Emily Brady

This article explores John's Muir's writings in order to construct a Muirian environmental aesthetics. To this end, I draw out three key features. First is the aesthetic category of sublimity as it emerges in his explorations of Yosemite. Second, a distinctive, pluralistic environmental aesthetics is found through his interweaving of aesthetic, religious, and scientific ideas. Third, his journals from the Thousand‐Mile Walk reveal an active and situated aesthetics, shaped by his practice of exploring and communing with nature. Together, these features support a perspective that is quite contemporary, in tune with environmental and everyday aesthetics, as well as with recent work in environmental ethics.

In The Sublime in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature, Emily Brady takes a fresh look at the sublime and shows why it endures as a meaningful concept in contemporary philosophy. In a reassessment of historical approaches, the first part of the book identifies the scope and value of the sublime in eighteenth-century philosophy, nineteenth-century philosophy and Romanticism, and early wilderness aesthetics. The second part examines the sublime's contemporary significance through its relationship to the arts; its position with respect to other aesthetic categories involving mixed or negative emotions, such as tragedy; and its place in environmental aesthetics and ethics. Far from being an outmoded concept, Brady argues that the sublime is a distinctive aesthetic category which reveals an important, if sometimes challenging, aesthetic-moral relationship with the natural world.

: In this paper we discuss ethical and aesthetic questions in relation to the gardening practice of topiary. We begin by considering the ethical concerns arising from the uneasiness some appreciators might feel when experiencing topiary as a manipulation or contortion of natural processes. We then turn to ways in which topiary might cause an 'aesthetic affront' through the humanizing effects of sentimentality and falsification of nature (most often found in representational rather than abstract topiary). Our contention is that successful topiary emerges through a dynamic and positive relationship between topiarist and tree, where the gardener works with nature's forms instead of in strong opposition to them. Appreciation of successful topiary, we shall argue, is marked by an experience of both the tree as a living thing and the artifice which has shaped it

In debates about nature conservation, aesthetic appreciation is typically understood in terms of valuing nature as an amenity, something that we value for the pleasure it provides. In this paper I argue that this position, what I call the hedonistic model, rests on a misunderstanding of aesthetic appreciation. To support this claim I put forward an alternative model based on disinterestedness, and I defend disinterestedness against mistaken interpretations of it. Properly understood, disinterestedness defines a standpoint which precludes self-interest and utility, and it does not entail a passive subject abstracted from who they are. This standpoint is compatible with a 'situated aesthetic' in which appreciation of aesthetic qualities is grounded in an embedded subject who is sensitive to the context and narrative of the object. The alternative model provides a conception of aesthetic value which distinguishes it from amenity value, and it also defines a non-instrumental approach that offers the opportunity for enhanced appreciation and attention to nature's value.

Philosophical discussions of climate change have mainly conceived of it as a moral or ethical problem, but climate change also raises new challenges for aesthetics. In this paper I show that, in particular, climate change (1) raises difficult questions about the status of aesthetic judgments about the future, or 'future aesthetics'; and (2) puts into relief some challenging issues at the intersection of aesthetics and ethics. I maintain that we can rely on aesthetic predictions to enable us to grasp, in some sense, aesthetic value in environments affected by climate change and, through a discussion of three hypothetical cases, I argue that, although moral considerations will press on aesthetic judgments, aesthetic value will not necessarily be trumped by them.

This fresh and innovative approach to human-environmental relations will revolutionise our understanding of the boundaries between ourselves and the environment we inhabit. The anthology is predicated on the notion that values shift back and forth between humans and the world around them in an ethical communicative zone called ‘value-space’. The contributors examine the transformative interplay between external environments and human values, and identify concrete ways in which these norms, residing in and derived from self and society, are projected onto the environment.

Recent work in environmental ethics has seen a pragmatic turn that emphasises the importance of developing positive relationships with nature through practices involved in, for example, ecological restoration and community gardens. This article explores whether environmental and land art-making encourages positive aesthetic-moral relationships between nature and humans. It critically examines a particular type of aesthetic objection to these kinds of artworks and defends the work of Robert Smithson and Andy Goldsworthy, among others, against this charge. It is argued that rather than constituting an 'aesthetic affront' to nature, some forms of environmental and land art show 'aesthetic regard' for nature.

