Is All Beauty in Nature?

Ugliness Transformed in Ecosystemic Perspective

Beyond Beauty to the Sublime

Shannon Maylath

Holmes Rolston’s Environmental Aesthetics

Defense of a particular form of aesthetic positivism: a system where not every individual aspect of nature is necessarily positive, but essentially is as a larger whole.This is in contrast to a more extreme aesthetic positivism,

where everything in nature is beautiful precisely because it is natural.

“Telescoping System” where natural phenomena can be considered as Items, Systemic Processes or Scenic Wholes. Proper categorization will be key in understanding a positive aesthetic world picture.

Natural aesthetics is fundamentally different from aesthetics of man-made objects.Nature cannot fail in the way man-made objects can.

Overview

Intuition: “Aesthetic properties ‘call for’ appropriate aesthetic experiences, and it is never ‘called for’ to say that such places are bland, dull, boring, incoherent, chaotic.”

“Wild” Distinguishes beauty from instrumentality/utility.Shows the importance of experiencing a landscape

on its own terms, sensitive to its integrity.One sense in which aesthetic properties are

always good:“There can be no failures in nature because nothing

is to be judged in the light of aesthetic intention.

Is All Beauty in Nature?

He goes on to acknowledge that apart from the easy answer, there do seem to be instances of failure (negative situations) in nature. These “failures” can be:ItemsSystemic ProcessesScenic Wholes

Death and destruction examples show that there are ugly aspects of nature, but....

Cont.

Ugliness Transformed in Ecosystemic Perspectives Widen the scope of the natural

phenomenon that is being appreciated: “Every item must be seen not

in framed isolation, but framed by its environment, and this frame in turn becomes part of the bigger picture we have to appreciate...”

Characterization of beauty that is most conducive to this sort of appreciation. Not “Disney World” but a

struggling, somber, serious beauty.

Cont.Rolston discusses four

ways of understanding or approaching this program for natural aesthetic appreciation:Appreciating what is not

present.Dead wood,

underground, decay, predation

Appreciating what is marred, for the greater wholeJigsaw puzzle, bitten

apple, damaged leaf

Cont.Appreciating nature as

part of “something greater”“Ugliness is in the eye of

the beholder,” - Rolston “Beautiful in the Eyes of God,” -Muir

Appreciating natural phenomena in a larger timeline“Ugliness mellows-though

it does not disappear-and makes its contribution to systemic beauty and to beauty in later-coming individuals...”

So, for Rolston, the end of the individual is never the end of the story. Itemized ugliness within a systemic process

does not subtract from, but enriches the whole.The ugliness is contained, overcome, and

integrates into positive, complex beauty.“Not so much a matter of sight, as insight into

the drama of life”

Cont.

Cont.So what about ugly

systemic processes? i.e. lava flows, tsunami, forest firesOur understanding of

the greater good these events provide may not have caught up to the magnitude of the negativity we associate with these sorts of natural occurences.

Aesthetic properties push the beholder to the experiences of the sublimeThis reinforces the move Rolston is making

from item systemic process scenic wholes / the sublime

To Appreciate the sublime aspects of nature:Be aware of nature’s specific individuality (it is

not agriculture, it is not art)Appreciate it appropriately, allow it to

overwhelm (this means immersion, not experience through car window)

Appreciating its enormity and projection (this means considering entire ecosystems, and our place in them)

Beyond Beauty to the Sublime

Cont. A Criticism: People accuse

Rolston of having an aesthetic blindfold due to Nature Romanticism “One stretches and twists

‘beauty’ to fit all the available evidence, some of which would by usual criteria be interpreted as repulsive.”

His Reply: this is not self-centered manipulation of the system, but rather an insistence on context. The goal: Finding an appropriately

inclusive paradigm Finding a holistic over partial

aesthetic view

It is not the case that nature is invariably aesthetically positive in immediate detail, but that it is essentially so when even the ugliness is embraced by the sublime. “As always with trends, one needs not only to

evaluate the particulars in space and time, but also to see the system.”

Essential motif: the conquest of constructive over destructive forces, resulting in positive aesthetic experience.

Conclusions