The aesthetic value of animals

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 29, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 151-169

  Parsons, Glenn ^a  

^a RYERSON UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANIMALIA;

EID: 34250822831     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics200729218     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. For a classic presentation of this view, see Monroe Beardsley's Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958).
2. Malcolm Budd, The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature: Essays on the Aesthetics of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 109.
3. This attention is reflected in interest in ontologically bizarre artworks, such as some conceptual works, and in discussion of traditional forms of art, such as painting and music, which, some have argued, are not as ontologically simple as has been thought. For an overview of ontological issues in current aesthetic theory, see Stephen Davies, "Ontology of Art," in The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, ed. J. Levinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 155-80.
4. For an overview of work on nature in environmental aesthetics, see Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant, "Introduction: The Aesthetics of Nature," in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004).
5. Other natural entities, such as swamps, forests, and mountains have been considered by environmental aestheticians in some depth, but discussion of animals is scant and unsystematic in comparison. I describe what some environmental aestheticians have said about animals in section three, below.
6. See, e.g., Jerrold Levinson, "What is Aesthetic Pleasure?" in The Pleasures of Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 1-10.
7. On the conception of disinterestedness and its historical development, see Jerome Stolnitz, "On the Origins of 'Aesthetic Disinterestedness, '" Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (1961): 131-43.
8. For an overview of this issue, see chapters two and three of Nicholas Hammond's Twentieth Century Wildlife Artists (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1986).
9. R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 39-40.
10. John Ruskin, Modern Painters (London: J. M. Dent and Co., 1907), vol. 2, chap. 12, p. 240.
11. Ibid., pp. 243-44.
12. John Andrew Fisher notes this tendency in E. O. Wilson's "Biophilia hypothesis" and related sociobiological analyses of our relationship with nature: see Fisher's "Aesthetics," in A Companion to Environmental Philosophy, ed. Dale Jameison (Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 267-68.
13. Not all forms of environmental thought lean in this direction, of course: see, for instance, Peter Singer's withering repudiation of the term "animal lover" in Animal Liberation, 2d ed. (New York: Avon Books, 1990), pp. ii-iii.
14. Discussion of this issue remains rare, but is increasing: see especially Carol Gould, "Glamour as an Aesthetic Property of Persons," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63 (2005): 237-47.
15. There is a brief consideration of the aesthetics of persons in Nick Zangwill, "Beauty," in Levinson, ed., Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, pp. 325-43, pp. 336-39;
16. see also Mary Devereaux, "The Ugly," American Society for Aesthetics Newsletter 24, no. 3, (2005).
17. Arthur Danto, The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art (Peru, Il.: Open Court Publishing, 2003), p. 28.
18. Perhaps the best-known development of this line of thought is Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth (New York: Doubleday, 1992).
19. On the moral agent/moral patient distinction, see Tom Regan. The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 151-56.
20. To my knowledge, there exists no systematic review of aesthetic practices concerning animals. In fact, the only philosophical work focusing specifically on the topic, of which I am aware, is Holmes Rolston, III's essay "Beauty and the Beast: Aesthetic Experience of Wildlife," in Daniel J. Decker and Gary R. Goff, eds., Valuing Wildlife: Economic and Social Perspectives (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987), pp. 187-96.
21. Ruskin, Modern Painters, vol. 2, p. 246. Ruskin qualifies this claim, however, because animals can also possess "typical" beauty, which is independent of their vital beauty.
22. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), vol. 1, pp. 130-31.
23. Rolston, "Beauty and the Beast," p. 189.
24. On this topic, see George Speaight, A History of the Circus (London: The Tantivy Press, 1980), pp. 125-28,
25. and Charles Philip Fox and Tom Parkinson, The Circus in America (Waukesha, Wis.: Country Beautiful, 1969), pp. 262-69.
26. Diane Michelfelder, "Valuing Wildlife Populations in Urban Environments," Journal of Social Philosophy 34 (2003): 85. Michelfelder's essay is not concerned with the aesthetics of wildlife per se, but with the broader issue of our moral relations with urban wildlife.
