Recent Debates in Everyday Aesthetics

The Definition of Everyday Aesthetics.  

Melchionne, Kevin. "The Definition of Everyday Aesthetics"  Contemporary Aesthetics  Vol. 11, Jan. 7, 2013.  I reply to Melchionne in this blog. 

Naukkarinen, Ossi.  "What is 'Everyday' in Everyday Aesthetics"  Contemporary Aesthetics  Vol. 11, Sept. 16, 2013.   I reply to Naukkarinen in my blog   Naukkarinen then replied to that blog entry, his reply also to be found on this blog.  

Responses to my book The Extraordinary in the Ordinary.  There have been two reviews of the book and then some further discussions.

Dowling, Christopher.  "Thomas Leddy:  The Extraordinary in the Ordinary:  The Aesthetics of Everyday Life."  Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. May 19, 2012.  I reply to Dowling in my blog.

Forsey, Jane. "The Promise, the Challenge, of Everyday Aesthetics," Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico, 7, no. 1 (2014): 5-2. Available at: <http://fupress.net/index.php/aisthesis/article/view/14608/13652>. Date accessed: 21 Jun. 2014. I reply here.


Melchionne, Kevin.   "Leddy, Thomas.  The Extraordinary in the Ordinary:  The Aesthetics of Everyday Life."  Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.  71 (3):296-298 (2013).

-   "The Point of Everyday Aesthetics." Contemporary Aesthetics 12 (2014) here

Poullaka, Kalle.  "Dewey and Everyday Aesthetics - A New Look,"  Contemporary Aesthetics 12 (2014)  here

Ratiu, Dan Eugen.  "Remapping the Realm of Aesthetics: On Recent Controversies about the Aesthetic and Aesthetic Experience in Everyday Life" Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics  Issue 1,  Jan 1013, to be found here.  

Discussions of Everyday Aesthetics Issues 

Freeland, Cynthia.  review  Jane Forsey, The Aesthetics of Design (Oxford U. Press, 2013).  Freeland provides an excellent overview of some of the issues in the context of discussing Forsey's book.

Leddy, Thomas.  

Di Stefano, Elisabetta. "Estetica e oggetti quotidiani ?".

“ Everyday Aesthetics and Photography.” Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico, 7, no. 1 (2014): 45-62. Available at: <http://fupress.net/index.php/aisthesis/article/view/14610 

Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico,   7 no. 1, (2114): 119-128.  Available at: <http://www.fupress.net/index.php/aisthesis/article/view/14615/13638>. Date accessed: 21 Jun. 2014.  [You can translate this by going to Google translation] Iannilli, Gioia Laura. "Inter-facing Everydayness From Distance to Use, Through the Cartographic Paradigm," Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico, 7 no. 1, (2114):

 

Are there correct categories for perception of art?

