RE: The Similarities Between Addison and Burke

Hi Fred –

I like your insight about pleasures being natural or manmade, and that the former are closer to God. I thought it was interesting how much Burke’s view of taste is similar to Addison’s pleasures of the imagination, particularly in regards to nature. To me,

Addison, Burke, and Locke: Pleasures of the Imagination, Taste, and the Notion of Understanding

Joseph Addison’s pleasures of the imagination are those that “arise from visible Objects, either when we have them actually in our View, or when we call up their Ideas in our Minds,” and are divided into two kinds: primary and secondary (Addison 4). In other words, they are primarily the positive feelings that are invoked when we directly see objects or, secondarily, when we are reminded of them; the latter only possible if we have previously seen the object since we need to have a memory of it in order to generate an imaginative idea.