Environmental Aesthetics & Ethics

abstract In this paper I would like to address the problem of the aesthetic value of damaged nature. A variety of arguments have been offered in order to ground the view that we cannot perceive damaged nature as beautiful, at least as soon as we are aware of its damaged condition. These arguments are usually offered in tandem with a view about what the correct appreciation of nature involves and, hence, are often supported by this view. I will try to show that none of these arguments are compelling and that there seems to be a way of explaining how damaged nature can be beautiful without disposing of the intuition that the awareness of its damaged condition penetrates our perception.

This paper applied an ecocritical perspective on street art to expand on the notion that street art can have an impact on how we relate to urban public space. In doing so, it argued that street art is particularly well positioned to affect the way we think and act with regard to the environment.

John Stuart Mill is known as the first canonical Western philosopher to espouse a stationary state of economic growth, and as such he can be seen as an important totemic figure for reformist strategies in environmental ethics. However, his reputation among environmental thinkers has been rendered more ambiguous in recent years by increased attention to his essay "Nature". The "Nature" essay has been much used lately by critics to oppose claims (1) that independent nature may properly be seen as important in any way as an ethical guide or inspiration, and (2) that Mill's philosophy may feasibly be viewed as pro-environmentalist. This use of Mill's essay is mistaken, and has undermined appreciation of the potential significance of Mill's thought for environmental philosophy. When examining the most detailed of the critical treatments of the essay, reading "Nature" as an anti-environmentalist text badly distorts the essay's meaning by ripping it from the context of Mill's intentions as well as from the very specific and significant historical circumstances and biographical conditions of its production. Attending properly to these factors shows that the essay is unrepresentative of Mill's general position and rather philosophically weaker than its reputation. Reading the text as a definitive statement of Mill's supposed anti-naturalism is thus mistaken and fails to recognize different modes and significances in "following nature", some of which Mill supported. The "Nature" essay is an aberrant outlier in the Mill canon, and one which should no longer be allowed to undermine Mill's strong and important environmentalist credentials.

How to cite this work:
Svabo, C., & Ekelund, K. (2015). Environmental Aesthetics: Notes for design ecology. In E. Christensen (ed.), Nordes 2015: Design ecologies Stockholm: Nordic Design Research.

Free PDF access:
https://archive.nordes.org/index.php/n13/article/view/373/352
https://archive.nordes.org/index.php/n13/article/view/373

The philosophical subfield environmental aesthetics can contribute to the design of sustainable futures. Environmental aesthetics provides a conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between nature and culture. Current positions in environmental aesthetics are lined out and used as backdrop for contributing an ecological approach to design. Three green aesthetic design strategies are sketched: Coated Green, Green Core and Green Stream.

The nineteenth-century invention of the category of the "spiritual"as opposed to being religious was deeply entangled within American Romanticism's larger project of reenchanting nature. While this relocation of spiritual authority out of the church and into the woods and wilderness echoes some of the larger dynamics of secularization that have long been a problematic for theories of Romanticism (see Abrams 1971), it also birthed a form of nature religiosity that still colors, for better and for worse, much contemporary American environmental thought. One of American Romanticism's most consequential legacies in the present, this chapter argues, is in an ongoing American predilection for sanctified landscape. This predilection is buttressed by models of conversion and self-transformation that have deep roots in Emersonian Transcendentalism and its larger dilations within postbellum culture. If this is where the sublimity of the New World has sometimes met the "woo-woo" of the New Age, this green spirituality and its attendant aesthetic forms has nevertheless inculcated viable forms of environmental politics, from legal frameworks for preservation and conservation to more radical forms of civil disobedience and environmental activism.

The 21st century is the time of a deepened ethical awareness of ecology. Among the topics that have been gaining more and more recognition are the ethical issues connected with restoration ecology, sustainability, the importance of insects (bees, for example) for the environment, the environmental impact of the fashion industry or of the meat and dairy industries. A notable example of a relatively new ethico-ecological topic is the ethics of space: according to some ethicists, we can no longer think that ecology is restricted to the condition of our planet alone. Apart from gaining recognition within the academic discourse, some of these topics are becoming increasingly popular on the level of everyday functioning and lifestyle choices. Such lifestyle choices may be connected with what one eats, with the way one travels during holidays or commutes on a daily basis, with buying local goods instead of those transported internationally, with reducing the amount of waste one produces (the zero-waste lifestyle), or with buying clothes that have been manufactured without causing environmental damage. In fact, we are faced with a multitude of new everyday practices motivated by the ethical concern for the environment, and these practices in themselves are worthy of research.