An immensely influential work not only in the aesthetics of art but also in the aesthetics of nature is Kendall Walton's "Categories of Art" Philosophical Review 79 (1970) 334-67.  However the article is based on a fallacy, one that has not been previously discussed of taken account of.  The idea is that some sort of objectivity is available in aesthetics if we assure that the aesthetic object is perceived under its correct category (this often taken to mean the correct name for the school or style under which the artist is working).  This seems initially plausible since seeing a cubist painting as confused might be the result of seeing it under the category of painterly realism.  However what sense can really be made of the notion of "the correct category"?  Correctness in category ascription is a very different idea than that of seeing it under a category that works well.  That would be a more pragmatist way of approaching the question, and much more plausible.  Noel Carroll in "On Being Moved by Nature" is a typical user of Walton's distinction.  (The distinction is very popular in the aesthetics of nature.)  Carroll writes: "logically speaking, if an aesthetic judgment is true (or appropriate), then that is a function of the perceived, nonaesthetic properties of the artwork being comprehended within the context of the correct category of art." (Carlson and Lintott, Nature, Aesthetics and
Environmentalism, 178) (I have a problem with the notion that contextualizing non-aesthetic properties has importance in the making of aesthetic judgments, but will not discuss that here.) For example, argues Carroll, one must perceive a cubist painting under the category of cubism.  How does one determine the correct category?  Carroll lists two ways.  One is to ask "which category (genre, style, movement) the artist intended for the artwork" and the other is to look at "whether the category in question is a recognized or well-entrenched one."  Although these are not the only ways of fixing categories, Carroll considers them "fairly decisive."  Consider, then, Picasso in 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, and consider any visitors to his studio who may have seen it there in 1907.  Neither Picasso nor his visitors would have any notion of the concept of "cubism"!  Picasso, no doubt, would have categorized this painting under other concepts.  Nor was the concept of cubism "recognized or well-entrenched" at the time.  It was not even known.  So it follows, according to Walton's theory, that Picasso and his friends would have misconceived the correct category for the painting and hence could not make any aesthetic judgments about it with any grounding.  This is absurd.  Perhaps you do not accept that this painting is cubist:  sometimes, indeed, it is called "proto-Cubist."  But Picasso would equally have had no idea what "proto-Cubist" meant.  Moreover, the same point can be made about Braque's Houses at L'Estaque, which was said to have been the occasion for Louis Vauxcelles to use the term "bizarreries cubiques." Vauxcelles, too, knew nothing of "cubism" when he made this comment since that term was coined later.  This ignorance of the so-called correct category is not uncommon.  The impressionists did not at first know that they were supposed to be impressionists; the postimpressionists and the fauves ditto.  Movements are constructions created by various events including statements by artists, reviews by critics, major shows, chapters in art history books, etc.  The concept of "cubism," and its boundaries, changes over time.  This is not a "natural kind."  Even Picasso himself, after he started using the term "cubism" or thinking of his art as "cubist," probably meant something different by this in 1914 than in 1910.  So the theory can't be saved simply by observing that Picasso sometimes though of some of the paintings later included by some art historians under the chapter for "cubism" as cubist.  Note that I am not saying that there is no such thing as cubism or that the sentence "Picasso was a cubist" has no truth value.  I am just saying that these things need to be understood as dynamic in a pragmatist way, and that, when they are, the way in which "correct category" guarantees objectivity of aesthetic judgments is pretty much lost.

There is another problem with the Waltonian theory.  Many movements of art share similarities.  Was Jean Metzinger a cubist (as was said in 1912) or a fauvist?   What if one saw one of his paintings as a fauvist, rather than as a cubist painting?  Would this be a category mistake?  But look at his paintings from this period:  they can be seen easily as either.   Similarly, what if someone read Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, no. 2 (1912) as a futurist rather than a cubist work?  Who is to say what the "correct" category is in this case?  Let's take this a bit further.  Although on a multiple-choice exam in an art history class it would be incorrect to call this work a dadaist work since dadaism in the history books is supposed to have started in 1916, might it not be interesting or useful to see it as such?  Walton and his followers might concede this much and yet would refuse to abandon the idea that there is one correct category.  But how valid is multiple-choice-exam-knowledge of this sort anyway?  Isn't the "correct" answer whatever the teacher said the correct answer is?  If you mark "cubist" and the teacher had said "fauve" in the class then you are "wrong," and this even though there may be books defending the idea that the work is cubist.  But this is the way of conceiving knowledge that Walton's idea of "correct category" leads us to. 

Moreover, isn't it interesting that whenever someone has a major insight into the nature of something it is posed not in terms of correct category ascription but in terms of a metaphor that violates category dimensions.  It would appear that deep knowledge of anything is always impossible for correct aesthetic judgment on Walton's view.  In On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, Nietzsche refers to "the rigid regularity of a Roman columbarium" and this is what we have here.  It is worth quoting his sentence:  "Whereas each perceptual metaphor is individual and without equals and is therefore able to elude all classification, the great edifice of concepts displays the rigid regularity of a Roman columbarium..."  But, Nietzsche argues, concepts are merely residues of metaphors.  If so, then concepts have lives:  they begin as metaphors and end as rigid categories that need to be superceded.  The Waltonian approach to objectivity in art judgment (and aesthetic judgment generally) relies on the dying end of the life-span of the concept.          

