Environmental aesthetics is a relatively new sub-field ofphilosophical aesthetics. It arose within analytic aesthetics in thelast third of the twentieth century. Prior to its emergence,aesthetics within the analytic tradition was largely concerned withphilosophy of art. Environmental aesthetics originated as a reactionto this emphasis, pursuing instead the investigation of the aestheticappreciation of natural environments. Since its early stages, thescope of environmental aesthetics has broadened to include not simplynatural environments but also human and human-influenced ones. At thesame time, the discipline has also (...) come to include the examination ofthat which falls within such environments, giving rise to what iscalled the aesthetics of everyday life. This area involves theaesthetics of not only more common objects and environments, but alsoa range of everyday activities. Thus, early in the twenty-firstcentury, environmental aesthetics embraced the study of the aestheticsignificance of almost everything other than art. Together with thisbroader scope of environmental aesthetics, the twenty-first centuryhas also given rise to renewed and more intense investigations of therelationship between environmental aesthetics and environmentalism aswell as to several new interests and directions. (shrink)

By the start of the twenty-first century, the notion of ‘the sublime’ had come to seem incoherent. In the last ten years or so considerable light has been shed by empirical psychologists on a related notion of ‘awe’, and a fruitful dialogue between aestheticians and empirical psychologists has ensued. It is the aim of this paper to synthesize these advances and to offer what I call a ‘two-tiered’ theory of the sublime that shows it to be a coherent aesthetic category. (...) On this theory, sublime experiences begin in an ‘awe response’ (the ‘thin sublime’) and might, with the additional element of temporally-extended reflection, turn into a ‘thick sublime’ response. Building on accounts of the sublime as a species of ‘aesthetic awe’ (Clewis, 2019a and 2019b; Arcangeli, et al., 2020) I aim to show that this two-tiered theory helps to explain why sublime experiences seem to have a basic, primordial core, but also seem to be historically and culturally quite variable (as Nicolson, 1963 [1959]; Battersby, 2007; and McMahon, 2017 have stressed). On this model, the cultural and historical variability comes in largely at the point of the temporally-extended reflection characteristic of the thick sublime, due to the cognitive stock that the subject brings to the encounter. Thus, sublime experiences really lend themselves to being interpreted quite variously by the subject (as well as by the theorist) of these experiences, as, for example, affording insight into the Divine, our moral vocation, or our metaphysical unity with the entire universe, among other lofty thoughts. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 13, Issue 4, Page 299-305, October 2021. According to recent accounts, we experience the emotion of “being moved” when a situation brings into play our core values. What are the core values evoked by nonhuman landscapes, however, particularly as the distinction between man-made and natural environments becomes increasingly blurry in the so-called Anthropocene? That is the central question tackled by this article. I start by rethinking the sublime as an affect that, since Romanticism, has shaped Western attitudes (...) toward nature. I argue that today's climate crisis calls for an expansion of our affective engagement with the nonhuman: the sublime can be part of our emotional repertoire, but only if it is complicated by feelings that point to constitutive human–nonhuman entanglement. (shrink)

In this paper I would like to deal with the question how environmentally engaged art can infirm Carlson's dualism between art and nature in his cognitive environmental aesthetics. I understand environmentally engaged art as a part of new tendencies in the second half of the 20th Century, when we can observe shift towards more conceptual and engaged art forms that leave the insides of galleries. This type of art projects are in opposition to Carlson's art-nature dichotomy. Equally, I would like (...) to show that science is in Carlson's theory limiting and can blocade aesthetic experience in many cases. Eventhough it may appear that science can diminish aesthetic experience, environmentally engaged artists, who often use scientific knowledge in their projects, show, that science can be also beneficial in creating aesthetic's intention. (shrink)

Similarity and difference, patterns of variation, consistency and coherence: these are the reference points of the philosopher. Understanding experience, exploring ideas through particular instantiations, novel and innovative thinking: these are the reference points of the artist. However, at certain points in the proceedings of our Symposium titled, Next to Nothing: Art as Performance, this characterisation of philosopher and artist respectively might have been construed the other way around. The commentator/philosophers referenced their philosophical interests through the particular examples/instantiations created by the (...) artist and in virtue of which they were then able to engage with novel and innovative thinking. From the artists’ presentations, on the other hand, emerged a series of contrasts within which philosophical and artistic ideas resonated. This interface of philosopher-artist bore witness to the fact that just as art approaches philosophy in providing its own analysis, philosophy approaches art in being a co-creator of art’s meaning. In what follows, we discuss the conception of philosophy-art that emerged from the Symposium, and the methodological minimalism which we employed in order to achieve it. We conclude by drawing out an implication of the Symposium’s achievement which is that a counterpoint to Institutional theories of art may well be the point from which future directions will take hold, if philosophy-art gains traction. (shrink)

This article discusses the way humans value nature, with a focus on the way they value nature aesthetically. Of particular interest are the values of children and adolescents and the role of aesthetics in scientific studies. The discussion is based on philosophical writings, especially aesthetic sources, and current environmental education empirical research. Our aim is to show the necessity the science lessons have of an unambiguous aesthetic dimension. With flexible teaching methods that partly take place outdoor, the students' own values (...) and aesthetic experiences become a prompting starting point for understanding humankind’s role in nature. (shrink)

Zoltán Somhegyi’s Reviewing the Past: The Presence of Ruins takes the reader on a captivating journey through the phenomenon of ruins. It is a remarkable achievement that, I believe, only someone like Somhegyi--a philosophical aesthetician as well as an art historian, and one who has studied ruins on a global scale--could pull off so brilliantly.What I focus on in this essay, however, is on the side of ruins that I believe gets shorter shrift in this book, namely, the environmental side. (...) First, I take up some difficult cases for Somhegyi’s ontology of ruins, which I believe his account handles quite well, namely, the phenomenon of contemporary industrial and commercial ruins and the case of so-called ruins brought about through the destruction of war. Next, I turn to my main criticism of his treatment of ruins: that he looks at them predominantly through the lens of art, and not enough through the lens of nature. I suggest that Somhegyi is not sufficiently alive to consequences of the ruin’s artistic/natural hybridity; more specifically, I think he neglects some of the consequences of nature being a co-creator of the ruin. Finally, I propose further attention to the environmental views embodied in the change from the picturesque to the sublime treatment of ruins in art. (shrink)