the value of aesthetics in the ecological crisis of reason

The Value of Aesthetics in the Ecological Crisis of Reason

Thais MamedeSoares

Independent Research Project

Roosevelt Academy

Dr. Aiken and Dr. Mueller-Friedman

May14, 2012

APA style

Thais

Thais

The Value of Aesthetics in the Ecological Crisis of Reason 2

Abstract

Val Plumwood proposed an interspecies ethic which is necessary in the current ecological crisis

of reason. This research paper uses the same approach to the environmental crisis, but attempts

to complement Plumwoods sensitive ethic with environmental aesthetics. The perception,

cognition and emotion elements of aesthetic experiences have been historically, culturally and

socially contextualized through a multidisciplinary literature review. Although current

environmental aesthetics is based on the logic of domination which Plumwood rejects, it has

proven to have a potential for the education of ethical sensitivities. Moreover, it seems that the

transformation of reason alone, without aesthetics, is not enough to make real social-ecological

change. The historical separation of aesthetics from ethics has resulted in a complex

development towards consumerist life styles. In conclusion, the trivialization of aesthetics is

largely discouraged, while on the other hand, research on aesthetics traditions and potentials are

largely encouraged.


Table of Contents

Introduction 6 General Background 6

Research Question and Hypothesis 7

Research Guidelines

Plumwood & Environmental Aesthetics 9

Plumwoods Critique of Environmental Ethics 9

Plumwoods Major Works 9

Mastery over Nature 9

Ecological Crisis of Reason 11

Framework and Critiques 14

Framework and Sympathies 14

Critiques 15

Environmental Aesthetics 16

Origins of Environmental Aesthetics 16

Pre-Enlightenment 16

Post-Enlightenment 17

The Sublime, the Beautiful and the Picturesque 18

Environmental Aesthetics after Environmentalism 19

Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Approaches 20

Practicality and Problems 23

Closing Remarks 25


Steps to Discover Ethics within Aesthetic Experiences 26

The Malleability of Vision: Scopic Regimes 26

Antiquity 27

Middle Ages 27

Modern and Contemporary Regimes 28

The Age of Show 30

Gaze Ethics 32

Gaze as action: ethics 32

Gaze as non-action : pathological 33

Ideological Aesthetics 37

Cultural Politics of Representation 37

Environmental Design 41

Ideological Construction of Subjectivity 42

Closing Remarks 43

Ethical Contradictions in Environmentalist Aesthetics 45

Tradition of Domination 45

Historical Roots 45

Disinterestedness and Vision 46

Tourism and Scopic Regime 48

Propagating Consumerism 48

Aesthetics roots in Consumerism 48

Ethical Consumption 52

From Commodity to Ecological Aesthetics 54


Closing Remarks 55

Discussion: Vices and Virtues of Aesthetics 57

Conclusion 63

References 64


INTRODUCTION

In the face of the ecological crisis, the development of environmental ethics is a

contemporary demand. The ecological crisis is a recent term, which encompasses the

preoccupation with colossal environmental hazards, created by human impact that is mostly the

fruit of irresponsible behaviour. According to Val Plumwood,the ecological crisis is not just or

even primarily a crisis of technology, but is rather a crisis of rationality, morality, and

imagination (Plumwood, 2002, p. 98). In the same spirit, this paper will look at the

environmental crisis as a crisis in human (inter-)subjectivity, where different forms of

subjectivity, more specifically in aesthetic experiences, are in confrontation. Although

subjectivity is an ambiguous term, this paper will simply mean personal experiences and not in a

negative sense.

Plumwood has started to develop an interspecific ethic which should be built on

perceptual, epistemic and emotional sensitivities (Plumwood, 2002, p. 142). Unfortunately, she

does not go too in-depth on this statement, which seems to be very important. The first question

that comes to mind is how humans are supposed to develop or recognize these sensitivities. This

paper introduces aesthetics as a mode of education in the sensitive and ethical understanding that

Plumwood demands. Aesthetics is a good candidate, since it involves perceptual, epistemic and

emotional sensitivities. It becomes important especially when its elements are linked to ethics,

which is what this paper will attempt to accomplish.

It is true that Plumwood discards aesthetics right away as anthropocentric, but that does

not mean that it is not worth investigating. If it does not teach one how to develop these ethical

sensitivities, then at least it can show how one ought not to develop them. Besides, aesthetics is

incredibly present in the presentations of environmentalists, without being highly regarded.

Scholars concerned with the field of environmental aesthetics often utter statements like

although aesthetic considerations have always practical weight in the environmental movement,

they have often been ignored by theorists of environmental ethics (Fisher, 2001, p.265), and

environmentalists have tended to deemphasize this dimension of natures value (Jamieson,


2007, p.159). This study will thus also attempt to find out why aesthetics is devalued and

question whether that should be so.

Research Question and Hypothesis

The research question can be formulated as:

What is the possible role of environmental aesthetics in the development of Plumwoods

interspecific ethic?

Because of Plumwoods emphasis on a communicative and sensitive relationship with

other species, the hypothesis is that indeed aesthetics should have a greater importance as in

being a medium of sensibility which involves more than human, or androcentric, verbal

communication and understanding. On the other hand, the trivialization of aesthetics will

probably subjugate it to anthropocentric and biocentric values. The thesis statement of this

research is then:

Environmental aesthetics can be an important complementation to Plumwoods ethic when used

less trivially, becoming a focus of academic and practical research as a mode of education

inethical sensitivities.

Research Guidelines

While the term aesthetics was officially coined by A. Baumgartner in 1735, meaning

taste or beauty experience, the term is used in a variety of ways and is applied to periods before

the coining of the term (Eagleton, 1990). The authors used for this study use the term without

further explanation, and all still seem to use it in (slight) different ways. Eagleton has expressed

the difficulty of making a strict definition of the term, which is not a handicap. According to

him:

The aesthetic has played such a dominant role in modern thought, (...) but if the aesthetic returns with such persistence, it is partly because of a certain indeterminacy of definition which allows it to figure in a varied span of preoccupations: freedom and legality, spontaneity and necessity, self-determination, autonomy, particularity and universality, along with several others. (p. 3)


The original purpose of this study is to focus on aesthetic experience and its underlying

processes, but it is very difficult to talk about this without using related terms such as art,

representation, commodity and (aesthetic) consumerism. For this study, thus, aesthetics will be

put on a web or family of meaning. Perception, cognition, emotion and environment are the three

elements which, when woven together, form an aesthetic experience (Wang, n.d.). In this

experience, none of the elements can exist independently. Of course, these main elements are

further related to culture, society, history, biology, etc. As such, aesthetic experiences are always

relational and complex. This paper will attempt to explore this complexity through existing

literature on the topic.

The conducted research is a literary review with a multidisciplinary perspective. This is

an important aspect of the work. If this paper was written from one perspective only, it would

become more of a field expertise, such as art history or evolutionary psychology, instead of an

exposure of a common problem of contemporary times. The paper will thus contain literature

and concepts from various fields such as (environmental) philosophy, art history, (critical)

sociology, history, and human geography. Together, these fields bring in different aspects of the

same problem: environmental aesthetics and ethics.

This research will proceed in a few steps. The first step is to explicate Plumwoods

development of the interspecies ethic, and to have a general understanding of what the field of

environmental aesthetics encompasses. The second step will be an exploration of ethics within

aesthetic experiences, which will first seek ethics within regimes of perceptual experiences and

then in ideologies of representation, design and subjectivity. The third step will be to find

contradictions between environmentalist ethics and the ethics that emerge from the aesthetics

that they use. Finally, the vices and virtues of different aesthetics will be discussed along with an

example of the possibly virtuous aesthetics of Bateson.


