Awe and the Experience of the Sublime: A Complex Relationship

Abstract

Awe seems to be a complex emotion or emotional construct characterized by a mix of positive (contentment, happiness), and negative affective components (fear and a sense of being smaller, humbler or insignificant). It is striking that the elicitors of awe correspond closely to what philosophical aesthetics, and especially Burke and Kant, have called "the sublime." As a matter of fact, awe is almost absent from the philosophical agenda, while there are very few studies on the experience of the sublime as such in the psychological literature. The aim of this paper is to throw light on the complex relationship between awe (as understood by psychologists) and the experience of the sublime (as discussed by philosophers). We distinguish seven ways of conceiving this relationship and highlight those that seem more promising to us. Once we have a clearer picture of how awe and the experience of the sublime are related, we can use it to enhance collaboration between these domains. We would be able to use empirical results about awe in a philosophical analysis of the experience of the sublime, which in turn can help us to design novel experimental hypotheses about the contexts in which we experience awe.

Healing Anthropocene Syndrome: Planetary Health Requires Remediation of the Toxic Post-Truth Environment

“…"The blocking of one's capacity for wonder and the loss of the capacity to appreciate mystery can have serious effects upon our psychological health, not to mention the health of our whole planet" Rollo May, PhD. 1992 [124] Awe is a positive emotion that is typically provoked by grand stimuli (e.g., viewing scenes of the Earth from space, vast scenes of breathtaking nature, or childbirth can provoke awe); aweprovoking stimuli often present with an element of mystery and wonder; a scene or event that is not immediately understood [125,126]-perhaps indistinct with what philosophers refer to as the sublime (Figure 7) [127]. Awe has been connected to lower systemic inflammation, emotional well-being, increased life satisfaction, mindfulness, increased patience, decreased materialism, and pro-social and pro-environmental behaviors [128][129][130][131].…”

Catalyst Twenty-Twenty: Post-Traumatic Growth at Scales of Person, Place and Planet

“…Awe is a positive emotion that is typically provoked by grand stimuli (e.g., viewing scenes of the Earth from space, vast scenes of breathtaking nature, or childbirth can provoke awe); aweprovoking stimuli often present with an element of mystery and wonder; a scene or event that is not immediately understood [86,87]-perhaps indistinct with what philosophers refer to as the sublime [88]. Awe has been connected to lower systemic inflammation, emotional wellbeing, increased life satisfaction, mindfulness, increased patience, decreased materialism, and pro-social and pro-environmental behaviors [89][90][91][92].…”

Religious Experience

“…Of course, it need not always be evil beings that elicit a negatively valenced emotional experience. For example, the feeling of awe, a commonly cited religious emotion often associated with experience of the divine (cf., for example, Wettstein 2012;De Cruz 2020a), appears to represent a complex mixture of positive and negative affective components (Keltner and Haidt 2003;Arcangeli et al 2020). Moreover, it is unclear that the spiritual, moral, and psychological effects of authentic religious experience always take the form of positive "fruits," as many philosophers have proposed.…”