Arnold Berleant
On Judging Scenic Beauty1
Introduction
Justifying normative judgments is one of the perennial sticking points in philosophy. To assess the value of objects or situations that are qualitative and unique seems to be a thoroughly nonrational process. Must such assessments, whether of moral worth or guilt or of aesthetic value rely on an intuitive sense of what is good, right, or beautiful? Must they rest on feeling, which may be the same thing? Principles are necessarily general and cannot respond to the peculiarities of individual circumstances and, when they are imposed on them, often offend by their hard-hearted indifference to consequences or their expedient disregard of the full range of their effects. And in cases of aesthetic judgment, ideology, whether political or artistic, can do violence to both creativity and originality.
What alternative is left? If we mistrust feeling and intuition as inveterately personal and thus not transferable to others, and principles as impossibly abstract and thus impervious to unique particularities, all judgment is unjustifiable and arbitrary. End of question. End of question? Not so, for decisions have to be made, if not by choice then by default. If reflect we must, some resolution of this quandary is necessary. How then to proceed?
Since we must begin somewhere, this discussion will center on the aesthetic, in particular on landscape, a subject awesomely broad enough itself. It may be, however, that the cognitive landscape of aesthetic judgment can be drawn more readily and clearly here than for moral judgment or for normative judgment in general. And it may even be that the direction we shall take on aesthetic judgment can prove useful in those other recalcitrant dominions of normative thought. At the very least, aesthetic judgment seems less intimidating, at least at first.
Judgments of aesthetic value: the critic
Efforts at making credible judgments of aesthetic value typically center on one of two opposite poles: the person engaged in appreciative experience or the object of appreciation. Either the basis for the value of a work of art or of natural beauty rests on the ability of an individual to respond affectively or cognitively to its charms, or it rests on features of the art object or the landscape scene, features that conform to standards for which universal validity is claimed, such as unity in variety or the object's presumed "aesthetic" qualities.
Both alternatives are unsatisfactory: The critic's judgment seems preremptory, no more than a decree based on personal and arbitrary preference, while the characteristics of the art object are ultimately conventional or circular (e.g., aesthetic qualities are what make an object aesthetic). And if one chooses to adopt a scientific approach and quantify those traits, the grounds for judgment are usually the questionable accumulation of preferences by unskilled observers of those objects.
How, then, to proceed after dismissing the alternatives so thoroughly? Let me begin by considering some aspects of these contrary approaches, aspects whose helpfulness may persist beyond their original limitations.
Although two and a half centuries have passed since it was first published in 1757, Hume's "Of the Standard of Taste" remains the preeminent philosophical discussion of critical aesthetic judgment. While it hasn't settled the question, Hume's clear description of the traits of an ideal critic is a compelling account of the qualifications that may be expected in an expert judge of artistic merit. This essay is too well known for me to do more than cite the qualifications to be expected of an expert critic, nor do I want to contribute to the endless debate over them. Hume's account rather serves the useful purpose here of helping to focus the discussion, and a brief review of his characterization of the expert critic, then, will launch our inquiry.
Central to Hume's position is the claim that judgments of aesthetic value are the considered pronouncements of a properly qualified critic. Since there is purportedly no objective scientific formula for arriving at these judgments, adequately grounded critical judgment seems the only ground. So for Hume a "true judge in the finer arts" possesses healthy and well-developed organs of sense, a sensitive imagination, which Hume describes as delicacy of feeling, full experience of the arts in question and knowledge of their principles and practices, a wide acquaintance with those arts that enables one to make revealing comparisons, and a mind free from prejudices, both personal and theoretical, that obstruct the unhampered exercise of experience and judgment. Finally Hume adds to all this the good sense to be able to keep in mind all these factors and qualifications and arrive at a fair and balanced assessment.2
To Hume's list we can add Dewey's suggestion that we include familiarity with different cultural traditions in art. At the present stage in world history this may seem an obvious requirement, but for Dewey, writing three quarters of a century ago, it is a sign of the breadth of his conception and awareness. Further, along with stressing the perceptual qualifications of the expert critic, Dewey adds a synthesizing function to the critic's analytic one.
This is a rich and full list of capabilities that characterize an expert judge of aesthetic value. It lacks, however, a critical dimension, one so basic that its omission leaves the critic suspended in mid-air, as it were, ripe with inapplicable competences. For underlying perceptual sensitivity, a lively imagination, wide experience with aesthetic matters that extends beyond one's native culture, and the educational background to focus and direct that experience – underlying these essential qualifications and partly the cause of them, is one more fundamental still.
