As aesthetic appreciators of the environment, we often encounter cases where our environmental commitments and our aesthetic responses do not seem to match. Some highly altered or contaminated environments may occasion powerful and insightful aesthetic experiences. In this article, I discuss some arguments that have been offered in favor of the view that this mismatch is not possible when we appreciate a particular environment with full awareness of its damaged or altered condition. I show that these arguments are not conclusive (...) and that there is room for valuable experiences of damaged or highly altered environments. Our knowledge of the damaged condition of an environment, while perceptually significant, does not necessarily make the resulting aesthetic experience to be negative. Finally, I show that these cases do not necessarily diminish the role that aesthetics can play in shaping our environmental sensibility and commitments. (shrink)

Does consciousness have non-instrumental aesthetic value? This paper answers this question affirmatively by arguing that consciousness is sublime. The argument consists of three premises. (1) An awe experience of an object provides prima facie justification to believe that the object is sublime. (2) I have an awe experience about consciousness through introspecting three features of consciousness, namely the mystery of consciousness, the connection between consciousness and well-being, and the phenomenological complexity of consciousness. (3) There is no good defeater of the (...) justificatory force of my feeling of awe for the sublime of consciousness. To defend the third premise, I argue against two potential defeaters: The first is that most people do not regard consciousness as sublime. The second is that there do not seem to be physical properties that can ground the sublimity of consciousness. I conclude by emphasizing an important ethical implication of the thesis that consciousness is sublime, namely that it explains why even conscious subjects who cannot have valenced experiences deserve moral consideration. (shrink)

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 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 global environmental change. The article 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, he 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, he proposes that art could stimulate environmental imagining in this age of uncertainty. (shrink)

The aesthetic appreciation of animals in China is different from that in the West. In this paper, I identify these differences by tracing the various definitions of the word ‘animal’ in Chinese, an...

In a recent paper, Allen Carlson moves away from a purely scientific–cognitive framework for environmental aesthetics towards a ‘combination position’ based on the ecoaesthetics theorised by Xiangzhan Cheng. Carlson argues that only an aesthetics informed by ecological knowledge can offer the correct foundations for the continued relevance of environmental aesthetics to environmental ethics. However, closer analysis of Cheng's theory of ecoaesthetics reveals a number of problems related to questions of anthropocentrism and in particular, the issue of an ethic based on (...) love. In this paper, I offer an alternative approach for the future of environmental aesthetics in the form of an intergenerational aesthetics based on Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK). (shrink)

Nonfictional field recording is a genre of music which offers a glimpse of art beyond our late-capitalist age. The ongoing ecocide which we, in a state of abject detachment, are witnessing and abetting calls out for artists to reconnect and reengage with the nonhuman world that has been deemed valueless by our civilization. Countering the disenchantment of nature wrought by scientism, human-centrism, and above all capitalism necessitates a dissolving of the barriers we set up between ourselves and our environment, a (...) task which can be only accomplished via religion or art: an art—like field recording—which affords reconnecting its audience with the enchantment of the ignored world surrounding them. In this article, Toshiya Tsunoda’s exemplary Somashikiba —recorded in locations forgotten by civilization—will be examined via interpretive tools adapted from Ueda Shizuteru’s Kyoto School aesthetics and Takahashi Mutsuo’s poetics. Ueda’s philosophy offers a way of understanding perception which eliminates the subject-object division. Takahashi’s project of recovering the spirituality of place through poetry is a model of historically and politically engaged art. Looking, as these contemporary Japanese thinkers have done, to the precapitalist, pre-formalist past to rediscover art’s function as a medium which reconfigures the listener’s perception of reality, I argue for the urgency of sound art such as Tsunoda’s which aids in the re-enchantment of the world to a future beyond capitalist, humanist “civilization.”. (shrink)

How should we characterize the interaction between moral and aesthetic values in the context of environmental aesthetics? This question is important given the urgency of many environmental problems and the particular role played by aesthetic value in our experience of environment. To address this question, we develop a model of Environmental Virtue Aesthetics (EVA) that, we argue, offers a promising alternative to current theories in environmental aesthetics with respect to the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. EVA counters environmental aesthetic theories (...) that focus more narrowly on scientific knowledge and ground aesthetic value in ways that obfuscate pluralistic modes of appreciation of and relationships with natural and semi-natural environments. To develop EVA, we work with a revised notion of respect and engage with ideas concerning the development of aesthetic sensibilities, care, and virtuous aesthetic appreciation. EVA has the potential to support forms of human-nature co-flourishing, as well as constituting an aesthetic grounding for ecological citizenship. (shrink)