27. Konrad Lorenz, "Part and Parcel in Animal and Human Societies," in Studies in Animal and Human Behaviour, vol. 2. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 115-95.
28. For further discussion of this response, see John Morreall, "Cuteness," British Journal of Aesthetics 31 (1991): 39-47.
29. Stephen J. Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1980), pp. 95-107.
30. See also Elizabeth A. Lawrence, "Neoteny in American Perceptions of Animals," in Perceptions of Animals in American Culture, ed. R. J. Hoage (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), pp. 57-76.
31. In his empirical study of attitudes toward wildlife, Stephen Kellert defines the "aesthetic attitude" as one that "primarily emphasizes the attractiveness of symbolic significance of animals. The major concern is with the artistic merit and beauty of animals, or their allegorical appeal as bearers of some special message." Stephen Kellert, "Perceptions of Animals in America," in Hoage, Perceptions of Animals in American Culture, p. 8.
32. Mark Sagoff, "On Preserving the Natural Environment," Yale Law Journal 84 (1974): 228.
33. Ibid., p. 228.
34. Kenneth Clark, Animals and Men: The Relationship as Reflected in Western Art from Prehistory to the Present Dav (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1977), p. 36.
35. Nick Zangwill, "Formal Natural Beauty," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 101 (2001): 209-24;
36. reprinted in Nick Zangwill, The Metaphysics of Beauty (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 116.
37. Gould, "Homage to Mickey Mouse," p. 104.
38. As morality tales for children, anthropomorphic representations seem unobjectionable enough, though the broader implications of this practice may be problematic. Marcia Eaton argues that the representation of deer in Bambi affected deer management policies for the worse, through its effect on public opinion, See her "Fact and Fiction in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 149-56.
39. William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, ed. Ronald Paulson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 15.
40. For an overview of the relation between beauty and function (along with related concepts), see Paul Guyer, "Beauty and Utility in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics," Eighteenth-Century Studies 35 (2002): 439-53.
41. There is a large literature on the application of "function," in this sense, to the traits of animals. Two representative treatments are Karen Neander, "The Teleological Notion of 'Function,'" Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69 (1991): 454-68:
42. and Peter Godfrey-Smith, "A Modern History Theory of Functions," Noûs 28 (1994): 344-62.
43. For a more general overview of philosophical analysis of function, see Mark Perlman, "The Modern Philosophical Resurrection of Teleology," The Monist 87 (2004): 3-51.
44. Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952 [1928]), p. 73, sec. 16.
45. Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 215. Note that other leading interpretations share Guyer's view that, for Kant, function or purpose is not "internal" to the pleasure of the beautiful (for a concise overview of these influential interpretations, see Guyer, "Free and Adherent Beauty: A Modest Proposal," British Journal of Aesthetics 42 [2002]: 357-66).
46. Some interpretations of Kant, however, have more in common with the strong sense of "functional beauty": see, e.g., Robert Wicks, "Dependent Beauty as the Appreciation of Teleological Style," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55 (1997): 387-400;
47. and Philip Mallaband, "Understanding Kant's Distinction Between Free and Dependent Beauty," Philosophical Quarterly 52 (2002): 66-81.
48. Kant, Critique of Judgement, p. 73, sec. 16. In line with this interpretation, Kant characterizes the judgment of adherent beauty as "limited" and "no longer a free and pure judgment of Taste" (ibid.).
49. Stephen Davies, "Aesthetic Judgments, Artworks and Functional Beauty," Philosophical Quarterly 56 (2006): 237.
50. Malcolm Budd seems to have something like the strong sense in mind when he discusses aesthetic judgments concerning the pleasing qualitative perfection of an organism "as being an instance of kind K." The aesthetic qualities involved in such judgments, Budd explains, "depend on the character of the natural functions of a certain natural kind and the ways in which they are realized in the appearance of something of that kind." These ways include "fitness of the parts to perform their natural function" and the "manifest suitability of the bodily parts to the creature's ability to flourish in its natural environment." Budd, The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature, p. 42.
