Part of the Continuum Aesthetics series, this book addresses all the central issues in the aesthetics of nature.

Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty addresses the complex relationships between aesthetic appreciation and environmental issues and emphasizes the valuable contribution that environmental aesthetics can make to environmentalism. Allen Carlson, a pioneer in environmental aesthetics, and Sheila Lintott, who has published widely in aesthetics, combine important historical essays on the appreciation of nature with the best contemporary research in the field. They begin with the scientific, artistic, and aesthetic foundations of current environmental beliefs and attitudes. Then they offer views on the conceptualization of nature and the various debates on how to properly and respectfully appreciate nature. The book introduces positive aesthetics, the belief that everything in nature is essentially beautiful, even the devastation caused by earthquakes or floods, and the essays in the final section explicitly bring together aesthetics, ethics, and environmentalism to explore the ways in which each might affect the others. Book jacket.

The Aesthetics of Natural Environments is a collection of essays investigating philosophical and aesthetics issues that arise in our appreciation of natural environments. The introduction gives an historical and conceptual overview of the rapidly developing field of study known as environmental aesthetics. The essays consist of classic pieces as well as new contributions by some of the most prominent individuals now working in the field and range from theoretical to applied approaches. The topics covered include the nature and value of natural beauty, the relationship between art appreciation and nature appreciation, the role of knowledge in the aesthetic appreciation of nature, the importance of environmental participation to the appreciation of environments, and the connections between the aesthetic appreciation of nature and our ethical obligations concerning its maintenance and preservation. This volume is for scholars and students focussed on nature, landscapes, and environments, individuals in areas such as aesthetics, environmental ethics, geography, environmental studies, landscape architecture, landscape ecology, and the planning and design disciplines. It is also for any reader interested in and concerned about the aesthetic quality of the world in which we live.

This books presents fresh and fascinating insights into our interpretation of the environment and shows how our aesthetic experience encompasses nature rather than art.

The aesthetics of nature has over the last few decades become an intense focus of philosophical reflection, as it has been ever more widely recognised that it is not a mere appendage to the aesthetics of art. Everyone delights in the beauty of flowers, and some are thrilled by the immensity of mountains or of the night sky. But what is involved in serious aesthetic appreciation of the natural world? Malcolm Budd presents four interlinked studies in the aesthetics of nature, approaching the subject from a variety of angles. As well as developing Budd's own original ideas, the book provides a comprehensive treatment of Kant's classic aesthetics of nature, and an encyclopaedic critical survey of recent literature on the subject.

A distinguished group of scholars here probes the complex structure of aesthetic responses to nature in a discussion enriched with insights from art history, literary criticism, geography and philosophy. Exploring the interrelation among nature, beauty and art, they show that natural beauty is impregnated with concepts derived from the arts and from particular accounts of nature. The distinction and relation between art and nature are questioned, and the volume culminates in philosophical studies of the role of scientific understanding, engagement and appreciation in aesthetics.

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.