Re-envisioning nature: The role of aesthetics in environmental ethics

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 33, Issue 4, 2011, Pages 415-436

  Bannon, Bryan E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84875328162     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics201133445     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. Arnold Berleant, Aesthetics and Environment (Burlington: Ashgate, 2005), p. 57.
2. Emily Brady, Aesthetics of the Natural Environment (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003), pp. 142 and 260.
3. Holmes Rolston, III, "From Beauty to Duty: Aesthetics of Nature and Environmental Ethics," in Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty, ed. Allen Carlson and Sheila Lintott (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), pp. 325 and 337.
4. Rolston, "From Beauty to Duty," p. 330.
5. Along with Rolston, J. Baird Callicott is one of the earliest interpreters to find this view in the writings of Aldo Leopold. See "Leopold's Land Aesthetic," in J. Baird Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 239-48. Many others have endorsed Carlson's view in some form, and several such as Marcia Muelder Eaton and Patricia Matthews are discussed concretely below.
6. Noël Carroll, "On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History," in Carlson and Lintott, Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism, p. 169.
7. Allen Carlson, "Nature, Aesthetic Appreciation, and Knowledge," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53 (1995): 398-99.
8. Allen Carlson, Nature and Landscape: An Introduction to Environmental Aesthetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), p. 61.
9. Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson, Functional Beauty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 125.
10. Marcia Muelder Eaton, "The Beauty that Requires Health," in Carlson and Lintott, Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism, p. 357.
11. Eaton, "The Beauty that Requires Health," p. 347.
12. Patricia Matthews, "Scientific Knowledge and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature," in Carlson and Lintott, Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism, pp. 191-92.
13. Christian Diehm has a lovely essay in this vein, describing how such new perceptions can cultivate non-anthropocentric attitudes as well. See "Staying True to Trees: A Specific Look at Anthropocentrism and Non-Anthropocentrism," Environmental Philosophy 5 (2008): 3-16.
14. Based on Matthews' distinction, I am also inclined to suggest there is a phenomenological equivocation in how theorists intend "appreciation" at various points in their writings. "Appreciation" in the linguistic mode means something distinct from what it means in the perceptual: in the first, appreciation is more intellectual than sensuous and might be likened to awe or wonder, while in the second appreciation remains within what most would regard as aesthetic experience. At points, Carlson indicates he intends the less aesthetic sense of appreciation (e.g., "Nature, Aesthetic Appreciation, and Knowledge," p. 396), but reading him as holding a strong split between the two forms of appreciation creates challenges for his explicitly aesthetic views.
15. Patricia Matthews, "Scientific Knowledge and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature," p. 191.
16. Eaton, "The Beauty that Requires Health," p. 343.
17. Daniel Botkin, Discordant Harmonies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)
18. Daniel Simberloff, "A Succession of Paradigms in Ecology: Essentialism to Materialism and Probabilism," Synthese 43 (1980): 3-39.
19. Donald Worster has also been tracking these changes as a historical phenomenon in his Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
20. "The Ecology of Order and Chaos," Environmental History Review 14 (1989): 1-18.
21. Simberloff, "A Succession of Paradigms in Ecology," esp. pp. 27-30.
22. See Jason Simus, "Aesthetic Implications of the New Paradigm in Ecology," Journal of Aesthetic Education 42 (2008): 63-79.
23. Holmes Rolston, III, "Does Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature Need to be Science Based?" British Journal of Aesthetics 35 (1995): 384.
24. Cheryl Foster, "The Narrative and Ambient in Aesthetic Experience," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 128.
25. Foster, "The Narrative and Ambient in Aesthetic Experience," pp. 132-33.
26. Eaton, "The Beauty that Requires Health," p. 357.
27. Edward S. Casey, "Mapping the Earth in Works of Art," in Rethinking Nature: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, ed. Bruce V. Foltz and Robert Frodeman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), p. 262.
28. Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 16-18.
29. Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1979), chap. 1.