It is often ignored by contemporary Chinese environmental aesthetics academia that the beginning, deepening and construction of North American environmental aesthetics bear the imprint of the time. The crisis of “visual quality”, as it is pertinent to landscape study, has raised theoretical concerns. In a practical sense, environmental aesthetics attends to the visual environment and aims to transform it, which is manifested in such scholarly activities as the technical assessment, aesthetic reflections, and analysing natural and human factors in landscapes. Frankly, the methodology used by environmental aestheticians is one which regarded environment as visual scenery in a simplistic way, making an analogy between environment and painting. The environmental issues triggered not only scientific quantification but also theoretical thinking. Reconstructing its philosophical discourse, North America environmental aesthetics came on the stage in a way independent of traditional philosophy of art. Nevertheless, there still exists an intrinsic connection between the artistic discourse and the environment discourse, and the inner unity of the two never split. It is evident to see that artistic-analysis method of analytic aesthetics and John Dewey’s experience theory continued to exert influence in environmental aesthetics. The former adopted the analytic approach to artistic works and concepts in the study of environment, and the latter, accompanying the expanding conceptions of art, tried to find the inner consistency – “experience” – in the fusion of art and environment. After Kendall Walton’s “Categories of Art”, Allen Carlson put forward “Categories of Nature” to build the objective knowledge of necessity toward adequate appreciation, which is applicable to both natural science and history. Carlson research approach attached importance to the analytical pattern concerning what exactly was the object and how to appreciate it, but it neglected how the experience could be aesthetic. Arnold Berleant inherited Dewey’s idea of “one experience” and emphasized the continuity between daily life and aesthetic activity. Contrary to Carlson’s objective analysis, Berleant proposed the perception description as the main method in the representation of experiential engagement situation. That is to say, Berleant intended to explain the aesthetic experience itself, but not the elements or chances. Besides traditional aesthetics, North American environmental aesthetics also followed the traditional ecological wisdom of “organic community” and its contemporary variants. The most remarkable contribution can trace back to Henry Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and their consistent ethical reflections between human beings and the nature. Aesthetic factors are an important emotional constituent in considering the ethical relation between human beings and nature, and it made a powerful motive for us to protect the environment. Based on this, it can be said that the environment’s aesthetic value and its ethical value are tightly connected, and such a connection could provide impetus for the future reformation of environmental aesthetics. In China, scholars have attended to the fundamental problems and the central ideas of North American environmental aesthetics, ignoring its academic relations to the twentieth-century geography, traditional aesthetics and ethics. This article aims to clarify the inner source of contemporary theory and shed some light on how we can build our environmental aesthetics that is rooted in our practical experience and thought tradition.

This paper explains how scientific knowledge is relevant to aesthetic appreciation of nature by drawing on Gadamer’s observation that all understanding “is to be thought of ... as participating in an event of tradition.” Allen Carlson argues that scientific knowledge enhances our aesthetic appreciation of natural environments. This is true, but not because ‘applying scientific knowledge’ is a step in a methodical approach for appreciating the beauty of nature. Rather, to experience nature aesthetically is a way to understand something about nature through understanding the tradition in which this experience occurs.  Science is a crucial part of this tradition.

"Bird and Line" is an artistic inquiry into the relationship between a deep state of artistic consciousness and the act of drawing a line to arrive at the form of a bird. This inquiry further proposes that by using line as a mode of research, the artist begins to perceive the consciousness of a bird and the relationship it shares with its form.
For me, the embodied and porous experiences of watching and knowing birds through the practice of working with "line" as an artistic element allow for an intimacy of experiencing and an unfolding of intersubjectivity. Artistic inquiry also acts as an investigation into self-awareness and self-realization in this space of making eco-art. These acts of being lead me into reflections on how perception and creativity are melded together during creative moments to allow for a porous consciousness to emerge and perform the act of drawing a bird. As an artist working with text, movement, and image, I embed questions on the ethics of creativity into how we evolve our lines of art, as well as encounter other beings. By unraveling the relationship between the inner and the outer through Indian aesthetic philosophy, I evolve methods for eco-art practice using line as an element. I emphasize the importance of artistic research with a framework of Indian aesthetics as a way of deepening our perception and relationships with the natural world.
This article is written to make artistic processes visible through a reflective auto-ethnographic approach. I write in a non-linear reflective narrative to comprehend cultural ontologies that drive my practice, unfolding internal thought processes, directions of research, and moments of mystical experience.

Washington State has seen a boom of industrial-scale wind farm construction over the past 10 years. The siting process for these projects has prompted conflict between those most directly impacted and those who favor broader community benefits.
The intent of this research is to develop an extensive geographic visual guide, which captures the political and geographic scales of this struggle and sheds light on who participates in the siting process and what that participation means for understanding broader policy questions about energy development, rural landscapes and public participation. Information on participating stakeholders was obtained by analyzing publicly available documents and media sources. Participants’ names, physical locations, and stances on wind projects were then inputted into an online mapping platform alongside locations of approved wind turbines.
I believe that the research methods employed here will help inform future efforts in visualizing qualitative data and that the final map will highlight how inequalities manifest in large scale industrial development.

A working paper presented at "Thinking Through Nature" conference of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy, University of Oregon, 2008.
Comments are welcomed. Please note that this document may not be cited or reproduced in whole or part without the author’s permission.

The term ‘nature’ remains an ambiguous, contentious concept which continues to prove a stumbling block in environmental theory and practice, for example, conservation. While various definitions of nature abound it is most commonly defined as that which is independent of human agency.  According to this definition human beings and their artefacts are separate from what is considered a wholly independent nature.  As a result it has created a prevalent culture/nature dualism that inhibits both practical land management and the formulation of a viable environmental ethic.  In seeking to establish a cohesive understanding on which we can collectively draw I present an understanding of nature qua identity.  The account of nature that I propose, not only, resonates with the intuitions from which the expression springs but removes the nature/culture divide.  On the account I present it is to understood nature as inclusive of human beings since it describes a collective dimension of the identity that we hold in common with all evolved entities.  To speak of nature, on this view, is not to speak of some scientific or ontological basis for it but it is to identify narrative qualities that characterise and define it.  I illustrate how this collective dimension of our identity, and the affective bonds of allegiance that it affords, makes our relationship to the non-human world significant, such that the scope and integrity of our human interaction with it can be of major concern.  In light of this  account of nature I argue that to describe environments as ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’, is to communicate a relational distinction; a distinction that bears on the integrity of the relations set up by the interaction of human and non-human elements. In conclusion I examine the ramifications of this account of nature for considering the rationale that drives conservation.