ABSTRACT
Taking the view that aesthetics is a study grounded in perception, the essays in this volume exhibit many sides of the perceptual complex that is the aesthetic field and develop them in different ways. They reinvigorate our understanding of such arts as music and architecture; they range across the natural landscape to the urban one; they reassess the place of beauty in the modern environment and reassess the significance of the contributions to aesthetic theory of Kant and Dewey; and they broach the kinds of meanings and larger understanding that aesthetic engagement with the human environment can offer. Written over the past decade, these original and innovative essays lead to a fresh encounter with the possibilities of aesthetic experience, one which has constantly evolved, moving in recent years in the direction of what Berleant terms 'social aesthetics', which enhances human-environmental integration and sociality.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |35 pages
The Arts as Experience
chapter |12 pages
Judging Architecture
chapter |8 pages
What Titles Don't Tell
chapter |9 pages
What Music Isn't and How to Teach It
part |106 pages
Environmental Aesthetics
chapter |7 pages
Art, Nature, Environment
chapter |12 pages
The Re-shaping of Experience
chapter |6 pages
Two Ways in the Landscape
chapter |12 pages
The Art in Knowing a Landscape
chapter |12 pages
Scenic Beauty in a Global Context
chapter |7 pages
Forestry Aesthetics: Forest Management as Landscape Architecture
chapter |10 pages
Distant Cities: Thoughts on an Aesthetics of Urbanism
chapter |13 pages
Ideas for an Ecological Aesthetics
chapter |12 pages
Nature and Habitation in a Chinese Garden
part |64 pages
Implications