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Nature, Aesthetic Appreciation, and Knowledge Author(s): Allen Carlson Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 393-400
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/430974
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ALLEN CARLSON
Nature, Aesthetic Appreciation, and Knowledge
On a clear night we stand beneath what Kant described as "the noblest spectacle that was ever placed before the human senses and that our understanding can bear to follow in its vast expanse." As we gaze upward we may simply be moved by the spectacle or simply be mystified by the expanse. Or, like Kant, we may be filled with "ever new and increasing admiration and awe" as our understanding follows the spectacle "into an unbounded magnitude of worlds beyond worlds and systems of systems and into the limitless times of their periodic motion, their beginnings and their continuance."1
What in such encounters with "the starry heavens above" is appropriate aesthetic appreciation? For that matter, what in such encounters is aesthetic appreciation? Or even, appreciation itself? And what is essential and what accidental in such appreciation? Concerning these questions, I suggest that the appreciation of any object, from the noblest to the most mundane, requires information about it and, by the same token, that the appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature requires knowledge of the natural world. Thus, I wish to advance the idea that, for example, to be filled with "ever new and increasing admiration and awe" by the starry heavens requires, as Kant suggested, that our understanding follow the passage that astronomy has charted into heaven's vast expanse; that is to say that appropriate aesthetic appreciation of the starry heavens is in this way informed and enriched by the knowledge provided by this science. I pursue this idea by examining two views that seemingly hold the opposite: that appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature requires either very little or perhaps no knowledge of nature.
In an interesting essay called "On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Nat-
ural History," Noel Carroll develops the first of these two views: what he calls "the arousal model" of nature appreciation.2 As Carroll's title suggests, his view is that there is, as he puts it, a "legitimate" way of appreciating nature which is neither a matter of religion nor of science, that is, a mode of nature appreciation involving neither "displaced religious sentiment" nor scientific knowledge.3 This way of appreciating nature is simply "being moved by nature." Carroll's examples make clear what he has in mind: "we may find ourselves standing under a thundering waterfall and be excited by its grandeur; or standing barefooted amidst a silent arbor, softly carpeted with layers of decaying leaves, a sense of repose and homeyness may be aroused in us." Carroll claims that such "responses to nature are quite frequent and even sought out" and that "being moved or emotionally aroused by nature" in this way is what "for many of us" is most often involved in appreciating nature. He summarizes: "We may appreciate nature by opening ourselves to its stimulus, and to being put in a certain emotional state by attending to its aspects. Experiencing nature, in this mode, just is a manner of appreciating it.... such experiences have a genuine claim to be counted among the ways in which nature may be (legitimately) appreciated." Carroll stresses that this manner of "experiencing nature" is not "rooted in cognitions of the sort derived from natural history." Compared with appreciation of nature that requires such knowledge, the responses to nature Carroll has in mind are, as he says, "of a less intellective, more visceral sort." However, he cautions that the fact that emotional arousal is involved does not imply that such responses "are noncognitive, since emotional arousal has a cognitive dimension."
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53:4 Fall 1995
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The second view is that of Stan Godlovitch. In an article on "Environmentalism and Natural Aesthetics," equally as interesting and as rich as is Carroll's, Godlovitch develops a view of the aesthetic appreciation of nature in some ways similar to Carroll's.4 However, Godlovitch's position is less traditional and more radical. In contrast to Carroll's arousal model, Godlovitch's may be called the mystery model, for the idea of mystery is central to the view. The basic claim is that "the only fitting aesthetic regard for [nature] is a sense of mystery" and that the "relevant special sense of mystery is ... a state of appreciative incomprehension, at best an acknowledgement of limits." He holds that the mystery involves neither awe nor sublimity. The idea is not that we be "impressed or overwhelmed" by nature, because that would be to bring ourselves into nature, but the only way we belong in nature, if we belong at all, is in having "a sense of being outside, of not belonging." Godlovitch further claims that if such a mystery model of nature appreciation "is possible, it leaves room open only for mysteries without solution" and that if "we acknowledge such mysteries, we approach natural appreciation, but not through forms of cognitive anchorage" for nature "is aloof, and in this aloofness we come, not so much to understand as to ... grasp without capture." Godlovitch concludes by suggesting that his view may in fact be "impossible" and "paradoxical" and by raising the question of whether it is an aesthetic theory at all rather than a religion or a "religious surrogate." Godlovitch, like Carroll, stresses that knowledge about nature provided by natural science is irrelevant to what he calls "natural appreciation." He claims that his sense of mystery "cannot... be apprehended from within the cognitive-scientific point of view because that demands solutions in principle" and, as noted, his sense of mystery is of "mystery without any possible solutions."