The last century, especially the last half-century, has shown how deeply and pervasively our cognitive preconceptions direct and color our experience and understanding.3 Sources for this recognition include the Marxist critique of ideology, insights from the sociology of knowledge and linguistic anthropology, and now, most recently, hermeneutics and its influence on interpretation, culminating in the unresolvable pluralism of postmodernism. W cannot evade the recognition that, despite the intent and efforts of phenomenology, there is no pure experience. And in our present context, we must acknowledge that there is no pure aesthetic experience. We look at the world, to speak metaphorically, through a multitude of superimposed filters, the filters of language and, still more comprehensively, the ontology and metaphysics of a culture. How else explain, for example, the pervasive and persistent dualism of Western civilization, a dualism not shared by most Eastern traditions? How explain the insistent transcendentalism of the classical tradition in Western philosophy, a vision that contrasts sharply with the animism prevalent in pre-literate societies? The fact that we cannot escape such influences and that, in order to view the world we must see through lenses and filters, does not vitiate entirely what we see. It rather defines and orders it and should make us more wary.
Such ruminations bear on all inquiry but they are especially pertinent to the judgments we make, particularly judgments of value, of aesthetic value. For here we may attempt and even presume to determine normative status on independent, objective grounds. That fact that this is impossible and that interpretive filters are unavoidable does not, however, relegate our judgments to the undebatable realms of subjectivity or mere chance. Hume's critic is not dumb nor is ours speechless. What we need, in fact, is to become more explicit, to identify and expose the filters that "correct" our vision and to be more aware and deliberate in choosing those to use. For here lies the main grounds for debate, since what is under our control is perhaps not so much what we see but the lenses through which we see it.
In the judgment of scenic beauty, the choice of standpoints is basic. There are, I believe, two opposite poles with numerous intermediate positions.4 These defining opposites are not only theoretical alternatives but are also the most commonly held and practiced. For convenience they may be called the observational standpoint or the spectator view and aesthetic engagement or the participatory approach. The observational standpoint comes from a long tradition in Western culture that understands humans' relation to nature as one of separation and opposition. Here nature serves human needs and people impose their wills on it. Thus humans are distinct and different, standing apart from nature and projecting their views, values, and desires onto the natural world. This long-established cognitive tradition of separation and distance culminated in Descartes' mind-body dualism and emerged in modern aesthetic theory in Kant's notion of disinterested contemplation. Disinterestedness is strikingly exemplified by the Claude glass, a small instrument for viewing scenery popular in England in the eighteenth century. It reflects a miniature image of the landscape on the convex surface of a small viewer of black or colored glass, not only distancing but also framing the landscape.
The aesthetic alternative to aesthetic disinterestedness is the concept of aesthetic engagement. Here, in a full aesthetic experience, there is no separation and contemplative disengagement between viewer and object. Both merge perceptually, the appreciator becoming entirely absorbed by the object in a rich and complex unity of experience, and the object assimilated into the appreciative experience. There is no separation between them; there are no boundaries that render them discrete. This is the experience of being totally absorbed in a novel, wholly immersed in a film, living in the tonal unfolding of musical sound, feeling fully connected in body and consciousness by a woodland, a landscape, a small lake or stream. Aesthetic engagement is a perceptual state that is intensely active, with cognitive, affective, and somatic dimensions. It is also thoroughly cultural, as is its alternative, disinterestedness. That is why it is essential for landscape judgment to take into account the theoretical equipment the critic brings to the process.5
Judgments of aesthetic value: the landscape
This leads us to the opposite pole of the presumed normative equation: the object of criticism. The synthesizing function to which Dewey refers is the request that the critic search for some unifying feature in the work under consideration. By revealing an integral whole, the critic provides a guide for the appreciator. Such a theme, however, must actually be present in the work and not an ingenious contrivance of the critic, and it must be found in the work consistently.6 This requirement to function as a unifying principle clearly follows from the central theme of Dewey's own aesthetic theory in the idea of aesthetic experience as a unified whole, an experience that moves through its course to fulfillment.7
To his account of the function of critical judgment, discrimination and unification, Dewey added a caveat in the form of two fallacies that can be mentioned only briefly. The first is a reductive fallacy. From sensing a qualitative aspect such as color or tone or noting a work's representational character, it consists in taking a single constituent of the work and then reducing the entire complex whole to that isolated element. Other factors often taken in isolation are technique or a historical, political or economic point of view. This fallacious practice also includes psychoanalytic criticism and sociological criticism. Each of these factors may be relevant but none of them offers a sufficient account of the complexity of factors that join in constituting a work of art.8
The second fallacy Dewey identified, one that is often mixed with the reductive, consists in the confusion of categories, such as taking historical judgment for aesthetic judgment or a mathematical analysis for an aesthetic analysis. This fallacy has a practical counterpart in the confusion of values, such as mistaking historic, scientific or religious values in an entire work for its aesthetic value. Such confusions result from neglecting the intrinsic significance of the medium. This must always be central, for ultimately "the function of criticism is the re-education of perception of works of art."9
Dewey's approach to aesthetic evaluation thus takes a focus somewhat different from Hume's. While its purpose resembles Hume's in foregoing any objective, quantitative standards by which the aesthetic merit of an object can be measured, it differs in turning to a discriminatory examination of the object's capacity to produce an aesthetic experience. It searches for what there is in a painting, a poem, or any art object that engages the appreciator to experience the work directly and immediately as a shaped and unified succession that comes to completion, bringing with it a sense of fulfillment. This approach does not center on the appreciator or critic nor does it concentrate on the features of the object. Rather it focuses on the experience that is generated by both of these coming together, that is on a direct experiential process. Thus we must attend to both the appreciator and the object of appreciation.
