ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETIC
natural environments
Environmental Aesthetic
● Is a relatively new sub-field of
philosophical aesthetics
● Aesthetics within the analytic
tradition was largely concerned
with philosophy of art
● Originated as a reaction to the
emphasis, pursuing instead the
investigation of the aesthetic
appreciation of natural
movements
● The scope of environment
aesthetics has broadened to
include not simply natural
environments but also human
and human-influenced ones
● Aesthetics of everyday life
● Involves the aesthetics of not
only more common objects
and environments, but also a
range of everyday activities
● Embraces the study of the
aesthetic significance of almost
everything other than art
BASIC POSITIONS IN
ENVIRONMENT AESTHETICS
● After the emergence of
environmental aesthetics as a
significance area of
philosophical research, some
basic positions crystallized
● These positions developed
distinct points of view
concerning the nature of the
aesthetic appreciation of
● The positions more frequently
distinguished as belonging in
one or the other of the two
groups, alternatively labeled
cognitive and non-cognitive
conceptual, or narrative and
ambient
● The distinction marks a crucial
division between those
positions that take knowledge
and information to be essential
to aesthetic appreciation of
environment and those that
take some other feature
● It thereby gives structure and
organization to the diverse
points of view represented in
the field
A. COGNITIVE VIEWS
● What are called
cognitive conceptual, or
narrative positions in
environmental aesthetic
are united by the thought
that knowledge and
information about the
nature of the object of
appreciation is central to
its aesthetic appreciation
● They champion the idea
that nature must be
appreciated as one
author pits it, “on its own
term”, these positions
 tend to reject aesthetic appreciation of nature
approaches to requires knowledge of
environments such as natural history
that governed by the ● scientific knowledge
idea of picturesque hat about nature can reveal
draw heavily on the the actual aesthetic
aesthetic experience of qualities of natural
art for modeling the objects and
appreciation of nature environments in the way
● Yet they affirm that art in which knowledge
appreciation can about art history and art
nonetheless show some criticism can for works
of what is required in an of art
adequate account of ● to appropriately
nature appreciation aesthetically appreciate
● For instance, nature “ on its own
appropriate appreciation terms” is appreciate it
of a work such as as if it is characterized
Picasso’s Guemica by natural science
painting that we ● other kind of cognitive
experience it as a accounts of the aesthetic
painting and moreover appreciation of
as a cubist painting, and environment differ from
therefore that we scientific cognitivism
appreciate it in light of concerning either the
our knowledge of kind of cognitive
paintings in general and resources taken to be
cubist painting in relevant to such
particular appreciation
● One cognitive approach ● several cognitive
to nature appreciation approaches and fun size
sometimes labeled the different kinds of
natural environmental informations, claiming
model or scientific that appreciating nature
cognitivism, holds that “ on its own terms”
just as serious, might involve
appropriate aesthetic experiencing it in light of
 various cultural and
historical traditions
B. NON COGNITIVE VIEWS
● Standing in contrast to
the cognitive positions in ● according to the
environmental aesthetics
are several so-called,
nonconceptual,
non-cognitive, or
ambient approaches
● should not be taken in
its older philosophical
sense, as meaning
primarily or only “
emotive”. Rather It
indicates simply that
these views hold that
something other than a
cognitive component,
such as scientific ● Viewing the environment
knowledge or cultural
tradition, is the central
feature of the aesthetic
appreciation of
environments
● Draws on the
phenomenology as well
as on analytic ethics ● it becomes appreciators
● it rejects many of the
traditional ideas About
aesthetic appreciation
not only for nature but
also for art
● it argues that the theory
of disinterestedness
involves a mistaken
analysis of the concept
of the aesthetic and that
this is most evident in
the aesthetic experience
of natural environments
engagement approach,
disinterested
appreciation, it's
isolating, distancing,
and objectifying gaze, is
out of place in the static
experience of nature,
for it wrongly abstracts
both Natural objects and
appreciators from the
environments in which
they properly belong and
in which appropriate
appreciation is achieved
as a seamless unity of
places, organisms, and
perceptions, challenges
the importance of the
additional dichotomies,
Such as that between
subject and object
to immerse themselves
in the natural
environment and to
reduce to as a small a
degree as possible the
distance between
themselves and the
natural world
● appropriate aesthetic
experience is health to
involve the total
immersion of the
appreciator in the object
of appreciation