Query:

I was part of the virtual meeting you had with my high school’s Philosophy Club, and I was very taken with your remarks about the difference between beauty and sublimity.  Could you say a little more about that?

Reply:

Well, I’m not an expert on aesthetics, but sure, I’ll do the best I can!  I think it was in the 1700s that people who thought about art and literature became fascinated by the fact that beauty doesn’t exhaust the range of aesthetic values.  The kind of thing which is properly called beautiful, or lovely, or pretty, stirs a certain kind of pleased admiration, as a rose does.  It gives rise to this delight because of its grace of form and color.  But the kind of thing which is properly called sublime stirs awe, as the North Face of Mt. Everest does.  We tremble, because of its vastness or mystery.

It’s possible for the same thing to be both beautiful and sublime, just as the same thing can be both big and green.  But beauty and sublimity are different qualities, as bigness and greenness are different qualities.  So an object can be beautiful without being sublime, and it can be sublime without being beautiful.  The writer Coleridge relates an anecdote about two tourists whom he overheard viewing a great waterfall.  One tourist called it “sublime,” but the other called it “pretty.”  Coleridge inwardly agreed with former tourist, but he was revolted by the judgment of the latter tourist.

In fact, these two qualities are so different that an object which is sublime may sometimes include elements of the jarring or grotesque, even though, in themselves, these are opposed to beauty.  A painting of the crucifixion in which Jesus doesn’t seem to suffer might please us in the way beautiful things do, but would probably not be viewed as sublime.  A painting in which stuns us by the vividness with which it conveys His pain and suffering might excite awe and be viewed as sublime, but would probably not be viewed as beautiful.

Needless to say, in everyday speech people throw these words around in slangy, comical, or figurative ways, and that’s okay.  When the hero of the movie finally turns the tables on the bad guy, I might clap and cry out, “beautiful!”  When someone serves us an incomparably scrumptious piece of chocolate cake, I might delightedly exclaim, “sublime!”  This is like my calling it a “miracle” when I manage to balance my checkbook.  Does this help?

Her reply:

Thank you!  Honestly, I didn’t have clear definitions until now.  I still don’t quite understand how something can be both beautiful and sublime, though.  Could you elaborate?

Also, why do we find different things beautiful?  Is there a gift of aesthetic judgment?  And does art have to be beautiful?

My further response:

As to how something could ever be both beautiful and sublime:  Beauty and sublimity are very different, yes, but they don’t absolutely exclude each other.  For example, quite a bit of religious art has both qualities.  Consider the Madonna and Child painting by Bouguereau called The Virgin and the Lilies.  It’s pleasing color and form give it beauty, but the gravity of the faces and the holiness of the Child’s blessing inspire awe, which gives it sublimity.  Or consider Michelangelo’s Pieta.  Mary, in unfathomable grief, is holding her dead Son.  One is struck with awe by the stillness of her face and by the suggestion of a vastly greater secret than mere mortality.  Yet the arrangement is perfectly balanced and beautiful.

Believers like me consider God Himself both beautiful and sublime.  St. Augustine of Hippo wrote in awe, “Question the beautiful earth; question the beautiful sea; question the beautiful air, diffused and spread abroad; question the beautiful heavens; question the arrangement of the constellations; question the sun brightening the day by its effulgence; question the moon, tempering by its splendor the darkness of the ensuing night; question the living creatures that move about in the water, those that remain on land, and those that flit through the air, their souls hidden but their bodies in view, visible things which are to be ruled and invisible spirits doing the ruling; question all these things and all will answer: 'Behold and see! We are beautiful.' Their beauty is their confession. Who made these beautiful transitory things unless it be the unchanging Beauty?”

Now all those transitory things are beautiful – but the unchanging Beauty who made them is also sublime.

As to why we don’t all find the same things beautiful:  I think there are at least three reasons (maybe lots more).  One is that we have unequal ability to recognize beauty when we see it, and someone whose appreciation of beauty is blunt, inexperienced, or still developing, may be able to recognize some kinds of beauty more easily than others.  A child will be drawn to bright colors: “How pretty!”  But a grownup, while appreciating what the child appreciates, may be more attracted to a subtle interplay of hue and shadow.  A second reason is that even among people who are equally sensitive to beauty, one person’s “antennae” may be tuned more closely to one kind of beauty, and another’s to another kind.  Amazingly, this difference adds to the delight, because each person can help the other person to see what he sees!  A third reason is that some people are attracted to things that aren’t beautiful, but call them beautiful, just because they are attracted to them.  More about that below.