Before further pursuing Carroll's and Godlovitch's views, I should make clear that part of my reason for considering them concerns my own view on the appreciation of nature. That position is that appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature requires knowledge about nature and that the relevant knowledge is paradigmatically provided by the natural sciences and by their commonsense predecessors and analogues.5 Each of Carroll and Godlovitch presents his view as
an alternative to this position, each contending that it, which may be called, following Carroll, the "natural environmental model," overlooks important dimensions of our aesthetic appreciation of the natural world. Thus, for example, after carefully assessing the natural environmental model and the arguments for it, Carroll worries that "it excludes certain very common appreciative responses to nature."6 He holds, as noted, that these responses involve being emotionally aroused by nature, and thus he develops the arousal model not as a replacement for the natural environmental model, but as, to use his term, a "co-existing" model. In a similar way, Godlovitch also finds the natural environmental model, which he calls "Carlson's Cognitivism": "Scientism for Natural Aesthetics," to be lacking in certain respects. Along with other difficulties, he thinks it has no place for the way in which nature is, as he says, "the aloof, the distant, the unknowable, the Other."7 The claim is that: "The cognitive view requires that we must know whatever it is we appreciate" but this "leaves no space for the necessity of the unknowable."8 Thus, as noted, Godlovitch develops the mystery model to accommodate what he takes to be the unknowable dimension of nature.
Within this context of three alternative, although not necessarily mutually exclusive, accounts of the aesthetic appreciation of nature, my present interest in the appreciative role of knowledge, in particular scientific knowledge, may be put into sharper focus. There are basically two options. First, if these three views are not mutually exclusive, then perhaps they simply emphasize different dimensions of our appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature. This is the option favored by Carroll, at least concerning the natural environmental model and the arousal model. However, although Godlovitch might also accept this option, this is unlikely given his claim that "the only fitting aesthetic regard" for nature involves mystery.9 Consequently, it is necessary to consider a second option. This option follows from noting that appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature requires knowledge and that the arousal and the mystery models either assume that knowledge is not necessary for such appreciation or else simply provide very little room for it. This second option thus suggests that these two models do not in fact track significant dimensions of our
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appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature. The consequences of this are, first, that the natural environmental model does not, contrary to Carroll and Godlovitch, overlook such dimensions, and, second, that the arousal and the mystery models are shown to be unnecessary.
