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Notes
See Figure 3 in §3 below and the discussion there.
In this article, I will focus on the visual aspect of experiences of landscapes, which I take to be the most important.
This article is not concerned with the ontology of macroscopic ordinary objects. When it comes to this ontological issue, I do happen to be an eliminativist of this kind.
Rolston, H. 1995. "Does aesthetic appreciation of landscapes need to be science-based?". British Journal of Aesthetics, 35:4, p. 375.
In this article, for simplicity and brevity, I will not discuss the dynamic and temporally extended aspect of an aesthetic experience of a landscape. Clearly, a landscape continuously changes, as clouds or the sun move for instance, and this is often a relevant aspect of the experience. I will briefly mention this aspect several times in what follows, but I will not provide a full analysis of it. As it will become apparent in §5 below, I think that appreciating a landscape has a lot in common with the way we appreciate a photograph. On the way photographs (can) depict/represent temporal extension see Benovsky, J. 2012. "Photographic representation and depiction of temporal extension". Inquiry, 55:2, p. 194–213. There are some interesting similarities there with what I say here, especially when it comes to the role imagination plays in the appreciation of photographs (and landscapes). In Benovsky, J. forthcoming. "From experience to metaphysics: on experience-based intuitions and their role in metaphysics". Noûs, DOI: 10.1111/nous.12024, I discuss how our experience of change, movement, temporal extent, and the passage of time works, based on the idea that such dynamic experiences arise from the way our brain interprets appropriately connected static events.
Rolston, H. 1995. "Does aesthetic appreciation of landscapes need to be science-based?". British Journal of Aesthetics, 35:4, p. 376 and 380.
Compare to the classical notion of the sublime (see inter alia Burke, E. 1757. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Oxford University Press, new edition 2015., Kant, I. 1790. Critique of Judgment. trans. Werner Pluhar, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987., Schopenhauer, A. 1818. The World as Will and Representation. trans. Norman, J., Welchman, A., Cambridge University Press).
Rolston, H. 1995. "Does aesthetic appreciation of landscapes need to be science-based?". British Journal of Aesthetics, 35:4.
Carlson, A. 1981. "Nature, aesthetic judgment, and objectivity". Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40:1, p. 15–27 and Carlson, A. 2000. Aesthetics and the Environment. Routledge.
Parsons, G. 2002. "Nature appreciation, science, and positive aesthetics". British Journal of Aesthetics 42:3, p. 279–295.
Caroll, N. 1993. "On being moved by nature: between religion and natural history". In Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts, Kemal, S. and Gaskell, I. (eds.). Cambridge University Press, p. 245.
A time-lapse video of this can be seen at http://www.jiribenovsky.org/aesthetics-landscapes.
An often-cited example of such a case is Hepburn, R. W. 1963. "Aesthetic appreciation of nature". British Journal of Aesthetics, 3:3, p. 200: "Supposing I am walking over a wide expanse of sand and mud. The quality of the scene is perhaps that of wild, glad emptiness. But suppose that I bring to bear upon the scene my knowledge that this is a tidal basin, the tide being out. I see myself now as virtually walking on what is for half the day sea-bed. […] Thus, in addition to spatial extension (or sometimes instead of it), we may aim at enriching the interpretative element of our experience, taking this not as theoretical 'knowledge-about' the object or scene, but as helping to determine the aesthetic impact it makes upon us".
Brady, E. 1998. "Imagination and the aesthetic appreciation of nature". The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 56:2.
Fudge, R. S. 2001. "Imagination and the science-based aesthetic appreciation of unscenic nature". The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 59:3.
Walton, K. L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Harvard University Press.
Hume, D. 1978. In A Treatise of Human Nature, Nidditch, P. H (eds.). Oxford Clarendon Press, p. 299.
Fudge, R. S. 2001. "Imagination and the science-based aesthetic appreciation of unscenic nature". The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 59:3, p. 277.
See a photograph of the Grand Capucin at www.jiribenovsky.org/aesthetics-landscapes.
The Matterhorn is not a good example here; it is composed of various sedimentary rocks and gneisses.
The grounding relation is better suited that supervenience to explain the relationship between aesthetic properties of an object and its non-aesthetic properties. For a detailed discussion, see Benovsky, J. 2012. "Aesthetic supervenience vs. aesthetic grounding". Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics, XLIX/V:2, p. 166–178.
Brady, E. 1998. "Imagination and the aesthetic appreciation of nature". The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 56:2, p. 143–144 makes an interesting distinction here between four kinds of imagination – ampliative, revelatory, exploratory, and projective – and the various ways it can play a role in the aesthetic appreciation of nature (and not only landscapes).
