Kant[edit]
Immanuel Kant in his The Critique of Judgment (1790) further clarifies Burke's definition of the sublime, mostly in contrast to the beautiful. He says that the beautiful in nature is not quantifiable, but rather focused only in color, form, surface, etc. of an object. Therefore, the beautiful is to be "regarded as a presentation of an indeterminate concept of understanding." However, to Kant, the sublime is more infinite and can be found even in an object that has no form. The sublime should be regarded as a "presentation of an indeterminate concept of reason." Basically, Kant argues that beauty is a temporary response of understanding, but the sublime goes beyond the aesthetics into a realm of reason. Whereas Burke argues that the sublime arises from an object that incites terror, Kant says that an object can be terrifying and thus, sublime, without the beholder actually being afraid of it. But there is much more to Kant's definition of the sublime. He claims that the sublime in itself is so great that anything compared to it must necessarily be considered small. And, because of that, an aspect of the sublime is the work of one's imagination to comprehend something so great; thus, one major aspect of the sublime is the power of mankind's mind to recognize it. Kant transforms the sublime from a terrifying object of nature to something intricately connected to the rational mind.[3]
The literary sublime (and the philosophical, aesthetic sublimes as well) are inherently connected to nature, but, with most literary terms, the sublime evolved alongside literature. More authors began to connect the natural sublime to an internalized emotion of terror. Authors began to see the sublime, with its inherent contradictions (pain and pleasure, terror and awe) as representative of the changing political and cultural climate of the times. They began to incorporate more aspects of the sublime into their literary works as a way of externalizing their inner conflicts. In this way, the sublime particularly appealed to the Romantics.