However, before considering the role of knowledge in appropriate aesthetic appreciation, it is instructive to note what might seem the most straightforward way of demonstrating that the arousal and the mystery models are not necessary. This would be to show that these models do not account for dimensions of our appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature simply because they are not concerned with anything aesthetic. This alternative is suggested by God-lovitch's doubts about whether or not his own view is a viable aesthetic and even an aesthetic at all rather than a religion. Concerning this alternative, two initial points are worth noting: The first is that it constitutes, as Godlovitch himself suggests, a serious challenge to these views. Their status as accounts of the aesthetic is doubtful just because the traditional manner by which positions are frequently deemed to be such accounts seems to explicitly exclude them. For example, consider a traditionally favored criterion of the aesthetic, that of a special state of mind or point of view, such as disinterestedness or psychical distance. By the distance version of such a criterion, each of the arousal and the mystery model would seemingly be disqualified as an account of the aesthetic in that each appears to track a state that fails to achieve the required degree of distance, the former tracking an underdistanced and the latter an overdis-tanced state. The second initial point, however, is that this question of what constitutes the aesthetic is itself far from straightforward. Many of the traditional criteria of the aesthetic have been subject to extensive and possibly damaging philosophical critiques. For example, recall Dickie's classic attack on what he calls the myth of the aesthetic attitude, or consider Arnold Berleant's rejection of all the traditional dogmas of aesthetics, including the disinterestedness criterion.10
This unclarity surrounding the issue of what constitutes the aesthetic suggests that the question of whether or not the arousal and the mystery models provide accounts of aesthetic appreciation may not be easy to answer. Moreover, this unclarity also gives rise to the question of
whether or not the natural environmental model can be considered a theory of the aesthetic. In short, once the question of what constitutes the aesthetic is raised, then suspicions concerning "aesthetic legitimacy" seem as relevant to the natural environmental model as to Carroll's and Godlovitch's models. It is not difficult to doubt that appreciation of nature grounded in scientific knowledge is aesthetic appreciation and that any view suggesting that it must be so grounded is a theory of anything concerned with the aesthetic. Why, it might be asked, is this not just a science-based account of nature appreciation rather than a truly aesthetic position about the aesthetic appreciation of nature? Although he does not pursue it, Carroll notes this possible objection to the natural environmental model, remarking that it could be argued that insofar as this model "involves the sub-sumption of particulars under scientific categories and laws," whatever it is that it tracks "is not an aesthetic mode of appreciation at all."11 The philosophical relevance is clear: If such doubts about the natural environmental model are significant, then any challenge to the aesthetic credentials of either Carroll's or Godlovitch's view is dispelled, for, as Berkeley once noted, what counts equally against all views, counts tellingly against none.
However, there is a means by which the natural environmental model can meet, or at least evade, this kind of problem, but which yet leaves the status of each of the arousal model and the mystery model at best unclear. This is to approach the issue of the nature of the appropriate aesthetic appreciation of the natural world not by focusing on the aesthetic but rather by focusing on appreciation. Such a shift moves the discussion away from the question of what constitutes a legitimate theory of aesthetic appreciation and toward the question of what constitutes a satisfactory theory of our appropriate appreciation of nature, quite apart from whether or not such appreciation is really aesthetic in some at best imprecise sense. Thus, concerning the particular views under consideration here, the issue is not whether or not Carroll's and Godlovitch's models, as opposed to the natural environmental model, track the aesthetic, but rather whether or not those models, as opposed to the other, provide an adequate account of our appropriate appreciation of the natural world.
