Environmental Aesthetics

This module is designed to equip students with a nuanced and critical understanding of environmental issues as they relate to aesthetic values. Drawing upon a diverse range of philosophical and cultural traditions from both Eastern and Western perspectives, the module examines aesthetic approaches to nature and the broader environment. Topics include concepts such as beauty, the sublime, wilderness, the natural world, human and built environments, as well as the notion of 'milieu'.

Learning Outcomes

• Demonstrate insightful understanding of environmental issues in relation to aesthetic values

• Identify critical environmental issues within the context of the contemporary world

• Display a sound understanding of how philosophical reflection can contribute to addressing issues concerning aesthetic experience and the environment

• Explain rigourously and accurately existing works in the field

• Develop critical thinking and creative ideas

• Research and write a coherent essay with citations on an agreed relevant topic in the field of environmental aesthetics

• Actively take part in constructive and critical dialogues

Teaching and learning methods: The course is lecture-based, supplemented by tutorials when relevant. 



Methods of assessment and examination: Overall assessment is by written essay at the end of the semester (c. 5000 words).

Texts: Relevant excerpts will be provided from the sources listed below for each topic.

Topics                                  

1. Introduction: Environmental Aesthetics

Allen Carslon (2015) ‘Environmental Aesthetics’ in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/environmental-aesthetics/

Arnold Berleant (2017) What Is Environmental Aesthetics?’ in Research Gate

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317369665_What_is_Environmental_Aesthetics

2. Nature, Mountain, Water

Introduction to East Asian conceptions of nature and the Chinese tradition

Wangheng Chen, Chinese Environmental Aesthetics (2015)

3. Nature, Culture, Living Things 

Introduction to East Asian conceptions of nature: A Japanese view  

Kinji Imanishi, A Japanese View of Nature – The World of Living Things (1941)

4. Nature from Matter and Motion to Form

Western conception of nature: matter, form and motion 

Aristotle, Physics (4th c. BCE)

5. Kant, Nature, Morality

Western conceptions of nature as examplary object of aesthetic experience    

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (1790)

6. Burke, Sublime, Environment

Western conceptions of the sublime as environmental experience  

Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)

7. Nature, Home and Wilderness

On the ideas of nature as home (Thoreau) and wilderness (Muir)

Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854)        

John Muir, Essential Muir (2006)

8. Nature on Its Own Terms

Aesthetic appreciation of nature on its own terms (the cognitive model)

Allen Carlson, Nature and Landscape: An Introduction to Environmental Aesthetics (2008)

9. Immersion into Nature

The immersed aesthetic appreciation of nature (the non-cognitive model)

 Arnold Berleant, Living in the Landscape: Toward an Aesthetics of Environment (1997)

  10.   Built Environment and Place

On the aesthetic dialectics of the urban environment

 Nishida Kitaro, “Basho” in Place and Dialectic: Two Essays by Nishida Kitaro, trans. John W.M. Krummel and Shigenori Nagatomo (2011 [1926]) 

Additional Sources  

• Marco Altamirano, Time, Technology and Environment: An Essay on the Philosophy of Nature (2017)

• J. Baird Callicott & James McRae (eds.), Environmental Philosophy in Asian Traditions of Thought (2014)

• Mark Elvin, The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China (2006) 

•  Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (2001)

• Masaharu Anesaki, Art, Life and Nature in Japan (1933)   

• Kathryn B. Alexander, Saving Beauty: A Theological Aesthetics of Nature (2014) 

• Emily Brady, Aesthetics of the Natural Environment (2003)

• Timothy Morton, Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics (2009)

• Glenn Parsons, Aesthetics and Nature (2008)

• Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture (2000)

• Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant, The Aesthetics of Natural Environments (2004) 

• Arnold Berleant and Allen Carlson, The Aesthetics Of Human Environments (2007)

• Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (1984)

• Henri Lefebvre, Writings on Cities (1996)