The sublime: What is it and why are we so keen to experience it?

The distinction between the beautiful and the sublime goes back at least to Longinus (first century CE), who saw the sublime as an overwhelming, ecstatic force that uplifts the soul with grandeur. A flower is beautiful, and so is a great oak, but the great oak is also sublime, and it is its sublimity rather than its beauty that we retain.

At the heart of our attraction to natural grandeur is our desire for transcendence, which is then expressed through sublime art and language. In On the Sublime, Longinus laid out five sources of literary sublimity: noble concepts; passionate feeling; figures of speech; noble diction; and dignified composition. The first two, he claimed, are innate, while the last three are learnt.

Later thinkers like Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant more sharply distinguished........

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