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Casting the issue in these terms centers the discussion on the concept of appreciation, rather than on that of the aesthetic. This has immediate benefits: On the one hand, there is the bonus of avoiding the difficult, technical, and theoretically-encrusted notion of the aesthetic. And on the other, there is the advantage of focusing on a concept that is much more naturally and vitally connected with our everyday experiences of art and nature. Indeed, much of such experience centers precisely on appreciation. For example, we are brought up by parents and in an education system that zealously attempt to develop our ability to appreciate, and we live in a society with countless resources devoted to nurturing and maintaining that ability. We have courses devised to teach music appreciation, public galleries devoted to art appreciation, and books designed to promote nature appreciation. Much of our leisure time is spent listening and looking— at the theater, the concert hall, the gallery, the museum, the park—and all of it is done with the idea that we are appreciating that which we hear and see. Consequently, in light of the extent of this everyday appreciative experience of art and nature, the concept of appreciation may be somewhat more transparent and easier to grasp than that of the aesthetic.12
Consideration of appreciation as it functions in our day-to-day experiences of art and nature suggests a number of things about the concept. The first and most obvious is that appreciation has an essential cognitive component. Consider the courses that teach music appreciation or the books that promote nature appreciation. The greater part of such courses and books is devoted to providing information about the object of appreciation, information which allows the appreciator to achieve a certain cognitive stance toward that object of appreciation. Paul Ziff refers to this as a "sizing up" of the object. He notes that although the "word 'appreciate' is commonly used to express gratitude ... as in the utterance 'I appreciate your efforts on my behalf the primary and aesthetically relevant sense of the word is best seen in connection with logistics."13 He provides the following example: "After the first World War Winston Churchill was asked by the British Admiralty to write an appreciation of the Battle of Jutland, a naval engagement. He was not asked to express feelings of gratitude. Prior to a military action, comman-
ders of the various groups may be convened for an appreciation: to size up the disposition of the enemy forces, materiel, and so forth. One can in this sense appreciate a position in chess, a political situation, a work of art."14
What Ziff refers to as "the primary and aesthetically relevant sense" of appreciation thus has an essential cognitive component, a cog-nitively-based "sizing up." However, further reflection on our everyday appreciative experiences also reveals a secondary component, closely connected to the first. Again, consideration of the courses and books that teach appreciation is instructive. The point of a course in music appreciation, for example, is not simply to provide such information as is necessary to cognitively "size up" the music, but also to prepare the appreciator to respond appropriately to the music. In a similar way, when military commanders do an appreciation of the enemy, it is done in preparation for appropriately responding to that enemy. This responsive component of appreciation is secondary to the central cognitive component in that the former is dependent upon and appropriate or not primarily in light of the latter. The sizing up of the object of appreciation determines the nature of the appropriate response to it. This means that there is no particular response that is involved in appreciation; the response that is appropriately involved is a function of the initial sizing up. Again, Ziff's remarks are illuminating: "It is not difficult to see that the common use of 'appreciate' to express gratitude is merely a derivation from the primary sense of the word. To say 'I appreciate your efforts on my behalf is primarily to say that one has sized up the situation and has the appropriate emotional response. That that response be a feeling of gratitude is only a matter of convention. For one can easily cancel all indications of gratitude as in 'I appreciate your efforts on my behalf and I mean to pay you back' said in a situation in which one has evidently been done a disservice."15
If appreciation in its primary and aesthetically relevant sense is thus constituted, at least in part, by an initial "sizing up" of an object of appreciation and a secondary responsiveness to that object in light of that sizing up, this has the following ramifications: First, that whatever is required for sizing something up is also required for appreciation and that this is, at the very least,
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some information about that thing or, in the case of appropriate or correct sizing up, knowledge of it. Second, since the secondary responsiveness is in light of the primary cognitive component of appreciation, the nature and appropriateness of the responsive component is a direct function of the sizing up and of its appropriateness or correctness. Since in this sense no particular response is required in appreciation, or in appropriate appreciation, what is essential for appropriate appreciation is not any particular response to the object of appreciation, but rather knowledge of that object. It follows that what indicates appreciation is not the responsive component of appreciation, but rather simply that it involves sizing up together with responsiveness; what indicates appropriate appreciation is that it involves correct, knowledge-based sizing up together with responsiveness appropriate in light of that sizing up.
