This philosophical enquiry is difficult to summarize because the excerpt that we have to work with is selections from a larger work showing his main ideas. So what I am going to try and do is just go through his main ideas from the beginning to the end. Starting with his thoughts on pleasure and pain and ending with actual questions on the sublime and the beautiful we will look at some of the major ideas in this enquiry.

In the opening, Burke has us examining our ideas of pleasure and pain. And through definitions and examples he has us see that they are not related and that the lack of pleasure is not pain or visa versa but that indeed lack of one or the other, leads to an indifferent state at least after a little while. Immediately following a painful episode we will perceive the lack of pain as pleasurable but that after a time it goes to

He went on to show how obscurity played an important role in this because objects that are illuminated are not half as scary as things you cannot see. That idols that were to be feared were kept in dark corners of Heathen's huts so that it was harder to see them and they would then be considered obscure, and capable of harm, thus sublime. He saw the beautiful as objects that weren't capable of harm, so the sublime and the beautiful were never in the same object.

This leads into his idea of the Sublime. He more or less saw the sublime as anything terrible, normal things could be seen in different lights, but when they were seen as capable of great human harm, they were seen as sublime, because of the growth people underwent after being subjected to this sublime object.

an indifferent state. He goes on to say that the impact intense pain has on people is so much greater and can lead to not enlightenmen

Some common words found in the essay are:
Edmund Burke, pleasure pain, sublime beautiful, capable harm sublime, main ideas, harm sublime beautiful, lasting impact, harm sublime, capable harm, lack leads, i'm feeling,
Approximate Word count = 618
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)