Is good taste elitist?

Some have said that "taste" is no longer a relevant concept.  It certainly had its heyday in the 18th century.  Moreover, there was a reaction against the idea of taste in the late 20th century.  It is often associated with elitism and is sometimes criticized for being undemocratic.  However we can distinguish between good and bad forms of elitism.  Surely there is nothing wrong with saying that there is an elite group called mathematicians who understand math far better than anyone else in our civilization.  Similarly, there are people who understand Abstract Expressionism better than others because they have studied it.  Although the word "elite" has negative connotations, all it really means is a small group of specialists, and no one denies that there are such things.  Elitism is a problem only when certain groups are told that they cannot belong to the elite because of some innate or cultural characteristics, or are excluded for other reasons that are irrelevant to the skills required to belong to a true elite.  One should not feel bad for being excluded from an elite group one has no business belonging to in the first place.  If we go by Hume's idea of taste, the group of good judges would certainly form an elite, but this would not be an elite in the bad sense of the word.  Bear in mind that I am interpreting Hume's good judges as only being so in certain areas, in particular in those areas in which they have practiced and compared, for example in Reggae music.  So this form of elitism is not based on wealth or ancestry.  It is based on experience, although it also requires that the members have "good sense" (capacity to reason) and be determined to avoid prejudice.  These qualities may be relatively rare when developed, but most people can develop them.  Nor does this form of elitism say anything about who is best able to govern:  we are just talking about aesthetics here.  One dictionary (dictionary.com) gives its first definition of elitism as "practice of or belief in rule by an elite" and this is not of concern here.  A second definition is "consciousness of or pride in belonging to a select or favored group."  This too, may not be relevant since the charge of elitism against the idea of taste is usually a charge against the very idea that there exists an elite in some area.  The further act of pride in belonging to an elite may or may not be a good thing.  Again, if one belongs to an elite group because one is a good judge in Hume's sense there seems to be nothing wrong with that, nor even with pride in belonging to such a group.  It is often thought that such elitism is anti-feminist or anti some other group.  Yet although most elite groups of good judges in the past have not included women or some other groups (racial, ethnic, gender, etc.) this should not be a reason for questioning the very idea of such an elite.  Women (etc.) just didn't have the opportunity to pursue the skills that would allow them to belong to these elite groups, or they were excluded even if they had the skills because of prejudice.  (And this is still true today in many places.)  There is nothing about elitism as such that excludes women or other oppressed groups from forming parts of elite groups or even entire elite groups, as for example in the case an elite feminist reading group.  Again, I am not advocating elitism in the traditional sense of that term, since that means advocating social dominance by the particular group:  rather I am simply arguing that basically Humean idea of taste does not entail elitism even though it does indicate a kind of elite and does not preclude pride in belonging to such an elite (assuming that there are no moral problems with such membership).  Belief in taste can be consistent with belief in even fairly radical or progressive forms of democracy.   

 

An interesting article that develops an idea of elite experience and the elite art that generates this kind of experience is Steven Skaggs and Carl R. Hausman "Toward a New Elitism" Journal of Aesthetic Education 2012 46:3 (83-106).   Skaggs and Hausman, like me above, veer away from the traditional definition of "elitism."   

 

Is there such a thing as good taste?