With these observations about the nature of appreciation in hand, I return to the arousal and the mystery models of nature appreciation. I consider them separately, the latter first. As noted, Godlovitch claims that if his mystery model "is possible, it leaves room open only for mysteries without solution" and that if "we acknowledge such mysteries, we approach natural appreciation, but not through forms of cogni-tive anchorage," for nature "is aloof, and in this aloofness we come, not so much to understand as to ... grasp without capture."16 Godlovitch here speaks of "natural appreciation," but I suggest that such "natural appreciation" is in fact not possible, that it is, as he himself worries, paradoxical. Seemingly with only mystery and aloofness, there is no grounding for appreciation of any kind. The mystery and aloofness of nature, which Godlovitch's view stresses, is a gulf, an emptiness, between us and nature; it is that by which we are outside of and separate from nature. Thus, it cannot constitute a source of the information or knowledge required for appreciation; it provides no means by which we can attain any appreciation of nature whatsoever. In this mystery and aloofness we not only, as Godlovitch says, "grasp without capture," we also grasp without appreciation. In sum, the mystery model seemingly does not track any kind of appreciation of nature, for it finds impossible exactly what is required for such appreciation, that is, information and knowledge
about nature. Insofar as Godlovitch's nature is "unknowable," it is also beyond appreciation.17 Where does this leave the mystery model? I noted earlier Godlovitch's question about whether his view is an aesthetic rather than a religion, and I expressed reservations about its being a theory of the aesthetic. Although I initially set this issue aside, I now return to it. I suggest that Godlovitch's view cannot be an account of the aesthetic if it does not allow for appreciation, for accommodating appreciation is as essential to any theory of the aesthetic as is accommodating the aesthetic itself. For something to be a case of aesthetic appreciation requires both that it be aesthetic and that it be appreciation. Consequently, perhaps Godlovitch is correct to raise the question of whether his view is a religion rather than an aesthetic. After all, even though mystery and aloofness cannot support appreciation, they can and do support worship. For example, the God of the Old Testament is an aloof God of mystery, a God without a name, a God from whom we must turn our eyes; and the Testament does not call for appreciation of that God, or even appropriate appreciation— rather it commands worship. Perhaps Godlovitch's view should be characterized not as an account of our aesthetic appreciation of nature, but rather as some kind of nature religion. Similar views are not unfamiliar; they are sometimes associated with pantheism or mysticism.18 Thus, I suggest that Godlovitch's view may be more a religion of nature worship than a model that tracks a dimension of the appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature. In terms of Carroll's quest for a theory of the aesthetic appreciation of nature that falls, as he says, "between religion and natural history," Godlovitch's mystery model fails to qualify, for it falls not between the two categories, but within the former.
Carroll's arousal model remains to be considered. As noted, the arousal model concentrates only on certain "more visceral" emotional responses to nature. Therefore, it is initially important to recall that the responsive component of appreciation is only a secondary component and thus that the existence of any particular response is not by itself sufficient to establish the response as a case of appreciation. Thus, Carroll is seemingly mistaken when he apparently holds that a response is appreciative of an object simply
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in virtue of the fact that it is an emotional response to that object. For example, he considers "children amused by capers of Commedia dell arte but who know nothing of its tradition or its place among other artistic genres, styles, and categories," and then he simply assumes that such a response is, as he says, an "appreciative response."19 But why, we may ask, is this a case of appreciation at all? Certainly the simple fact of amusement is not by itself sufficient to establish appreciation. In a similar way, Carroll's general claim that experiencing nature by "opening ourselves to its stimulus" and being "put in a certain emotional state by attending to its aspects. ... just is a manner of appreciating it" seem to be at least question begging, if not just false. Again, we may ask: why does being put in a certain emotional state constitute a case of appreciation? If what we have noted about the nature of appreciation is correct, the answer is simply that it does not—at least not by itself.
However, even though the existence of an emotional response is not by itself sufficient to establish appreciation, this does not rule out the arousal model as a model for some dimensions of our appreciation of nature. This is because the arousal model, unlike the mystery model, does not necessarily exclude the knowledge required for appropriate appreciation. However, even though it does not exclude it, the interesting question is how does it, if it does, include it? Concerning this question, the relevant point is Carroll's acceptance of the view that emotions have what he calls a "cognitive dimension." Among other things, Carroll appeals to this cognitive dimension in order to establish that the emotional responses to nature that the arousal model stresses can indeed be appropriate or inappropriate and thus have as much of a claim to objectivity as does that appreciation stressed by the natural environmental model. Thus, he contends that an individual's emotional response of fear to, for example, a grizzly with cubs is objective in virtue of his belief that such a bear is dangerous and the fact that the particular belief is, as Carroll puts it, "a reasonable belief for the rest of us to hold."20 In this way the arousal model recognizes that reasonable and universal-izable belief is required for an appropriate emotional response to nature. In fact, in another context Carroll notes that in being "emotionally moved by nature ... operative cognitions ... play
a constitutive role in our response."21 These are important points for they mean that the arousal model in fact requires something that is essentially as strong as knowledge, that is, justified belief, for the appropriate appreciation of nature. From this it follows, on the one hand, that the arousal model may after all have the resources required to meet the challenge that it fails to track any dimensions of our appropriate appreciation of nature, but, on the other hand and yet by the same token, that the arousal model virtually collapses into the natural environmental model.