PLUMWOOD AND ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS

PLUMWOODS CRITIQUE OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

MAJOR WORKS

Feminism and the Mastery of Nature

Plumwood argues that the long hyper-dualistic tradition of western culture is the culprit

for the environmental crisis which is occurring nowadays, and that the solution to this crisis is to

become critical of dominant ways of thinking. She formulated her thinking firstly in her book

Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993). In a later book, Environmental Culture: The

Ecological Crisis of Reason (2002), she reformulated the same core ideas and reshaped them

through more recent trends and critiques. In Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Plumwood

argues that dualisms are the result of a denied dependency on the subordinated other (p. 41).

This master-subordinator relationship in turn defines the identity of each of the categories. She

distinguishes dualism from other forms of differentiation and hierarchy; it is the sort of

differentiation that naturalizes a hierarchy of irrevocably separate realms. While in hierarchical

systems and differentiation there is still a possibility for shifting of positions, such change is not

possible in dualisms. The categories of dualism become opposites. A set of these dualism pairs

can be found in Table 1.


The master values of dualisms work through several ways. The first distinguishable way

is the backgrounding of the slave-component, the denial of its importance in existence, which

results in the universalization of the master values. Radical exclusion through opposition has

already been mentioned. Another way is through the definition of the slave-component as

lacking what the master-component is, which she calls incorporation. The slaves are thus not

seen in their own rights, but they have to put aside their values for the masters and in doing so

slaves become instruments for masters values. Plumwood argues that homogenization and

stereotyping of the dominated class support instrumentalization, incorporation and radical

exclusion.

Another important part of her argument is the consideration of the logic of dualism. This

is particularly important, because Plumwoods argumentation may be seen as a critique of reason

and differentiation in general, while it is not. She criticizes classical (Aristotelian) logic, but does

not see it as the only possible logic in the world. Also, she does not deny difference or

dichotomies; rather she distinguishes dualism as a particular logical type, which is marked by

negation. When the world is only known through Ps and not-Ps, not-Ps cannot have an

independent existence from P (See figure 1). This logical definition of not-P in terms of P is

TABLE 1: CONTRASTING PAIRS OF DUALISTIC WESTERN THOUGHT (PLUMWOOD, VAL 1993, P. 43).


exactly what produces radical exclusion and homogenization. Backgrounding, incorporation and

instrumentalization are caused by the other feature of classical logic: truth-suppression. When

the assumption behind the premises is true, it can be hidden. Even though the outcome is

dependent on this hidden premise, this is formally denied, which causes backgrounding of the

hidden assumption. Truth-interchangeability follows truth-suppression, which means that certain

truths may be changed by other truths as long as the implicational properties stay the same. In

other words, the means can change, as long as the same end is achieved; thus instrumentalization

is embedded in classical logic.

According to Plumwood, these features of classical logic are not inevitable to reason. The

discerning reason should not be denied nor does Plumwood deny difference. What has to happen

is the rectification of the distorted differences, which are created by dualistic thinking often

through the very denial of them, e.g. through homogenization.

The Ecological Crisis of Reason

Plumwoods account of environmental ethics, which is best articulated in Environmental

Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason (2002), argues that historically developed systems of

power have corrupted rationality to employ dualisms in order to justify and naturalize the

privilege of people over nature. This dominant form of rationality, dualistic thinking, is also

FIGURE 1 P AND -P (PLUMWOOD, 1993, P.57).


predominant in scientific, political, economic and ethical systems of reasoning. Rationalism is

not equated to reason, just as she has explained that classical logic is not the same as logic.

The philosophical task to find solutions in this environmental crisis is divided in two

attempts: re-situating humans in ecological terms, and situating non-humans in ethical terms for

the first time. The first attempt is easier and does not require a complete reframing of ethics.

Utilitarianism is not opposed to a more sustainable planet. The second task, however, is more

problematic and usually considered to be less important. From there arises the whole debate of

intrinsic value, for instance. The roots of these problems lie in the Cartesian dualistic rationality,

which dictates that a rational-conscious mind confronts a mindless and morally meaningless

universe (Plumwood, 2002, p. 143). This rationality makes it impossible for humans to justify

that animals, plants and rocks may have any form of intrinsic value whatsoever.

Neo-Cartesian dualism is used in the defence of animals with higher consciousness to

include them in the realm of persons rights. This is the typical case of minimal moral extension,

which does not overthrow moral bases founded on Cartesian dualism. This moral fundament is

described as the ethics of commoditization, because it separates persons from things, and its aims

are to maximize the amount of things for consumption by persons, which are the minimum elite.

(Neo-)Cartesian ethics cut off sharp boundaries between the privileged and the unprivileged,

denying the continuity of planetary life. Moral dualisms are also moral boomerangs: the

exclusion of lower classes reinforces the exclusion of a bit higher classes in other areas. This

means that when humans tend to exclude animals in their worthiness of moral considerations,

they are also more drawn to exclude unprivileged human races in their worthiness of

employment considerations. The practice of exclusion will reinforce the moral dualism that also

deteriorates the less privileged class in each atmosphere. Conversely, the practice of openness

and communication, even to non-humans, will make humans more ethical.

The denial of human embeddedness in nature, through Cartesian rationality and

anthropocentrism, leads to the Ecological denial- a denial of the environmental crisis. Centrism

is understood as an essential form of cognition, since it categorizes into superior and inferior.

But, says Plumwood, it is much more a matter of moral epistemology, of frameworks for

noticing, perception, attention and focus, and for self-perception, in framing concepts of

autonomy for example (Plumwood, 2002, p. 101). Her wording in this quote is abundant with

concepts intimately linked to aesthetics. She notices that in centrism the focus is on the victims


irrationality, whereas there are blinders in the master perspective which do not need to be

exposed for all of its aspects are irrationally assumed to be universally valid. This superior-

inferior relationship does not only affect the inferior negatively, but also the superior (as shown

in the example of gender under critiques of ecofeminism). Centrism is grounded on dualisms

and the master values of dualism that have been described above.

Related to this centrism is the biocentrism as proposed by deep ecology. Plumwood

criticizes its view that dualisms need to be bridged by unity and identification. In the unity of

deep ecology even atomic bombs would be part of identification, and natures independence and

difference are neglected. Thus, it does not fit her communication model for ethics. The

existential gulf between nature and human is still important. One can also feel respect for nature

through the experience of the Other (such as in a sublime-pristine nature scenario). The focus of

deep ecology on the biocentric Self, thus the self-interests of the total biotic community, is just

an expansion of the self in the self/other duality. For a relationship based ethic, there needs to be

regard for both self and other and their continuous balance and movement. Moreover, prudence

does not have to be abandoned in a non-centered ethic. Human-centeredness is associated with

egoism, although prudence does not have to be so. Those who can take care of themselves can

also take care of others.

Plumwood also states that Global capitalism is the expression of Cartesian dualism,

which divides person and property. The world is structured through egoism and competition.

However, Plumwood pleads for the move from a competitive to a complementary approach to

ethics. She says that her counter hegemonic program is self-critical and reflecting. Rather than

testing whether animals are good enough to have rights, it tests whether humans are qualified for

ethics.In order to be qualified for ethics, humans need to denaturalize assumptions of the Other,

including objectifying stereotypes. Humans also need to be aware of over-centred concepts of the

mind and open to the other as a communicative being. She further describes two features of an

interspecies ethic. The first is intentional recognition in order to see agency in non-humans. The

second is panpsychism, which is the view that Cartesian consciousness is in continuous

graduated ways permeating the natural world.(146). These features form the basis for new

interspecies ethics that open up to communicative, recognition-based and sensitive relationship.

As was mentioned in the introduction, Plumwood dismisses aesthetics, even though it seems to

be very close to the core of her ethic: Ultimately, a durable relationship between we humans


and our planetarypartners must be built on the kinds of perceptual, epistemic and emotional

sensitivities which are best founded on respect, care and love (Plumwood, 2002, p. 142). This

research paper will look for exactly these perceptual, epistemic and emotional sensitivities in

aesthetics.

