Burke Edmund - A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (Oxford Worlds Classics)

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Introduction, Note on the Text, Select Bibliography, Explanatory Notes
Adam Phillips 1990

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First published as a Worlds Classics paperback 1990
Reissued as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 1998

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Burke, Edmund, 17291797.

A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the
sublime and beautiful / Edmund Burke; edited with an introduction
by Adam Phillips
p. cm.(Oxford worlds classics)
Includes bibliographies.
I. AestheticsEarly works to 1800. 2. Sublime, TheEarly works
to 1800. I. Phillips, Adam. II. Title. III. Series.
BH181.B8 1990 111.85dc20 8935936

ISBN 0192835807

3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4

Printed in Great Britain by
Cox & Wyman Ltd.
Reading, Berkshire

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OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

EDMUND BURKE

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by
ADAM PHILLIPS

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

EDMUND BURKE (172997) was born in Dublin, the son of a Protestant Irish father who was an attorney, and an Irish Catholic mother. He took a BA degree at Trinity College, Dublin (17449) and went to London in 1750 to read for the bar, but abandoned his legal studies in 1755, establishing himself in literary London with two publications, A Vindication of Natural Society (1756) and the Philosophical Enquiry (1757).

Burke began his political career in 1759 as Private Secretary to William Hamilton who, as Irish Chief Secretary, employed Burke twice in Ireland (17612, 17634). Breaking with Hamilton in 1765, Burke became Private Secretary to the Whig Marquis of Rockingham, and became MP for Wendover. In 1770 he published his important pamphlet Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents. He became MP for Bristol in 1774 and allied himself with Fox to oppose Lord Norths administration. In 1780 he lost his Bristol seat, and when Rockingham gained office in 1782 he was not a member of the cabinet. During this period he was committed to exposing the injustice of British administration in India, culminating in the impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788). Events in France prompted his greatest writing, the Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Burkes passionate denunciation of the Revolution led to a final breach with Fox in 1791, the year in which he published his fine Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.

In 1794 Burke retired from Parliament and his seat was given to his son Richard, who died in the same year. In his overwhelming grief at the end of his life he published the Letter to a Noble Lord (1796) and the Letters on a Regicide Peace (17967). Disturbed by the victories of revolutionary France and the tragedies in Ireland, he died in 1797.

ADAM PHILLIPS is Principal Child Psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital in London. He has edited Charles Lambs Selected Prose for Penguin and Walter Paters The Renaissance for Oxford Worlds Classics. His study, Winnicott, is published in the Fontana Modern Masters series.

The following people have given me invaluable help in the preparation of this edition. I would like to thank Mary Mackintosh for deft translations, and Kate Weaver for architectural information on the period that reinforced Burkes point that perhaps the body is not a very good analogy for buildings. Hugh Haughton managed to keep faith with my interest in the eighteenth century, and Geoffrey Weaver encouraged clarity despite Burkes misgivings. Michael Neves interest and breadth of knowledge were inspiring.

A true artist should put a generous deceit on the spectators.

Burke, Enquiry

THE Enquiry is a book that has always been overshadowed by Burkes great book Reflections on the Revolution in France, and by his subsequent career as a Whig politician. As a study of the relationship between strong feelings and forms of art it seems far removed from Burkes later political commitments, despite the fact that those commitments were always characterized by his distinctive eloquence and intensity. Even though the influence of the Enquiry is clearly identifiable in many of the most important works of the Romantic period it has either been dismissed as an interesting but derivative piece of juvenilia, or deemed to be negligible, indeed amateurish compared with Kants powerfully serious