Nature and Landscape

An Introduction to Environmental Aesthetics
Erscheinungsjahr 2008
ISBN: 978-0-231-14040-9
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 208 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 228 mm, Gewicht: 440 g

The roots of environmental aesthetics reach back to the ideas of eighteenth-century thinkers who found nature an ideal source of aesthetic experience. Today, having blossomed into a significant subfield of aesthetics, environmental aesthetics studies and encourages the appreciation of not just natural environments but also human-made and human-modified landscapes.

Nature and Landscape is an important introduction to this rapidly growing area of aesthetic understanding and appreciation. Allen Carlson begins by tracing the development of the field's historical background, and then surveys contemporary positions on the aesthetics of nature, such as scientific cognitivism, which holds that certain kinds of scientific knowledge are necessary for a full appreciation of natural environments. Carlson next turns to environments that have been created or changed by humans and the dilemmas that are posed by the appreciation of such landscapes. He examines how to aesthetically appreciate a variety of urban and rural landscapes and concludes with a discussion of whether there is, in general, a correct way to aesthetically experience the environment.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Carlson, Allen

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunsttheorie, Kunstphilosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ästhetik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

PrefaceAcknowledgments1. The Development and Nature of Environmental Aesthetics2. Aesthetic Appreciation and the Natural Environment3. The Requirements for an Adequate Aesthetics of Nature4. Aesthetic Appreciation and the Human Environment5. Appreciation of the Human Environment Under Different Conceptions6. Aesthetic Appreciation and the Agricultural Landscape7. What Is the Correct Way to Aesthetically Appreciate Landscapes?NotesBibliographyIndex

Über Autor(innen)

Allen Carlson is professor of philosophy at the University of Alberta. He is the author of Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture and, with Glenn Parsons, coauthor of Functional Beauty, as well as coeditor of Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty, The Aesthetics of Human Environments, and The Aesthetics of Natural Environments.