This is the big question in aesthetics, but it is surprising how seldom philosophers attempt to answer it.  Like many aestheticians I am attracted both to the approach of David Hume and to that of Sibley.  So it seems to me that Hume is right that the standard of taste cannot be anything totally objective.   Rather than explicate Hume or Sibley here, I am more interested in developing some sort of combination view, at least one that works for me.  I'll start by rejecting any sort of science-based standard of taste.  Although it might be the case that the golden rule or a certain curve tends to produce things that look good there is enough variation in taste to preclude any conclusive objectivist theory of taste.  Taste must be based on something like what Hume called "the good judge."  This would be someone who has practiced and compared a great deal in a particular field of interest, for example Rap music, or perhaps even some narrower field such as West Coast Rap.  If a person with good sense (which is to say, the capacity to think and analyze rationally) and lack of prejudice (or at least relative lack of prejudice, since an absolute absence of prejudice would seem impossible) has practiced and compared a lot (had a lot of experience in this field of interest) then that person will have positive aesthetics experiences when confronting objects of beauty or objects of some other positive aesthetic quality (and negative experiences when confronting objects with negative aesthetic qualities.) However, we want to avoid some of the difficulties in a Humean approach to taste.  Hume says that the standard of taste is the joint verdict of the good judges, but we all know that the people who come closest to what we would call "good judges" often disagree.  So, the best we can do is speak of the ideal good judge and the verdict of such an ideal as being the standard of taste.  Also, Hume's emphasis on what he calls "delicacy of sentiment," which he usually treats as coming from practice and comparison, seems, in the end, too mechanical.  It is just a matter of determining which parts of the object appreciated are good and which parts are not so good.  His key example of the two critics of wine saying that the wine is good but for a piece of leather in one case and the piece of metal inn the other, leads us to believe that a good critic is someone who is able to tick off good and bad parts of an object of taste and then give a summary account in the end.  Yet taste is more holistic than that.  I tend to see objects of taste, including works of art, as organic wholes in which each part has characteristics that partake of the characteristics of the whole.  On this view, although a part may, in isolation, be seen mechanically as bad-making, in reality even such parts probably contribute to the goodness of the whole in some way.  Nonetheless there is some truth in Hume's account of delicacy of sentiment.  Certainly someone who is practiced in a field of art can make distinctions and see things that others cannot:  this is an indicator that someone is likely to have good taste.  But it is here that we might bring in Sibley.  In many respects Sibley's views on taste seem quite similar to Hume's.  However, unlike Hume, Sibley stresses the interrelationship between the good critic and what Hume would call the bad critic, but I would rather call the student.  The good critic (Sibely seems to suggest) is only known as a good critic if he or she is able to get the less tutored one to see an aesthetic quality.  This is a process that requires being present to the work in question.  So let us imagine both the critic and the student as standing before a painting.  The good critic is able to get the student to see that the painting has certain aesthetic qualities, say "grace" and "tragic character" through pointing out various things.  The critic might, for example, point out certain non-aesthetic qualities upon which the aesthetic qualities of the object "depends."  The word "depends" is used oddly here, since none of these qualities serves as either a necessary or a sufficient condition for whether or not the object in question has these qualities (here I would agree with Sibley).  Rather, experience has simply shown us that by making certain statements about the painting (including statements both about aesthetic and about non-aesthetic qualities) or by asking the student to note certain things in the painting, one can eventually get students to experience it as having certain aesthetic qualities.  If one does this, then one is a good judge.  This might cause some problems as it is always possible that someone can get people to have aesthetic quality experiences without these experiences being the ones one wants them to have, or even without actually having had those experiences oneself.  So perhaps we should add the condition that the good critic is one who gets students to experience the aesthetic qualities he and at least some other good critics have had.  In any case, this dynamic teacher/student relationship adds an important element to the Humean base understanding of the nature of good taste.   So, yes, there is good taste, and good taste can be passed on from teacher to student through various strategies, and we know that this happens because students can attest to "getting it" sometimes, i.e. in experiencing the object as positively aesthetic or even as negatively aesthetic in the case of negative criticism.   This does not indicate however that the aesthetic qualities are objectively independent in the object.  Rather they emerge in the processes of interaction between observers and objects and also between observers and observers (i.e. between teachers and students and between experts as well).  Anyway, that's the thought. 

