Allen Carlson and Sheila Lintott (eds): Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty (original) (raw)

A Diamond In The Rough: Art, Science, and Politics in the Search for an Environmental Aesthetics.

In light of people’s generalized enjoyment of natural beauty, it is rather surprizing how pitifully underworked the topic of environmental aesthetics is within philosophical aesthetics. This thesis retraces the meandering path that the field has taken over the years at the periphery of other philosophical debates, and thus analyzes four different conceptual stages in the historical development of environmental aesthetics, from its birth in the eighteenth century to its revival in the latter half of the twentieth. My hope here is to show that by critically deconstructing and reconstructing environmental aesthetics’ historical and philosophical commitments along the lines of art, science, and politics’ diverse influences, we can gain a much more solid theoretical foundation on which to build a stronger environmentalist aesthetics going forward into the twenty-first century.

From beauty to duty: aesthetics of nature and environmental ethics

Colorado State University. Libraries eBooks, 2001

In both aesthetics and ethics something of value is at stake. What are the relations between these different normative modes? If beauty, then duty. If so, is the logic the same in art and in nature? If not beauty, then no duty? But not all duties are tied to beauties. Other premises might as well or better yield duties. Aesthetic imperatives are usually thought less urgent than moral imperatives. Nor is all aesthetic experience tied to beauty. Perhaps ethics is not always tied to duty either, but is logically and psychologically closer to caring. Already the analysis is proving challenging. Right or Wrong Place to Start? Aesthetic experience is among the most common starting points for an environmental ethic. Ask people, 'Why save the Grand Canyon or the Grand Tetons, and the ready answer will be, 'Because they are beautiful. So grand!' Eugene Hargrove claims that environmental ethics historically started this way, with scenic grandeur: 'The ultimate historical foundations of nature preservation are aesthetic.' 1 More recently, the U.S. Congress declared, in the Endangered Species Act, that such species have 'esthetic value ... to the Nation and its people' and urges 'adequate concern and conservation'. 2 In the presence of purple mountains' majesties or charismatic megafauna, there is an easy move from 'is' to 'ought'. One hardly needs commandments. More precisely, the move seems to be from fact of the matter: 'There are the Tetons', to aesthetic value: 'Wow, they are beautiful!' to moral duty: 'One ought to save the Tetons.' Prima facie, one ought not to destroy anything of value, including aesthetic value. That is an unarguable beginning, even if carelessness sometimes needs repair by legislation. Aesthetic values are often thought to be high level but low priority: jobs first, scenery second; one cannot tour the Tetons if one is broke. So this aesthetic ethic will need to be coupled with more persuasive power lest it be overridden when amenities are traded against basic needs. At this point, one can switch to resource and life support arguments. The forests turn carbon dioxide into oxygen, they supply water for drinking and irrigating; they 127 128 Environment and the Arts control erosion; they serve as a baseline for scientific studies. Biodiversity has agricultural, medical and industrial uses. Couple these lines of argument: healthy ecosystems, public welfare, resource benefits and aesthetic quality of life, and the combination of heavyweight and more 'spiritual' arguments will supply ample rationale for conservation. That is practical in everyday life: everyone needs bread and loves beauty. Further, for those interested in philosophical issues, this is the quickest way out of the postmodernist confusions. We do not need epistemological realism, which is so problematic, as every academic knows. Ordinary relativist scenic enjoyments will do, joining them to routine resource use: amenities coupled with commodities. These motivations are ready to hand. Take a drive to the mountains. Enjoy the view, look at the fields en route, and think how air, soil and water are basic human needs. Press these points environmental security and quality of life-and you will get no argument from the postmodernists, anti-foundationalists, deconstructionists, non-realists, pragmatists, pluralists or whatever is the latest fashionable critique. Easy though this transition from beauty to duty is, we need a closer analysis. It may turn out that the initial motivations are not the most profound. Epistemologically, yes, aesthetics is a good place to start. Metaphysically, no: the worry soon comes that this beauty is only in the mind of the beholder. The metaphysicians will ask their probing questions. Any ethic based on aesthetics is going to be quickly undermined epistemologically, and in just the ways that the postmodernists, anti-foundationalists, deconstructionists and all those other troublemakers worry about. Any aesthetic value is some kind of a construct, set up on human interaction with nature. More radical environmentalists will insist that this falls far short. One is not yet respecting what is really there. Now we have to backtrack and start again. Aesthetics is the wrong place to begin in environmental ethics, at least to begin in principle, though perhaps not always in practice. Aesthetics is also the wrong place to center environmental ethics, in principle and in practice. Nevertheless, one ought to celebrate-and conserve-beauty in nature. Aesthetic experience is indeed a capstone value when humans enjoy nature, but that does not make it the best model for all values carried by nature. The problem is that the aesthetic model keys value to the satisfaction of human interests; indeed, it leashes value to just one particular kind of interest. But there are many nonaesthetic human interests, and these may urge compromising, even sacrificing, aesthetic values. Starting off with an aesthetically oriented approach may disorient us and leave us with too weak a locus of value to protect all the values in jeopardy. Consider an analogy, I am asked, 'Why are you ethical toward your wife?' I reply, 'Because she is beautiful,' Certainly, beauty is a dimension of her life, but it is not the main focus of her value. 1 respect her integrity, rights, character, achievements, her intrinsic value, her own good. In some moods, I might say that all these features of her person are 'beautiful',

Disturbing Nature's Beauty: Environmental Aesthetics in a New Ecological Paradigm