PLUMWOODS FRAMEWORK AND CRITIQUES

Framework and Sympathies

Although there is a great variety of focuses within the field of ecofeminism, there is a

general agreement that the domination of nature should be understood through its connection

with the domination of women (Davion, 2001). Within the field, Plumwood is known for her

philosophical explication of value dualisms and the logic of domination (Davion, 2001). The

idea of logic domination is actually the intellectual product of Kate Warren, but is highly

compatible with Plumwoods thoughts (Davion, 2001). Plumwood is also memorable through

the fact that she rejected other radical environmentalist movements, such as social and deep

ecology. She rejected their assumptions that are still based on androcentric values, which is

contradictory to their struggle for equality (Davion, 2001). Through the logic of domination, not

only women, but also races and classes that are considered to be inferior, are connected with the

domination of the environment (Davion, 2001). This idea is supported by environmental justice,

the movement that sees the degradation of life of minorities behind and due to the degradation of

the environment (Davion, 2001). Therefore, it is important to take into account that ecofeminists

inspirations come from a history of social inequality and that their attempt is to find the roots of

this inequality in order to make justice to oppression. It is straightforward that scholars in

environmental justice, ecofeminism and post-colonial studies will look for historical and social

power dynamics behind concepts that are assumed to be universal. Rather than victimizing

nature, these groups are criticizing the dominant modern subject and his ethics. This paper will

take the same approach when studying environmental aesthetics.


Critiques

The general critique of ecofeminism is that there is a tendency to romanticize oppressed

groups and give them full uncritical credit in the construction of an ecofeminist ethic (Davion,

2001). Ecofeminists, including Plumwood, want to go back to the feminine values that have

been devalued by the patriarchal western society (Davion, 2001). By doing so, feminists accept

the gender roles that function under patriarchy uncritically (Davion, 2001). Moreover, they

essentialize femininity and nature without taking historical, class and race differences within

these categories into account (Davion, 2001). Also, that men or the ruling class does not only

have benefits from this duality is barely ever talked about (except for Plumwood). This is

something to think about when evaluating the effects on humans of the Cartesian separation

between humans and non-humans.

Despite these charges, ecofeminism is still valid. Uncritical, activist based solutions of

feminists should not overshadow their highly critical studies. Their important discovery is that

dualisms are legitimizing oppression. These dualisms are so inherent to people that even when

women are not happy with them and want to move away from this oppression, they fall in the

same ways of thinking. Feminists recognize that the domination logic consists of a hyper-

separation of categories, but they seek to solve the problem by exalting the oppressed categories,

instead of doing away with the dichotomies altogether. Equally important is the critique that

biocentrism comes from the same dichotomy as anthropocentrism. There can be no good

biocentrism if it is forms a dualist pair with anthropocentrism.After these essentialist charges,

Plumwood renamed her position as Critical feminist eco-socialism in order to distinguish

herself from the essentialist feminists (Gaard, 2011, p. 27). Such a change has been well

expressed in The Ecological Crisis of Reason.

A more specific critique of Plumwood comes from Eaton (2002). He points out that there

is a danger that does with attempting to see embedded cultural phenomena in overtly abstract

symbolic terms (Eaton, 2002, p. 178). According to him, this creates a reductionism that fails to

understand highly complex contextualized situations in all their aspects (Eaton, 2002). In other

words, Plumwoods theory may be as reductionist as the very rationality which it criticizes.

Indeed, Plumwood seems to go too fast in her judgements of what is right and wrong. This paper

will therefore still take aesthetics in consideration, even though she has dismissed it.


ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS

ORIGINS OF ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS

Pre-Enlightenment

Although environmental aesthetics has only emerged as discipline in the second half of

the twentieth century, there have been signs of symbolic values of nature for millennia. The

fundamental questions of modern environmental aesthetics have their foundations already in

Platos characterisation of the soul. As Wang et al put it: Such an idea that humans have some

common qualities with nature and yet differ from nature in some crucial aspects has shown the

fundamental complexity of understanding natural beauty, the very prime subject of

environmental aesthetics (p. 2). This already points out that the struggle of understanding and

dealing with differences, sometimes expressed as dualities, is crucial to the field of

environmental aesthetics.

Nature and landscape have had different meanings across historic-geographical lines

(Gold & Revill, 2004). From the Classical, Medieval and Renaissance period there are three

important legacies. The first is the pastoral landscape, which is the ideological symbol that

connects the Classical rural idyll with the Christian Garden of Eden (Gold & Revill, 2004, p.

80-115). The second is the animate nature, which is a model of the world where nature is the

expression of spirituality, religious values and emotions (Gold & Revill, 2004). The third legacy

is how landscape has come to be linked to identity. The land becomes property, a representation

of life style and a treasure of memories and history (Gold & Revill, 2004). These three major

legacies have been very important in the eighteenth and nineteenth century (and further), the

period of time when environmental aesthetics started its academic development towards its most

current form.


Post-Enlightenment

Eighteenth-century early development of nature aesthetics occurred through a tension of

two values (Rueger, 2007). The first was the value of freedom, which required nature

appreciation to be free of domestication, free of artistic judgment values (Rueger, 2007). The

second was the value of the picturesque, which was exactly the opposite: nature was only

beautiful when it looked like art (Rueger, 2007). This same tension was still present in the

revival of environmental aesthetics in the twentieth-century. The remaining question throughout

these periods is always what an appropriate appreciation of nature is (Rueger, 2007). The

dominant answer to this is the appreciation of nature for what it is, rather than for what it is not,

namely art (Rueger, 2007). Even though this question of appropriate appreciation already stems

from art, and the attempts to categorize nature appreciation in terms of beauty and sublime are

also derived from art, there is a tendency to distinguish between art and environmental aesthetics.

Kant is very important in this debate, for he is known to have manufactured the first

systematic study of aesthetics (Wang, n.d.). Kant is famous for being in favour of natural beauty

that is free from external concepts (Rueger, 2007). His concept of disinterestedness has become

central to the philosophy of aesthetic experience, which has to be detached from personal and

practical interestedness or everyday life (Wang, n.d.).

Rueger (2007) gives a comprehensive explanation of Kants ideas on nature aesthetics.

The pure form of judgements of taste is non-cognitive, and nevertheless universal. It is the

freedom from conceptualization that triggers the joyful experience of beauty. What happens is

that imagination and understanding, which are elements of the universal cognitive function, are

involved in the process of judgement of taste. However, these two elements do no behave in the

same way as in conceptual cognition, which makes taste judgments not objective. It seems that

pleasure is purposive; however, it cannot be, for taste judgments are not conceptual. It is also

very important that natural beauty is not purposeful. Nature must be mechanical, so that it does

not have purposes or intentions that correspond to the roots of aesthetic pleasure:only as a

mechanism does nature produce forms freely, without purposes or intentions (Rueger, 2007, p.

154). Pure aesthetic pleasure can only occur when there is no purpose or desire for the object.

Appropriate aesthetic judgements are judgments of appreciation for what it is; concepts about the

object or sensations should be undermined in order for the judgment to be pure.

Thus, the disinterested attitude is a normative concept that is grounded on the assumption


of a mechanical, passive nature and on the strict distinction between humans and nature.

Although this philosophical idea or assumption seems to disappear from sight later on, it is

inherent in the disinterestedaesthetic experience. This exemplifies how bodily experiences can be

grounded on ideas. Of course, the age of Enlightenment is also the age of Cartesian rationality

and the exaltation of the superior Reason. This compromises the field of (environmental)

aesthetics from the start. However, there have been changes and conflicts throughout the

development of the field. Therefore it is still important to trace this development.

The sublime, the beautiful and the picturesque

The valuation of wilderness experienced a transformation from fear and repulsion to

touristic and romantic attraction to spectacular nature (Gold & Revill, 2004). The sublime and

picturesque can be seen as visual theories and codes which make it possible for people to

reinterpret the terrible wilderness as a meaningful and pleasurable experience (Gold & Revill,

2004). This is an example of the power of visual codes, aesthetics, to change the meaning and

feeling of experiences. Kant is considered to have coined the term sublime, and Burke is his

successor in the elaboration of it (Gold & Revill, 2004). At the same time that the sublime is

dangerous and involving, it is also comforting through the distance of the spectator. (Gold &

Revill, 2004). The beautiful is the opposite of the sublime: it is carefully calculated and orderly.

