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From the Author's Perspective Aesthetics and Nature From the Author’s Perspective Aesthetics and Nature Glenn Parsons Aesthetics and Nature is a single-author text surveying contemporary philosophical debates concerning the aesthetic appreciation of nature. Although philosophical aesthetics is widely conceived of as covering the appreciation of nature as well as art, courses in aesthetics tend to be focused primarily on the latter. The aesthetics of nature is sometimes included AMERICAN SOCIETY as a topic in such courses, and some aesthetics anthologies (Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen’s Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The Analytic Tradition, for example) For AESTHetics and some single-author textbooks (such as Robert Stecker’s Aesthetics and the Philosophy An Association for Aesthetics, of Art) are well-suited to this approach. Criticism and Theory of the Arts However, the philosophical study of the aesthetics of nature has reached the point where it VOLUME 29 NUMBER 2 SUMMER 2009 is now also possible to deliver an aesthetics course focused primarily on the appreciation of nature, rather than the appreciation of art. Moreover, such an approach is attractive in light of interest in the aesthetics of nature among students oriented toward environmen- 3 Review of Parsons and Lin- tal issues. As yet, however, we have lacked texts appropriate for this approach. The 2004 tott, Nature, Aesthetics, and publication of an anthology of essays by various philosophers on the aesthetics of nature, Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant’s The Aesthetics of Natural Environments, was a major Environmentalism, by Allison step toward filling this void. The need for a single-author survey text, however, persisted. Hagerman When I wrote Aesthetics and Nature, the available single-author volumes on the subject were Arnold Berleant’s The Aesthetics of Environment (1992), Allen Carlson’s Aesthetics and the Environment (2000), Malcolm Budd’s The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature (2002), 5 News from the National and Emily Brady’s Aesthetics of the Natural Environment (2003). Another volume, Ronald Office Moore’s Natural Beauty (2007), appeared while I was writing Aesthetics and Nature. These books, while excellent specimens of their kind, possess two important limitations when used in lieu of a survey text for undergraduate courses. First, some of them are essentially 6 Aesthetics News collections of published journal articles, and so are not structured using an overarching narrative. Second, and more importantly, each of these volumes is primarily a develop- Conference Reports ment and defence of one particular theoretical approach to the aesthetic appreciation of 7 nature. Thus, these books are not ideal for the instructor attempting to introduce students to the full range of philosophical views on the subject. In short, there existed a need for a 9 Calls for Papers survey text for the field, and Aesthetics and Nature was meant to meet this need. The book consists of three parts. In the introductory part, consisting of chapter one and 12 Upcoming Events the first part of chapter two, I introduce the basic concepts that underlie the subsequent discussions. The second and central part of the book consists of chapters two through six. Active Aestheticians In these chapters, I survey and critically assess a range of different positions on the nature 15 of appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature. These include what I call ‘postmodern- ism’ (the view that any sort of aesthetic appreciation is appropriate), Formalism (the view that appropriate aesthetic appreciation focuses upon nature as a perceptual array of pure lines, shapes and colours), the view that appropriate aesthetic appreciation must be informed by a scientific understanding of nature, two kinds of pluralism, and Arnold aesthetics-online.org Berleant’s ‘engaged aesthetic.’ In these chapters, I seek to succinctly catalogue and juxta- SUMMER 2009 1 pose the different arguments that had been offered and critiqued in philosophers independently of one another, but together they provide the philosophical literature, in such a way that the reader can obtain a very useful ‘data set’ for testing intuitions about the philosophical an overall view of the field. In this, I tried to give a ‘neutral’ presenta- issues involved. Here once again, my aim was primarily to consolidate tion, which identified strengths and weaknesses in each view. This and synthesize, for the student’s use, the excellent resources already approach reflects my own instinct about teaching undergraduates, existing in the literature. which is to avoid endorsing any particular view and leave the final weighing of evidence to the student. Perhaps it is impossible to real- Perhaps the ideal way to employ a text like Aesthetics and Nature is to ize this ideal completely, and I’m sure my own views are discernible use it as a supplement to a collection of primary readings. The chapters in the book. Nonetheless, I do hope that philosophers whose views on Pluralism, for example, could be read along with Noël Carroll’s “On differ from mine will find their own perspectives represented fairly Being Moved by Nature” and Yuriko Saito’s “Appreciating Nature on and forcefully in it. its Own Terms”; the chapter on science-based approaches to nature appreciation can be read along with Carlson’s “Appreciation and the The arguments discussed in this second part of the book have consti- Natural Environment,” and so on. (For a full chapter-by-chapter list tuted the main philosophical debate in the aesthetics of nature over of suggestions for primary readings, see my “Teaching and Learning the last thirty years. Nonetheless, in recent years philosophers have Guide for: The Aesthetics of Nature,”in Philosophy Compass 3/5 (2008): begun taking on other questions as well, in much the way that phi- 1106–1112.) For this purpose, instructors can use the aforementioned losophers of art have increasingly broadened their focus beyond the anthology, Carlson and Berleant’s The Aesthetics of Natural Environ- traditional central question ‘What is Art?’ to confront questions about ments, which contains many of the relevant readings. This approach concepts such as expression and meaning, and about the ontology allows students to confront philosophers’ arguments directly, while and ethics of art. In the third part of the book, chapters seven through turning to the text for context, exposition, and critical analysis. nine, I pursue some other intriguing issues in the aesthetics of nature, including the possibility of aesthetic grounds for preserving nature, the The book might also be profitably employed in a graduate course on relation of gardens to nature, and the ethical status of environmental a particular topic in the aesthetics of nature. For instance, a course art. With this final topic, the book connects up with more traditional focusing on aesthetic arguments for nature preservation might be philosophical discussions about the nature and value of art. divided into two portions. In the first, the instructor might employ chapters one through six of Aesthetics and Nature, along with selected One important consideration in composing Aesthetics and Nature was primary readings, as the basis for an overview of the main positions in the diverse audience that a course on the topic might be expected the field. In the second and central portion of the course, the instructor to attract. As mentioned above, in addition to students with a back- might use chapter eight of Aesthetics and Nature as a general introduc- ground in philosophy, such a course would be of obvious interest to tion to aesthetic preservation and a point of departure into detailed students pursuing environmental studies. Also, a survey text on the study of the literature on that topic. This literature is now collected in topic could prove useful to non-students with a professional interest the excellent new anthology Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism in the topic but without a background in philosophy. Given this, I (2008), edited by Allen Carlson and Sheila Lintott. took pains to make the text accessible to readers without previous experience in philosophy. In the first chapter, for instance, I began In a survey text of this length and scope, one cannot give sufficient not with the concept of aesthetic appreciation, but rather with the attention to each deserving issue. But I hope that the material pre- more popular and familiar concept of natural beauty. I also tried to sented in Aesthetics and Nature will facilitate further discussion of highlight some issues of particular salience from the perspective of topics of particular interest to instructors or students. For instance, the environmental policy, such as the possibility of quantifying scenic provocative idea of Positive Aesthetics—the idea that nature, unlike value. Although this issue has somewhat fallen out of contemporary art, is always on balance aesthetically good—arises in chapter four philosophical debates, insightful discussions of it are present in the and can be spun out into an independent discussion there, or later older literature. Also, I collected a number of interesting case studies when it arises again in chapter eight. The aesthetic appreciation of of actual attempts at environmental preservation based on aesthetic animals, a subject almost entirely ignored in contemporary discus- value; these examples had been proposed and discussed by different sions but worthy of much scrutiny, can also be investigated using the resources of chapter four. One of my regrets about Aesthetics and Nature is the absence of a chapter devoted to the concept of the sublime, as it applies to nature. Nonetheless, the sublime is discussed Erratum at various points, particularly in relation to the engaged aesthetic, and instructors so inclined might take a detour from the text here, to The articles by Dominic McIver Lopes linger over some classic sources (Kant, Burke) or some more recent and Derek Matravers published in our investigations (Ronald Hepburn’s neglected essay “The Concept of the Sublime” (1988), or Malcolm Budd’s recent reappraisal of the Spring 2009 special issue on philosophy Kantian sublime (2002)).
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