An ecological paradigm shift from the “balance of nature” to the “flux of nature” will change the way we aesthetically appreciate nature if we adopt scientific cognitivism—the view that aesthetic appreciation of nature must be informed by scientific knowledge. Aesthetic judgments are subjective, though we talk about aesthetic qualities as if they were objectively inherent in objects, events, or environments. Aesthetic judgments regarding nature are correct insofar as they are part of a community consensus regarding the currently dominant scientific paradigm. Ecological science is grounded in metaphors: nature is a divine order, a machine, an organism, a community, or a cybernetic system. These metaphors stimulate and guide scientific practice, but do not exist independent of a conceptual framework. They are at most useful fictions in terms of how they reflect the values underlying a paradigm. Contemporary ecology is a science driven more by aesthetic than metaphysical considerations. I review concepts in the history of nature aesthetics such as the picturesque, the sublime, disinterestedness, and formalism. I propose an analogy: just as knowledge of art history and theory should inform aesthetic appreciation of art, knowledge of natural history and ecological theory should inform aesthetic appreciation of nature. The “framing problem,” is the problem that natural environments are not discrete objects, so knowing what to focus on in an environment is difficult. The “fusion problem” is the problem of how to fuse the sensory aspect of aesthetic appreciation with highly theoretical scientific knowledge. I resolve these two problems by defending a normative version of the theory-laden observation thesis. Positive aesthetics is the view that insofar as nature is untouched by humans, it is always beautiful and never ugly. I defend an amended and updated version of positive aesthetics that is consistent with the central elements of contemporary ecology, and emphasize the heuristic, exegetical, and pedagogical roles aesthetic qualities play in ecological science.

Introduction to Environmental Aesthetics

Published in Martin Drenthen & Jozef Keulartz (eds.). Environmental Aesthetics. Crossing Divides and Breaking Ground. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014

Environmental aesthetics crosses several commonly recognized divides: between analytic and continental philosophy, Eastern and Western traditions, universalizing and historicizing approaches, and theoretical and practical concerns. This volume sets out to show how these perspectives can be brought into conversation with one another. The first part surveys the development of the field and discusses some important future directions, such as the inclusion of everyday artifacts, human activities, and social relations. The second part explains how widening the scope of environmental aesthetics demands a continual rethinking of the relationship between aesthetics and other fields. How does environmental aesthetics relate to ethics? Does aesthetic appreciation of the environment entail an attitude of respect? What is the relationship between the theory and practice? The third part is devoted to the relationship between the aesthetics of nature and the aesthetics of art. Can art help “save the earth”? The final part illustrates the emergence of practical applications from theoretical studies by focusing on concrete case studies.

Re-Envisioning Nature: The Role of Aesthetics in Environmental Ethics

The discussion of environmental aesthetics as it relates to ethics has primarily been concerned with how to harmonize aesthetic judgments of nature’s beauty with ecological judgments of nature’s health. This discussion brings to our attention the need for new perceptual norms for the experience of nature. Hence, focusing exclusively on the question of whether a work of “environmental art” is good or bad for the ecological health of a system occludes the important role such works can play in formulating new perceptual norms and metaphors for nature. To illustrate this point, the work of sculptor Andy Goldsworthy presents us with a different perception of time that is ethically useful.

Environmental Art and Wilderness: The Stakes of Beauty

Beauty [Working Title], 2020

In the field of environmental art, the concept of beauty is linked to the history of wilderness and Romantism. The beautiful and the sublime arouse a debate that opposes the defenders of a pragmatic ecological commitment against the partisans of a subjective and sensitive creation. In reality, these debates are nothing but old quarrels over the engagement of art, the recognition or rejection of its autonomy towards other disciplines, especially regarding scientific expertise. Approaching creation from the angle of beauty is a way of updating our principles of taste, the ability to judge and also to raise once again what is considered a risk for the individual and for the collective, the exacerbation of the senses, the passions and seduction. Finally, it is about subjecting art to principle of utility that neglects all subjective creation when we are collectively and daily subjected to a regime of guilt and anxiety which orchestrates in turn a form of political and existential resignation. But what remains of aesthetic and artistic experience in such conditions? Does not the rationality of this approach confuse art and communication, denying the emotional connect of art and the fact that beauty is defined by emotional reactions?

Environmental Aesthetics. Crossing Divides and Breaking Ground

Groundworks Ecological Ossues in Philosophy and Theology, 2014

Ecological Aesthetics (2010)

H.R. Sepp, L. Embree (eds.), Handbook of Phenomenological Aesthetics, 2010

The emerging subdiscipline of ecological aesthetics concerns the aesthetic appreciation of the world in its entirety, including both the natural and built environments, and is consequently the broadest category of aesthetics. This area of study emerged as a distinct field in the latter half of the twentieth century, although its historical roots may be traced to eighteenth century British and Scottish theories of natural aesthetics, especially their treatment of the picturesque in landscape painting, which culminated in Kant’s analysis of the beautiful and sublime in nature. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, aesthetic theory tended to focus almost exclusively on artworks and other objects of human design. But encouraged by increasing concern with environmental issues among philosophers and the general public, a new interest in the aesthetics of nature and its relationship to the built environment has emerged over the last several decades. Ecological aesthetics today incorporates studies of the aesthetics of nature, including natural objects and larger wholes such as ecosystems, gardens and landscape architecture, environmental and earth art, architecture and urban planning, and the relations between the different modes of aesthetic appreciation appropriate to these different domains. This extension of aesthetic consideration to both natural and built environments has led to a reconsideration of traditional aesthetic categories and of central tenets of aesthetic theory.

Allen Carlson and Sheila Lintott (eds): Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty (original) (raw)

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