The picturesque draws elements from both sublime and beautiful, and is best seen as a painting

or arrangement as in a picture. Both sublime and picturesque are products of the legacies of the

old pictorial tradition of seventeenth-century Italian painters (Gold & Revill, 2004). Table 2

shows more specific qualities of the three visual codes.


ENVIRONMETALISM AND REVIVAL OF NATURE AESTHETICS

While the interest in nature aesthetics had faded away for about a century, mainly

through Hegels assertion that art is the highest form of the aesthetic, it has been revived after the

1960s with the rise of environmental movements (Carlson, 2010). This is also due to the fact

that the environmental concern has reached the academic world, producing not only the field of

environmental aesthetics, but also environmental ethics (Carlson, 2010).

It is important to note that in the eighteenth-century British birth of early environmental

aesthetics, philosophers saw nature appreciation as a personal and passive acceptance of sensory

stimuli, what has become characterized as subjective (Wang, n.d.). It was only with the

Romantics in the nineteenth-century that a new element of objective impression was introduced

along with scientific knowledge as factors of what is to be properly appreciated (Wang, n.d.).

Around the corner of the twentieth-century, environmental aesthetics became a serious scientific

study, which, with the aid of cognitive psychology, acknowledges and supports an interactive

appreciation of the environment (Wang, n.d.). This transformation has left behind different

methods of studying environmental aesthetics: subjective, objective, distant or involved methods.

TABLE 2: THE SUBLIME, THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE PICTURESQUE (GOLD & REVILL, 2004, P. 141).


Within the philosophy of environmental aesthetics, there are several positions which are

generally divided in two groups: cognitive and non-cognitive approaches. Cognitive

approaches often take the form of realism, seeing nature as a manifestation of divine beauty or

orderly objectivity (Jamieson, 2001). Non-cognitive approaches tend to take a sort of post-

modern subjectivist position which states that beauty is on the eye of the beholder (Jamieson,

2001). Of course, there is a middle ground to that, where one believes that there are general

objective principles behind the judgement of beauty and that some properties of objects work in

subjective organs in such a way that compels people to find them beautiful (Jamieson, 2001).

The main question behind the cognitive and non-cognitive approaches is in the

comparison between artistic and nature appreciation (Carlson, 1998; 2011). The appreciation of

nature needs a different context than the context of art, which is mostly art history (Carlson,

1998; 2011). The cognitive approach uses scientific understanding, whereas the non-cognitive

approach uses a kind of subjectivity or holism as the new context. Most scholars in these fields

are also concerned with environmentalism, and tend to make aesthetics work for it in a way or

another. The question of appropriate appreciation is then also often submerged in

environmentalism and in the world views that produce different types of environmentalism.

Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Approaches

Important in the cognitive approach are scientific cognitivism and positive aesthetics

which go hand in hand. Scientific cognitivism is the view that scientific knowledge is necessary

and appropriate for aesthetic appreciation of nature (Carlson, 2007). This means that in order for

people to appreciate all nature, including its normally considered revolting parts, as beautiful,

they need to understand it scientifically (Carlson, 2007). Whatever is not beautiful at first sight

may become beautiful when understood in a larger scientific context (Carlson, 2007). Rolston is

famous for his example of the rotten carcass of an elk, full of maggots. (Carlson, 2007, p. 111).

It is revolting at first, but becomes beautiful as the insight of the whole recycling of nature (see

figure 2). People need to develop an all-seeing point of view or Gods-eye view in order to

reach the complex beauty of real nature (Carlson, 2007, p. 112). The point of view that Real

nature, or virgin nature, will always essentially be beautiful comes from positive aesthetics. The

threat for the subjectivity and insignificance of aesthetics is made invalid through this new


scientific ground of aesthetics (Carlson, 2007). Unfortunately, the question why the carcass is

revolting in the first place is not asked. This question would lead to a larger understanding of the

processes behind aesthetic experiences. It seems that the field of environmental aesthetics is less

concerned with this understanding, than it is with the modification and justification of aesthetic

experiences.

However, the cognitive views are condemned for they put the object of aesthetic

appreciation outside of immediate experience or perception (Carlson, 2007). There is absolutely

no guarantee that people will find the maggots in the rotting carcass beautiful for what they

represent. In other words, in order for people to find the parts of the whole beautiful, it needs to

be somehow presented in the perceptual composition (Carlson, 2007). A slight response to this

is that science can re-illuminate objects through their description (Carlson, 2007). Science

redescribes natural objects in a factious way that contends value: symbiotic relationships already

contend stability and harmony in them (Carlson, 2007). Moreover, organisms themselves are

described as harmonious and symbiotic, which means that the particular case is made beautiful

as well (Carlson, 2007). Scientific cognitivism also tries to find the roots of aesthetic experience

FIGURE 2 BEAUTIFUL, HARMONIOUS RECYCLING OF NATURE (MAGGOTS SERVED ON A DEAD ANIMAL, 2011).


through psychological experiments and evolutionary psychology. The greatest critiques of this

stance come from the side of non-cognitive approaches, which will be described below.

Non-cognitive approaches usually completely reject the disinterestedness of art

appreciation (Carlson, 2010). The subject of appreciation (Carlson, 2010) must be completely

immersed in the object of appreciation, or the appreciation must be purely emotional and

imaginative (Carlson, 2010). This means that there is an attempt to transcend nature/human and

subject/object dualisms (Carlson, 1998; 2011). The scope of aesthetic experience is broadened to

also include artistic objects and emotional responses such as wonder and intimacy (Carlson,

1998; 2011). Although the scientific cognitivism is far from being suitable for Plumwood, this

approach is not incompatible at first.

This approach is also criticized. Because there is no framework or painter around nature,

the non-cognitive approach usually disregards the questions of appropriate nature appreciation

(Carlson, 1998; 2011). These questions can never be answered. What is more important is to be

immersed in nature, appreciate and enjoy it freely (Carlson, 1998; 2011). This approach

effectively creates a validation to immediately accessible aesthetic experience (Carlson, 1998;

2011).

However, because of the broadness and perhaps vagueness of this approach, there is no

distinction between aesthetic experiences, which makes it rather trivial (Carlson, 1998; 2011).

One can appreciate both a tree and a skyscraper. The trust in subjective experience is thus the

main problem of this approach, which has lead to responses that try to make it more objective

(Carlson, 1998; 2011). This is where the old dualisms need to get involved in this approach. This

can be seen best in Emily Bradys (1998) critique of scientific cognitivism. She does not have a

problem with objectivity per se, but finds several problems with that position: it is difficult to

understand what exactly counts as scientific knowledge, and once it is understood, knowledge

can indeed expand appreciation, but is not essential to it. To make aesthetic value have an

important place in the ecological field, it needs to be unique and not simply subjective or trivial.

Science makes it less subjectivist, which is a good start, but it is imagination and perception that

make aesthetics unique. Science takes aesthetic appreciation too far away from the realm of

perception. Another distinct feature of environmental aesthetics is that they are free and

disinterested from practical interests. Brady completely neglects the roots of this approach in the

fundamental distinction between humans and nature. However, she continues, a science-based


approach makes appreciation limited, fixed and conventional; only imagination can make

appreciation be free and fresh all the time.

Her approach needs to be educated: aesthetic experience depends on the effort of the

observer which connects attentive observation with imagination. She gives two flexible

guidelines to make imagination appropriate, thus non-trivial and arbitrary. The first guideline

must be Kantian disinterestedness. The second and last is called imagining well (p. 146),

which entails that imagination must be appropriate to context and all irrelevant imagination must

be cut off through virtuous skill. This connection of aesthetics with virtuous skill is at the core of

the argument of this paper. It shows the educational aspect of aesthetics which is largely

undermined.

