Aesthetics in Europe and the Americas

Aesthetics, as noted earlier, is not always concerned with art. The core of Kant's theory of aesthetic judgment had little to do with art but rather with the special kind of pleasure taken in the appearance of things (of any kind). There are longstanding debates over whether there exists a distinctive "aesthetic attitude" or "aesthetic experience" associated with contemplating an object "for its own sake," without interest or desire. The psychologist Edward Bullough (1880–1934) introduced the idea of psychical distance to explain aesthetic response, giving the illustration of someone fogbound at sea enraptured by the beauty of the swirling fog quite apart from the imminent dangers it presents. While recognizing some such phenomenon, philosophers have challenged the idea of an aesthetic attitude either as too narrow to do justice to the many interests, including moral and political ones, properly brought to art appreciation, or even as a "myth," reducible to other factors.

Setting aside difficulties in how to characterize the psychology of aesthetic appreciation, philosophers have raised questions about the kind of qualities sought in aesthetic experience. Are there distinctive aesthetic qualities? If so, what makes them different from nonaesthetic, physical, structural, or perceptual qualities? The English philosopher Frank Sibley (1923–1996) initiated the contemporary debate and was one of the first to broaden the scope of the inquiry beyond the limited focus on qualities like beauty and the sublime. Words that identify aesthetic qualities, he suggested, include: unified, balanced, integrated, lifeless, serene, somber, dynamic, powerful, vivid, delicate, moving, trite, sentimental, tragic, and many more. Some are purely evaluative, some have a descriptive element. Such qualities "emerge" from, but are not logically determined by, nonaesthetic properties like color, configuration, or material constitution. They require "taste" for their apprehension and might be missed by nondiscerning perceivers. A revived form of eighteenth-century debates about the objectivity of beauty addresses the question whether a "realist" or "antirealist" theory of aesthetic qualities is most apt. Those defending the former often postulate specially qualified observers whose judgments are normative.

The most striking reaffirmation that there is more to aesthetics than just philosophy of art comes in the recent renewed interest in the aesthetics of nature and its offshoot "environmental aesthetics." The dominance of philosophy of art in aesthetics (since Hegel) had distorting effects on philosophical understanding of the appreciation of nature. For one thing, art had become a paradigm for all aesthetic experience, and natural objects or landscapes were viewed as essentially like works of art. Even in the eighteenth century there is evidence of such a conception with the pleasure taken in landscaped gardens, scenic views, "prospects," the "picturesque." Pioneers in the new aesthetics of nature, including Ronald Hepburn and Allen Carlson, insist that appreciation of nature is sui generis. Nature, after all, does not come "framed" or designed by an artist, nor is it static. For Carlson a "true" or appropriate appreciation of the natural world, as it is in itself, does not rest on a merely intuitive response or "innocent eye" but should be informed by knowledge—drawn from geology, biology, and ecology—about the natural processes that brought about the objects perceived. What gives a mountain range its distinctive appearance? Why do landscapes look as they do? To explain our response to the appearance we must go deeper than mere appearance. The advantage of Carlson's view is that it relates aesthetics to practical and informed decisions about environmental planning, and it connects to ethical concerns about ecological preservation. But other philosophers prefer a more subjectivist conception and dismiss as too prescriptive the idea of "appropriate" or "inappropriate" responses to nature.

Of course not all environments are "natural," just as not all "nature" is void of human intervention. Environmental aesthetics goes beyond the aesthetics of nature by considering environments of all kinds, man-made or wilderness, urban or rural. It is hard to see how norms for aesthetic appreciation for such a variety of environments might be established, although extensions of Carlson's "cognitive" approach have been proposed. Also, it is not clear exactly where the bounds lie between a genuinely aesthetic response to an environment and other more or less pleasurable responses, such as "feeling at home" or sensing a relaxed atmosphere.

Aesthetics has an immensely broad scope both in the objects of its inquiry—from the fine arts to a forest wilderness—and in its methods and underlying principles. A concern for beauty resides deeply in human nature, and inquiring into its sources and characteristics occupies a central place in philosophy. There is, as briefly outlined, a long and rich tradition of debate in Western intellectual history that seeks to explore and clarify the aesthetic dimension of human experience. That tradition continues strongly to this day.