Aesthetics and Environment, Variations on a Theme

Environmental Values, 2010

Though it may be his needs which drive man into society, and reason which implants within him the principles of social behavior, beauty alone can confer upon him a social character. Taste alone brings harmony into society, because it fosters harmony in the individual. All other forms of perception divide man, because they are founded exclusively either upon the sensuous or upon the spiritual part of his being; only the aesthetic mode of perception makes of him a whole, because both his natures must be in harmony to achieve it.

Groundworks Ecological Ossues in Philosophy and Theology, 2014

Environmental aesthetics crosses several commonly recognized divides: between analytic and continental philosophy, Eastern and Western traditions, universalizing and historicizing approaches, and theoretical and practical concerns. This volume sets out to show how these perspectives can be brought into conversation with one another. The first part surveys the development of the field and discusses some important future directions, such as the inclusion of everyday artifacts, human activities, and social relations. The second part explains how widening the scope of environmental aesthetics demands a continual rethinking of the relationship between aesthetics and other fields. How does environmental aesthetics relate to ethics? Does aesthetic appreciation of the environment entail an attitude of respect? What is the relationship between the theory and practice? The third part is devoted to the relationship between the aesthetics of nature and the aesthetics of art. Can art help “save the earth”? The final part illustrates the emergence of practical applications from theoretical studies by focusing on concrete case studies.

Mami AOTA, 2023

This paper discusses the artistic value of "community-engaged art project (CEAP) "from the perspective of environmental aesthetics. CEAP refers to art projects that take place in a specific region for revitalization and other similar purposes. I evaluate the artistic value of it in terms of creating a cycle of discovery of the aesthetic value of a place by various subjects. Section 1 examines Vid Simoniti's "pragmatic view" of the artistic value of socially engaged art (SEA). Section 2 points out two problems that arise when applying the practical view to CEAP. The first is the ambiguity of community revitalization as a social purpose, and the second is that the view overlooks that art is an act of making something. Section 3 interprets previous research on creative placemaking and site-specificity from the perspective of environmental aesthetics and argues that CEAP creates a cycle of discovery of the aesthetic value of a place at the initial phase of revitalization. Section 4 explains what exactly a cycle of discovery of the aesthetic value of a place means, referring to the case of the Oku-noto International Art Festival.

2005

2005

The belief that art stands independent of the social process and that the artist is free from the obligations and standards that are part of the cultural ethos is both misguided in theory and false in fact. Yet the claim of freedom for art, not for artists alone but for the functioning of the aesthetic sphere of culture, captures the vital core of that activity. This is because the arts have the ability to engage us in experience that is rich in perceptual awareness and in resonance of meaning, and such experience always has a social aspect and social content. What the arts offer society in achieving this experience, however, can only be realized when artists are free to pursue their own course, to explore their creative perceptions and to embody them in their work. The value of a work of art, then, has a social dimension, yet it leads to a paradoxical conclusion: Only when art is free from social constraint can it make its unique social contribution.

While ecocriticism has become a respected field in literary theory and in the broader landscape of aesthetic philosophy, it could benefit from an enhanced ethical-political framework which social ecology – an underrated critical theory developed by Murray Bookchin – could provide. This essay attempts to tease out the potentials for such a framework, integrating the insights of social ecology, ecocriticism, Critical Realism, and John Dewey's aesthetic concepts into a layered idea-set used for the study of all kinds of aesthetic objects, from popular art to the gallery arts. Its key principles are the emergence of aesthetic objects (including formal artworks) out of congealed human experience, the relation between organism and environment in assessing meaning, the breakdown of implicit or overt hierarchies within a work, and the idea of the artist and art-critic as a "gardener". We live in an era of crisis and catastrophe. While nuclear war occupied the minds of the general populace and the artists alike throughout the second half of the 20th century, the subsequent neoliberal era has given way to a more fragmented set of species-destroying prospects. Everything from killer-robots, to viral epidemics, to totalitarian statism, to mass surveillance, to bio-genetic mutations appear in popular fiction as new threats to human survival. The social imaginary of a large part of our culture has responded to neoliberalism, with its rhetoric of triumph and the optimistic " end of history " , by taking a turn for the apocalyptic. 1 However, an apocalypse need not be an altogether gloomy affair. The English word comes from a Greek word, which, translated, means " lifting the veil " , uncovering what was hidden, revelation. Moments of downturn may show us everything that could go wrong, but, if examined the right way, can also provide insights for how to transform things for the better. That, in brief, could be framed as the central problem of the arts today, including the world of criticism which attempts to make sense of it: how to " lift the veil " in such a way as to reveal not only potentials for doom and dystopia, but potentials for hope and utopia – or rather eutopia (good place) as distinct from an impossible outopia (no place). 2 Whether a contemporary person's mind is fixed on dystopian pessimism or eutopian hope, one topic of our cultural apocalypse is becoming more and more salient as a whole:

2022

My work aims to focus on the intersections between aesthetics, intergenerational values, and climate change while exploring some core questions. How do aesthetic values interact with the construction of social and intergenerational values? Can the aesthetic experience of art have any influence on our attitudes toward the environment? These questions are related to the broader question: is the aesthetic experience of art connected to the aesthetic experience of nature? The thesis underlying this paper is that aesthetic appreciation of nature and art mutually influence each other. To prove this claim, I propose a Deweyan and pluralistic approach to environmental aesthetics that interacts with the fields of neuroaesthetics and intergenerational thinking. The key concept on which my proposal rests is the Deweyan connection between aesthetics and experience.

Published in Martin Drenthen & Jozef Keulartz (eds.). Environmental Aesthetics. Crossing Divides and Breaking Ground. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014

Environmental aesthetics crosses several commonly recognized divides: between analytic and continental philosophy, Eastern and Western traditions, universalizing and historicizing approaches, and theoretical and practical concerns. This volume sets out to show how these perspectives can be brought into conversation with one another. The first part surveys the development of the field and discusses some important future directions, such as the inclusion of everyday artifacts, human activities, and social relations. The second part explains how widening the scope of environmental aesthetics demands a continual rethinking of the relationship between aesthetics and other fields. How does environmental aesthetics relate to ethics? Does aesthetic appreciation of the environment entail an attitude of respect? What is the relationship between the theory and practice? The third part is devoted to the relationship between the aesthetics of nature and the aesthetics of art. Can art help “save the earth”? The final part illustrates the emergence of practical applications from theoretical studies by focusing on concrete case studies.

2018