Before returning to the composite portrait of the qualified judge and the judge's function, let me give this direction more specificity by inquiring into the traits that contribute to an aesthetically fulfilling experience of landscape. We should note here, again following Dewey, that it is necessary to understand by such experience not a private moment of pleasure but a situation that develops as an integral process toward its fulfillment. The possibility should hold that any person with normal perceptual and cognitive capacities, joined to aesthetic interest and sensitivity, could, in principle, come to a similar judgment of aesthetic value.
What, to begin, are the general characteristics of a landscape that are conducive to an experience of environmental beauty? Let me suggest six such conditions, recognizing that each landscape has its own unique particularity and complexity, and that no general guide can assume the status of an autocratic rule. Later, when our discussion will turn to specific features of a landscape, we may need to qualify these general characteristics in the light of the interplay between both sets of aesthetic guidelines. Nor should we take the order of presentation here as an indication of relative importance. This will tend to emerge when examining individual cases. A further consideration arises with the question of the relation of any identification and classification of aesthetically significant landscape features with correlative features of art objects, especially in the case of human landscapes, that is, those that have been shaped by human action. Then there is the additional question of how these characteristics of objects relate to our experience of them. So, for example, Beardsley's three criteria for aesthetic experience: complexity (diversity of distinct elements), intensity (concentration of experience), and unity (coherence and completeness) refer at the same time to features of aesthetic objects.10
One general characteristic of an aesthetically pleasing landscape consists in its possessing some degree of variety and its concomitant contrast. The appeal of irregularities of topography is directly somatic and particularly kinesthetic. On the other hand, a landscape that is uniform may exercise a subtle attraction through variations in texture and tonality. A perfectly flat landscape may even thrust space on the observer of a magnitude so great that Kant could call it sublime. A flat landscape requires more perceptual subtlety and sophistication from the visitor than does one whose irregularities have an immediate appeal, and for a person with a high level of sensitivity and discernment, it can evoke perceptual involvement.11
Another condition that contributes to a positive aesthetic judgment of a landscape is that its degree of interest not result in a situation that is so extreme in some respect as to be threatening. This condition is reminiscent of the limitation Kant placed on the sublime, namely that the degree of magnitude of the object of aesthetic perception, such as a hurricane, the boundless ocean, or a lofty waterfall, not be so great as to convey the threat of danger.12 Our world imposes threats of a magnitude that Kant could never imagine at the end of the eighteenth century. Not only are these physical, such as the threats of or actual radiation from medical procedures, cell phones, or nuclear plants. Threats now often have a human source, from the fear of mugging while strolling along an isolated path in an urban park to being shot by a hunter who mistakenly identifies his quarry.
A third condition concerns the place of aesthetic value in relation to other values. Most sites and landscapes embody a complex mix of values. It is important to recognize that aesthetic value is always present in any landscape, although its position is sometimes submerged by the aggressive advocacy of other values, especially economic but also political, moral, and cultural ones and especially use values. What is the relative importance of aesthetic value in the situation and, if not dominant, is its presence nevertheless necessary and therefore needing to be recognized and preserved?
