Enviromental Aesthetics

Environments are everywhere in crisis. One cannot speak of nature, landscape, ecology or atmosphere today without a sense of urgency: a warming climate; ground, water and air pollution; loss of biodiversity, and numerous other issues demand immediate response. The condition of the biosphere calls into question deeply rooted cultural and philosophical conceptions of nature. Historically, Environmental Aesthetics was a discipline that considered the aesthetic appreciation of natural and cultivated environs, through concepts such as natural beauty, sublimity and the picturesque. Later, its remit expanded to include the aesthetics of built environments and everyday life. Nature is rarely found in ‘natural’ condition today, however, and the impacts of human activities upon local and global environments cannot be overlooked. Contemporary Environmental Aesthetics becomes overtly political, by attending to the power of images and ideas of nature to shape the world itself. From the intimate and quotidian sphere, in which desires shape our eating habits, acclimatization and consumption patterns, to the public sphere in which land use, building codes and energy sources are shaped by economic decisions, our actions are a direct expression of environmental values. Is nature a reserve of ‘resources’ or ‘ecosystem services’? Does it exist apart from culture(s)? Does it have value in itself? Who understands nature? How shall we seek connection with nature–or avoid its wrath? 

This course offers a historical and philosophical introduction to Environmental Aesthetics, tracing its emergence within the European philosophical tradition of the mid-eighteenth century, and further back to changing ideas of nature concordant with the rise of capitalism and colonialism. We attend to the social relations that ground environmental imaginaries, from imperial visions of nature to carbon democracies and decolonial ecologies. Then, as now, literature and visual arts played a critical role in elaborating environmental ideas and imaginaries. Thus we attend to developments in landscape painting, still life, science fiction, land art, ecological art and other genres. We ask why Kant made recourse to pepper gardens, a colonial cash crop of eighteenth century Sumatra, in defending the beauty of wild nature, how the science of ecology was (and maybe still is) an imperial project, and to what extent contemporary writers and artists, from Kim Stanley Robinson to Marwa Arsanios, are engaged in decolonizing projects.

Building upon conceptual and methodological foundations, the course takes a case-based approach, addressing pressing contemporary issues such as fossil fuel extraction, the ecological impacts and causes of war, architecture’s carbon emissions, palm oil cultivation, Arctic politics, geoengineering and the environmental impact of digital storage and computing. Students are invited to develop additional topics of interest through presentations, group work, excursions and final projects. The course will include museum visits and invited lectures, and sustained attention to contemporary affairs.