Aesthetic Theory and the Philosophy of Nature

We investigate the fundamental relationship between philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of nature, arguing for a position in which the latter encompasses the former. Two traditions are set against each other, one is natural aesthetics, whose covering philosophy is Idealism, and the other is the aesthetics of nature, the position defended in this article, with the general program of a comprehensive philosophy of nature as its covering theory. Our approach is philosophical, operating within the framework of the ontology of the process of the production of art, inspired especially by the views of Antonin Artaud, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bakhtin, Deleuze, and Guattari. We interrogate Dilthey and Worringer while outlining an ontology of art based on the production of nonhuman images and a nonpersonal experiential field of nature.

Traces of Mysticism in Wordsworth’s Aesthetics of Nature: A Study on William Wordsworth’s Nature Philosophy in the Light of Ibn Al-‘Arabi’s Ontology

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is generally known as a nature poet or a “worshipper of nature”. Yet, his nature poems are not merely confined to the portrayal of the physical elements of nature but are marked by his enlightened spiritual vision. The belief in one life flowing through all, which is a prominent feature of Wordsworth’s nature poetry is a prevalent theme also in the treatment of man and the universe in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s philosophy_ a Sufi mystic whose philosophy is most famously associated with the doctrine of wahdat al-wujud or “the oneness of being”. This paper is an attempt to critically analyze the traces of pantheistic and mystical elements underlying Wordsworth’s poetry, and more importantly compare this with Ibn al-‘Arabi’s stand on the matter. Through analysis of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s ontology, particularly his concept of unity of being and his emphasis on the importance of the faculty of imagination, this study first meets the controversy surrounding the pantheistic elements in Wordsworth’s nature philosophy and then attempts to demonstrate that the mystical doctrine of unity in all beings and the reliance on intuition and imagination as a means of perception of divine immanence is evident in both Ibn al-‘Arabi’s ontology and Wordsworth’s nature poetry. This study also reveals that Wordsworth’s attempt to get to coalescence of subject and object via imagination and its sublime product, poetic language, resembles the mystic’s yearning for transcendental states of consciousness and unification with the divine.

A landscape embroiled: experience of nature through experience of art

The article sets out with the theory of “aesthetics of reality” (created by Maria Gołaszewska) and its related method of transferring artistic structures onto non-artistic reality. The resulting construct, which is dubbed a para-artistic structure, becomes the theoretical basis for the aesthetic experience of nature. The so-called “formalization”—a procedure which consists in inserting nature into artistic frameworks—makes natural phenomena acquire a pretense of artwork. Nature as a picture becomes a landscape, while terms connected with the aesthetics of nature gain artistic qualities, enabling use of such notions as picturesque or kitsch. The methodological proposal by Gołaszewska is subsequently compared with the critical perspective of environmental aesthetics.

Aesthetics of nature in contemporary context

U ovom radu estetika prirode predstavlja se u kontekstu njena oživljavanja u suvremenoj filozofiji. Priroda kao objekt estetskog iskustva i vrednovanja uglavnom je pitanje tradicionalne estetike i stoga je njeno oživljavanje u radu prikazano kao problem redefiniranja estetike u suvremenim terminima. Analiza se sastoji od primjera iz suvremene estetike, filozofije i umjetnosti, i usmjerena na otkrivanje ključnih svojstava novog estetičkog razumijevanja prirode. Ta ključna svojstva u zaključku su viđena kao indikacije buduće perspektive u razvoju filozofijske estetike.

Nature, aesthetic appreciation of

In the Western world, aesthetic appreciation of nature and its philosophical investigation came to maturity in the eighteenth century. During that time, aestheticians found in nature an ideal object of aesthetic experience and analysed that experience in terms of disinterestedness, thereby laying the groundwork for understanding the appreciation of nature in terms of the concepts of the sublime and the picturesque. This philosophical tradition culminated with Kant, while popular aesthetic appreciation of nature continued primarily under the influence of the idea of the picturesque. In the late twentieth century, renewed interest in the aesthetics of nature has produced various positions designed to avoid assimilating appreciation of nature to traditional models for aesthetic appreciation of art. One extreme position holds that the appreciation of nature is not in fact aesthetic, while another rejects the traditional analysis of aesthetic experience as disinterested, arguing instead that the aesthetic appreciation of nature involves engagement with nature. Other positions attempt to maintain much of the traditional conception of the aesthetic, while distinguishing aesthetic appreciation of nature from that of art by appeal to the unique character of the object of appreciation, stressing dimensions such as nature’s capacity for emotional arousal, its mysterious qualities, the role of imagination in its appreciation, the freedom that its appreciation allows, or the dependence of its appreciation on scientific knowledge. These positions have a number of ramifications. In freeing the aesthetic experience of nature from artistic models, they focus appreciation on the true character of the object of appreciation: nature itself and its properties. This significance given to the character of the object of appreciation secures connections with the appreciation of nature associated with environmentalism. In addition, some of these positions attempt to provide aesthetic appreciation of nature with a degree of objectivity that may make aesthetic considerations more effective in environmental assessment. Moreover, the contemporary work in the aesthetics of nature helps to pave the way for a general environmental aesthetics comparable to other areas of philosophy, such as environmental ethics.