Explication of a passage from Gombrich on pictorial realism

Ernst Gombrich can be a lot more difficult than he at first appears.  I gave a quiz in my Introduction to Aesthetics this week in which I asked students to explicate page 11 of the third edition of Aesthetics:  A Reader in Philosophy of the Arts ed. David Goldblatt and Lee B. Brown.  The passage is from a selection by Gombrich called "The Limits of Likeness" which comes from his book Art as Illusion.  Several students found it quite difficult to do this.  So, as an aid, here is my own take on the passage.  First, in order to properly interpret a piece of scholarly prose like this one one should consider it in context.  Look, in particular, at what came before it.  What comes prior to this passage is the most important part of the reading, the last paragraph of page 10.  There, Gombrich defines a "correct view" [for a drawing or other visual representation] in this way:  "those who understand the notation [i.e. the style used in the drawing] will derive no false information from the drawing."  He allows for different styles to be equally correct.  He further gives what I would call his definition of pictorial realism in terms of what he calls a "complete portrayal."  He is tentative about this:  "a complete portrayal might be the one which gives as much correct information about the spot as we would obtain if we looked at it from the very spot where the artist stood."  As can be seen, this is an information-based account of realism.

Now to look at page 11.   He had said earlier that he was interested in the "riddle of styles."  So, here he is continuing with this.  Consider as examples of styles the style of the German students in his story who drew with great precision using hard pencils, and the style of the French students who drew the same scene using broad brushstrokes.  So, styles differ in that they require different "articulations" and they allow the artists to ask different questions (for example the hard pencil user is going to ask questions about how sharp lines can depict shadows, for example, realistically).  Still, Gombrich argues, the information that we get from a scene is so complex that no one picture and no one style will capture it all.  Some would say that variety in style is a matter of subjectivity of vision:  each person having his own way of seeing.  But it is more a matter of there being so much information to choose from.  Now when an artist tries to copy a human product, say a one hundred dollar bill, he can, with much less difficulty [than he would have in copying a scene in nature], produce something that looks just like the original.  It is easy for him here to hide his personality.  Moreover, he doesn't have to be worried about being limited in realism by the style he inherited from his period and country.  In the case of portrayal (as in portraying a landscape) the correct picture is more like a good map than like a forged bill.  The artist achieves accuracy here by partaking of a long tradition both in his discipline and in his own career.  Various schemata are put forth, and then, based on experience, these are corrected.  The stylistic device of Western perspective, for example, has benefited from such a history.  Some believe that a realistic drawing is a "faithful record of a visual experience."  But it is, rather, a good model that shows all the relations accurately, like a map.  So, even though the artist is influenced by his or her own personal vision and also by the conventions of that tradition, he or she can still make such a model (i.e. such a painting or drawing) to as high a degree of accuracy as he or she wishes.  The question then is what degree of accuracy is required.  Images serve different purposes in different societies and the form of the representation should be understood in terms of its purpose.  Although Gombrich holds to an information-based theory of pictorial realism he does allow for cultural differences, for example two paintings being equally realistic even though they are in different styles:  they just give us different relational models that convey different sets of the total information available.  Moreover, different societies may require different degrees of accuracy depending on their needs. 