Practicality and problems

Bradys approach already exemplifies the attempt to find a middle ground between the

various approaches. This is done in order to strengthen rather than weaken the field of

environmental aesthetics. All this effort seems to go into the practical goal of making aesthetic

experience both pleasant and motivational for a better connection with nature. In other words, to

make aesthetic experience appropriate to environmental ethics. Aesthetics is not connected to

duty, but neither is ethic, says Rolston (2002). Ethic is logically and psychologically closer to

caring (p.127). According to him, humans must learn to move from shallow to deep aesthetics,

where aesthetics is embedded in scientific understanding and in the embodiment of humans in

the landscape.

There are also attempts to ecologize aesthetics, that is, not merely attempts to make

aesthetic values important motives for environmentalism, but attempts to make landscape design

ecological and to educate aesthetic experience to become ecological, or even to base

environmental ethics on environmental aesthetics. Traditional aesthetics is often in the way of

ecological practices (Rolston, 2002; Parsons, 1995). The emphasis is on how to make the

environments always beautiful in a consistent way, instead of focussing on health. According to

a study of Parsons (1995), this position is less certain. Aesthetics is potentially in conflict with

ecological goals of landscape ecology, but there is evidence for both psychological benefits and


of visual experiences of wild life, which in turn can stimulate positive environmental action.

There needs to be more research on their effect, according to him.

There are certainly more attempts to find a universal effect of being in nature in humans

through the scientific method, which are generally positive of psychological benefits (Gobster, et

al, 2007). These approaches come from a modernist perspective: Aesthetic value is a function

of aesthetic response (Fisher, 2001). They come along with biophilia: the evolutionary

psychology position that holds that humans have evolved to have psychological benefits from

engaging with natural surroundings and natural organisms (Fisher, 2001). However,

psychological effects do not guarantee that they will outweigh other cognitive processes and

social influences.

Loftis (2003) points out three problems of aesthetic foundations of environmental

ethics which rise independently from psychological effects. Firstly, it provides weak reasons for

actions, which are not comparable to motivation from basic necessities. Secondly, not every

nature carries positive aesthetic qualities; environmentally un-friendly culture, like skyscrapers,

can be just as aesthetic as environmental scenery. Thirdly, aesthetic values are associated with

Hollywood movie stars. They cannot be taken serious enough to justify sacrificial acts, such as

job and complete lifestyle changes.

Nonetheless, aesthetics is quite powerful, because it influences natural science.

According to Kovacss et al (2006) study, aesthetics influences the practice of ecology through

the appreciation of ecologists. One of the main motives for people to become ecologists is their

attraction to environmental aesthetics. Landscape ecology is also influenced in its design;

interpretation of ecology and even public perception of ecological processes are not left out.

Aesthetics may be in conflict with scientific practice, but it also may stimulate discoveries and

bring them in a particular direction.


CLOSING REMARKS

There are lots of other problems with environmental aesthetics: it rises up as a sort of

independent and new field which casts its past influences as inexistent. It merges on the one hand

with science and scientism and on the other hand with Romantic environmentalism, roughly

speaking. Along with these areas, it takes assumptions of objectivity and subjectivity in its

discussions for granted, without further elaborating on these notions, leaving them only half

criticized. Its disregards the massive use of aesthetics in environmentalist representation and art,

leading to a further disregard of the socio-ideological aspects of aesthetics. It tends to direct

aesthetic experience to become a motivation for environmental action, but does not see what the

untrained experience itself already tells about motivation, ideals and ethics. In all senses, this

new academic discourse is unshaped and muddled. Indeed, Wang et al have also come to the

same conclusion when trying to trace a methodology for the aesthetic discourse.

All in all, environmental Aesthetics is a new field with some environmentalist purposes

and has a history in Cartesian rationality. This field does attempt to unify ethics, emotion and

reasonability. The non-cognitive approach also attempts to bridge the subject/object divide,

although not without problems. Although it is clear that environmental aesthetics is rooted in

Cartesian dualisms, which is unsuitable for Plumwoods ethic, there are attempts to unify the

elements needed in her ethical sensitivity: ethics, perception, emotions and epistemology. The

failure of these attempts may lie in the lack of coherence and clarity of the field. The following

section will be an attempt to understand the relationship between these elements through

historical, social and ideological contextualization. The main purpose will be to connect

sensitivity or perception with ethics and find the political or ideological relation to it.


STEPS TO DISCOVER ETHICS WITHIN AESTHETIC EXPERIENCES

THE MALLEABILITY OF VISION: SCOPIC REGIMES

One of the ways of discovering aesthetics relation to ethics is through historical

contextualization. One will then find that the problematic connection between aesthetics and

ethics lies already at perception. Today it is not common to think that perception can be trained

into a virtuous skill. However, this very unthinkable property already points to the existing ethic

of the modernist period, which will be explained below.

There are writers that trace the change in perception habits throughout western history.

More specifically, they trace the different regimes of vision, or so-called scopic or ocular

regimes. These regimes are about the eye as an organ and vision as a socio-historical

phenomenon. While there are many theories of vision, predominant scientific theories cancel all

theories that do not follow the scientific method. These authors do not see one type of vision as

being more real than the other. Rather, they link vision to culture and history. This connection

goes to an extent that not only interpretations of vision are cultural, but also what is visible to the

eye. The scientific explanation of vision is thus not more correct than the medieval

understanding of seeing; it is only a manifestation of different cultural ethos. This section will

illustrate how vision is not merely a naturalist or a-historical phenomenon of perceiving, but

takes different forms and is malleable through social, historical, and political forces. Vision will

be the focus of this particular section, since there is more literature available on it.


ANTIQUITY

The starting point of Illich (1998; 2001) is in Ancient Greece, where Opsis, i.e. to gaze, is

a human action that can be trained and be made into an ethical skill or virtue (2001, p. 5). The

science of opsis is the basis and guide for human activity. Among the Greeks the gaze is a fleshy

projection out of the skin, or psychopodia. It touches the objects to reveal their internal

characteristics just the way that the sun reveals their colours (See figure 3). The fusion between

object and subject occurs outside of the body in the cosmic event where the glance [is] coloured

by the world, the world coloured [is] by the glance (1998, p. 6). Knowledge of the world is thus

based on the conaturality(or shared nature) of the fleshy gaze and world.

MIDDLE AGES

In the Middle Ages, the gaze is still going outwards, but does no longer fuse with the

object; it extracts universal meanings from the characteristics emanated from it (Illich, 1998).

The gaze transcends material reality and unites with the eternal Forms or love of Christ (Illich,

1998). That religion is important in the visual experience of individuals has also been

FIGURE 3 PSYCHOPODIA REACHING OUT FOR BUNNY (OWN IMAGE).


underscored in the book The Medieval Vision, by Carolly Erickson (1976). According to her

research findings, it also seems that the gaze is an activity connected to divinity. It was normal

for travelling monks to see mystical creatures, for vision was creative energy rather than

passive recording (p. 13). It is not so that people could not distinguish sober visions from more

imaginative visions, but the creative component of vision was acknowledged and celebrated. In

fact, it was mans visual capabilities, Macrobius wrote, that determined the degree of his

participation in the divine mind (p. 13).

MODERNIST AND CONTEMPORARY REGIMES

In this period, the gaze becomes an instrument, a Camera Obscura (See figure 4), where it

is detached from the body and mediates a pictorial reality (Illich, 1998; 2001). Reality is now

objectified and can be directly perceived through such detached instrumentation (Illich, 1998;

2001). However, there is still a common ground that can bring the spectator to understanding of

the picture: the perspective (Illich, 2001). This change occurs due to the inversion of the gaze ray

(Illich, 1998; 2001). In this regime, light comes inside the passive eye (Illich, 1998; 2001). This

implies that metaphysics invites itself to the cognition to know it. Men can have direct

knowledge of the world through the eyes, which is now equal or even inferior to an observatory

device (Illich, 1998; 2001). Instrumental, pictorial observation becomes the only way in which

the world could be logically derived and represented (Illich, 1998; 2001). The image, and not

what is behind it, becomes essential to observation and reality.

