The Kantian philosophy, for many, largely represents the Modern West’s anthropocentric dominance of nature in its instrumental-rationalist orientation. Recently, some scholars have argued that Kant’s aesthetics offers significant resources for environmental ethics, while others believe that Kant’s flawed dualistic views in the second Critique severely undermine any environmental promise that aesthetic judgments may hold in Kant’s third Critique . This article first examines the meanings of nature in Kant’s three Critique s. It concludes that Kant’s aesthetic view toward sensible nature (...) is indeed inconsistent. The article, however, also suggests that the “I” as “transcendental apperception” discussed in the paralogisms of the first Critique holds some promise of “interthing intersubjective” thinking. The second half of the article demonstrates that Daoism with a dialectic concern similar to Kant’s has something insightful to offer in its idea of interthingness based on a phenomenal account of nature. The article investigates important Daoist ideas of interthing analogical experience, qi , spiritual exercise, and wuwei in its dialect relation to zizan . By bringing Daoism and Kant into dialogue, the author hopes to bring forth a synthetic approach that is better suited to today’s environmental concerns. (shrink)

Experience of the sublime is most often discussed as a facet of the aesthetic experience of nature. In this paper, I argue that religious liturgy can be a source of sublimity and that experiences of the liturgically sublime are analogous to aesthetic experiences of nature and natural sublimity. Experiences of the liturgically sublime are not religious experiences, since the aesthetic experience of liturgy is not dependent upon any particular belief, such as belief in a deity, does not communicate specific information, (...) and is fundamentally physical in its experience, since it is based upon sensory experiences of the physical environment. I conclude that, as aesthetic experiences of liturgy are similar in important ways to experiences of natural sublimity and can be fully appreciated by any attendant of a liturgy, so can anyone, regardless of belief set or religious background, experience and appreciate liturgical sublimity to the fullest degree. (shrink)