The aesthetics of nature

pp. 11-34

in: Robert Wood, Nature, artforms, and the world around us, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

Recent aesthetic thought has returned from the study of art to the aesthetics of nature as our own rootage. Animal monopolarity driven by need evolves into human bipolarity detached from need and oriented toward the Whole which grounds the capacity to transform nature for practical and for aesthetic purposes. This chapter looks at how the arts arise within the human relation to nature, drawing upon its rhythms and energies. We go back to pristine nature to escape from our daily lives, but we also bring nature into those lives through landscaping and gardening.