Jay (1998) focuses on the plurality and hierarchy of scopic regimes present in the modern

period, which started with the Renaissance. The field of perception is here fundamentally non

reflexive, visual and quantitative (p.3). According to him, authors such as Rorty, Foucault and

Debord confirm that vision is dominant in the modern period (Jay, 1998). Jay suggests a

hierarchy of visual subcultures in modernity, and characterizes the hegemonic visual culture of

the modern period as a Cartesian perspectivalism. This is in line with the reality that imprints

its representation on the retinal canvas, which Illich has thought to be characteristic of this

period. It corresponds to the idea that scientific observation is equivalent to the natural world.


According to Jay several authors have written on the perspectivalist revolution and its

technical, aesthetic, economical, psychological and political aspects (p. 5). Both Illich and Jay

talk about the monocular gaze that looks through a geometrical rooster and peephole, which

makes the gaze fixated and disembodied (See figure 5). The resulting image becomes

eternalized, or a-historical, and is reduced to one point of view. This is done when the three-

dimensional rationalized space is put to a two-dimensional medium. This perpectival gaze is cold

and distant. This corresponded with the dissociation of narrative from text, and the neutrality of

FIGURE 4 CAMERA OBSCURA WHICH MERGES THE HEAD OF THE PICTURE TAKER AND INSTRUMENT INTO ONE, (CAMERA OBSCURA, 2012).

FIGURE 5 INSTRUMENT FROM 1925 FOR MONOCULAR AND DISINTERESTED VISION (ALBRECHT DURER, 2012).


the researcher. The doors from the world of art to the world of capitalist commodity were open:

Separate from the painter and the viewer, the visual field depicted on the other side of the

canvas could become a portable commodity able to enter the circulation of capitalist exchange

(p. 8). Also, according to Martin Heidegger, the natural world could now be viewed as resources

that can be kept under surveillance and be manipulated in an impersonal manner.

Jay distinguishes two other scopic regimes in the modern period. One is the spontaneous

photographic regime that is not respectful of the Cartesian explanations, but can be unified in its

de-narrative stance and commoditization. The baroque regime, on the other hand, is more

radically opposed to the hegemony. It denies that nature is understandable and readable in purist

ways. It sees that vision and rhetoric go hand in hand together, the same way that images are

signs and concepts are imagitistic (p. 9). According to him, the Baroque is the sublime as

opposed to the beautiful Cartesian perspective.

The author sees the baroque regime taking over the hegemonic power that Cartesian

perspectivalism once had. This is due to the rise of hermeneutics and post-structuralism that

challenge scientific epistemology. However, he sees this as a slightly dangerous move, since the

other regimes are no more closer to true vision (p.10) than the Cartesian. He pleads, on the

contrary, to maintain a plurality of scopic regimes, and explore all negative and positive aspects

of each.

The Age of Show

Illich (1998; 2001) describes a more recent phenomenon, which is that viewpoints are no

longer affected by standpoints. Since the 70s, virtual spaces make the individual standpoint-less,

directing where he/she looks, manipulating the visible world, in order to seduce the eyes and

swallow up the consumer . The eye is trained for perception and interpretation of appearances

that could never be touched. (1998, p.15) This is also called the resorptive gaze. The act of

seeing becomes digital, that of recording. Seeing is now dull and segregated from the fleshly

presence of the other (2001, p.20). Illich calls the last thirty years the Age of the Show,

because what the eyes do is replicate replications. The actual person behind the image is no

longer reached out for.The representations are no longer views, but measurements of


instruments; no longer things that people can walk to or grab or reach, but things as they are in

a distant and unreachable objective reality. People are trained to see graphic shows of things that

are invisible to their natural eye, and to take them for reality. This does not mean only

microscopic images, but also graphic representations of abstract notions such as Gross National

Product and population growth and climate change (2001, p.22). See figure 6.

Instead of critically reading the image, to grasp essential truths of the world (even if

changing ones), peoples perception is now merely the gateway for directly objectified and

distorted reality, which takes the measurements of instruments for direct reality.

FIGURE 6 POPULATION GROWTH MADE VISIBLE, (POPULATION GROWTH, 2008).


ETHICAL GAZE

It can be concluded from the studies above that there are various ways of viewing reality

with the carnal eye, and that there is a certain visual hegemony during different historical

periods. What can also be stated, and most importantly, is that depending on the understanding of

the gaze, humans may or may not gaze with the awareness of ethical repercussions involved in

the act. The two positions, the passive objective gaze and the active ethical gaze will be

juxtaposed in this section. This dualistic contrast will merely be done for the sake of finding

differences. There are of course different gradients of active perception and passive action

(consumerism).

GAZE AS ACTION

Until a certain point in history one had to guard the eyes, for the gaze was a powerful

action, says Illich (2001). The eyes can be trained just as the ears can be trained by music and

taste can be trained by food. His view is inspired by the virtue ethics of Aristotle. The training of

the senses is also fundamental to character formation, since the realization that the gaze is an

action, has implication to the disciplined reflection of this action which builds up personal

habits, character and attitudes. In other words, it has implications for ethics, especially for

Aristotelian virtue ethics, in which attitudes are built. The eyes can be trained as a skill just the

way that one learns to walk and talk virtuously. The propensities of the gaze must be understood

along with what might be detrimental to character and what might harm others. Illich further

recognizes the age of the show as detrimental to this virtuous life. Perceptions should be

synesthetic; the eye should not be segregated from other senses or from the fleshy presence of

other beings.

Illich pointed out that when the gaze is action, to be more specific a kind of relational

action, it needs to be considered morally. It seems to him that the gaze has been more and more

detached from the body and attained less moral responsibilities. That this development is parallel

to the development of contemporary capitalist western culture has been more explicitly


demonstrated by Jay (1998). At the same time that the gaze got exempted from its moral

responsibilities, the object of appreciation became a commodity that could be controlled and

dominated. The path to a virtuous aesthetics will be one which leads humans to actively

experiences in a moral relational manner. This aesthetics will make it impossible to objectify and

commodify, for the body is no longer separated from action. Instead of being an instrument of

action, the body is part of a character which is in constant relation to others.

GAZE AS NON-ACTION: PATHOLOGICAL

According to Kant, aesthetic or empirical judgments can never be moral judgments

(Rueger, 2007). Aesthetics has then been fundamentally separated from morality for centuries.

This is probably due to the Cartesian separation of morality in the mind from empirical or

emotional experience in the body. Scientific explanations of vision that can be learnt in high

school textbooks only talk about the light which comes into the eyes.

Illich made clear that the less active the gaze becomes, the less agency and character the

gaze has and also the less ethical it is. It appears that the conaturality of the gaze and world,

along with synesthesia (or connectivity of senses) is essential for the construction of ethical

relationships. When the gaze is absorbed, as in the resorptive gaze, in a world of fiction, it has to

rely on appearance and less on intentions and relationships. Living is then no longer about

relationships and full embodiment, but is more like a vegetative state of dreaminess. This feeding

of sensory signals, a conditioning, resembles the image of the broiler chickens in the chicken

factory. The same concern for other species can thus be directed to those, humans, who concern.

It has already been mentioned above that the Cartesian perspectivalism, or the gaze

exempted from character and action, can be detrimental for the environment, for it justifies

control and domination. Yet there is another account for why the gaze that is not self-aware is

pathological. It comes from a post-structuralist perspective on impairment. Although this

discussion is about impairment, it can be interchangeably applied to non-humans, which are by

definition lacking human perfection.

Hughes (1999) has written on the aesthetic of oppression through the perspective of

impairment as a critique of modernity. The author also writes on a scopic regime, which the


author calls the scopic regime of modernity. According to him, modernity is characterized as the

production of strangers, which this paper can compare to the characteristics of duality as laid out

by Plumwood. Strangers are conceived as a disturbance from and a threat to the order. The

treatment to strangers is then exclusionary (tolerance) or assimilative (neglect of differences),

which again resemble Plumwoods radical exclusion and incorporation. The author then

formulates that these treatment strategies are executed through the gaze which casts out images

of normality (p. 157). See figure 7.

