著者

星野 太

出版者

美学会

雑誌

美學 (ISSN:05200962)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.61, no.1, pp.13-24, 2010-06-30

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In this paper, I examine Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757/59), comparing it with Pseudo-Longinus' On the Sublime. In his book, Burke does not refer to On the Sublime but once, although he shares one of the main subjects with Pseudo-Longinus, namely the "Sublime". However, in the Part V of Sublime and Beautiful, one can find some descriptions where the tradition of rhetoric, including On the Sublime, is recognized. Especially, Burkian notion of "Passion", which is discussed at the last part of Sublime and Beautiful, draws a lot of attention. According to Burke, arousing the "sympathy" or "contagion of our passion" is made possible only by words, not by paintings, architectures, or natural objects. And he assumes that the sympathy is aroused by words without "picture" (namely, mental representation). This is the very reason why, I suppose, Burke excludes Pseudo-Longinus' theory from his book on the "Sublime and Beautiful". For Pseudo-Longinus assumes that, when the violent power of speech arouses a sympathy, it is mediated as vivid image (phantasia). To put it briefly, while Pseudo-Longinus considers that the mental representation is necessary to influence other's passion by words, Burke takes the standpoint contrast with that of Pseudo-Longinus.