History of Aesthetics of Nature: Since Antiquity and Far East to Modern Europe

podstawowy

OB2_W09

OB2_W12

OB2_U01

OB2_U09

The course is focused on a history of the changes of aesthetic appreciation of nature. At the end of this course students should be able to understand main changes in the history of aesthetic appreciation of nature and to explain differences among appreciation of natural individual objects, places and landscape, also between rural and wild landscape; to explain main aesthetic concepts connected with appreciation of nature as Beauty, Sublime and Picturesque; to interpret connections between aesthetic appreciation of nature and environmental thinking.

Course content

1. Introductory lecture: Basic cathegories and concepts.

2. (Aesthetic) appreciation of nature in antiquity. Philosophy and aesthetics of nature.

3. Aesthetic appreciation of nature and Far East and other civilisations.

4. Beauty of nature in the work of medieval philosophy, aesthetics and visual art.

5. Renaissance: origins of the concept of landscape. First tours and aesthetic liking of nature. Renaissance painting and landscape. An Arcadian landscape.

6. Baroque period. Landscape painting and the changing aesthetic attitude towards nature: Dutch landscape painting, classical landscape (Claude Lorrain, Poussin), Baroque period in the Central Europe.

7. British aesthetics of the 18th century and appreciation of the untamed nature. Roots of the philosophical reflection of the aesthetic appreciation of nature - Lord of Shaftesbury, J. Addison. British aesthetics and the Beauty and Sublime of the natural object (E. Burke).

8. The picturesque tours and concept of the Picturesque (Gilpin, Price), Origin of the tourism. Landscaping and „English” garden as the results of a new taste.

9. France: J.-J. Rousseau. Origin of appreciation of wilderness.

10. German region: Aesthetics of nature - J. G. Sulzer. I. Kant: Critique of Judgement.

11. New aesthetic appreciation of mountains in the 18th century – its origins nad consequences

12. Romanticism. Aesthetic liking of nature and first protection of nature.

13. "The end" of aesthetics of nature in philosophy. Nature and art in the 19th century. Aesthetics of nature in the 19th century thinking.

14. 20th century aesthetics: lack of an interest in the 50th and new wave of interest in the last decades in aesthetics and art. Environmental aesthetics (Hepburn, Carlson, Berleant).

15. Conclusion

Addison, J., Steele, R., and others: The Spectator III (ed. G. Smith). London-N.Y. 1967, s. 276-309, No. 411-421.

Adorno, T. W. F.: Teoria estetyczna. Warszawa: PWN 1994

Andrews, M.: The Search for the Picturesque. Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain, 1760-1800. Stanford: Stanford UP 1989

Andrews, M.: Landscape and Western Art. Oxford: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999

Budd, M.: Delight in the natural World: Kant on the Aesthetics Appreciation of Nature. Part I: Natural Beauty, v: British Journal of Aesthetics 1/1998, pp. 1-18.

CARLSON, Allen. Aesthetics and the environment :the appreciation of nature, art and architecture. 1st pub. London: Routledge, 2000. xxi, 247 s. ISBN 0-415-20683-9.

Gerhardi, G. C.: Hortus Clausus: Funktionen der Landschaft bei Jean-Jacques Rousseau. v: Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft. 1/1983, pp. 34 – 61.

Gilpin, W.: Observations on the river Wye, and several parts of South Wales, etc., relative chiefly to picturesque beauty; made in the summer of the year 1770. Reprint Richmond 1973

Gilpin, W.: Forest Scenery (ed., intr. F. G. Heath). London: Sampson Low 1879

Heringman, N.: Romantic Rocks, Aesthetic Geology. Ithaca and London 2004

Kant, I.: Critique of Judgement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007

Nicolson, M. H.: Mountain Gloom, Mountain Glory. The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite. New York: W. W. Norton 1959

SHAFTESBURY, Anthony Ashley Cooper. Characteristics of men, manners, opinions, times. Edited by Lawrence E. Klein. 1st publ. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xxxvii, 49. ISBN 0-521-57022-0.

Stibral, K.: The beauty of nature: The end of beauty's connection with proportionality and usefullness in modern aesthetics, v: Szabó, P., Hédl, R. (Eds.): Human nature. Studies in Historical Ecology and Environ. History. Brno : Institute of Botany of the ASCR 2008, pp. 46-51.

Sulzer, J. G.: Unterredung über die Schönheit der Natur. (Reprint vyd. z r. 1770) Frankfurt am Main 1971.

Woźniakowski, J.: Die Wildnis: zur Deutungsgeschichte d. Berges in der europeischen Neuzeit. Frankfurt a. Main 1987

Woźniakowski J.: Góry niewzruszone. O różnych wyobrażeniach przyrody w dziejach nowożytnej kultury europejskiej. Warszawa 1974.

At the end of this course students should be able to understand main changes in the history of aesthetic appreciation of nature and to explain differences among appreciation of natural individual objects, places and landscape, also between rural and wild landscape; to explain main aesthetic concepts connected with appreciation of nature as Beauty, Sublime and Picturesque; to interpret connections between aesthetic appreciation of nature and environmental thinking.

Requirements of credits

Written exam and essay