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Natural Beauty
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Natural Beauty
A Theory of Aesthetics Beyond the Arts
Ronald Moore
CRITICAL ISSUES
IN PHILOSOPHY
broadview press
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© Ronald Moore
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Moore, Ronald, -
Natural beauty : a theory of aesthetics beyond the arts / Ronald Moore.
(Critical issues in philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN ----
1. Nature (Aesthetics)—Textbooks. 2. Aesthetics—Textbooks. I. Title.
II. Series.
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Contents
Preface •
Introduction •
Chapter : Appreciating Nature as Natural •
The Problem of Appreciation •
Glass Flowers •
Warhol and Blaschka •
Chapter : Conceptualism and Non-conceptualism •
Conceptualism and Its Problems •
Non-conceptualism and Its Problems •
Syncretic Aesthetics •
Chapter : The Historical Roots of Syncretism: Early Developments •
Ancient Views •
Medieval and Renaissance Views •
Early Modern Developments •
Chapter : The Historical Roots of Syncretism: Modern Developments •
Kant and the Subjective Turn •
Schopenhauer and the Aesthetic Attitude •
Recent Aesthetic Experience Theory •
Critical Responses to This Theory •
Where This Leaves Us •
Chapter : Aesthetic Experience Revisited •
Cold Plums •
Hunkered-down Aesthetic Experience •
Grains of Sand •
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Chapter : The Framing Paradox •
Nature Unframed •
Nature Framed •
The Paradox and Its Resolution •
Chapter : Syncretic Regard—Part I •
Judges and “True Judges” •
The Natureworld •
Fundamental Elements in Judgments of Natural Beauty •
Selective Sensory Focus •
Completeness Within Limits •
Savoring •
Letting Nature Be Nature •
Typal and General Judgment •
Chapter : Syncretic Regard—Part II •
General Factors •
Intensive Beauty •
Formal Beauty •
Formal Beauty and Formalism •
Connective Beauty •
Elaborative Imagination •
Art and Nature •
Reciprocity: Learning from Each Other •
Inhibition: Getting in Each Other’s Way •
Chapter : Patterns of Appreciation and Aesthetic Development •
Carlson’s Inventory •
The Place of Syncretic Theory •
Growing Up Aesthetically •
Chapter : Theoretical Implications and Conclusion •
Layers of Response •
Hard Questions •
Conclusion •
References •
Index •
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Preface
I
n one sense, natural beauty is perfectly familiar and unremarkable. It’s
the robin on our grass in the morning, the break of the waves along the
shore, the rustle of the wind in the maple. It’s just there—obvious, right
at hand, and readily apprehended. And yet, in another sense, it’s mysterious.
Although it’s easy to say that the robin, the crab nebula, the frangipani
fragrance, and the maple rustle are beautiful, it’s hard to say why they are
beautiful. And it’s harder still to explain what’s going on when we engage in
that peculiar mode of mental regard we often speak of as “appreciation” in
finding such things beautiful.
For one thing, the considerations we have in mind when we think of vari-
ous artifacts as beautiful—musical compositions, athletic feats, automobile
designs, perfume fragrances—don’t always apply comfortably to natural ob-
jects. For another, the independence they have from human agency imparts to
them a special privilege. They are what they are in their natural environment;
so their beauty must be comprehended in a way that immunizes it to some
degree from our intellectual meddling. It is my aim in this book to present an
account of our appreciation of natural beauty that retains both its familiarity
and its mystery.
Ronald Hepburn, the father of environmental aesthetics, once remarked
that “unrestricted generalizations in aesthetics are usually precarious in pro-
portion to their attractiveness.” This is certainly true. They are precarious
because they present such easy targets for rebuttal. One solid counterexample
demolishes a universal claim. But they also are precarious in that they fail
to take account of the way our thinking about topics such as natural beauty
evolves, both historically in our culture and individually in our personal de-
velopment. The process by which we grow up aesthetically—as a people and as
individuals—is gradual, incremental, and necessarily incomplete.