Of central importance in any consideration of aesthetic value is the powerful presence of sensory experience. Sensuous delight is a compelling dimension of a landscape that possesses strong positive value. Sensuous satisfactions include color, fragrance, texture, smell, and sound, but also somatic perception, as in the kinesthetic perception of movement along a path, the body's response to a springy or hard surface under foot, the thrill of gazing out from a high point, the physical sensation of balancing when crossing a small stream on stepping stones or along a log or narrow bridge.
Let me add to this list an additional influence on landscape beauty, perhaps more subtle and difficult to assess but nonetheless important. That is the appropriateness of scale, which is the size of landscape features in relation to the human body. Here cultural and regional influences, as well as personal familiarity and preference, play a large part. How, for example, does the size of a mountain range affect the experience of beauty? The rounded forms of the old, worn Appalachian Mountains offer a different experience from the jagged heights of the younger Olympic range in Washington State. A small valley may convey a sense of intimacy and security, while a great, broad one enclosed by heights may evoke a feeling of expansiveness.
Finally, the aesthetic importance of a landscape may also be qualified by its degree of social accessibility. In a democratic age when everyone can claim the right to a fulfilling life although relatively few actually achieve it, accessibility to the pleasures of a garden or park does affect the overall consideration of its social value. Factors such as remoteness or entrance fees limit the extent to which people can enjoy the beauties of a landscape, not to mention the obvious public inaccessibility of privately held parks and environmental enclaves. The situation resembles that of paintings in private collections and the claim that great art is a human treasure.
Now is landscape most fully appreciated as disinterested or engaged? A full discussion of this question demands a more extended treatment than the scope of this essay allows. It is a question that has been considered elsewhere.13 Suffice it to make two observations here. One is that the choice of a theoretical standpoint for appraising the aesthetic value of landscape has a profound influence on the judgment that is rendered. At the same time, if the perceptual experience is taken as central, it may have a powerful effect on judgment, perhaps outweighing the influence of theoretical preconceptions. The second comment is to urge the primacy of perception, in Merleau-Ponty's phrase. In any matter being contested in aesthetics, there is no more compelling recourse in searching for a resolution.
Specific aesthetic characteristics of landscapes
Let me turn now to some specific characteristics that typically enhance the aesthetic appreciation of landscape. This list is hardly exhaustive but is intended to suggest some of the characteristics or features that commonly evoke positive appreciation of a landscape. As with the account of general traits, this one is not intended to imply a rule or a formula for environmental beauty. It rather suggests features the designer or preservationist may wish to consider introducing, retaining or, when already present, enhancing, guided always by expert judgment on their quantity, size, and distribution. Again, the order of this discussion does not reflect relative importance; this, too, requires informed judgment in each particular case.
A common feature of valued landscapes, one that needs little argument, is the presence of water. A stream, a pond, a rippling brook, a river or lake, the seashore - each is an attraction in the scene, capturing the eye and leading the feet to its edge. Even the historical traces of water in the past exercise an appeal. From the striated walls of the Grand Canyon to the smooth stones at the bottom of a flowing stream, the ability of one of the softest substances to wear down one of the hardest, and in the process producing objects of sensuous delight, excites both wonder and.
Another feature that adds to the attractiveness of a landscape is variety in the distribution of masses and open space and of the landscape's major features. Masses may vary in density and size, and take the form of hills, mountains, buildings or trees, singly or in groves, while space can be created by the absence or removal of trees or buildings, and it can be enhanced by windows or mirrors. Here architectural and painterly values coincide with landscape ones, informing the design. In any particular case, the arrangement of masses and space makes a basic contribution to a scene's distinctive and pervasive quality. A related feature is the presence of a dramatic element, such as a mountain, a waterfall, a chasm, an enormous boulder, the surge and pounding of waves, or an endless vista. So, too, is the presence of contrast, especially of light and shadow. One is reminded here of the Chinese word for landscape, sans sui, which in Japanese and Korean is the same cognate, and which means mountains or hills and water.
How effective and valuable these experiences are depends, of course, on the entire situation, including the contribution of those experiencing them. Their participation, their engagement, takes many and complex forms, from the factors that Hume and Dewey identified in the ideal critic to the idiosyncratic traits of individual persons. Moreover, engaging in a landscape means abandoning the visual aesthetic that reduces landscape to a view, requiring instead that we move into and through it. The ability to choose the direction and rate of movement may add to a landscape's attraction. Finally, some degree of coherence in the landscape, both perceptually and processually, adds to its satisfaction.