As to whether we have a gift of aesthetic judgment:  Yes, I would call it a gift.  Aesthetic perception enables us to see in things qualities that no animal can see.  It elevates us to the consideration of things beyond food and drink.  We didn’t give it to ourselves; it is a gratuitous gift to the human race from our Creator.

As to whether art has to be beautiful:  Here let me borrow from something I posted to my blog in 2019.  If by art we mean any object that we value for reasons other than its usefulness, then there is no telling what people may call “art.”  Even beauty and sublimity are far from the only qualities that people look for.  I am not here thinking of attractions which can be separated from the work, such as how much its great expense will delight my friends, or how well its color scheme blends in with the rest of my decor.  Rather I am thinking of attractions which are intrinsic to the work, which it would possess even if it I had picked it up cheap at a garage sale and it looked out of place in my house.

For example, a work of art might be neither beautiful nor sublime, but intriguing.  It might be none of these things, but a faithful representation of its object.  It might call my attention to something I had not thought of before.  It might add variety and interest to a structural feature of a building.  It might catch the eye, or even fool the eye as in the form of illusion called trompe-l'œi, like this painting by del Caso.  It might suggest an episode in a story, or convey a lesson.  It might symbolize a concept.  It might excite admiration because of the labor which went into its composition.  It might evoke a mood, such as boredom, a philosophy, such as nihilism, or a psychological state, such as obsession.  It might call up a whisper of memory or longing.  It might calm or excite the beholder.  It might challenge, comfort, or irritate.  It might build up, or it might inflict damage and harm.  It might signal that the maker holds one of the currently fashionable views (or, more rarely, that he doesn’t).  It might do nothing more than express his attitude toward himself, other people, God, or the viewer -- in the manner of a joke, a prayer, a sob, a sin, or a curse.

Such qualities have always been present in art.  The difference is that in our day they have migrated to the center of the enterprise.  Mind you, though I could do without some of them, I am not at the moment passing judgment on all of them, only pointing them out.  I am not one of those who hate all modernist art, though much of it leaves me cold.  It is often interesting -- even though it is not often what I would call beautiful.  Or, for that matter, sublime.

Her reply:

Last question for now!  In our Philosophy Club meeting, a lot of questions about God came up too, just like in your comments just now.  You mentioned that God is utterly complete, with no unfulfilled potentiality.  Since God is already fulfilled, why does He desire to have a relationship with us?  Aren’t desires born out of need or lack?

My further response:

Have you noticed how strongly people want to think that God is needy?  Quite a few people think He must have created us out of loneliness.  A widely quoted poem begins, “And God stepped out on space, and he looked around and said:  I’m lonely -- I’ll make me a world.”  But God doesn’t need us.  We Human beings are lonely because of deficiency, especially in relation to God, from whom we are alienated by sin.  But God is deficient in nothing.  He did not create us because He needed us; He created us from sheer love.

Perhaps our problem is that we think of love itself as the result of deficiency:  I love, because I need someone.  If Divine love were like that, then Divinity would incapable of love.  This is why Aristotle considers it ridiculous to think that God could have friendship with man.  He thinks of God as “thought thinking itself,” revolving around itself in utter indifference to humans and their affairs.

Then again, perhaps the reluctance to believe that God doesn’t need anything arises from a desire to put God in our debt.  The asymmetry of our relation to Him perturbs us; we want Him to depend on us, as we depend on Him.  Irrationally, we are more confident if we think He needs something from us – if we think we can make Him unhappy by withholding it -- than if it is His very nature to love.  This delusion makes us think that we can bargain with Him.

In Christian tradition, which is my own tradition, Divine love isn’t like that, because it proceeds not from deficiency but from utter fullness.  St. John doesn’t just write that God loves, but that God is love.  He is One God, yes, but this One is a burning unity of three Divine Persons united in love.  Thus it pertains to His very being to love, and it pertains to Him not because of need or compulsion, but freely, as gift.  Charity is the stupendous, supernaturally infused virtue by which a human being becomes capable of loving like that, by sharing in the Divine life.

Yet according to the same faith, the most stupendous act of Divine love is that the Second Person of the Trinity, by His nature lacking nothing and incapable of pain, joined Himself to the weakness of our own human nature.  He took the burden of our suffering upon Himself, even the suffering of our alienation from Him.  Identifying completely with us, He deliberately exposed Himself to death by torture, so that if we are in turn identified with Him, then everything in us that needs to die can also die, and we can be resurrected with Him.

A God who lacks something is not much of a God.  But a God who freely joins Himself to our suffering, just because of the fullness of His love for us, is worthy of the highest worship.