Hume, D. 1985. Of the standard of taste. In Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, Miller (ed.). Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, p. 240–241, also adds that such qualified judges also have to be practiced in the attribution of aesthetic properties, have to have a "good sense", and have to be intellectually honest.
This is true in all normal cases. The case of a photograph taken by accident if a camera drops on the floor and the shutter is released does not constitute a relevant counter-example, but I do not have the space here to defend this claim, based on the idea that in all cases, including the case of the camera that falls on the floor, decisions need to be taken, necessarily, before a photograph comes into being (I discuss this issue in Benovsky, J. 2011. "Three kinds of realism about photographs". The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 25:4 and more quickly but more specifically in Benovsky, J. 2014. "The limits of photography". International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 22:5, p. 716–733, §5).
The context of creation matters in the aesthetic appreciation of all works of art (see, inter alia, Walton, K. L. 1970. "Categories of art". Philosophical Review 79:3, p. 334–367, or Levinson, J. 1984. "Aesthetic supervenience". Southern Journal of Philosophy, 22:Supplement, p. 93–94), and it can typically include historical, political, or social contexts (think, for instance, of Kundera's "The Joke").
In Benovsky, J. 2013. "Experiencing photographs qua photographs: what's so special about them?", Contemporary Aesthetics, I explore and defend the view that photographs and paintings are not as different as one might think.
Levinson, J. 2015. "Paintings, photographs, titles". In Figuring Out Figurative Art. Contemporary Philosophers on Contemporary Paintings, Matravers and Freeman (eds.). Routledge, p. 168: "A photograph is always in some degree and at some level a trace of something real, something that exists or that existed at some time […]".
Walton, K. L. 1984. "On the nature of photographic realism". Critical Inquiry, 11:2.
Benovsky, J. 2011. "Three kinds of realism about photographs". The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 25:4, §5.
On the (central) role imagination plays in photographic depiction and representation, see Benovsky (manuscript).
Benovsky, J. 2012a. "Photographic representation and depiction of temporal extension". Inquiry, 55:2, p. 194–213, §2–3.
This is a neighbouring, but stronger, claim than the idea that the appreciator of nature (not landscapes) is an "active participant" (for a good discussion of this claim, see Budd, M. 2002. The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature. Oxford University Press, Chap. 4, §2). Also, compare to Brady, E. 1998. "Imagination and the aesthetic appreciation of nature". The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 56:2, p. 142: "With art, much depends on the ability of the artist to create an engaging and imaginative work of art. With nature, the character of the natural object to a great extent determines how much perceptual effort is required. It may take less effort to see the beauty of a particularly grand landscape than a mudflat or a wasteland. However, mudflats and wastelands may also have aesthetic value, and perceiving that is dependent upon the effort of the percipient." (Brady of course does not use here the terms "nature" and "landscape" in the way I do.).
Carlson, A. 1984. "Nature and positive aesthetics". Environmental Ethics, 6, p. 5–34.
Budd, M. 2002. The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature. Oxford University Press, p. 91: "[…] just as the aesthetic appreciation of art is the appreciation of art as art, so the aesthetic appreciation of nature is the aesthetic appreciation of nature as nature. For, given that the natural world is not anyone's artefact, the aesthetic appreciation of nature as nature, if it is to be true to what nature actually is, must be the aesthetic appreciation of nature not as an intentionally produced object (and so not as art)."
This notion of the artist/creator can of course be understood as applying in degree. An appreciator of a landscape can take the time and effort to appreciate a landscape in the best possible way (say, for instance, by hiking up a mountain opposite to the Matterhorn during the night, in order to be there at sunrise, at the best time of the year, and so on), but she can also be a 'minimal creator' when, for instance, she just looks out a train's window to appreciate the mountains that just happen to be there – this is a very minimal effort, but one that still counts as 'creation' in a minimal sense, where the appreciator has simply made the choice to pay attention to what is there, given the point of view and the framing she has. Also, the artist/creator can, of course, be educated by other artists/creators. A good mountain guide, or a guide in, say, the Arches National Park, is typically someone who teaches her clients when, where, and how to look at a landscape, as well as how to understand it, providing information along with the best points of view and the best time of observation.
For very useful comments that helped me to improve this article, I would like to thank Bernard Debarbieux, Lynda Gaudemard, Baptiste Le Bihan, Jerrold Levinson, Olivier Massin, and Anne Meylan.
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Benovsky, J. Aesthetic Appreciation of Landscapes. J Value Inquiry 50, 325–340 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9514-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9514-9