I have, for these reasons, tried to avoid unrestricted generalizations in this
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natural beauty
book. Nevertheless, I have advanced a number of general—not universal—claims
about natural beauty that draw equally on historically evolved components and
familiar experiential components of aesthetic experience. Because they draw
upon a common stock of historical reflection in Western civilization and upon
awarenesses most readers of this book will have had, I hope and expect that these
claims will seem convincing. In this book I set forth a clear view of what makes
our aesthetic experience of natural objects appealing and precious. This is a
book about beauty in nature, rather than a book about the beauty of nature. It is
not, that is to say, a study in environmental aesthetics. It does, of course, consider
many examples of beauty drawn from natural environments. These are often
the evident, easy, and paradigmatic examples of natural beauty. But, it also takes
into account non-artifactual objects divorced from natural environments—at
least as these are usually understood. Waterfalls, sunsets, and grazing elk are
natural things that can be and often are beautiful. But so are—in the sense of
“natural” I deploy here—the grain on my coffee table, the weed in my otherwise
tidy front lawn, the whorls and loops in my thumbprint, and the faint red glow of
a distant star. So, while I try to avoid the precariousness of unrestricted general-
ization, I deliberately embrace the precariousness of nearly unrestricted scope in
the topic of this study. The only beautiful things I wish to exclude from attention
here are the man-made ones. This leaves me with a world (worlds, really) of quite
heterogeneous subjects to be coaxed into a coherent general analysis.
What makes this task less daunting is the simple fact that, in a prelimi-
nary and rough-and-ready way, people make judgments of the kind I want
to explain all the time. That is, ordinary people in all times and places have
found ways of identifying certain elements, and not others, in their experi-
ence of the non-artifactual as precious and delightful. And they have generally
taken these natural elements to be like artifactual elements in some ways, but
importantly unlike them in others. A viewer captivated by the splashy dis-
play of vibrant colors in an autumn maple leaf is likely to be deeply mindful
of the fact that this aesthetic object lies outside of human creation. But, at
the same time, that viewer may recall ways in which interweavings of colors
have affected him similarly in the observation of man-made objects—fabrics,
paintings, lamp shades, and so on. Often—in fact typically, I think—people
move quite nimbly in their sensibilities from the natural to the man-made.
And the aim of their appraisal is not to make one the instructor or manager of
the other, but to wring profit from their inter-relationships. People want to ap-
preciate natural beauty as natural. But they also want to integrate the aesthetic
awareness they obtain in relation to natural beauty with aesthetic awareness
that informs and motivates their lives generally. My aim is to follow up on the
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preface
lead these common recognitions give us and present an account that renders
them as intelligible and coherent as possible. I believe that, when you look at
it carefully and well, natural beauty is not just one more chip in the assorted
pile of value chips we play in the game of life. It is instead the basis for forms
of experience that affect the play of all the other chips, and thus makes the
whole game more rewarding. Our delight in what is there, unmade and open
to sensory awareness, is a fundamental value in a good life.
***
This undertaking would have been impossible without the constant help and
support of my wife, Nancyanne, the thoughtful contributions from my daugh-
ter, Hollis, and the encouragement of a great number of colleagues who have,
with their inspiration and criticism, helped me reach the position I take here. I
want especially to acknowledge the contributions and advice of Allen Carlson,
Noël Carroll, Donald Crawford, Marcia Eaton, Stan Godlovitch, and Stepha-
nie Ross, without whose thoughtful comments, conversations, and responses
to inquiries over the years this book would never have been completed.
An earlier version of portions of chapters and appeared in Journal of
Aesthetic Education, Vol. , No. (Fall, ), and part of chapter has appeared
in Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. , No. , Summer . The latter was an
article co-authored with Marcia Eaton, but I have tried to restrict what I include
here to just the parts I contributed to the joint publication, and I use this mate-
rial with Prof. Eaton’s consent. A version of chapter has appeared in Ethics,
Space, and the Environment, Vol. , No. , October . “This is just to Say,”
by William Carlos Williams, from Collected Poems: -, Vol. , copyright
© by New Directions Publishing Corp. is reprinted by permission of New
Directions Publishing Corp.
NOTES
Ronald Hepburn, “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural
Beauty,” in British Analytical Philosophy, ed. Bernard Williams and Alan
Montefiore (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, ), p. n. .
I am indebted to Allen Carlson for suggesting this way of putting the
distinction between the project of this book and work of the kind he,
Hepburn, Arnold Berleant, Yi-Fu Tuan, Stan Godlovitch, Noël Carroll,
Marcia Eaton and others have been pursuing over the past two decades.
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Description:Natural Beauty was selected for the Choice Outstanding Academic Title list for 2008! Natural Beauty presents a bold new philosophical account of the principles involved in making aesthetic judgments about natural objects. It surveys historical and modern accounts of natural beauty and weaves element
