Here are my CRAP reflections on Chapter 15 of Longinus’ “On the Sublime.”

Criticism

Longinus begins this chapter by emphasizing the importance of phantasia, or visualization:

“…dignity, grandeur, and urgency are to a very large degree derived from visualization (phantasia).”

He distinguishes this from the mere production of images. Instead, phantasia is a vital mental conception that animates the subject so vividly that both speaker and listener feel as if they’re seeing it. But it’s not the same across disciplines. As Longinus writes:

“You will have noticed that phantasia means one thing with orators and another with poets — that in poetry its aim is to astonish, in oratory to produce vividness of description…”

Here, Longinus teases out the dual nature of this rhetorical tool. Poets are permitted madness, exaggeration, and fabulous impossibilities. Orators, however, must remain tethered to plausibility. And in that fidelity to reality, he argues, there is true persuasive power.

This distinction remains relevant. Today, poetry and speech often blur together, especially in viral soundbites or performative media. Yet Longinus draws the line where exaggeration becomes too unmoored from truth—where phantasia becomes empty spectacle. You know, where we are today in the twenty-first century.

Rhetoric

The power of phantasia lies not just in the image conjured, but in how it masters the audience:

“…when it is combined with factual arguments it not only persuades the hearer, but actually masters him.”

This is an elegant definition of sublimity in rhetoric: not argument alone, and not imagery alone, but the union of both. He even explains the hierarchy:

“…when two forces are combined to produce a single effect, the greater always attracts to itself the virtues of the lesser.”

In this case, emotional visualization dominates logical argument, pulling the audience into an experience that bypasses their defenses. As I reflected in my initial reading notes, today I feel that visualization has degraded to producing spectacle with only the barest relations to truth and past inspirations.

Indeed, in the modern context, phantasia is often weaponized in advertising, propaganda, and spectacle-driven media where the purpose isn’t truth but manipulation. Longinus offers a corrective—not to avoid visualization altogether, but to bind it to truth.

Aesthetics

Longinus identifies two kinds of visual grandeur: the poetic and the rhetorical. He acknowledges that poetic visualization often aims for astonishment, even at the cost of credibility:

“…those from the poets display a good deal of exaggeration of a somewhat fabulous kind… whereas the finest feature of visualization in oratory is always its adherence to reality and truth.”

But the aesthetic pleasure of visualization, even in oratory, isn’t diminished by its truthfulness. On the contrary, Longinus suggests that it’s heightened. When the audience recognizes the truth in the vision, the sublime becomes accessible. It’s earned, not conjured.

Poetry dazzles. But great oratory moves. That movement, Longinus suggests, requires an anchor in what is believable, even as it stretches toward grandeur.

Philosophy

The philosophical core of this chapter is about vision as ethical communication. Phantasia isn’t just style—it’s a test of the speaker’s sincerity. Are you using imagery to elevate truth? Or to mask it?

Visualization, when aligned with reality and fused with emotional power, becomes a moral force. It does not merely entertain; it shapes belief.

That, to me, is where modern usage has fallen short. Too often visualization is used to distract, not direct. It stuns instead of stirring. Indeed, as he concludes this chapter, Longinus has ‘gone far enough in my discussion of sublimity of thought, as it is produced by greatness of mind, imitation, or visualization.’”

Visualization without greatness of mind or a clear ethical core is just empty light. But visualization grounded in sincerity, truth, and emotional clarity? That’s sublime.

So, Longinus challenges us to reclaim visualization not as a spectacle, but as a tool of conviction. When image and idea marry truthfully, they can stir the heart and guide the mind. True sublimity, then, is a vision seen clearly and shared honestly—not illusion, but revelation.