These general characteristics and specific features that may contribute to the beauty of a landscape are not inviolable conditions. As generalizations from experience, they may be modified and, more likely, added to as we conduct appropriate research and reflect increasingly on environmental beauty and on its loss or failure. Most important is to recognize that none of this constitutes a formula but rather suggests factors to consider in designing or refining a landscape. The same requirements of sensibility and taste that enter into creation in any art occupy a similar place here. The experience of landscape beauty is no different in kind from the experience of beauty in any art.
Quantitative and qualitative judgments
Landscape thus has its own characteristic factors that contribute to its aesthetic value. In this respect it is much like an art. Indeed, it is an art, an art of environment. And, like any art object, the physical landscape is fulfilled in engaged experience when its features are activated by an appreciative participant. And again as in art, the assessment of a landscape's aesthetic value is best made by a person knowledgeable of and sensitive to the kind of factors that help create environmental beauty. In every landscape, as in every art object, these factors work in a unique combination, and it requires informed and discriminating consideration to assess its success. That there is the same coalescence of judgment in landscape as in the arts is attested to by the emergence of a canon. Most visitors to the park at Blenheim palace, designed by Capability Brown, find it deeply satisfying. This is no coincidence, and one can cite other designed landscapes such as the gardens of the Silver Pavilion in Kyoto and natural landscapes, such as the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Niagara Falls in the United States and Mt. Koli in Finland, landscapes that evoke near universal admiration.
The focal issue in landscape assessment on the contrast between qualitative and quantitative judgments seems to place the matter of environmental assessment in stark perspective.14 We have found in the present discussion that the judgment of scenic beauty is neither inexpressibly personal nor can it be objectively assessed by quantitative standards. We must be content with the degree of precision that the subject allows, as Aristotle observed about ethical judgment, and this requires the same capacity to discriminate in each particular case to make a reasonable and justifiable judgment. This does not end the discussion, however, for insofar as landscape design evolves, so must our awareness and recognition of different aesthetic features. And as the art critic's skills must develop and expand, so must those of the environmental critic. But a good critic, whether of art or of landscape, always subordinates judgment to experience. Finally, the scholar-researcher, assisting this process, has the opportunity to identify general characteristics previously unremarked and so help in developing a normative theory of landscape. Moreover, the establishment of critical judgment is not the work of a single critic, however qualified, but of the critical community. Reasonable judgments are a collective product that shows some similarity to critical judgment in the arts and to empirical theory in science. In all these cases a group of qualified researchers or scholars engages in critical interplay, testing their observations, analyses, and ideas against each other in order to arrive at a tried judgment. This is ultimately an open, public process. Is this, then, a third way between presumed objectivity and inescapable subjectivity?
To continue these suggestive explorations by pursuing the question of normative judgment, let us consider on what grounds a landscape may be judged beautiful? An analogy may help propel the inquiry forward. Because scenery is often an aspect of a human or human-influenced environment and always requires a person to identify and appreciate it, scenic beauty can be judged, at least in part, by the aesthetic success of the human intervention.
Consider the analogous case of an artifact, say, a quilt. What makes one quilt more beautiful than another? Clearly there are two sets of considerations, one objective and quantitative, the other based on the artistry of the quiltmaker, a qualitative, expert judgment. On the side of the first are such things as craftsmanship in the form of skillful needlework, fine fabric, weight, size, and warmth. On the other side we can consider originality of the overall design and the effective combination of different fabrics and patterns, in conjunction with the pattern of the stitching, and all of these in the light of pictorial values such as colors, complementarity, contrast, balance, and perhaps also including liveliness, grace, and imagination.
Now in judging a quilt based on these factors, some considerations, the quantitative ones, such as size and warmth in relation to its projected use, are determinable without extensive debate and fundamental disagreement. However, the other, qualitative, considerations mentioned above clearly require a judge with extensive background and experience, a critic of the sort that Hume was describing. Such determinations are made all the time, with greater or lesser success, at country fairs, by manufacturers, by collectors, and by shoppers.
It is my view that a similar analysis will illuminate the aesthetic judgment of landscape. The quantitative factors here are such things as topography and other physical features. Because scenery is often an aspect of a human environment, it can be judged by its functional success. In the case of a working landscape, such as a farm or a park, this is its functionality by how well it is adapted to the physical conditions that are given, as well as by its success in fulfilling its practical purposes. In addition to the functionality of the landscape, we may add a consideration of data from the history of and current research into landscape preference, in addition to the common features of scenic landscapes that we identified earlier. All these are basically quantitative assessments However, to take them as reasons for valuing a landscape would be unforgivably circular!
