10 - Appreciating art and appreciating nature

Summary

THE CONCEPT OF APPRECIATION

The concept of appreciation is common to both art appreciation and nature appreciation. However, it is usually not examined in the relevant theoretical work. Writings on appreciating art by art critics and art historians seldom touch on it. Nature literature may exemplify it but typically does not discuss it. Investigations of aesthetic appreciation by aestheticians dwell on the nature of the aesthetic and have little to say about appreciation. That the concept is not discussed is a pity, for it is central both to philosophical aesthetics and to our day to day dealings with such matters. Not only are the notions of art appreciation and nature appreciation in common usage, but we move with ease from the appreciation of landscapes to that of landscape paintings, from appreciating Van Gogh's The Starry Night to appreciating the starry heavens above. Yet the nature of appreciation is far from clear and what is involved in each of these two central cases – appreciating art and appreciating nature – remains obscure.

Thus, some clarification of appreciation is useful. To achieve it, since our topic is the appreciation of both art and nature, it is appropriate to consider a philosophical tradition which in its infancy thought nature at least as significant as art as an object of aesthetic appreciation. The tradition ties appreciation to notions such as disinterestedness.