisms of Hobbes, Malebranche, and Hume, who, James informs us, ‘made the mistake of supposing that fear is invariably a negative affect’.1 On the contrary, for Burke the experience of fear can arouse pleasure provided that we experience it at a distance sufficient enough to preclude the possibility of immediate danger. As long as we are able to ‘contemplate the possibility of danger rather than danger itself’ then the consequent feelings of terror and fear may be accompanied by ‘delight – a sort of delicious frisson’. As James points out, the source of the sublime for Burke lies primarily in ‘the experience of things ‘that are greater than we are’.2 Furthermore, the arts assume a central position in affective matters for Burke because they are able to create the distance necessary to arouse the passion of sublimity; as James asserts, Burke recognizes the existence of the sublime in both the natural and the artificial.