Now while such quantitative judgments can contribute to the evaluation of scenic beauty, they do not themselves generate fine perceptual discrimination or permit more than approximate designations and comparisons. The aesthetic success of the human intervention demands the experienced judgment of the environmental critic who can bring an aesthetically informed and practiced understanding to the uniqueness of a landscape by means of a thorough perceptual inquiry. This requires considering its sensuous qualities, its temporal processes, and the ways in which the body participates with and activates the landscape – the entire and inclusive perceptual experience.
We have, then, a complex of factors that can help us identify and judge scenic beauty. All of these can be located and specified, although none is absolute. Some considerations are quantitative, some qualitative; some easily objectifiable, some not. Such factors need to be studied further and amplified, and careful procedures developed for applying them in judging specific landscapes. Further research is needed into both the general conditions and the particular features of scenic landscapes, as well as into the full range of the critic's contribution.
Moreover, it is particularly important to recognize that all these factors are not additive but are interrelated in a complex field that includes the perceiver in the landscape, taking aesthetic engagement as our theoretical model. Even though individual critics will vary in the acuteness of their observation and the sensitivity of their perception, reasonable normative judgment is both possible and actual.15 Applying them to specific landscapes requires discriminating judgment and there is no substitute for the informed and discerning judgment of the environmental critic.
ENDNOTES
This paper is the first variation in a projected series on aesthetic judgment and has appeared in Aesthetic Culture, Essays in Honor of Yrjö Sepänmaa ( Maahenki Co: 2007), pp.57-75. The second variation is "Judging Architecture."
1 This paper is the first variation in a projected series on aesthetic judgment. The "theme" is implicit and may be inferred from this and other papers in the series.
2 David Hume, Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), pp. 10-17.
3 These differ from the 'prejudices' Hume noted and from which the ideal critic should be free. Although they may share their irrationality, what distinguishes these cognitive preconceptions is that they claim a rational basis and, when they become explicit, they are justified on cognitive grounds.
4 Since I have discussed these at length elsewhere, it would not serve to develop it again here. See Arnold Berleant, Aesthetics and Environment, Theme and Variations (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2005); Art and Engagement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991); Chapter I, "A Phenomenological Aesthetics of Environment" and Chapter III, "Down the Garden Path," in Living in the Landscape: Toward an Aesthetics of Environment (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997); "Two Paths through the Landscape," in Art and Landscape, Vol. 1, ed. George L. Anagnostopoulos (Athens: Panayotis and Effie Michelis Foundation, 2001), pp. 35-43.
5 The very foundation of what is distinctively human in perception is its character as a socially and historically achieved, and changing mode of action; and thereby invested with a cognitive, affective and teleological character which exemplifies it as a social, and not merely a biological or neurophysiological activity. What is more, it is not an activity of the perceptual system or of a specific sense-modality, but an activity of the whole organism. See Marx Wartofsky, "Perception, Representation, and the Forms of Action: Towards an Historical Epistemology" (Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, 1985).
6 John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Minton, Balch & Co., 1934), pp. 312-315.
7 John Dewey, op. cit., pp. 303-315
8 John Dewey, op. cit., pp. 315-318.
9 John Dewey, op. cit., pp. 317-318, 319, 324.
10 Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958), pp. 529, 531.
11 I owe this point to Prof. Allen Carlson, whose comments on a draft of this essay were welcome and helpful.
12 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (1790) (New York: Hafner, 1951), p.100 (§28).
13 See, for example, Allen Carlson, "Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature," in Aesthetics and the Environment (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 102-125; Arnold Berleant, "The Aesthetics of Art and Nature," in The Aesthetics of Environment (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), pp. 160-175 and other essays in the same volume.
14 A large literature exists on the controversy over the significance of qualitative versus quantitative standards in landscape assessment. Allen Carlson has made important contributions to clarifying this issue. See, for example, Allen Carlson, "On the Possibility of Quantifying Scenic Beauty," Landscape Planning 4 (1977), 131-172; "On the Possibility of Quantifying Scenic Beauty--A Response to Ribe," Landscape Planning 11 (1984), 49-65; and especially "Landscape Assessment," Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics, ed. M. Kelly (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) ,Volume 3, pp.102-105.
15 David Lowenthal rests judgment on the unsurpassably personal experience of the viewer, inevitably conditioned by time and place. See "Not Every Prospect Pleases. What Is Our Criterion for Scenic Beauty?," Landscape, Winter 1962, 19-23.