The gaze works in positive social sciences and biomedicine, where observations

determine what is normalized or pathological. Normative order is taken uncritically for an

empirical given, through the disembodied gaze. However, vision does not provide immediate

access to the external world as Cartesian perspectivalism suggests (Illich and Jay would agree).

The aesthetic view on the production of knowledge sees through how vision is blurred by

interpretation. The Cartesian attitude of seeing is believing, is simply an attitude, although a

powerful one.

Hughes explains the discursive power of the gaze through Sartre, who talks about the

gaze which victimizes its object and is hostile and alienating in its intersubjectivity: the self is

limited by the temporalization and spatialization of the others gaze. This is why supervision

FIGURE 7 THE GAZE CASTS OUT IMAGES OF NORMALITY, ASSIMILATING OR EXCLUDING STRANGERS (DOWN SYNDROME, 2012; MONKEY TALKS, 2012).


corresponds to loss of freedom (of being). This is the rise of the power of vision and the

panopticum in the sense of manipulation and domination rather than oppression. Along with this

comes the understanding of the act of gazing as a carnal validation and invalidation, constitutive

of a moral, aesthetic, cognitive and political point of view. Non-disablement reaffirms itself

through the disabled lack of perfection that stems from discourses. The author further argues that

the gaze constructed from non-disablement is pathological. It is pathological in the sense that it is

not self-aware, not recognizing its roots in discourses (moral, medicine and aesthetics) that are

not neutral as they claim to be, but are rather immersed in mythologies of normality, truth,

beauty and perfection (p. 164).

Finally, there are two political themes of the aesthetic of oppression: the tyranny of

perfection and personal tragedy theory. The first constitutes the fact that beauty has become the

form in which morality is recognized in the post-modern world (or current culture of

appearances). This is how a strong and fetishized body is seen as a mark of self-control. Even

though people realized the flaw in such categorization, and try to take pride of their deviant

appearances, this normalization still lives on through institutions.

The personal tragedy theory describes how the disability of people is individualized so

that it does not change capitalist social and economic structures. Just as poor people are

stigmatized as weak in character, so are disabled people (or animals) in need of charity. People

have recognized the problem described by the personal tragedy theory, but they have attacked

only the economic system of capitalist production.The power of the gaze which maintains the

image of personal tragedy, however, is left untouched.

Modernitys vision is looking for a perspective, a fixed point that will freeze the flow of

visions own dynamism: it gathers the world in itself with the certainty that there is nothing else

worth seeing (p. 169). However, gazing is not biologically determined, it needs training. The

technological visualization is an aid in this training of constructing a hyper-real reality. This

training leads to a philosophy of life, one that in its extreme has lead to the disposal of strangers

in the holocaust. The irrational extermination of demonized insects is another manifestation of

this problem (see figure 8). The myth of Aryan perfection has been replaced by the myth of

beauty, and is still present as a scopic regime in the contemporary consumption life style culture.

This myth of beauty and stereotype creations, which Hughes describes, may of course also be in

the way of understanding ways of living with humans and other species. It might even be that


nature is now inevitably seen as tragic and in need for charity and human directed control, while

the power of the gaze and its myths slowly disappear from the mind.

It must be said though that Hughes rejects the gaze of modernity that discerns pathology

from normality at the same time that he describes the modern gaze as pathological himself. One

must always be careful with installing one type of normality in replacement of another. Thus,

while these critiques of the modern gaze may be valid, one needs to be careful with the

imposition of alternative gazes. Both Jay and Illich have demonstrated how innovations in

aesthetic work, be it scientific, artistic or philosophical have their impacts on the habits of

society. Aesthetic experience can be further linked to morality through the construction and

interpretation of representation.

FIGURE 7 KILL THE FILTHY COCKROACH! (AFASTANDO BARATAS, 2012).


IDEOLOGICAL AESTHETICS

CULTURAL POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION

The book Representing the Environment by Gold & Revill (2004) offers a good basis

for the understanding of environmental representations, and their role in the relation between

individual action and social structure. Media is a means of aesthetic reproduction and exchange

(Gold & Revill, 2004). Media is the transmission of content in symbolic form to the audience,

which includes clothes, food packaging and cinema (Gold & Revill, 2004). Commodities,

including actual designed environments, can thus also be seen as media. Because signs are

arbitrary and do not directly correspond to their signified meaning, there needs to be an active

perception of media (Gold & Revill, 2004). At the extremes of the continuum of views on the

relationship between representation, meaning and social value, there are two points of view:

Voluntarism and Determinism. In the first theory, meaning is created by individuals own

interpretational choices (Gold & Revill, 2004). In that view, humans are also the sole cause of

their own actions, uninfluenced by exterior forces. The determinist theory goes against that idea,

stating that individual creation and interpretation of representations, and according values and

behaviour, are products of external forces (Gold & Revill, 2004). None of these views are

plausible, for the reality is rather complex (Gold & Revill, 2004). One can thus not say that art

and representation simply determines the individual gaze or perception.

However, environmental representations can influence individuals perceptions in a

variety of ways. Representations reflect the social organization of institutions,which in turn

reflect ideologies (Gold and Revill, 2004). In this context, ideology can be defined as the

system of signification which facilitates the pursuit of particular group interests and which

sustain specific relations of domination (Gold and Revill, 2004,p. 59). That is to say, one

ideology seeks to dominate others (Gold and Revill, 2004). Ideology contains ideas, beliefs and

images which compete or antagonize with other groups ideologies (Gold and Revill, 2004). All

institutions who produce representation have viewpoints, which are expressions of their own

interests (ideologies), and which they offer to their consumers to adopt (Gold and Revill, 2004).


Of course, the audience gives meaning to it only through their own understanding and

motives in the world (Gold & Revill, 2004). It is important to complement this understanding by

seeing this understanding and consuming of ideologies as a loop rather than a one-directional

process. The way that people understand the world affects ideologies and the way that ideologies

are presented affects their understanding of the world. An important concept to illustrate the

interconnectedness of representations and understanding of the world ishabitus: the same

material which regulates and limits life is the material that can be used creatively to create new

circumstances. This concept can be applied to representations, where the symbolic and practical

are often intermeshed:the making and interpretation of representations both reproduces and

remakes, or creates anew, the social relations on which they initially depend (Gold and Revill,

p. 52). Representations and practices are thus in constant dialogue and negotiation (Gold &

Revill, 2004).

At this point the term cultural politics, which is the intersection between cultural and

political dimensions in representations, becomes important. This intersection involves questions

concerning who has the power or which is the dominant culture that is behind the meanings and

values of representations (Gold & Revill, 2004). This does not mean that only those in power are

the ones behind representations, although their representation may be more legitimatized.

Environmental issues can be represented through cultural politics that express nationalism,

racism and sexism (Gold & Revill, 2004). By contrast, minorities may represent environmental

degradation as a link to their own oppression and urge to fix this through a new values and

identities (Gold & Revill, 2004). This means that certain groups oppose each other through the

power that they give their values in these representations (Gold & Revill, 2004). One can see

here thus that in order to understand the environmental crisis one has to understand the social

conflicts that are related to it. The cultural politics of representations has the following key

powers: The power to name, the power to represent common sense, the power to create official

versions, and the power to present the legitimate social world (Gold & Revill, 2004). See figure

9; the power to represent common sense and create official versions are featured through the

clich you are what you eat and the depiction of people who eat genetically engineered food as

aberrations.


FIGURE 8 ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM, (GOLD & REVILL, 2004, P. 66).