In light of this apparent collapse of the arousal model into the natural environmental model, only two things seem to hold the two views apart. The first is the kinds of appreciative cases and the aspects of those cases that each view stresses. The natural environmental model stresses the essential cognitive component of appreciation and not the secondary responsive component. Thus, it concentrates on cases of nature appreciation, such as Kant's appreciation of the starry heavens, in which the former plays an obvious role. In contrast, the arousal model stresses the responsive component of appreciation rather than the cognitive component, which it nonetheless allows in the back door, as it were, by recognizing the "constitutive" cognitive dimension of emotional responses. Thus, the arousal model concentrates on cases of nature appreciation, such as Carroll's thundering waterfall, in which an emotional arousal response is very prominent, while the essential cognitive component is somewhat minimal and thus rather inconspicuous. I submit, however, that this first difference between the two models is only a matter of emphasis, not of substance. Were it the only difference, we would have only one model rather than two.
The second difference between the two models may be more important. This involves the exact nature of the cognitive component required for appreciation. The natural environmental model holds that in the appropriate appreciation of nature the required information, justified belief, or knowledge is that which is provided by the natural sciences and their com-monsense predecessors and analogues. The arousal model holds that this is too much to require for at least some of what it considers "legitimate" cases of appreciation of nature.22
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However, upon closer inspection this difference also seems to dissolve. For example, Carroll recounts a case that he considers "legitimate" appreciation in which, although he thinks it a fish, he is excited by the grandeur of a blue whale, moved by "its size, its force, the amount of water it displaces."23 However, although this appreciation is not fully appropriate in that it involves the mistaken "scientific" belief that the creature is a fish, it nonetheless depends upon other knowledge, such as the amount of water a blue whale displaces. This knowledge is, if not exactly straightforwardly scientific, at least the product of the commonsense predecessors or analogues of science. In short, what is appropriate in the appreciation in this case depends upon knowledge of the kind required by the natural environmental model, even though that knowledge comes from the commonsense end of the spectrum ranging from science to its common-sense analogues.
On this issue, Carroll rightly notes: "A lot depends here on what is included in commonsense knowledge of nature."24 But, perhaps a more significant question is, given that we are concerned with knowledge, why should anything be excluded? The primary case Carroll presents of something that is meant not to be commonsense knowledge of nature in the relevant sense is, in his waterfall example, "that the stuff that is falling down is water."25 However, it is not completely clear why such knowledge is not commonsense knowledge in the relevant sense. Is it not the product of the commonsense predecessors and analogues of natural science? Carroll thinks not, claiming that "the knowledge in my case need not involve any systemic knowledge of nature's working of either a folk or scientific origin."26 Carroll's case seems to me to involve some low-level commonsense "systemic knowledge of nature's working," but perhaps Carroll is correct here. However, it is worth noting that although the natural environmental model does not stress the role of knowledge such as that involved in Carroll's waterfall case, it need not exclude it. Be that as it may, two points are perhaps more significant. The first is that if this kind of knowledge is the only knowledge required for the appreciation that the arousal model tracks, then such appreciation is, if not nonexistent, certainly minimal. The second, and more important, is that if it is only the issue of the exact na-
ture and significance of such knowledge that separates the arousal model from the natural environmental model, then again the difference between these two models is theoretically unsubstantial. The former differs from the latter only in that it focuses on simply the most minimal level of appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature, rather than on the fuller and richer levels of such appreciation that are emphasized by the natural environmental model. The two models are at least, as Carroll puts it, "co-existing," if not more intimately related.