Aldo Leopold and J. Baird Callicott on the Land Aesthetic: Ecology as Mythology

At first, it would seem nearly impossible to pry Aldo Leopold from the cognitivist camp in the appreciation of nature and to ally him with something more like the Muir-inspired synthesis/cycle view which I now advocate (see my previous post on this).  However there is a deep way in which Leopold is really a mythologist who uses imagination in his appreciation of nature much like the way a fine artist does.  A central concept in Leopold's thinking is the distinction between land and country, land having to do with practical and even monetary value, and country having to do with "the personality of the land" and also "the collective harmony of its soil, life, and weather."  Another feature of country is that "its quality may not be apparent at first glance, nor at all times." So, a lakeshore may at first seem boring but then one may find riches hidden within it.  The distinction between land and country is not just one of practical vs. aesthetic attitude:  something can be land and not country, or perhaps the world is divided between land and country environments.  Leopold is no proponent of the view called "positive aesthetics" in which everything in nature is beautiful in some way.  He suggests that the beauty of an environemnt depends a lot on whether or not certain wildlife is present.  For example, he notes that he cannot prove (but certainly believes) that "a thicket without the potential roar of a quail covey" is only a thorny place.  Thus:  wildlife "often represents the difference between rich country and mere land."  Leopold has the usual distaste of naturalists for nature tourists who are herded through scenic places, especially if they would find something like the Kansas plains boring.  But what is it that makes the Kansas plains interesting to Leopold?  To understand this we need to consider what the tourist herd does not see:  "They see the endless corn, but not the heave and grunt of ox teams breaking the prairie."  That is, they do not see the corn under the aspect of and intensification of historical background knowledge, specifically of the somaesthetic knowledge of the first farmer and his team of oxen.  Another example is:  "they look at the low horizon, but they cannot see it, as de Vaca did, under the bellies of buffalo."  So when we are talking about a plain exterior that "conceals hidden riches" we are talking either about the possibility of enhancements through awareness of key wildlife or through awareness of historical background (specifically background about the human/animal interaction within this environment, although I see not reason why one should exclude other historical phenomena, for example the battle between U.S. solders and the Dakota Sioux on this very spot).  Most would see this approach as entirely one of applying scientific cognition to nature.  But how then explain the preference of the place with quail over the one without, and how explain the interruption of imaginings of local natural history?  In fact, Leopold uses imaginative perception to extend the aesthetic in nature beyond the merely scenic (and beyond even the merely scientific).  Of course de Vaca did in fact see vast seas of buffalo on these plains, as we cannot.  However, to look at the plains as if one were de Vaca is not to see nature "as it is" as most aestheticians of nature would require.   Rather, it is to pump up perception through giving the plains themselves a kind of aura, a heightened significance through imaginative perception.  This is a case of seeing nature as it is not.  What I want to argue (but cannot fully develop here) is that imaginative seeing, or seeing something as something that it is not (for example, seeing the brambles as potentially filled with quail although not quail are actually present to perception) is essential to aesthetic experience of nature, and that even the greatest heroes of the aesthetics of nature, people like Leopold, actually engage in this practice.  