In debates about nature conservation, aesthetic appreciation is typically understood in terms of valuing nature as an amenity, something that we value for the pleasure it provides. In this paper I argue that this position, what I call the hedonistic model, rests on a misunderstanding of aesthetic appreciation. To support this claim I put forward an alternative model based on disinterestedness, and I defend disinterestedness against mistaken interpretations of it. Properly understood, disinterestedness defines a standpoint which precludes self-interest and utility, and it does not entail a passive subject abstracted from who they are. This standpoint is compatible with a 'situated aesthetic' in which appreciation of aesthetic qualities is grounded in an embedded subject who is sensitive to the context and narrative of the object. The alternative model provides a conception of aesthetic value which distinguishes it from amenity value, and it also defines a non-instrumental approach that offers the opportunity for enhanced appreciation and attention to nature's value

This paper explores the significance of Adam Smith's ideas for defending non-cognitivist theories of aesthetic appreciation of nature. Objections to non-cognitivism argue that the exercise of emotion and imagination in aesthetic judgement potentially sentimentalizes and trivializes nature. I argue that although directed at moral judgement, Smith's views also find a place in addressing this problem. First, sympathetic imagination may afford a deeper and more sensitive type of aesthetic engagement. Second, in taking up the position of the impartial spectator, aesthetic judgements may originate in a type of self-regulated response where we stand outside ourselves to check those overly humanizing tendencies which might lead to a failure in appreciating nature as nature

The concept of cultural landscape was first put to use by the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel in 1895. The American geographer Carl Sauer was probably the first to use the concept in the English language in 1925. In recent years, the concept of cultural landscape has become significant in social and political decision-making, and in environmental management and preservation. Cultural landscape has also become the object of extensive consideration and discussion within diverse academic disciplines and areas of research, such as human geography, cultural anthropology, history, archaeology, biology, and ecology. Depending on the discipline or area of research, focus is directed towards specific features in the landscape that have come about as a result of human activity. This collection of essays is predicated on the view that considerations regarding the cultural landscape have underlying philosophical presuppositions. The authors propose that the cultural landscape be made the focus of environmental philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics.

Aesthetics plays an important role in environmental conservation. In this paper, I pin down two key concepts for understanding this role, aesthetic character and aesthetic integrity. Aesthetic character describes the particularity of an environment based on its aesthetic and nonaesthetic qualities. In the first part, I give an account of aesthetic character through a discussion of its subjective and objective bases, and I argue for an awareness of the dynamic nature of this character. In the second part, I consider aesthetic character in a conservation context. I develop the diachronic concept of aesthetic integrity to guide decisions about how to manage change to aesthetic character. My argument is illustrated with a case study of the proposal for a superquarry on the remote isle of Harris in Scotland

Exploring key topics in contemporary aesthetics, this work analyzes the issues that arise from the unique works of Frank Sibley (1923-1996), who developed a distinctive aesthetic theory through a number of papers published between 1955 and 1995. Here, thirteen philosophical aestheticians bring Sibley's insight into a contemporary framework, exploring the ways his ideas foster important new discussion about issues in aesthetics. This collection will interest anyone interested in philosophy, art theory, and art criticism.

Aesthetic value, often viewed as subjective and even trivial compared to other environmental values, is commonly given low priority in policy debates. In this paper I argue that the seriousness and importance of aesthetic value cannot be denied when we recognise the ways that aesthetic experience is already embedded in a range of human practices. The first area of human practice considered involves the complex relationship between aesthetic experience and the development of an ethical attitude towards the environment. I then discuss how aesthetics has played a role in scientific study and the use of evaluative aesthetic concepts in science, such as variety and diversity. The final section shows the connection between the beneficial effects of aesthetic engagement with nature and the restorative value of nature for human well-being

Aesthetics plays an important role in environmental conservation. In this paper, I pin down two key concepts for understanding this role, aesthetic character and aesthetic integrity. Aesthetic character describes the particularity of an environment based on its aesthetic and nonaesthetic qualities. In the first part, I give an account of aesthetic character through a discussion of its subjective and objective bases, and I argue for an awareness of the dynamic nature of this character. In the second part, I consider aesthetic character in a conservation context. I develop the diachronic concept of aesthetic integrity to guide decisions about how to manage change to aesthetic character. My argument is illustrated with a case study of the proposal for a superquarry on the remote isle of Harris in Scotland.