Recently, several authors have defended a new version of formalism in the aesthetics of nature and attempted to refute earlier arguments against the doctrine. In this essay, we assess this new formalism by reconsidering the force of antiformalist arguments against both traditional formalism and new formalism. While we find that these arguments remain effective against traditional formalism, new formalism falls largely beyond their scope. We therefore provide a novel line of argument for the insignificance of the formal appreciation of nature. (...) This argument suggests that new formalism is inadequate as a theory of the aesthetics of nature. (shrink)

A key dispute in environmental aesthetics concerns the role of scientific knowledge in our aesthetic appreciation of the natural environment. In this article, I will explore this debate by focusing on the aesthetic experience of forests. I intend to question reductive forms of the scientific approach and support the role of imagination and stories in nature appreciation.

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.

This essay begins with some observations on the main features and availability of the aesthetic experience of the night sky to us. In the second part, the aesthetics of the starry sky is interpreted in terms of time experience, complementing the usual approach in terms of immense space. These remarks on this broad and abundant subject can partly be linked to the intellectual historical interpretation of the birth of modern aesthetics, and partly to the vital discourse of environmental aesthetics, which (...) proves that these two approaches can work together and bring to the fore the aesthetic relevance and fruitfulness of this subject. (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 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...

Este artículo tiene como objetivo fundamental analizar las bases de una apreciación estética de los animales en clave no antropomorfista, una con la que valorarlos en sus propios términos. Otras apreciaciones tienen un fundamento antropomórfico: la concepción de los animales desde el modelo artístico o desde nuestras necesidades evolutivas, por ejemplo. El contexto de esta investigación es doble: por una parte, la actitud antropomórfica dominante en la cultura moderna y, por otra, las nuevas iniciativas artísticas y culturales alejadas de la (...) comprensión del ser humano como centro de todo lo que existe. La metodología empleada en este estudio es hermenéutica y dialéctica. Hermenéutica porque pretende, ante todo, comprender estas nuevas manifestaciones estéticas animalistas, y dialéctica porque para comprenderlas establecemos un debate crítico con las anteriores posiciones antropocentristas. La conclusión del trabajo es que la apreciación estética de los animales no antropomorfista solo puede fundarse en una ética animalista. Para lograrlo, es necesario, primero, tener conciencia de nuestra tendencia antropomórfica. Y, segundo, adoptar una ética empática que nos permita acceder al punto de vista de los animales, porque solo así podremos percibirlos en sí mismos. (shrink)

Allen Carlson and Sheila Lintott (eds): Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s10806-010-9258-2 Authors Nathaniel Barrett, Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion 1711 Massachusetts Ave NW #308 Washington DC 20036 USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.

This essay is a critical notice of Malcolm Budd's _The Aesthetics of Nature (Oxford, 2002) and Emily Brady's _Aesthetics of the Natural Environment (Edinburgh, 2003). I argue that, although each of the volumes makes an important contribution to our understanding of the aesthetic experience of nature, the accounts of aesthetic appreciation of nature that are developed by Budd and Brady are each somewhat defective in that neither grants an adequate role to knowledge in such appreciation, and specifically to scientific knowledge.