The Sublime, the Beautiful, and the Political in Burke’s Work

Abstract

Following on his O’Neill’s earlier work on Wollstonecraft’s political rereading of Burke, O’Neill now details Burke’s own rereading and appropriation of some tenets that are visible in the Philosophical Enquiry in his later work. He shows that the Enquiry already encapsulates views on the role of power, e.g., in interpersonal relationships and institutions, which can be seen to have political import. In other works of this period, such as the English History and the Account, Burke merged political and aesthetic aspects in his analyses. Finally, in the Reflections, and in his arguments in defence of empire, these two strands of his thought are explicitly brought in relation to each other. Here, Burke appropriated the categories of the sublime and the beautiful that he had developed decades before in the Enquiry, in order to refashion them for explicitly political goals.