Brady, Chapter 2, Early Theories of Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature
- When aes app of nature began
- From early beginnings of human civilization many individuals have responded aes to
natural surroundings
- Before 18th century, aes app of nature taken place informally in pastoral envs and gardens;
- Formally probably only through rep in art and literature
- No phil aes theories addressing nature until 18th century
- From classical period (300 BC?) to 18th century many had little access to predominantly
natural landscapes and didn't seek env. exp we so value today (except for indigenous
people living in wilder environments)
- But weren't many/most people "indigenous"? Or did most people live in cities and
in rural, reworked areas and were not hunter-gathers; Consider Native
Americans peoples ("little access to predominantly natural landscapes"?)
- App of wild nature by Asian cultures, including nature worship; wild manifest divine better than rural
- Not common practice to enjoy nature for recreation or own sake
- Alexander Baumgarten formulated term 'aesthetics" in 18th century
- 18th century change
- Theorists talked about both art and nature (Kant, Burke, Hutcheson)
- Landscape app became art form, leisure activity of educated
- Start to get more sympathetic attitude toward nature
- Within 50 years, drastic change occurred in attitude toward nature
- KANT ON NATURE OF AES JUDGE AND BEAUTY
- Aes based on perception and feeling not cognition or knowledge
- Aes not dt by kn of object but immediate feeling of liking or disliking in
appreciator of an object (e.g., flower) unmediated by the concept of what it is
- Aes dt by immediate response to its perceptual qualities: soft creamy white color
with delicate petals
- Enjoyment of these underlies aes app
- Judge of beauty results from interaction of subjective and objective features
- But beauty is not objective (perceptual) quality of flower; not in flower's
color/forms
- Finding it beautiful is result of accordance/attunement between perceptual
qualities of flower and mental powers or imagination (=im) and understanding (=under)
- Attunement is harmonious free play of im and under
- Freed from conceptualization, mental powers engages perceptual qualities of
object in a pleasurable activity directed at object for own sake.
- Aes judge not merely subjective, as it is disinterested (DI), and thus potentially
universal
- Not subjective in sense of "everyone has own taste" and beauty in eye of
beholder (Kant argues against this)
- Judge of beauty implies possibility of universal assent
- Disinterestedness: not indifference or lack of interest, but aes interest as distinct from
interest in
- Object as means of sensory gratification
- Or interest in using it as means to some end.
- Why isn't aes app sensory gratification, an instrumental use of aes object?
- Brady's example: DI aes app of seascape valuing aes qualities (graceful
movement of seals against striking blue backdrop), rather than valuing it as place
to refresh myself after sunbathing (sensory gratification) or as a mineral resource
- Is the sensory gratification involved in aes pleasure the result of contemplating
object for own sake, and aes pleasure is a byproduct of this and not goal sought (hence not mere sensory gratification?)
- DI gets one a degree of impartiality; Free oneself from personal desires or
preoccupation in relation to the object, better able to judge object on its own terms
- DI keeps aes judge from arbitrariness and subjectivity of personal desires (and other practical aims)
- DI helps with universality: One way aes judges don't express personal preferences
- Approach flower DI (and assume others do too), can expect agreement from
others when judge it beautiful.
- Does DI mean that one's own peculiar relation to an aes object is an inappropriate part
of one's aes response to it? (First mountain I climbed? Where I learned to kayak?)
- Summary Kant (on beauty)
- Aes app based on immediate, DI, liking or disliking in response to perceptual qual
of object
- Not aes if it is a neutral response?