30. María Lugones, "Playfulness, 'World'-Travelling, and Loving Perception," Hypatia 2 (1987): 10-11.
31. On this point, see also Janette Winterson, "Imagination and Reality," in Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery (New York: Knopf, 1995), pp. 133-51.
32. Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking, p. 6.
33. Casey, "Mapping the Earth in Works of Art," p. 266.
34. John Fowles, "Three Conversations with Andy Goldsworthy: John Fowles," in Hand to Earth: Andy Goldsworthy, ed. Andy Goldsworthy and Terry Friedman (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2004), pp. 160, 163. This effect of the work, of course, is identical to the one Eaton describes science as having on our perception.
35. Emily Brady, "Aesthetic Regard for Nature in Environmental and Land Art," Ethics, Place, and Environment 10 (2007): 289.
36. Andy Goldsworthy, Stone (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), p. 50.
37. Fowles, "Three Conversations with Andy Goldsworthy," p. 161.
38. For example, he writes, "If I had to describe my work in one word, that word would be time" (Goldsworthy, Stone, p. 120)
39. "In sum, my work is a growing body of feeling toward and understanding of the earth" (Fowles,"Three Conversations with Andy Goldsworthy" p. 161).
40. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper Collins, 1980);
41. Pierre Hadot, The Veil of Isis: An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).
42. Brady, "Aesthetic Regard for Nature in Environmental and Land Art," p. 294.
43. "Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy, Working with Time," DVD, directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer (New York: Docurama Films, 2001).
44. Sue Clifford and Angela King, "Hampstead Heath," in Goldsworthy and Friedman, Hand to Earth, p. 58.
45. Stan Godlovitch, "Icebreakers: Environmentalism and Natural Aesthetics," in Carlson and Lintott. Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism, p. 136.
46. Goldsworthy, Stone, p. 64.
47. Anonymous, "Andy Goldsworthy: Drawn Stone, 2005," http://deyoung.famsf.org/about/andy-goldsworthy-drawn-stone-2005.
48. Goldsworthy, Stone, p. 65.
49. Fowles, "Three Conversations with Andy Goldsworthy," p. 162.
50. Fumio Nanjo, "Three Conversations with Andy Goldsworthy: Fumio Nanjo," in Goldsworthy and Friedman, Hand to Earth, p. 163.
51. Nanjo, "Three Conversations with Andy Goldsworthy," p. 164 (emphasis added).
52. I sketch how the appropriate theories of caring for a place necessitate attentiveness to their temporal diversity in my "Developing Val Plumwood's Dialogical Ethical Ontology and Its Consequences for a Place-Based Ethic," Ethics and the Environment 14 (2009): 39-55.
53. Miranda Strickland-Constable, "Beginnings," in Hand to Earth: Andy Goldsworthy, ed. Andy Goldsworthy and Terry Friedman (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2004), p. 20.
54. Glenn Parsons, Aesthetics and Nature (New York: Continuum, 2008), p. 130.
55. Allen Carlson, "Is Environmental Art an Aesthetic Affront to Nature?" Canadian Journal of Philosophy 16 (1986): 637.
56. Parsons, Aesthetics and Nature, p. 132.
57. See especially Carlson, "Is Environmental Art an Aesthetic Affront to Nature?" pp. 646-47.
58. Parsons, Aesthetics and Nature, pp. 136-37.
59. Brady, "Aesthetic Regard for Nature in Environmental and Land Art," pp. 290-92.
60. See Jason Simus, "Environmental Art and Ecological Citizenship," Environmental Ethics 3- (2008): 21-36.
61. Brady cites Michael Heizer as self-identifying with the American pioneer spirit of breaking the land for human purposes ("Aesthetic Regard for Nature in Environmental and Land Art," p. 290)
62. while Carlson cites Smithson saying, much like Goldsworthy, "an 'artist's treatment of the land depends on how aware he is of himself as nature.' He also urged artists to 'become conscious of themselves as natural agents'" ("Is Environmental Art an Aesthetic Affront to Nature?" p. 645).
63. Brady, "Aesthetic Regard for Nature in Environmental and Land Art," p. 297.
64. See Simus, "Environmental Art and Ecological Citizenship.