Alain de Botton on the sublime

"The sublime is a feeling provoked by certain kinds of landscape that are very large, very impressive and dangerous. Places like the wide-open oceans, the high mountains, the polar caps. The Sinai Desert, the Grand Canyon. These places do all sorts of things to us. It's interesting that around the end of the 18th century, people started to say that the feeling that these places provoke in us is a recognizable one and universal one -- and a good one. This feeling was described as the feeling of the sublime. There are all sorts of theories about what exactly is needed to have the experience of the sublime. But gathering them all together, essentially what lies at the center of the experience is a feeling of smallness. You are very small and something else is very big and dangerous. You are very vulnerable in the face of something else. Of course, the other thing that tends to make you feel very small and vulnerable is God, traditionally, in our culture. There is an intriguing synchronicity between the rise of the idea of the sublime and the decline of organized religion. The way many people speak of landscape as of the late 18th century is often in quasi-religious tones or actively religious tones. …I think there is a way in which daily life, city life might make us feel quite small. You talk to the doorman at a smart hotel, he might make you feel small. The Grand Canyon also says, "You are a little speck of dust on the face of the Universe." The Grand Canyon says it in a nice way. Or in an awe-inspiring way, in a way that enables us to come to terms with our limitations in a very appealing and gracious way. For many people encounters with sublime places are ways of coming to terms with how small we are in ways are not depressing but actually inspiring, "I am small but in a Universe that is very mighty but also very beautiful." It's a willing surrender of one's claims to immortality, to strength, to knowledge, to what ever it is. One can say, "Yes the thing is much bigger than me." But because it's so beautiful, so impressive, one doesn't do so grudgingly. It's a gracious acceptance."
--Alain de Botton, in an interview with Robert Birnbaum in Identity Theory

Alain be Botton's latest book is The Art of Travel.