- Kn not basis, but feeling that comes from perception and harmonious free play of
Im and Under
- Neither wholly objective or subjective: Intersubjective, subjective universal
validity
- Subjective basis in feeling,
- Asserting agreement of others
- KANT ON SUBLIME
- Wild/great things in nature evoke aes response not wholly pleasurable (nor displeasure at
ugliness), but pleasure mixed with fear
- E.g.: Overhanging and threatening rocks, thunderclouds with lightning, destructive power
of volcano/hurricane, boundless ocean or high waterfall of mighty river
- Two types of sublime objects for Kant:
- (1) Sheer magnitude or infinite size or unending vastness
- Imagination can't grasp-displeasure, reason needed-pleasure
- (2) Nature's power/might
- E.g.: Massive mountains climbing skyward, deep gorges with raging streams
- Seized by amazement bordering on terror, horror and sacred thrill
- Result is wonder and anxiety
- Dangerous, could harm us; but we are in a place of safety
- So not actual fear, but imagined fear
- Judge nature as sublime rather than simply find nature frightening
- Recognize we can cope with nature's challenges and dangers, discover our own strength
- Not as superior to nature, but independence from it
- Respect both for nature and its might and for ourselves
- Difficulty in perceiving these; Imagination pushed to its limits (use reason, our capacity
for grasping what is beyond sensation)
- Imagination goes beyond conceptual thought, as rather than aiming for order in exp
(using concepts), allows us to appreciate disorder/indeterminacy in nature
- Many claim that Kant's account of sublime dualizes humans and nature (and he writes
about our dominion over nature)
- Brady claims that sublime feeling leads to a respect for nature; it's a humanist perspective
but anticipates Romantic turn toward nature
- Subline response to nature seems to be a very positive, helpful attitude toward nature
- Religious sentiments toward nature are close to this
- CLASSICAL BEAUTY
- Aes exp of env mainly via idealizations of nature;
- Improve nature via art or idealize it via mythological landscapes of Greek literature
- Aesthetic qualities of nature valued: serene pastoral qualities, peacefulness and calm tranquility
- Wild nature as frightening place, savage, irrational, disordered and evil compared to safety, order and virtue of cities; Forests looked on with horror and dismay
- Reached peak in middle ages
- First European settlers of North America viewed it as ungodly, hostile, wilderness to conquer and civilize
- Human life sharply dist from nature and dominion over it
- Nature of little interest compared to art
- PICTURESQUE
- Lies between
- Serene pastoral qualities of classical beauty
- Awesome grandeur of sublime
- Example of picturesque, classical beauty, and the sublime
- Useful slide show on these issues by Gene Hargrove on Why we Think Nature is So Beautiful?
- Paintings by Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa
- Criticism of landscape gardening involving grand designs that moved
earth and trees to create classical landscapes with extensive prospects (views) across
lawns, lakes (and built features like classical temples) (Henry Repton's criqique)
- Landscapes should be app by criteria used to app picturesque paintings
- Picturesque objects: those that please due to a quality that can be illustrated in painting;
proper subjects of paintings
- Move away from formal ordered classical beauty: Peacefulness and tranquility
- P's main qualities were roughness, sudden variation and irregularity
- Examples of picturesque
- Ruggedness in landscape, protuberances in land, irregularity due to passage of
time: weather stains, mosses, variety of colors
- Splendid confusion and tumbled masses with everything overgrown
- Picturesque scenery: undulating, lake with savage banks, white water, trees not
evenly but irregularly spaced in clumps
- Picturesque trees: with rugged variegated bark
- Often included buildings; in natural landscapes a ruin would be built
(to expressed passage of time and weather and overgrown ivy)
- Picturesque temples collapsed and decayed, as opposed to beauty of
classical temples
- Rough hewn character of mills, cottages and old barns
- Contrast with sublime less clear (than contrast with classical beauty) but still there
- Both sublime and picturesque move away from calm tranquillity of beautiful,
toward more expressive aesthetic
- Picturesque paintings of wild uninhabited places and designed landscapes that
copy them are mysterious and strange
- Sublime (other extreme from beautiful) most wild, most fearful, most alien of any
landscape, overwhelming senses and evoking awe
- Appreciation of picturesque is less anxious, less fearful and more curious and
charming
- Sublime hard to express via art, picturesque theory aimed at depicting nature and
art of gardening
- Picturesque was (and is) a practical movement for nature appreciation
