Hello. Welcome to my channel for a new video. This time the topic of my video will be the frightening
beauty of nature, and its effects on our soul. According to some western philosophers,
the contemplation of nature and its beauty can make man morally grow.
But why? Have you ever hiked in high mountain?
How many times you reached the top of a peak, and you turned around enjoying the spectacle
of a colossal nature? It can inspire a deep sense of beauty and at the same time fear
I think it always happens. It is a common feeling and we call it Sublime.
Starting from something extremely big but still fixed like a mountain or a valley,
the mind immediately goes to something else and higher, that is infinite but not clearly defined.
Akille Rattee, a great Italian mountaineer who became pope in 1922 with the name of Pius XI,
once said: in only few places nature shows the majesty and beauty of God like in high mountain.
During the Seventeenth century, historians rediscovered an old dissertation dating back
to the first century AD and written by an anonymous Latin philosopher on this subject.
It was a milestone for modern philosophy. Starting from there,
many philosophers wondered about the concept of beauty and sublime.
During the eighteenth-century, the English Edmund Burke defined the sublime as a delightful horror,
namely an enchanting terror. It is something pretty different from simple beauty. In fact,
the difference is that sublime produces a movement of the soul.
The most complete Sublime definition was reached by German philosophers.
First, Emanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgment. Kant defined the Sublime as a characteristic of
things that are huge. He distinguished two types of Sublime: a dynamic and a mathematical one.
The dynamic sublime represents the destructive energy of nature.
Think for example to an avalanche, a waterfall or an erupting volcano.
The mathematical sublime is present in the immobile and timeless nature.
For Kant, the contemplation of the frightening spectacle of nature puts man against his limits.
Anyone who ventured to the mountain would certainly has experienced contrasting feelings.
In fact, you are in balance between enthusiasm for exceeding your limits
and the temptation to give up for weakness and risks.
According to Kant, this contradiction pushes us toward a moral and rational growth.
In fact, facing the choice of give up, we fight to resist. In this way, people can control nature.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Goethe, followed by other German philosophers
such Arthur Schopenhauer and Rudolph Otto, experienced the pleasure for horror. In
literature, sculpture and paintings, natural disasters became one of the main subjects.
In this context, natural catastrophes are no longer seen as a divine punishment. They are
events that shapes our emotions and rationality. industrialization, development of science
and technology, construction of new railway lines, invention of new means of transport,
colonialism, were all products of this desire of dominating nature.
Heroic mountaineering was something similar. It happened in nineteenth
century and it led to conquering Alps and some extra-European peaks.
It was the expression of human inventiveness and creativity capable of dominating nature.
Accordingly, Germany, who gave birth to Kant and Goethe, is at the forefront of this battle for
supremacy in mountaineering as happened for Eiger in the Alps or Annapurna in Himalaya.
What do you think? Have you ever been stunned by the terrifying beauty of a landscape?
Have you ever thought to the possible link between mountains, beauty and personal growth?
If you have something to add please leave a comment.