Aesthetics and Nature

Glenn Parsons is Professor of Philosophy at Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada.

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Aesthetics and Nature from an Analytic Perspective

1. The Conceptual Background: Nature

1.1 The end of Nature?
1.2 Is Nature a Useful concept?
1.3 Some Alternatives: Wilderness, Landscape, Environment

2. The Conceptual Background: Beauty and Aesthetic Value

2.1 Beauty
2.2 The Sublime, the Picturesque and the Aesthetic
2.3 Two Questions About Aesthetic Value
2.4 Two Accounts of Aesthetic Value

3. Imagination, Belief and Aesthetic Judgement

3.1 From Ethics to Ice Cream
3.2 Thought Contents
3.3 Anything goes? A Relativist Approach
3.4 Objections to the Relativist Approach

4. Formalism

4.1 Traditional Formalism
4.2 Strengths of Formalism
4.3 Quantification and Formalism in Empirical Landscape Assessment
4.4 Objections to Traditional Formalism
4.5 Zangwill’s Formalism

5. Science and the Aesthetics of Nature

5.1 Science and the nature critic
5.2 Another Turn in the Taste for Landscape? Positive Aesthetics
5.3 Objections to the science-based approach
5.4 The Fusion Problem

6. Pluralism

6.1 A Modest Pluralism
6.2 Robust Pluralism
6.3 Problems for Robust Pluralism (two arguments redux)
6.4 Modest Pluralism Again


7. Nature and the Aesthetics of Engagement

7.1 The Challenge to Disinterestedness
7.2 An Engaged Aesthetics of Nature
7.3 Problems for Berleant’s Engaged Aesthetic
7.4 Engagement, Unity, and the Aesthetic

8. Animals

8.1 Appreciating Animals
8.2 Normative Questions
8.3 Are there ugly species?

9. Aesthetic Issues in Environmental Protection, Restoration and Rewilding

9.1 Aesthetic Protection in Theory and Practice
9.2 Two Issues for Aesthetic Protection
9.3 Aesthetic Protection, Ethics, and the Problem of Taste
9.4 Biodiversity and the Politics of Aesthetic Protection
9.5 Aesthetic Remediation, Restoration and Rewilding

10. The Sublime, the Picturesque, and the Beautiful

10.1 Rise and Fall of the Sublime
10.2 Contemporary Theories of the Sublime
10.3 Reappraising the Picturesque
10.4 Beauty, Taste and Love of Place

11. Nature in the Garden

11.1 The Garden as Nature
11.2 The Garden as Art
11.3 Is Nature Essential to the Garden?
11.4 Appreciating Gardens: Interaction, Achievement, Atmosphere

12. Art In Nature

12.1 The Ethics of Environmental Art: Four Questions
12.2 Is Environmental Art an Aesthetic Affront to Nature?
12.3 Is the Effrontery Charge Justified?
12.4 Is the Effrontery Charge Coherent?

13. Nature Through Art: Mediated Appreciation

13.1 Mediated Appreciation
13.2 Two Problems for Mediated Appreciation
13.3 Beyond Accuracy: Generative Mediation

14. Epilogue: Aesthetics in the Anthropocene? Philosophical and Empirical Challenges

Bibliography
Index