Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer
Logo Thémata

"Aesthetic Confluences between the Everyday and Nature’s Experience"

No. 72 (2025): Thémata Revista de Filosofía

Environmental aesthetics and Ecological aesthetics: From commitment to intertwining

DOI
https://doi.org/10.12795/themata.2025.i72.11
Submitted
September 15, 2025
Published
2025-12-31

Abstract

Environmental aesthetics and ecological aesthetics, as emerging subdisciplines within the framework of philosophical aesthetics, have today established themselves as broad and thriving fields of study. They enable the integration of both natural aesthetic experiences and those originating in hybrid or mixed contexts, including urban environments, designed spaces, or landscapes altered by human activity. This article examines how these subdisciplines, conceived as forms of situated engagement with environments, allow us to rethink aesthetic experience through the lenses of interdependence, entanglement, and care, generating sensitive spaces of encounter, cohabitation, and shared responsibility.

References

  1. Arribas, Fernando. “Ecología, estética de la naturaleza y paisajes humanizados”. Enrahonar, 53 (2014): 77-91.
  2. https://ddd.uab.cat/record/123348
  3. Bacon, Francis. 1620. Novum Organum. Madrid: Tecnos, 2011.
  4. Barad, Karen. Meeting the universe halfway. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.
  5. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things. London: Duke university press, 2010. Trad. española: Materia vibrante. Una ecología política de las cosas. Buenos Aires: Caja Negra Editora, 2022.
  6. Bennett, Jane. The Enchantment of Modern Life. Princeton University Press, 2001.
  7. Berleant, Arnold. “Toward a Phenomenological Aesthetics of Environment”, Descriptions (Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy 11), eds. Don Ihde y Hugh J. Silverman. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985. 112–128.
  8. Berleant, Arnold. “Environment as an Aesthetic Paradigm”, Dialectics and Humanism, 15(1/2), 1988: 95–106.
  9. Berleant, Arnold. The Aesthetics of Environment. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992.
  10. Berleant, Arnold. Living in the Landscape: Toward an Aesthetics of Environment. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997.
  11. Berleant, Arnold y Allen Carlson, eds, The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2004.
  12. Berleant, Arnold. Aesthetics and Environment. Variations on a Theme. Aldershot and Burlighton: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2005.
  13. Berleant, Arnold. “Ideas for an Ecological Aesthetics”, Ecological Aesthetics and Ecological Assessment and Planning, eds. Xiangzhan Cheng, Arnold Berleant, Paul Gobster, Xinhao Wang. Henan People's Press, 2013a. 54–72.
  14. Berleant, Arnold. “What Is Aesthetic Engagement?”, Contemporary Aesthetics, 12 (2013b).
  15. https://arnoldberleant.com/pages/Aesthetic%20Engagement-5.htm
  16. Berleant, Arnold. “A Philosophical Retrospective,” Contemporary Aesthetics, Special Volume 9, 2021.
  17. https://contempaesthetics.org/2021/01/05/a-philosophical-retrospective/
  18. Berleant, Arnold. The Social Aesthetics of Human Environments: Critical Themes. London: Bloomsbury academic, 2023.
  19. Berleant, Arnold. “Ecoaesthetics symposium, 2014, 2017, VI.” Arnold Berleant papers, 22-5F-1292. University Archives. https://findingaids.lib.buffalo.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/253817
  20. Böhme, Gernot. Atmosphäre: Essays zur neuen Ästhetik. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1993.
  21. Böhme, Gernot . L’atmosphère, fondement d’une nouvelle esthétique? Communications, 102(1) (2018): 25-49 https://doi.org/10.3917/commu.102.0025.
  22. Brady, Emily. Aesthetics of the Natural Environment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003.
  23. Brady Emily y Jonathan Prior “Environmental aesthetics: A synthetic review”. People Nat. 2, (2020): 254–266. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10089
  24. Budd, Malcolm. The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
  25. Carlson, Allen. “Appreciation and the Natural Environment” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 37, n.º 3 (1979): 267–276.
  26. Carlson, Allen. “Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature”. Landscapes, Natural Beauty and the Arts, eds. S. Kemall y I. Gaskell. Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1993. 199-227.
  27. Carlson, Allen. Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge, 2000.
  28. Carlson, Allen. “Environmental aesthetics”, The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. eds. Gaut, B, Lopes, D. London: Routledge, 2001. 423-436.
  29. Carroll, Noël. “Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History”. Landscapes, Natural Beauty and the Arts, eds. S. Kemall y I. Gaskell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1993. 244-266.
  30. Descartes, René. Los principios de la filosofía. Madrid: Alianza, 1995.
  31. Dewey, John. Art as experience. [1934]. New York, NY: Perigee, 1980.
  32. Foster, Cheryl. “The Narrative and the Ambient in Environmental Aesthetics,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 56 (1988): 127–137.
  33. Fudge, R., 2001, “Imagination and the Science-based Aesthetic Appreciation of Unscenic Nature,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 59: 275–285.
  34. Haraway, Donna. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016. Trad. española: Seguir con el problema. Generar parentesco en el Chthuluceno.
  35. Bilbao: Consonni, 2019.
  36. Hepburn, Ronald. “Contemporary Aesthetics and the neglect of Natural Beauty”, British Analytical Philosphy. eds. W. Bernard, A. Montefiore. London: Routledge, 1966.
  37. Heyd, Thomas. Encountering Nature. Toward an Environmental Culture. Burlington: Ashgate, 2007.
  38. Ingold, Tim. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description London: Routledge, 2011.
  39. Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, London: Routledge, 2013.
  40. Ingold, Tim. The Life of Lines. London: Routledge, 2015.
  41. Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Psychology Press / Routledge, 2000.
  42. Latour, Bruno. “Whose Cosmos, Which Cosmopolitics? Comments on the Peace Terms of Ulrich Beck”. Common Knowledge, 10(3) 2004, 450–462.
  43. Latour, Bruno. Nous n'avons jamais été modernes. Paris: La découverte, 1991. Trad. española: Nunca fuimos modernos. Buenos aires: Siglo XXI, 2007.
  44. Latour, Bruno. Políticas de la naturaleza. Por una democracia de las ciencias. Barcelona: RBA, 2013.
  45. Latour, Bruno. Face à Gaïa. Huit conférences sur le nouveau régime climatique. Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 2015.
  46. Leddy, Thomas. The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life. Peterborough: Broadview, 2012.
  47. Moore, Ronald. Natural Beauty. Peterborough: Broadview Press. 2008
  48. Parsons, Glenn and Allen Carlson, “Environmental Aesthetics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2024 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2024/entries/environmental-aesthetics.
  49. Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge, 1993.
  50. Rosa, Maria del mar. “La apreciación estética de los entornos naturales y los entornos mixtos”. Universidad de Murcia, tesis doctoral. 2024.
  51. Saito, Y. “The Role of Aesthetics in World-making”. Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive): Vol. 0, Article 7. (2021).
  52. Saito, Y. Aesthetics of care: Practice in everyday life. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022.
  53. Tafalla, Marta. “Rehabilitating the Aesthetics of Nature: Hepburn and Adorno”, Environmental Ethics, 33(1) (2011): 45–56.
  54. doi:10.5840/enviroethics20113315
  55. Toadvine, Ted. “Ecological Aesthetics”, Handbook of Phenomenological Aesthetics. eds. Lester Embree, H.R. Sepp. Berlin: Springer, 2010. 85-91.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.