Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Our burgeoning cultural commitment to environmental protection appears in significant part to rest on a sociologically shared aesthetic valuation of nature. Evidence of this type constitutes a prima facie case for believing that nature is a legitimate object of aesthetic appreciation, worthy of inclusion in theories within philosophical aesthetics which purport to give complete accounts of what it means to experience, judge, or appreciate in an aesthetic capacity. However, the discipline of aesthetics since the turn of the twentieth century has focused almost exclusively on art as the object of aesthetic import, treating the appreciation of nature as a weak analogy to that of art in some cases and omitting it entirely in others. The justification for this marginalization of nature can be founded on arguments which highlight important disanalogies between art and nature to support the conclusion that nature is not a subject of genuine aesthetic interest. In this essay, we aim to show that an account of nature appreciation is a required feature of a complete aesthetic theory. We further aim to show that aesthetic value is a core feature of environmental value, so that an adequate account of the significance of nature within a theory of environmental ethics cannot be advanced without placing significant weight on a sound theory of natural aesthetics. Accordingly, the paper has two parts, each devoted to these two distinct arguments and together constituting a “pincer move” that, if successful, requires the marriage of aesthetics and environmental ethics.