Overwhelming Perfection: A Defense of Addison’s Account of the Sublime

Abstract Although Joseph Addison’s discussion of sublimity is widely acknowledged as historically influential, there has been little philosophical engagement with his account in the recent flowering of interest in the sublime in philosophy and psychology. But the core of his account is persuasive. He holds that sublime experience is pleasurable because it involves being presented with an astonishing, overwhelming volume of content that seems perfectly suited to our faculty for representation. This view is a convincing alternative to the common view, accepted as early as Burke and Kant and up to the present, that sublimity is a “mixed valence” experience involving both positive and negative effects. It also accords well with contemporary philosophical approaches and empirical psychological research on sublimity. These theories often subscribe to the “mixed valence” view, but their central contention is that the sublime is an aesthetic variant of awe. I show that Addison’s understanding of sublimity allows us to retain this plausible idea while resolving apparent problems facing views defending a mixed valence approach, including skeptical attacks on the very notion of sublimity. Addison plausibly suggests that the “vastness and immensity” of sublimity can be a pure joy.