51. See, e.g., Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981),
52. and Kendall Wallon, "Categories of Art," Philosophical Review 79 (1970): 334-67.
53. Note that even formalists concede that at least some of aesthetic qualities of art are shaped, in part, by knowledge of art history and genre: see, e.g., Nick Zangwill's "Feasible Aesthetic Formalism," Noûs 33 (1999): 610-29.
54. The general view that scientific knowledge can alter our aesthetic responses to natural things is developed by Allen Carlson in Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2000).
55. I defend and develop this view in "Nature Appreciation, Science and Positive Aesthetics," British Journal of Aesthetics 42 (2002): 279-95,
56. and in "Theory, Observation, and the Role of Scientific Understanding in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (2006): 165-86.
57. I discuss the role played in aesthetic appreciation by knowledge of function specifically in "Natural Functions and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Inorganic Nature," British Journal of Aesthetics 44 (2004): 44-56.
58. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. J. T. Boulton (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1958), pt. 2, sec. 6, p. 105.
59. Note that Burke often speaks of "utility," rather than "fitness." These are distinct concepts, but Burke seems to use the terms interchangeably: "It is said that the idea of utility, or of a part's being well adapted to answer its end, is the cause of beauty. . ." (ibid., p. 104).
60. Burke's rejection of beauty as fitness was unorthodox in eighteenth-century British thought, but not unique. As Paul Guyer points out, Francis Hutcheson mounted a similar argument against Berkeley, though employing artefacts rather than animals in his examples ("Beauty and Utility," p. 441); Hutcheson's argument occurs in the fourth edition of his Inquiry into Beauty and Virtue, and is reprinted in George Berkeley - Alciphron in Focus, ed. D. Berman (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 169-70.
61. Burke's examples have classical antecedents: the pig snout, discussed below, clearly echoes the dung-basket of Xenophon's Memorabilia, reprinted in Philosophies of Beauty from Socrates to Robert Bridges: Being the Sources of Aesthetic Theory, ed. E. F. Carritt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931), p. 1.
62. Burke, Philosophical Enquiry, p. 106.
63. Ibid., p. 107.
64. Ibid., p. 105.
65. Ibid., p. 107.
66. Guyer suggests that the Burke/Hutcheson counterexamples were not answered by eighteenth-century defenders of the view that fitness is a sufficient condition for beauty, and that the relationship of beauty to fitness was ultimately resolved in a different way (see above) by Kant ("Beauty and Utility," p. 445). George Landow expresses a similar view in his study of John Ruskin's aesthetics, writing that "whatever way Hume and others intended the notion of utility to be taken, in these terms the swine would have been beautiful. And swine are not beautiful." George Landow, The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 98.
67. It is worth noting that Burke offers other examples of such cases, viz.: "How well fitted is the wolf for running and leaping! how admirably is the lion armed for battle! but will any one therefore call the elephant, the wolf, and the lion, beautiful animals?" (A Philosophical Enquiry, pp. 105-06). Since some of these animals are for us, if not for Burke, generally viewed as paradigms of the beautiful, they are not even putative counterexamples to the claim that looking fit is sufficient for being beautiful.
68. Archibald Alison, Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1968), p. 341.
69. Ibid., p. 342.
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid.
72. On this shift, see Jerome Stolnitz, "Beauty: Some Stages in the History of an Idea," Journal of the History of Ideas 22 (1961): 185-204.
73. See Peter Kivy, The Seventh Sense: Francis Hutcheson and Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 94. On Hutcheson's criticisms of the identification of beauty with fitness, see n. 42 above.
74. Along similar lines, Tom Leddy has recently argued that some aesthetic terms, such as "looking neat" and "looking clean" have been neglected because they are unusual or absent in art. See Leddy, "Everyday Surface Aesthetic Qualities: 'Neat,' 'Messy,' 'Clean,' 'Dirty,'" Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53 (1995): 259-68;
75. "Sparkle and Shine," British Journal of Aesthetics 37 (1997): 259-73.