On the Sublime in Malebranche, Adam Smith, Longinus, and some Newton and Reid.
In my post last week on Adam Smith and the sublime I claimed that throughout his writings Smith uses ‘sublime’ in three distinct senses: first, to refer to a style (in writing and oratory) with grandeur (associated with Longinus). This is the way Smith treats the sublime in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (see lecture 6 on Monday Nov 29, 1762.) Second, to refer to exalted persons or motives. And, third, where the sublime is associated with an intellectual discipline. This third notion of the sublime was my main focus because, first, it occurs in all of Smith’s published writings including Wealth of Nations, and, second, it struck me as distinctive.
Despite receiving unusually many kind messages about it after the post, I felt a bit uneasy because since I rarely work on ‘aesthetics,’ I wondered whether I knew too little about the way ‘sublime’ was commonly used and theorized in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.* I wrote Rachel Zuckert, and she suggested I check out Kames, Reid, and Mendelsohn (which I did). But first I got my hands on a fifth corrected (1800) copy of “On the Sublime” first translated by William Smith’s 1738/9.
Since 1809 (Weiske’s edition) the traditional authorship of this piece has been in doubt. This is echoed by Wikipedia. But for what it’s worth, while I am not a classical philologist, I find Heath’s (1999) argument persuasive that we lack a good reason to deny the authorship to Longinus. (“Longinus On Sublimity” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 45: 43-74.) So, I will treat Longinus as the author in what follows.
Now, crucially reading Longinus made me realize two important things about my three-fold distinction: first, that the sublime in style and sublime in motives and in persons are related, and not so distinct. As Longinus puts it, “the sublime is an image reflected from inward greatness of the soul.” (section 9.) And a in the same section he claims “it is impossible for those who have groveling and servile ideas…to produce anything worth admiration, and the perusal of all posterity.” And the shifting between sublime style and sublime motives/person is characteristic of the treatment of the sublime in the chapter on “Grandeur and Sublimity” Kames’ (1762) Elements of Criticism (with which Smith was familiar) also Mendelssohn’s “On the Sublime and Naive in the fine Sciences”
As an aside, the political significance of this point is made clear in the final section, where Longinus claims that “democracy” and “liberty” are the most fertile ground in cultivating the kind of characters capable of the sublime (section 44). Interestingly, democracy and liberty also entail war, whereas imperial peace seems to be conducive to a kind of mental sloth on this view.
Be that as it may, second, for Longinus the sublime is itself context insensitive: “you may pronounce that sublime, beautiful, and genuine, which always pleases, and takes equally with all sorts of men. For when persons of different humours, ages, professions, and inclinations, agree, in the same joint approbation of any performance, then this union of assent, this combination of so many different judgments, stamps a high and indisputable value on that performance, which meets such general applause.” (Section VII.)+ Mendelssohn emphasizes the context insensitiveness of Longinus’ sublime.
However, as I noted last week, when it comes to the sublimity of intellectual systems or disciplines Smith denies this feature of the sublime. For Smith, in such cases the perception of sublimity depends on other background commitments. Smith acknowledges that the medieval schoolmen find metaphysics more sublime than mechanics, while Smith reverses this judgment in his own voice (Cf. 5.i.f.28, 770-1 and WN 5.i.f.55, 785-786). So, I came reinforced that this is not derived from Longinus.
Now, as I noted last week there is a passage in Galileo’s Letter to Christina (that Smith almost certainly read) that seems to treat of certain doctrines in and even means of the sciences as sublime. And from here the step to Adam Smith’s idea that “geometry and mechanicks…are the most sublime sciences” is not that far.
There is another, perhaps even more salient, example worth mentioning. After the death of Newton, a work appeared in Latin and in English in 1728 (by different publishers). It’s called “Newton's System of the world” and is a non-mathematical version of Book III of the Principia. The identity of the translator is actually a bit mysterious. But the first edition of the work contains some errors, and a corrected (and changed) second edition was published. (See Gaustad’s (1987) piece.; and for context recall my post on the Pemberton manuscript I found by accident.) The Frontispiece of this edition is worth reproducing:
I suspect this frontispiece influenced Smith. There is good reason to suspect that Smith’s originally drafted the “History of Astronomy” between 1738 (when Maupertuis account of the figure of the Earth appeared) and 1758 (when Halley’s comet returned). It was published in 1795 posthumously.
