Aesthetics of Nature

Contents

  1. Summary
  2. 1. Introduction
    1. 1.1. Hypothesis and Research Questions
    2. 1.2. Methodology
    3. 1.3. Original Scientific Contribution to the Development of the Field
  3. 2. Some Reservations about Natural Beauty
    1. 2.1. The Original Sin: Hepburn and/or Adorno?
    2. 2.2. Survey of the Field: Established Positions in the Aesthetics of Nature
  4. 3. Five Conditions for an Adequate Aesthetics of Nature and Their Critique
    1. 3.1. First Condition: Ziff's "Anything Viewed" Doctrine
    2. 3.2. Second Condition: Budd's "As Nature" Constraint
    3. 3.3. Third Condition: Berleant's Requirement of a "Unified Aesthetics"
    4. 3.4. Fourth Condition: Hepburn's Intuition of Serious Beauty
    5. 3.5. Fifth Condition: Thompson's Desired Objectivity
    6. 3.6. Whether the Divide between the Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Camps Makes Sense
    7. 3.7. The Deficient General History of the Discipline
  5. 4. Why Must Aesthetics Not Interest Ecologists?
    1. 4.1. Acentrism, Not Anthropocentrism
    2. 4.2. Environment, Not Landscape
    3. 4.3. Depth, Not Triviality
    4. 4.4. Objectivity, Not Subjectivity
    5. 4.5. Moral Engagement, Not Indifference
    6. 4.6. An Attempt at Aesthetic Conservation and Protection of the Environment
  6. 5. Mediation and Depiction
    1. 5.1. The Body as a Phantom Limb
    2. 5.2. Unmediatedness: From Postojna Cave to Križna Cave
    3. 5.3. The Claude Glass
  7. 6. Faking: The Renaturation of Škocjanski Zatok
    1. 6.1. The Countryside as a Space of Authenticity, Then and Now
    2. 6.2. Land Art and Bio Art as an Insult to Nature
    3. 6.3. Katz's Reply Two Decades Later: Biological Beings, Too, Are (or Can Be) Artefacts
  8. 7. Space: Apollo on the Moon Discovers the Earth
    1. 7.1. The Hubble Telescope and Space Landscapes: The Problem of the Sublime in Space
    2. 7.2. Environmental Imagination: Visualising Natural Space
  9. 8. Conclusion
  10. 9. List of Figures
  11. 10. Bibliography
  12. AfterwordAn Obituary for Ecology and a Manifesto for Positive EnvironmentalismAfterword to the Slovenian edition of Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects (Založba Krtina, 2018)
  13. Exhibition textThe Blue Marble: The Image That Turned Us into TerranautsAccompanying text for the exhibition Icons of the Non-visible (KSEVT, Vitanje, 2015)

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