This article is a response to yuriko saito's "is there a correct aesthetic appreciation of nature?" (jae 18:4) which challenges the position on the aesthetic appreciation of nature that i develop in a series of recent articles. i here consider saito's arguments, concluding that they neither establish the correctness of a wide range of kinds of aesthetic appreciations of nature nor undercut the grounds for the prominence i grant to scientific considerations in such appreciation.

Animal beauty provides a significant aesthetic reason for protecting nature. Worries about aesthetic discrimination and the ugliness of predation might make one think otherwise. Although it has been argued that aesthetic merit is a trivial and morally objectionable basis for action, beauty is an important value and a legitimate basis for differential treatment, especially in the case of animals. While the suffering and death of animals due to predation are important disvalues that must be recognized, predation’s tragic beauty has positive (...) aesthetic value that can be appropriately aesthetically appreciated. (shrink)

Emily Brady asks us to reconsider what kinds of environmental artworks constitute ‘aesthetic affronts to nature’, and concludes that many of these works may in fact show aesthetic regard for nature...

The aesthetics of nature is a growing sub-field of contemporary aesthetics. In this article, I outline the view called ‘Scientific cognitivism’, which has been central in recent discussions of nature aesthetics. In assessing two important arguments for this view, I outline some recent thinking about key issues for the aesthetics of nature, including the relationship between nature and art and the relevance of ethical considerations to the aesthetic appreciation of nature.

This introduction to the special issue on "Aesthetics of Science" reviews recent philosophical research on aesthetic aspects of science. Topics represented in this research include the aesthetic properties of scientific images, theories, and experiments; the relation of science and art; the role of aesthetic criteria in scientific practice and their effect on the development of science; aesthetic aspects of mathematics; the contrast between a classic and a Romantic aesthetic; and the relation between emotion, cognition, and rationality.

The multiple aesthetic representations of the sacred throughout our troubled human history account for the variety of the ways the sacred has been appropriated as a regulatory moral and civilizing force by groups and large communities of peoples. Nature has always been part of the everyday life of human beings, and the natural environment has been perceived as a medium for the manifestation of the sacred and as a source of moral behavior. Because of this, humans developed a peculiar relationship (...) with nature, imbued with both fear and fascination, which Bernard Williams has called “promethean fear,” “a fear of taking too lightly or inconsiderately our relations to nature,” with the potential of nourishing “our... (shrink)

Writing about the ethics and aesthetics of the natural environment, authors like Berleant, Plumwood, Becker, Gschwandtner, Brady, and Scruton share a number of insights with historians of religions (Mauss, Otto, Eliade) over the connection between humanity and nature. These insights are the attention given to human awe in the face of majestic landscapes, a distinctive agency operating through nature’s intentionalities, the sacred character given to this agency of nature, and a feeling of guilt for human destiny diverging from nature’s path (...) or for trespassing the limits humanly imposed that separate the space of artificial human dwelling from natural environment. I argue that reflecting on the awe of the archaic human mind, in the form of both tremendous fear and positive fascination for the mystery of nature, has potential for a contemporary aesthetic and ethical perspective of a symbiotic approach regarding nature’s fate in the context of a human technological destiny. (shrink)