J. Baird Callicott in "Leopold's Land Aesthetic" (also in Nature, Aesthetics and Environmentalism) helps support my point by discussing Leopold's idea of the noumenon.  The idea is inspired by Kant but is used in a different way:  for Leopold a noumenon of the land is an actual, physical thing (usually a species) that constitutes the "essence" of the countryside. (As soon as we see this term "essence" we know we have left the land of science and have entered something more like a Schopenhauerian world in which the genius artist is able to see the Platonic Form of chair in the chair, and is able to capture the essence of the chair...Leopold is like the Schopenhauerean genius in nature.)  The grouse for example is the noumenon of the north woods.  Leopold writes:  "In terms of conventional physics, the grouse represents only a millionth of either the mass or the energy of an acre.  Yet subtract the grouse and the whole thing is dead.  An enormous amount of some kind of motive power has been lost." (114)  He even thinks that any "sober ecologist" would agree.  There is something ironic here, since although this idea may be approved by many ecologists, it is hardly sober.  It is practically Dionysian.  It reeks of something like religious ecstasy.  (And note that Kant's noumenon is something that resides in the transcendent realm, a realm that gives meaning to our lives, but is unapproachable by reason.  I think that Leopold's noumenon actually is more like Kant's "aesthetic idea" which is perceivable unlike the nuomenon but has some of the features of the nuomenon and is essential to our understanding of the genius artist.)  Leopold admits that this notion of ecological death "is inexpressible in terms of contemporary science."  This view, then, is not supportable by scientific cognitivism, not even consistent with it.  Instead, it is a kind of mythology (or religion), perhaps the kind that Thoreau favored in his "Walking" (in the same anthology) in which he says that although English literature fails to capture nature, Greek mythology does not:  "Mythology [Thoreau writes] is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were affected with blight; and which it still bears, wherever its pristine vigor is unabated."  (59)  Thoreau goes on to talk about how the West is preparing is own mythology, perhaps to emerge around great rivers like the Mississippi.  I argue that Leopold's idea of the noumenon is the creation of a Thoreauian mythology, and this explains why he has no trouble seeing nature as what it is not, or as what it once was.  Although Leopold rejects an art-based view of appreciation of nature, he himself creates his own art, an art of seeing, in which the noumenon plays the role of the key actor on stage, the protagonist of the ecological story.  This is not to imply that I disapprove of the idea of the noumenon:  I find it exciting and quite appropriate.  It entails a highly engaged, constructive and interactive way to approach natural aesthetics.  Callicott is eager to tone this down however and so he calls these noumenon "aesthetic indicator species."  He thinks this is more precise although less arresting.  (But, scientifically speaking, why would one species indicate anything more than any other?)  Such species, on his view, supply "the hallmark, the imprimatur, to their respective ecological communities" and this is seen by the fact that if they are absent the ecological community lacks "the rosy glow of perfect health."  This is lovely, but it is also mythology.  Nature does not care which species is dominant, or which one makes an ecological system most meaningful to us humans.  The mystical element here can be found especially in the fact that the follower of this doctrine does not even care if he or she actually sees examples of the noumenon species:  "they need not be seen or heard to grace and enliven their respective habitats."  The presence of their grace is a matter not of actual but of imaginative perception, of a kind of heightened significance brought by the belief that representatives of this species are somewhere about.  This leads of course to certain negative aesthetic judgments, even extreme ones, as well.  So, when Leopold visits the German forests he deeply regrets the absence of the great owl Uhu without whose calls "the winter night becomes mere blackness."  It then surprises me greatly that, after describing Leopold's idea of the noumenon, Callicott ignores the unscientific aspect of this and simply says that Leopold has given us the first natural aesthetic "informed by ecological and evolutionary natural history and thus the only genuinely autonomous natural aesthetic" in the West.  He further observes that it involves a "cultivated natural sensibility."  Yet, no amount of cultivation of sensibility without a heavy dose of imaginative perception can get someone to see the Kansas plains as these were seen by someone four hundred years ago.  The romance of this should be palpable.  The idea of the noumenon involves a special kind of imaginative perception:  one that focuses on a particular species as that which gives the environment life, a kind of minor god or muse, as in mythology.  Callicott admits himself the central role of imagination: "the experience of a marsh or bog is aesthetically satisfying less for what is literally sensed than what is known or schematically imagined of its ecology."  And he actually quotes Leopold to the effect that "the Ph.D. may become as callous as an undertaker to the mysteries at which he officiates" followed by the observation that perception cannot be purchased with earned degrees.  Hence, in the end, Leopold and Calicott could hardly agree with the scientific cognitivists who insist that one can only appropriately appreciate nature through scientific knowledge.   The scientific mindset does not value mystery as mystery any more than the apprehension of essences.