Now, as I noted last week, the “History of Astronomy” culminates with the following observation on Newton’s “philosophical system:” can “we wonder then, that it should have gained the general and complete approbation of mankind, and that it should now be considered, not as an attempt to connect in the imagination the phaenomena of the Heavens, but as the greatest discovery that ever was made by man, the discovery of an immense chain of the most important and sublime truths, all closely connected together, by one capital fact, of the reality of which we have daily experience.” (EPS 4.76, p. 105; see also TMS 4.2.7, p. 189.)
And, in fact, a few pages before Smith had written of “The superior genius and sagacity of Sir Isaac Newton, therefore, made the most happy, and, we may now say, the greatest and most admirable improvement that was ever made in philosophy, when he discovered, that he could join together the movements of the Planets by so familiar a principle of connection, which completely removed all the difficulties the imagination had hitherto felt in attending to them.” (EPS 4.67, p. 98) As it happens Kepler is also repeatedly treated as a genius, but not as great as Newton. And this way of coupling genius to sublimity is very much in the spirit of Longinus (as translated by William Smith), who uses ‘genius’ in this sense frequently.
As happens, Adam Smith is not alone in treating a science as “sublime,” In Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), Reid calls all kinds of sciences ‘sublime.’ Not, primarily in the “Essay of Taste,” but in several other places. However, in the “Essay of Taste,” Reid calls Pope’s famous (1730) epitaph on Newton “sublime” (“Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.”)
So, where are we? First, there is no reason to assume that Reid was familiar with Smith’s History of Astronomy. So, it looks as if both converged on the idea of calling a science ‘sublime’ independently of each other. This makes me suspect there is a further common cause. In part, I think this because there are passages in Hume and Rousseau that conjoin sublime with scientific doctrines, truths, and maxims.
Right now, I believe Malebranche is the common cause here. Smith was quite familiar with Malebranche’s Search and even quotes it explicitly at the start of section 3 of the History of Astronomy (EPS 3.1, p. 48). For, Malebranche, in the Search after Truth, posits the following principle: “the excellency of a science derives from its object.” (Book 4, chapter 7, p. 154 in the 1694 translation.) He does so to explain the kind of obsessive nature of astronomers in their science. As Malebranche notes, the astronomers themselves think of this science as “sublime.” However, I don’t think Malebranche shares their judgment. Here’s what he writes:
'Tis for the fame reason that Astronomers employ their time and Fortune to get an Accurate Kowledge of what's not only useless, but impossible to be known: They would find in the Courses of the Planets, such an exact Regularity, as does not belong to them and erect Astronomical Schemes to fore-tell effects, the Causes whereof they do not know. They have fram'd a Selenography, or Geography of the Moon, as if Men design'd to travell thither; and have already shar'd that World amongst the most Famous Astronomers: few of them but are awarded some Province in this Country, as a Recompense for their Labours and I' question whether they think it not a piece of Honour to have been in the good graces of Him, who so magnificently distributed these Kingdoms. (Book 4 chapter 7, p. 154)
For Malebranche, then, astronomy is a useless form of escapism, a kind of serious intellectual play. (Although it may also lead to astrology.) On my view, Smith also sometimes treats astronomy as a form of escapism:
Those [astronomers] transported themselves, in fancy, to the centres of these imaginary Circles, and took pleasure in surveying from thence, all those fantastical motions, arranged, according to that harmony and order, which it had been the end of all their researches to bestow upon them. (EPS 4.14, p. 62)
It seems pretty clear that Melebranche himself thinks of theology and metaphysics as sublime (see Book 2, chapter 8, p. 65 and the reference to “abstract and sublime sciences” and also p. 112 in Book 3, chapter 4.) Here it seems Malebranche anticipates Smith move to treat scientific practitioners’ views of their science as sublime as quite natural. And simultaneously treats it as a context sensitive mistake. By contrast, Smith admires astronomy as it is perfected in Newton, but finds metaphysics and theology unadmirable.
Smith himself clearly also embraces something like principle that “the excellency of a science derives from its object” even if it is false. In fact, as Devid Levy reminded me, in a letter from Burke, who had received The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) from Hume, to Smith on TMS, we see an even more complex version of this combination of commitments also exhibited: “[TMS] is often sublime too, particularly in that fine Picture of the Stoic Philosophy towards the end of your first part which is dressed out in all the grandeur and Pomp that becomes that magnificent delusion.” (I0 September. I759; Smith’s Correspondence, p. 38)
*I was especially uneasy because the piece generated uncommonly many emails from my readers, even though the post itself was unpolemical (those always get more readers) and the size of the audience was not unusual.
+This clearly anticipates Hume’s views on the standard of taste. I will return to that before long since Hume’s reading of Longinus is actually quite important as I learned from my former student, Andrew Corsa writing in Ergo.