Ronald Hepburn
Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty
(1966)


 

 


Miscellaneous Notes Below (not recently edited) (ignore)



  • This frame/unframed distinction does not map universally onto art/nature distinction
    • Not every art object has a frame
    • E.g., Architecture, like Natural objects can set no limits to viewpoints from which properly regard them; no
      • Church from several miles away may dominate and determine how see whole landscape
    • Still distinction is true for most part and a useful one


  • Absence of frame makes natural aes objects more indeterminate and unpredictable
      • Makes room for surprises and a sense of adventurous openness


    • Frame of a painting exerts controlling influence that helps determine nature of aes object and proper context of viewing it
    • Don't get this with natural objects
    • Aes impact of tree determined by context we include in our view of it
      • We choose the frame?
      • Look at one tree bent over, strained and grim
      • Look at whole hillside of such trees and see a delightful pattern with quite different emotional quality (may be cheerful)


    • Any aes quality in nature is provisional, correctable by reference to different-wider or narrower context
      • Idyllic scene? Have you noticed the distant by advancing thunderclouds and how threatening and ominous they look?
    • Leads to a restlessness, alertness in viewer and a active search for new standpoints and more comprehensive way of seeing




  • For aes appreciation of nature lack of artistic intent can enhance experience
    • Delighted that forms of nature offer scope for exercise of imagination
    • Wonder at this amazing uncontrived adaptation
    • It needn't have been so; nature might not have been aesthetically excellent
    • See a pattern in art and expect it there (as someone made it); see it in nature and more amazing as it was not consciously designed


  • Aes appreciation of nature can allow experience of a range of emotions that human scenes by themselves can't evoke
    • Desolateness of desert
    • Nature's otherness can affect our own sense of being
    • Oneness with nature (with aesthetic object)
      • Not possible with art (for we are not part of art/one with art)
      • Env from which get food, protect ourselves, eventually take us (death) and to which finally united
      • Cease fire negotiated in out relation with nature


  • Role of thought/scientific knowledge in aes appreciation of nature


  • Not require to have pure aesthetic contemplation unmixed by impure associations/thoughts
    • Sand example: Realizing the wide expanse of sand and mud one stands on is a tidal basin with the tide out is not irrelevant to aes experience
    • Not theoretical knowledge for own sake but to help us determine aesthetic impact of object on us.


  • The true, false, profound, shallow, superficial in aes appraisal of nature (as well as art)
    • Where in aes appreciation of nature is there room for talk about truth, depth, triviality?


    • Is truth required is seeming all that matters?


    • Examples
    • Utter loneliness of the moor? But there are 100 people there hiding behind the bushes?
    • Rolston's moon/microwave tower example


    • Tree's solidity, sturdiness and strength (touch it and it crumples)


    • Outlines of clouds as resemble a basket of washing
      • Trivial, shallow appraisal of a freakish element
    • Focus on inner turbulence and 250 mile wind speeds in cloud that determine its structure
      • Less superficial experience, more worth having


    • Rock made by great pressure (or looks like a funny face)


    • Passage in both appreciation of art and nature from easy beauty to more difficult and serious beauty


  • If there wasn't a strong sense in which truth is important to aes appreciation of nature, how explain bewilderment people express over how to bring aesthetic view of nature into accord with recent science?
    • If aes experience of nature merely contemplation of shapes, colors movements, these discoveries couldn't disturb it


  • Science can enhance an aes experience of nature, but can also undermine it
    • See full moon rising behind winter trees and it is more beautiful to see it as a livery flat disc at no great distance from the trees
    • Why have one's enjoyment spoiled by someone telling that you need to realize moon's true shape and distance
    • No guarantee truth here will enhance aes experience


  • Can imaginative assimilation of scientific knowledge ultimately lead to aes impoverishment?
  • To reject intentionalism is not to embrace formalism:
    • That intention of artists aren't of total importance in aesthetic appreciation of art (or are not even relevant?) allows for many other factors besides formal ones to be relevant (such as history of production, context of appreciation, etc.)
    • Following examples are a problem for formalism