Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0192835807, Paperback)

An eloquent and sometimes even erotic book, the Philosophical Enquiry was long dismissed as a piece of mere juvenilia. However, Burke's analysis of the relationship between emotion, beauty, and art form is now recognized as not only an important and influential work of aesthetic theory, but also one of the first major works in European literature on the Sublime, a subject that has fascinated thinkers from Kant and Coleridge to the philosophers and critics of today.

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0140436251, Paperback)

A classic of modern aesthetics that remains both influential and engaging, by the politician many consider the father of modern conservatism.

From the awesome thrill of the sublime to the delightful perfection of the beautiful, Edmund Burke gives an involving account of our sensory, imaginative, and judgmental process and its relation to artistic pleasure--it is a text that influenced the writers of the Romantic period. This edition also features several of Burke's early political works, which illustrate that, despite his later opposition to the Revolution in France, he took a liberal and humane view of society and government. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful includes Burke's political parody, "A Vindication of Natural Society," and his essays on the American colony--"Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents," "Speech on American Taxation," "Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies," and "Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol on the Affairs of America." This authoritative edition has securely established texts, and in his illuminating Introduction, David Womersley clearly reveals the cross-pollination of Burke's aesthetic and political thinking: the power exercised by art and the art of exercising power.

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0192818074, Paperback)

The "Philosophical Enquiry" is a study of the relationship between strong feelings and forms of art, that considers the inspired persuasiveness of certain kinds of writing alongside experience of the natural landscape, and is gradually being recognized as an important work of aesthetic theory. This eloquent and sometimes erotic book was long considered to be a piece of Burke's juvenilia, published when he was only 28. But it is a precursor of his later political writings, and clearly deals with a fashionable topic of intellectual preoccupation in the 18th-century. This work is also one of the first major works in European literature on the sublime, a subject that was later to fascinate thinkers from Kant and Coleridge in the 18th-century, to contemporary philosophers and literary critics. Adam Phillips has also edited Charles Lamb's "Selected Prose" and Walter Pater's "The Renaissance", as well as writing a study of his own entitled "Winnicott".

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0199537887, Paperback)

An eloquent and sometimes even erotic book, the Philosophical Enquiry was long dismissed as a piece of mere juvenilia. However, Burke's analysis of the relationship between emotion, beauty, and art form is now recognized as not only an important and influential work of aesthetic theory, but also one of the first major works in European literature on the Sublime, a subject that has fascinated thinkers from Kant and Coleridge to the philosophers and critics of today.

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0415453267, Paperback)

Edited with an introduction and notes by James T. Boulton.

'One of the greatest essays ever written on art.'– The Guardian

Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful is one of the most important works of aesthetics ever published. Whilst many writers have taken up their pen to write of the beautiful, Burke’s subject here was the quality he uniquely distinguished as the sublime—an all-consuming force beyond beauty that compelled terror as much as rapture in all who beheld it. It was an analysis that would go on to inspire some of the leading thinkers of the age, including Immanuel Kant and Denis Diderot. The Routledge Classics edition presents the authoritative text of the first critical edition of Burke’s essay ever published, including a substantial critical and historical commentary.

Edmund Burke (1729–1797). A politician, philosopher and orator, Burke lived during a turbulent time in world history, which saw revolutions in America and France that inspired his most famous work, Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0486461661, Paperback)