The Synthesis/Cycle View of The Aesthetics of Nature

Working from my last two blogs on John Muir, I want to now argue for what I will call a synthesis/cycle view of the aesthetics of nature.  Muir's manner of appreciation of nature is taken as the ideal in this project.  Muir, as we have seen, manages to synthesize four modes of aesthetic appreciation of nature:  the religious/transcendentalist, the somaesthetic, the cognitive scientific, and the arts-based.  He cycles through all of these, enhancing each mode by way of the others.  An important element in all of this is the imaginative, which is not a separate mode as such but rather a possible (and highly important) dimension of every mode.  The synthesis/cycle model of appreciation is to be distinguished both from relativism and from pluralism.  Relativism (or at least radical relativism) would say that every mode and every theory is equally good.  This leads to obvious contradictions.  Pluralism is superior to relativism, eliminating contradiction by paring off the elements of each theory that would contradict the others (for example, that this theory is exclusively true and useful) while at the same time allowing for the same openness that is the main virtue for relativism.  But pluralism simply allows for a variety of different perspectives, some perhaps ranked higher than others, and all made consistent by leaving out contradicting elements.  The synthesis/cycle theory is an advancement over mere pluralism in that it allows for several perspectives, each one of which is useful and valuable, but also posits an ideal in which all of the perspectives are cycled through in a manner that allows for synthesis.  Muir has achieved, or comes close to achieving, this ideal.  Most aestheticians of nature unfortunately ignore or suppress the arts-based, somaesthetic, transcendentalist and imaginative elements of Muir's manner of appreciating nature.  They simply construct or (mis)understand him as an early example of a scientific cognitivist (sans imaginative element).  Previously I had favored an arts-based view within a larger context of advocating pluralism.  My view was essentially libertarian/pragmatist.  But reading Muir teaches me that an ideal is still needed.  So in the current view  pluralism is only as a step towards the synthesis/cycle view.   The synthesis/cycle view also owes something to the idea of "toggling" between interested and disinterested perception which has been advocated in art contexts by Peggy Brand and Ted Gracyk.  I discuss the value of toggling in my book and will also develop that idea in a future paper on the philosophy of Arnold Berleant.  Toggling still plays a role within the current view, although now it is part of a larger process that also involves cycling through modes of appreciation, and the mutual enrichment of these modes that can be achieved in synthesis.   

Much to my surprise I have discovered that there is one other reader of Muir who takes a very similar approach to his aesthetics of nature.  This is Jeffrey Wattles, "John Muir as a Guide to Education in Environmental Aesthetics."  Journal of Aesthetic Education  47:3 (2013) 56-71.   Wattles even notices the somaesthetic dimension in Muir.  He writes:  "In Muir, perceptual, somaesthetic, scientifc, empathetic, imaginative, intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual modes of awareness fused in his  realization of beauty in nature."  Wattles, unlike any of the other commentators on Muir's aesthetics recognizes the value of the religious dimension of his aesthetic experience.  He also allows for the possibility of a secular rereading of this, writing that "[t]hose who reject the concept of God may redescribe his experience." He ends his article with a quote (as an example that the secular reader can accept as a re-description) from Muir on the way that the rays of mountain beauty glow with joy.  I am very sympathetic with that.  The subsections of Wattles' article also remarkably parallel the position that I have been putting forth:  "Wholehearted Engagement of the United Powers of Mind, Soul and Body,"  "Keen Perception," "Scientific Understanding," "Artistically Cultivated Imagination," "A Sense of the Expressiveness of Nature," and "Intellectual Discovery of Harmony," "Philosophical Aesthetic Reflection," and "A Sense of Beauty as Divine."  I will not go further into his article here, but commend it to anyone who wishes to take Muir's contribution to the aesthetics of nature seriously (and not just as a rather confused forerunner to a scientific cognitivist view.) 

So what then is my argument for the synthesis/cycle view?  It is simply that (1) it has none of the failings of any of the other prevailing views, (2) it has all of the virtues of all of the other prevailing views (since it is deliberately designed to incorporate those virtues), and (3) it is manifested wonderfully in the writings of John Muir, a true genius of aesthetic appreciation of the natural environment.  I also think that it is manifested to perhaps a lesser extent in the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, and even Aldo Leopold.  My next post will be on Leopold.