Duality in Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature: Triviality and Seriousness
Ronald W. Hepburn delves into the duality present in the aesthetic appreciation of nature, exploring the interplay between the trivial and serious aspects. He discusses the sensuous and thought components, perception versus reflection, superficial versus serious readings, and the importance of considering nature on its own terms. The text emphasizes the need to deepen one's understanding and respect for nature, beyond mere superficial observations.
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Trivial and serious in aesthetic appreciation of nature Ronald W. Hepburn
Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature Defending Outstanding natural beauty against depredation Value of nature vs. values of industry aesthetic appreciation of nature ? Beauty narrow vs. wide sense
Duality in Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature sensuous component: sense of immediacy, in the purest case one is taken aback by nature. -the sky color-effect, or the rolling away of cloud or mist from a landscape Thought-component: -implicit comparison -analogies to bear on the concrete particulars -modification of awareness, in which feeling, thought, and perception all interact Ex). The fall of an autumn leaf
Perception-and-reflection Perception: attentive, inattentive, discriminating, or undiscriminating, lively or lazy Reflective-component: feeble or stereotypical, original, individual, or exploratory Trivial: to the extent that it distorts, ignores, suppresses truth about its objects, feels and thinks about them in ways that falsify how nature really is. Detached viewer Deepening of seriousness: realization that I am myself one with, part of, the nature over against me Serious approach is a self-exploration
Superficial and Seriousness Superficial reading of nature: Objects will tend to have an invariable univocal expressive quality Bland unawareness of potential variability and endless modification of qualities Seriousness or depth not simply correlated to intensity or fullness of thought-content -may neutralize or trivialize when fail to fuse thought with perceptual content
Another important duality Considering and contemplating nature in its own terms -Respecting natures own forms, structures, and sequences Problems with serious goal of considering and contemplating nature in its own terms: in-its-own-terms might prompt us to supply a scientific thought component U-valley example
Problem with respect Natures limited respect for its individuals Vulnerability and brevity of individual life Disturbing thought-content Working with a scale Between the extremes, we might find an acceptable ideal for serious aesthetic perception in encouraging ourselves to enhance the thought- load almost to the point, but not beyond the point, at which begins to overwhelm the vivacity of particular perception
2nd approach to the forms of nature: The forms of nature are annexed in imagination, interiorized, the external made internal -range: universally intersubjective (shareable, though not universal), to individual and personal Metaphor Invisible world Messages Dreamlike element of nature *any discrediting in each case is the work of literalism. Naively serious, and thus trivial.
Is it possible, however, to be moved by skeptical thoughts which suggest that the whole of this area of experience is nothing other than trivial, that aesthetic experience of nature being founded on a variety of illusions can never really be serious? Aesthetic experiences of nature because they are dependent on anthropocentric factors such as scale, viewpoint, and perspective may be fleeting and unstable. Mountain Viewpoint -view from a cliff vs. view from aircraft
Creative role in fashioning aesthetic object: The appreciators of nature have to find their viewpoint, decide on the boundaries of attention, generate the thought content Assumptions about authority Readiness to conform, factor of trivialization Failure to realize how deeply dependent our aesthetic appreciation of nature is on scale and individual viewpoint is to trivialize
Concluding thoughts Objectivizing and antiobjectivizing movements of the mind -on the one hand he wants objective truth pursued by science (provided it does not carry us beyond what can be incorporated in perceptual experience) -on the other hand, it has no stronger or more serious claim to aesthetic attention than has the illusory. What exactly is Hepburn's position in the end? We are free to respect, or to ignore, the objectivizing option. To feel bound to always pursue it is not really to show commitment to so-called seriousness, but rather to show a profound misunderstanding of the aesthetic. Or would that be simply and shockingly, at the very end, to capitulate to the trivializers?