Gold and Revill further describe strategies that reinforce dominant readings of

representations: coercion, persuasion and negotiation. Coercion means regulations of what can

be said in public. Persuasion involves strategies that justify commonsense. Negotiation is

consensus building and suppression of differences. Dominant readings of representations occur

through hegemony:Hegemony describes the way that politically powerful groups maintain their

power by presenting their view of the world as commonsense and part of the natural order for

those who are in fact subordinated by it (p. 69). In this sense, representation is not fixed and is


based on negotiation that perpetuates the hegemony (Gold and Revill, 2004). That is not really

favourable to the minority, when it is the sort of assimilation as described by Plumwood and

Hughes.

Another powerful tool of hegemony, as described by Foucault, is discourse. A discourse

is a regulated way of speaking or writing about the world, where regulated means that it takes

place according to the rules and conventions of the society and its culture (Gold and Revill,

2004, p. 74). Discourses create symbolic knowledge of objects because of its coherence, self-

referentiatlity, account of reality and because the rules of what can be said and known (truth,

beauty and good) are shaped by the very same discourse (Gold and Revill, 2004). There are

formal and informal discourses (Gold and Revill, 2004). Aesthetics is a formal discourse (Gold

and Revill, 2004), and watching a picturesque motion picture on the TV is an informal discourse.

In discourses, who has the knowledge has the power, and regulation of action is more efficacious

within a discourse (Gold and Revill, 2004). Discourses constitute individuals identities and

subjectivities (Gold and Revill, 2004), because they regulate the way in which people give

meaning to their practices. In figure 9, one can see the Frankenstein monsters, which are

embedded in an informal discourse where GMOs are simply abnormal. Interestingly, the

abnormal is at the same time an aesthetic negative, intended to provoke disgust and disapproval.

The note on the side of the poster includes Personally in order to internalize the regulation of

boycotting genetically engineered food: Combining the practical and the symbolic, the material

and the social, discourse stresses the hybrid qualities of social life (p. 76).

Thus, although there needs to be an active reception of media, there are a variety of tools

to convince and enforce ways of understanding the world. One of these ways is the discourse of

aesthetics, which cannot be seen separately from the rules and conventions of society and its

culture (Gold and Revill, 2004, p. 74), or ideology. Later on, the notions and concepts of

environmental aesthetics will be analyzed by these terms.


ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN

Another scholar who confirms the socio-political dimensions of aesthetics, argues that

although environments are largely perceived as a symbol of social and political relations,

professionals involved in their design never regard that (Appleyard, 1979). Moreover, the citizen

of urban environments has formerly been seen as a passive observer of the city, but this situation

is changing through political movements concerned not only with the transformation of

production but also of consumption (Appleyard, 1979). This trend will be later elaborated upon

under Ethical Consumption.

Appleyard (1979) pleads for recognition of the intentions of environmental change,

which are intentions towards the self, the action or others. Often, the motive for environmental

action is masked as instrumental or aesthetic, because personal intentions are not regarded as

professional. This creates a lack of communication between the different parties involved in the

environmental creation and consumption: initiators (initiative takers), executives (designers),

monitors (citizens) and interpreters (media).

Behind aesthetics there are more motives than just form, space and texture, according to

Appleyard. In the aesthetic lies the creation of symbolism for self-identity, especially in

contemporary culture. Especially the poor, powerless and new migrants have this need for

aesthetic display; the rich try to be modest and hide their power. Communication of power and

expression of group identity is thus an integral part of aesthetic display in environmental action.

When this is not recognized, but rather done invisibly, social-environmental conflicts cannot be

approached correctly. This error is parallel to the development that people are more and more

dependent on appearances to learn what is going on (p. 150), since social meaning is

dematerialized in myths of social media and academia. Appleyards discussion adds up to Illichs

and Hughes concern about the role of aesthetic experience which is based only on appearances,

lacking the dimension of a critical gaze which investigates the depths of being. Apparently this

lack of recognition of social intentions is connected to the reliance on appearances; the shallow

look is a form of relating.

This transference of social meaning to myths also causes people depend on appearances

and to forget the origins of environmental conflicts. This means that people will fight over the

design or utility of an environment, instead of social inequality, for instance. As he phrases it:


(..) perhaps environmental conflicts occur in cases where social meaning is especially critical.

(p. 150). Appleyard finds the distinction of distance and home to be the most relevant in

environmental conflicts. Since distance is symbolically light, planners and tourists depend on

appearances to attribute social meaning, which by virtue of its superficiality is idealized,

mythological and stereotypical. At the same time, distance can be a search for authenticity and

identity, which is characteristic of tourism. There is also certain imperialism in the reactions of

people in their home-places when strangers arrive. The distance between people can also

reinforce identity, however also superficial and stereotypical that may be.

CONSTRUCTION OF SUBJECTIVITY

A more direct link between aesthetics and ideology is made by Eagleton (1990), in his

book The Ideology of the Aesthetic. In eighteenth century Germany, the call for an aesthetic

was part of a result of absolutist power (p. 14). Philosophers realized that the political order

rested solely on the ruling rationality and overlooked the whole world of sensations and passions.

Exempted from political and financial power, the bourgeoisie sought its supremacy in its

intellectual and cultural Enlightenment. In order for absolutist power to be perpetrated, not only

reason but also the sensitive life needs to be under its rule. Aesthetics needed to bring the

inferior sensuous in union with the supreme reason. In this, aesthetics is autonomous but at the

same time guided and informed by the rules of reason. This can be seen in the search for

appropriate aesthetic judgments, which need to be guided by Cartesianscientific knowledge in

one way or another. The law of the aesthetic is an inferior sort of law which the individual is

willing to obey, because of its pleasant component.

However, at the same time that Aesthetics is employed in structures of power, it can be

used for the liberation from it, argues the Marxist Eagleton. It is in this period of modernity that

epistemology, ethics and aesthetics have become separated. While once, ethics has been

intermeshed with aesthetics, (in a way that to do the right thing feels good), now art has become

autonomous. However, this autonomy was only possible since art has been integrated into the

capitalist mode of production, into the commodity production. It has been released from its social

functions, and has ceased to be the medium of ethics. Aesthetics as a philosophical field has


been born when art could be used for political forces. Only it is used in a way that everything

should become aesthetic now (p. 363): truth and morality are also governed by what is

pleasurable and fashionable (instead of the other way around). On the other hand, it is used as a

mute guerrilla medium that subverts subjugation, gets out of the semantics and representation

that oppresses. It becomes negative aesthetics that is a mute gesture of resistance upon social

order, something that can be shown, but not spoken, and is thus incompetent for politics (p.

376). Aesthetics is a highly contradictory concept and its meanings and values can serve a

counter-hegemonic goal as well as the hegemonic project. Eagleton adverts that aesthetics must

be served along with dialectic in order to make a real difference. Because Eagleton does not deal

with environmental aesthetics in particular, this paper will elaborate more on a similar finding by

Morton later on.

CLOSING REMARKS

The scopic regimes have revealed a development of perception paradigms. The gaze has

proven to be malleable, trained by social, cultural and historical forces. A certain scopicregime,

the modernist, has been linked to commoditization. The regime following the latter is theAge of

Show, which contains the gaze that is trained for consumption. These regimes seem to form the

example of how one ought not to develop the ethical sensitivities which Plumwood has talked

about. When the gaze is embodied in a relational and virtuously developing character, it would

not be fit for consumerism. It is thus possible that this could be used in the development of

ethical sensitivities. Hughes has demonstrated how one ought to be aware of the myths and

limitations upon which the (aesthetic) gaze is grounded, in order to avoid aesthetic oppression.

He also remarked that the current oppressing myth is ideal Beauty. Subsequently, the research

focused on the social and cultural forces that would influence aesthetic perception, or even train

it. Environmental representations convey ideological messages and attempt to normalize

symbolic meaning in images. Sometimes images express social meanings that people do not or

cannot express in daily life, because they are creations of new social meaning based on old

structures. This same phenomenon occurs in environmental design, where aesthetics serves to

mediate unspoken intentions of the designer.


The loss of legitimacy of material, aesthetic social meaning on the one hand, and the

transference of meaning to academic myths on the other, forces people to rely on superficial

appearances in

the value of aesthetics in the ecological crisis of reason

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