I conclude by returning to the title of Carroll's essay and his quest for a view of the aesthetic appreciation of nature that falls, as he says in that title, "between religion and natural history." Concerning the two views I have focused on, Godlovitch's mystery model and Carroll's arousal model, I have argued that the former falls on the religion side of this dichotomy and the latter, in the last analysis, on the natural history side. If this is correct, it is because, as suggested by our initial encounter with the starry heavens, appropriate aesthetic appreciation requires knowledge. But, as we have seen, while the mystery model makes knowledge of nature impossible, the arousal model, when all is said and done, makes it necessary. Perhaps there is not much space for the aesthetic appreciation of nature between religion and natural history, for although without knowledge of the natural world we may have only religion, with such knowledge we seemingly have at least the beginnings of natural science.27
ALLEN CARLSON Department of Philosophy University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
internet: acarlson@vm.usc.ualberta.ca
1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956 [1788]), pp. 166-167.
2. Noel Carroll, "On Being Moved By Nature: Between Religion and Natural History," Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts, eds. S. Kemal and I. Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 244-266. The quotations in this paragraph are from pages 245-246.
3. The idea that nature appreciation may involve "displaced
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religious emotions" is developed in T. J. Diffey, "Natural Beauty without Metaphysics," Landscape, pp. 43-64.
4. Stan Godlovitch,'Icebreakers: Environmentalism and Natural Aesthetics," Journal of Applied Philosophy 11 (1994): 15-30. The quotations in this paragraph are from pages 26-28.
5. See, for example, my "Appreciation and the Natural Environment," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 37 (1979): 267-275; "Nature, Aesthetic Judgment, and Objectivity," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40 (1981): 15-27; "Nature and Positive Aesthetics," Environmental Ethics 6 (1984): 5-34; or "Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature," Landscape, pp. 199-227.
6. Carroll, p. 245.
7. Godlovitch, p. 26.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., my italics.
10. See, for example, George Dickie's classic, "The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude," American Philosophical Quarterly I (1964), and Arnold Berleant's Art and Engagement (Temple University Press, 1991). I discuss Berleant's attack on the traditional dogmas of aesthetics in "Aesthetics and Engagement," The British Journal of Aesthetics 33 (1993): 220-227 and "Beyond the Aesthetic," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52 (1994): 239-241.
11. Carroll, p. 246, Carroll's italics.
12. Elsewhere, I approach the concept of appreciation by attending not to our everyday appreciative experience but rather to some of the traditional theoretical discussions of the concept of the aesthetic. Nonetheless, I reach similar conclusions about the nature of appreciation. See section I of "Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature," Landscape.
13. Paul Ziff, "Art and Sociobiology," Antiaesthetics: An Appreciation of the Cow with the Subtile Nose (Dordrecht; D. Reidel, 1984), p. 101.1 have taken the liberty of adding commas to the quotes from Ziff. I elaborate and defend
Ziff *s account of aesthetic appreciation in "Critical Notice of Ziff, Antiaesthetics: An Appreciation of the Cow with the Subtile Nose" The Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (1987): 919-933.
14. Ziff, p. 101.
15. Ibid.
16. Godlovitch, p. 28, my italics.
17.1 do not wish to suggest, however, that mystery has no place whatsoever in the aesthetic appreciation of nature. See Section V of "Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature," Landscape.
18. Godlovitch argues that his sense of mystery "doesn't match certain conceptions of mystical insight" (p. 27), but his overall view seems to be that the boundaries between the aesthetic and the religious are "obscure and even trivial" p. 28).
19. Carroll, p. 253.
20. Carroll, p. 258.
21. Carroll, p. 254, my italics.
22. Related concerns are expressed by Yuriko Saito; see her "Is There a Correct Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature?," The Journal of Aesthetic Education 18 (1984): 35-46.1 discuss these concerns in "Saito on the Correct Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature," The Journal of Aesthetic Education 20 (1986): 85-93.
23. Carroll, p. 258, my italics.
24. Carroll, p. 253. 25.Ibid.
26. Carroll, p. 254.
27, An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 50th annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics, Philadelphia, 1992. I profited from the responses of those present, especially Stan Godlovitch and my commentator, Ron Moore. I have also benefited from comments by Philip Alperson and two anonymous reviewers for this journal.
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