Aesthetic Appreciation

The natural world has long held aesthetic attraction, but environmental aesthetics is only now emerging as a discipline in its own right, with distinctive concepts, issues, and theories. In the last two decades, scholars have begun in earnest to develop the field from scattered beginnings that predate the current environmental movement. For environmental aesthetics does not stand apart from other kinds of research. It draws from philosophy, anthropology, psychology, literary theory and criticism, cultural geography, architecture, and environmental design, as well as from the arts. It is also related to philosophy, in particular, for ontology, ethics, and the theory of art. Moreover, environmental aesthetics has implications as well for governmental policy and social practice. Like environment itself, the field of environmental aesthetics extends broadly and on many levels. This article will explore this field in several directions: historical, conceptual, experiential, and practical.

Social aesthetics may seem to be a strange combination of terms. People usually think of aesthetics as concerned with the arts-- their experience, their appreciation, their value. What can this have to do with society except in the most general sense? Actually, this customary way of thinking about aesthetics is unnecessarily narrow. Not only do activities concerned with the arts have a place in social life, but the values we recognize in the arts are found more widely in social experience.

The aim of the paper is to reassess the prospects of a widely neglected affective conception of the aesthetic evaluation and appreciation of art. On the proposed picture, the aesthetic evaluation and appreciation of art are non-contingently constituted by a particular kind of pleasure. Artworks that are valuable qua artworks merit, deserve, and call for a certain pleasure, the same pleasure that reveals (or at least purports to reveal) them to be valuable in the way that they are, and constitutes their aesthetic evaluation and appreciation. This is why and how art is non-contingently related to pleasure. Call this, the Affective View. While I don’t advance conclusive arguments for the Affective View in this paper, I aim to reassess its prospects by (1) undermining central objections against it, (2) dissociating it from hedonism about the value of artworks (the view that this value is grounded in, and explained by, its possessors’ power to please), and (3) introducing some observations on the practice of art in support of it. Given that the objections I discuss miss their target, and given the observations in support of it, I conclude that the Affective View is worth serious reconsideration.

There has been a long debate in environmental aesthetics about what guides our aesthetic appreciation of nature. Proponents of the ‘scientific approach’ claim that the aesthetic appreciation of nature should be based on our scientific knowledge about nature, whereas the defenders of the ‘non-scientific approach’ assert that the aesthetic appreciation of nature is primarily an imaginative, emotional or a bodily activity. In this article, I will explore this debate by focusing on the aesthetic experience of forests. By making an excursion into ‘environmental criticism’, I attempt to question reductive forms of the scientific approach and support the role of imagination and stories in nature appreciation.

Global climate change has been characterised as the crisis of reason (Val Plumwood), imagination (Amitav Ghosh) and language (Elizabeth Rush), to mention some. The 'everything change', as the author Margaret Atwood calls it, arguably also impacts on how we aesthetically perceive, interpret and appreciate nature. This article looks at philosophical theories of nature appreciation against the global environmental change. The author examines how human-induced global climate change affects the 'scientific' approaches to nature appreciation which base aesthetic judgment on scientific knowledge and the competing 'non-scientific' approaches which emphasise the role of emotions, imagination and stories in the aesthetic understanding of environment. The author claims that both approaches are threatened by global climate change and cannot continue as usual. In particular, the author explores aesthetic imagination in contemporary times when our visions about environment are thoroughly coloured by worry and uncertainty and there seems to be little room for awe and wonder, which have traditionally characterised the aesthetic experience of nature. Finally, the author proposes that art could stimulate environmental imagining in this age of uncertainty.

El presente trabajo aspira a ser una contribución a la filosofía de la crítica. En él se discute el  “programa descriptivista" de Jean-Marie Schaeffer y el "programa evaluacionista” de Noël Carroll. Su propósito es integrar estas dos teorías acerca de la crítica de arte, que no ve como antagónicas, sino como complementarias entre sí. Para ello  distingue tres tipos de juicios relativos al arte: los juicios estéticos, los juicios teleológicos y los juicios normativos de la crítica. Estos últimos involucrarían tres operaciones que son interdependientes: la apreciación subjetiva, la descripción objetual y la evaluación razonada, conjugando así aspectos descriptivos y evaluativos.

Since the mid-Sixties, philosophers have debated over the aesthetic relevance of authentic art-objects, perfect replicas, and restoration. In particular, a dispute has ensued concerning the cogency of our penchant for original artworks. Originalists argue that authenticity, the quality of an object being of undisputed origin or authorship, is a necessary condition for aesthetic experience, since the appreciation of an artwork presupposes its correct identification. Anti-originalists retort that we have no art-relevant reason to favour originals over visually-indistinguishable duplicates. To this extent, they claim, ‘there is no identification without (prior) evaluation’. In this paper, I re-examine the underpinnings at the core of this discussion. I argue that aesthetic appreciation does not necessarily require judgement of authenticity. However, there are instances in which authenticity does intrude upon aesthetic evaluation, namely when style recognition is involved. In these cases, I propose that errors in historical attribution reduce the impact of the object and jeopardise aesthetic appreciation altogether.

Philosophers have long debated over the aesthetic value of authentic art-objects and their perfect replicas. Originalists argue that authenticity, the quality of an object being of undisputed origin or authorship, is a necessary condition for aesthetic experience, since appreciating an artwork presupposes its correct identification. Antioriginalists retort that there is no aesthetic reason to favor originals over visually-indistinguishable duplicates. To this extent, they claim, the need for authenticity is a matter of case by case evaluation. Drawing from this debate, I argue that judgment of authenticity is not a primary source for aesthetic appreciation. There are instances, however, in which authenticity does intrude upon aesthetic evaluation, namely when style recognition is involved. In these cases, errors in attribution reduce the object’s impact and jeopardize aesthetic appreciation altogether

One of the most encouraging signs in the widespread interest in environmental values is the recognition of the importance of the aesthetic. Aesthetic values are a large part of what draws people to environmental activities and issues.  But this is not as simple as it may seem.  Many ideas and issues are easily confused here, and not the least of these is the nature of environmental aesthetics.
Confusion often surrounds those committed to the idea of environmental aesthetics.  It  is like discord in a family in which everyone loves everyone else but no one can say anything without misunderstanding and discord.  In neither case is this inevitable.  Let me take the easy task and talk about environmental aesthetics.
Like so many disagreements, profound as well as trivial, people with environmental concerns  share many of the same interests and values but don't know how to talk about them with one another. clearly and understandably.  Much of the difficulty comes from a confusion about what is understood by 'aesthetics.'  Philosophers and other scholars see aesthetics as a branch of philosophy concerned with understanding the intrinsic  values  we ascribe to works of art and to natural beauty.  What does appreciation consist of here?  Where is the value located that we recognize  in appreciation?  How do other values bear on aesthetic value?  In what ways do our knowledge and understanding play a part in recognizing these values, values not only aesthetic but others, such as moral, economic, and historical?

The acquaintance principle (AP) and the view it expresses have recently been tied to a debate surrounding the possibility of aesthetic testimony, which, plainly put, deals with the question whether aesthetic knowledge can be acquired through testimony—typically aesthetic and non-aesthetic descriptions communicated from person to person. In this context a number of suggestions have been put forward opting for a restricted acceptance of AP. This paper is an attempt to restrict AP even more.