A feeling that is at once pleasurable and unsettling is exceedingly paradoxical and difficult to account for, as we will see. But that doesn’t take away from its ability to influence and inform us about our place in the world, and our relationship with nature.
Although we can identify the sublime, it seems to follow no principle or rule. While it brings pleasure, that pleasure is associated with pain or fear. While linked with nature, it also applies to art, even if derivatively. And though it is associated with religious experience, it also maps onto scientific wonder and discovery.
In his Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), Kant emphasised the roles of form and formlessness in distinguishing beauty from the sublime.
A feeling that is at once pleasurable and unsettling is exceedingly paradoxical and difficult to account for, as we will see. But that doesn’t take away from its ability to influence and inform us about our place in the world, and our relationship with nature.