The Principle of Mutuality. An Art-based Approach to Environmental Aesthetics (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.

Environmental Aesthetics. Crossing Divides and Breaking Ground

Groundworks Ecological Ossues in Philosophy and Theology, 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.

Aesthetics and the Environment: Repatriating Humanity

Contemporary Aesthetics, 2007

If aesthetics is to claim its place among the fundamental philosophical disciplines, it must adequately deal with the ecological challenge, that is, the need to explain the continuity-relation between human and non-human environments. To that effect, Arnold Berleant's aesthetics of engagement constitutes an attractive proposal. Its critics (Allen Carlson and others) seem to miss its point and attack it on the basis of a particular understanding of Kantian aesthetics (mainly the disinterestedness thesis). But not only can Berleant's aesthetics meet the ecological challenge; it is also possible that it encourages a re-evaluation of traditional aesthetic categories (like disinterestedness) without necessarily precipitating a need to jettison their deeply entrenched significance.

Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature and the Global Environmental Crisis

Environmental Values

Global climate change has been characterised as the crisis of reason (Val Plumwood), imagination (Amitav Ghosh) and language (Elizabeth Rush), to mention some. The 'everything change', as the author Margaret Atwood calls it, arguably also impacts on how we aesthetically perceive, interpret and appreciate nature. This article looks at philosophical theories of nature appreciation against the global environmental change. The author examines how human-induced global climate change affects the 'scientific' approaches to nature appreciation which base aesthetic judgment on scientific knowledge and the competing 'non-scientific' approaches which emphasise the role of emotions, imagination and stories in the aesthetic understanding of environment. The author claims that both approaches are threatened by global climate change and cannot continue as usual. In particular, the author explores aesthetic imagination in contemporary times when our visions about environment are thoroughly coloured by worry and uncertainty and there seems to be little room for awe and wonder, which have traditionally characterised the aesthetic experience of nature. Finally, the author proposes that art could stimulate environmental imagining in this age of uncertainty.

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 in the Age of Climate Change

Sustainability, 2019

As climate change alters the environment, people's associations with and appreciations of the environment change too. Environmental aesthetics, an area of knowledge informed by philosophy and ethics, offers an important vantage point on human wellbeing in the age of climate change. Contributors to the literature have attempted to imagine how changing environmental conditions might change aesthetic encounters with nature. Some have contemplated the prospect of aesthetic enjoyment becoming tainted by knowledge of the societal forces and human folly that have damaged nature. One strain of argument rests on the view that aesthetic value in nature is an inherent property of the natural entity itself, and thus independent of moral considerations and other interests, which are viewed as external. The irrelevance of moral consideration to estimations of aesthetic value is the crux of the "autonomist" understanding of environmental aesthetics. From this perspective, condemnation of peoples' enjoyment of climate-altered nature is beside the point, since moral concerns have no bearing on the intrinsic, aesthetic qualities of the observed entity. This paper argues that the autonomist perspective is challenged in a world of increasingly pervasive and negative encounters with climate-altered nature. Expectations for more frequent, widespread, and severe impacts from climate change suggest a rethinking of salient questions bearing on aesthetic experience. This article raises the prospect of pleasurable aesthetic experiences becoming increasingly rare in a climate-changed world and the prospect of moral pressures becoming more immediate and personal. Also challenged is the thesis that people will ably adjust to climate change and thereby secure aesthetic comfort.

Ecological Aesthetics: artful tactics for humans, nature, and politics (introduction)

With this poetic and scholarly collection of stories about art, artists, and their materials, Nathaniel Stern argues that ecology, aesthetics, and ethics are inherently entwined, and together act as the cornerstone for all contemporary arts practices. An ecological approach, says Stern, takes account of agents, processes, thoughts, and relations. Humans, matter, concepts, things, not-yet-things, politics, economics, and industry are all actively shaped in, and as, their interrelation. And aesthetics are a style of, and orientation toward, thought—and thus action. Ecological Aesthetics is a plea for us to continuously think- and act-with the world and its inhabitants, both human and nonhuman; to orient ourselves in ways that we might find and express what our environments, and what they are made of, want; and then to decisively help and continue those thoughts, wants, and actions toward novel aims and adventures. Free introductory chapter included here. Full book at https://amzn.to/2MJPDNG

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.

Environment and the Arts: Perspectives on Environmental Aesthetics

The British Journal of Aesthetics, 2004

The environment raises basic questions about many of the fundamental concepts and doctrines in aesthetics and the arts. Including new work by the leading international contributors to environmental aesthetics, this is the first book to deal with the relations between the arts and environment, directed towards a non-philosophical audience of practitioners and critics, as well as theorists. Introducing many for the basic ideas and issues in the theory of the arts, particularly as they bear on environment, this book addresses the special concerns of an aesthetics of environment and explores the implications of environmental aesthetics for understanding both aesthetic theory and the aesthetic of individual arts. Environment and the Arts provides an introduction to some of the most intriguing and compelling questions about understanding and appreciating the arts and environment, setting a mark for the field and opening the topics to a wider audience.

The Principle of Mutuality. An Art-based Approach to Environmental Aesthetics (original) (raw)

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