- Had handbooks for guidance in constructing such landscapes and for viewing
natural scenery from picturesque perspective
- Look at nature like look at landscape painting: stand back and behold
- Claude glass (tinted convex mirror) framed landscapes like rectangular painting
- Upper and middle class picturesque travelers scout out these landscapes
- Positive aspects of picturesque
- Picturesque a serious step towards app nature in the raw (for its own qualities)
- Before, nature's imperfections were corrected in neo-classical art that idealized
nature's beauty
- P recognized the temporality of nature, its dynamic/organic character, as opposed
to freeze nature in ideal of classical beauty
- Allowed us to see nature's imperfection; nature not neat and tidy or symmetrically
perfect
- P a softening of attitude saw nature as ugly and uncontrollable, to be tamed and
perfected by human ideals
- Increased human curiosity for nature's wild qualities
- Picturesque's problematic approach to nature (aes and ethical)
- Strongly human centered: value landscape by how well met standard set by
picturesque paintings
- Landscapes app as if were paintings, Claude glass literally framed nature
- This is one way to app nature, but narrow basis, as falsely assumes nature approp
app as a picture, as if landscapes were two-dimensional fixed images on canvas
- Makes some sense for landscapes designed this way
- Little sense for more natural landscapes
- Inappropriately judges nature by artistic criteria:
- Nature demands diff app frameworks than art
- Nature is three dimensional, dynamic, and multi sensuous
- Picturesque limits app to the visual
- Fails to capture poss of sensory immersion in env as three dimensional space
- Creates a distance between humans and nature
- App nature as spectators rather than being part of it
- Failed to recognize nature as worthy of app apart of human design
- Although did not sentimentalize nature, recreated nature to make it look wild and
uninhabited
- Still in tradition whereby aesthetic improvement of nature viewed as preferable to
raw nature
- Contemporary counterparts to picturesque
- Scenery model of nature app exists today
- Claude glass replaced by picture postcards
- Relatively superficial aes exp from scenic viewpoints
- Discourages mufti sensory environed app
- Fails to find aes value in less conventionally attractive environments
- ROMANTICISM AND AFTER
- In part reaction to distanced and relatively elitist aes treatment of nature in picturesque
(=P)
- Much greater respect for nature
- Much more intimate relation between humans and nature
- Strong emphasis in powers of imagination and feeling, in contrast to Enlightenment's reliance on
power of reason and science, with its tendency to separate humans and nature.
- Imagination closed gap humans and nature, and lets us understand nature
- One root is Rousseau's noble savage: humans as primitive wild beings living closer to
nature than to civilization
- Romantic aes subject: solitary traveler exploring her expressive freedom via exp of living
close to land where exp leads to self-under and self-realization
- Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge
- Constable, Turner, Ruskin
- Ruskin: focused on truthful & faithful rep of nature rather than idealized rep of classical
landscape painters
- More measured, other directed attitude towards nature
- Appreciators and artist not worshiping nature via humanist dream, but respect for
natural phenomena as truly distinct and independent from human design.
- AMERICAN TRANSCENDENTALISTS (TR)
- Thoreau and Emerson
- Wilderness worship of TR
- App of wildness as in Thoreau
- Sublime wilderness paintings of Hudson River School
- Wilderness paintings of Thomas Cole and Frederick Church (Falls of Niagra 1957)
- Mountains/rivers with little or no human presence
- Wild, sublime, divine qualities of nature
- Here you get the furthest extension of gradual increase in aes receptivity to wilder
landscapes
- Raw encounters with nature essential to one self, as provides source of spiritual and
moral truths
- Also cared about local places, not just distant and alien (Thoreau's Walden Pond)
- Less humanistic in comparison with picturesque
- Values a more direct relation with nature
- Is much less concerned with artistic rep of nature than romanticism
- AFTER TRANSCENDENTALISM
- Phil attention to aes app of nature peaked in 18th century and early 19th century, then tailed
off
- Hegel's insistence on primacy of art over nature
- Hegel: nature aes value realized only when fashioned by human sprit via
production of art
- Concern for human/nature relation displaced by focus on artistic expression and social
value of art
- Twentieth century art moved away from rep toward expression and abstraction
- Avant-garde art got philosophers to pay attention to art: figure out status of art
- Only in late 1960s, early1970s did a few aes philosophers begin to think about nature
again, and their interest emerged in context of environmentalism.