Ancient ruins and the sublime

Hassan, Patrick 2025. Ancient ruins and the sublime. British Journal of Aesthetics Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Following a prominent 18th and 19th century tradition, some contemporary philosophers have appealed to the notion of the sublime as a promising avenue for exploring the aesthetic experience of ancient ruins. Nevertheless, existing accounts have typically focused solely upon the great magnitudes of ruins—specifically the magnitude of time—and have therefore operated exclusively within the bounds of the ‘mathematically sublime’. However, this paper defends a less well-represented view in contemporary literature, that ancient ruins ought to also be appreciated in terms of the ‘dynamically sublime’: being confronted with great powers and forces of nature relative to our own. Drawing upon hitherto under-utilised conceptual resources, especially those offered by Schiller, the paper explores the necessary and sufficient conditions for conceiving of the sublime experience of ancient ruins in terms of their ability to express human vulnerability, and what the philosophically significant implications of this view may be.

Item Type:	Article
Schools:	Schools > English, Communication and Philosophy
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	0007-0904
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	4 September 2025
Date of Acceptance:	2 September 2025
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2025 11:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/180814

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