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The Ugly Truth: Negative Aesthetics and Environment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2011

Emily Brady
Emily Brady
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Extract

In autumn 2009, BBC television ran a natural history series, ‘Last Chance to See’, with Stephen Fry and wildlife writer and photographer, Mark Carwardine, searching out endangered species. In one episode they retraced the steps Carwardine had taken in the 1980s with Douglas Adams, when they visited Madagascar in search of the aye-aye, a nocturnal lemur. Fry and Carwardine visited an aye-aye in captivity, and upon first setting eyes on the creature they found it rather ugly. After spending an hour or so in its company, Fry said he was completely ‘under its spell’. A subsequent encounter with an aye-aye in the wild supported Fry's judgment of ugliness and fascination for the creature: ‘The aye-aye is beguiling, certainly bizarre, for some even a little revolting. And I say, long may it continue being so.’

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Papers
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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 69 , October 2011 , pp. 83 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2011

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References

1 Stephen Fry, video clip from ‘Last Chance to See’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/species/Aye-aye#p004m3h9. Accessed 27/6/10.

2 An important exception is: Saito, Y., ‘The Aesthetics of Unscenic Nature’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56:2 (1998), 101–111Google Scholar. Also, Frank Sibley discusses mainly natural objects in his essay: ‘Some Notes on Ugliness’ in Sibley, F., Approach to Aesthetics, ed. Benson, J., Cox, J. Roxbee, Redfern, B. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 191–206Google Scholar. Eco, Umberto has edited a fascinating book relating to ugliness and the arts: On Ugliness, trans. McEwen, A. (London: Harvill Secker, 2007)Google Scholar.

3 I will deal exclusively with cases of ugliness in natural environments, rather than ugliness in cultural landscapes, the built environment, or human impacts on environments, e.g. clear-cutting.

4 For some discussion of these views see Moore, R., ‘Ugliness’, in Kelly, M., ed. Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (New York: Oxford, 1998), 417–421Google Scholar.

5 Carlson, A., ‘Nature and Positive Aesthetics’, Environmental Ethics, 6 (1984), 5–34Google Scholar. Other adherents include Hargrove, E., Foundations of Environmental Ethics (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1984)Google Scholar; Rolston, H. III, Environmental Ethics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988)Google Scholar, 239ff. The position probably also has some roots in pre-Enlightenment theological views which held that one could not find ugliness as such in nature, since only beauty exists in God's creations.

6 Carlson, 1984, 5.

7 Based on a discussion by Fisher, J. A., ‘Environmental Aesthetics’ in Jamieson, D., ed. Companion to Environmental Philosophy (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998)Google Scholar.

8 For various discussions of positive aesthetics and its problems, see Saito, 1998; Budd, M., Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Godlovitch, S., ‘Offending Against Nature’, Environmental Values, 7 (1998), 131–150Google Scholar; Hettinger, N., ‘Animal Beauty, Ethics, and Environmental Preservation’, Environmental Ethics, 32 (2010)Google Scholar; Parsons, G., ‘Nature Appreciation, Science and Positive Aesthetics’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 42:3 (2002), 279–295Google Scholar. Budd points out the problems too in establishing the most ‘ambitious’ form of the position, which would appear to demand that everything in wild nature has roughly equal (positive) aesthetic value (Budd, 2002, 127).

9 See Rolston, 1988, 241.

10 Saito, 1998, 104.

11 Saito, 1998, 104.

12 According to Moore, the paradox of tragedy is the ‘generic parent’ of the paradox of ugliness (1998, 420). There's been a long debate, reaching as far back as Aristotle, about how to resolve the paradox of tragedy. Also, there are a range of experiences and associated aesthetic qualities which fall into the category of what we might call ‘difficult’ or ‘challenging’ aesthetic experience or appreciation. In respect of both art and nature, and environments falling in between, several forms of appreciation can be included here, but perhaps most commonly: the sublime, tragedy and ugliness. In aesthetics, especially in the eighteenth century when these topics reached a pinnacle in philosophical debates, experiences falling into these categories were seen as difficult because they involve, commonly, a mixed response of negative and positive feelings, or just negative feeling, to qualities that are challenging or unattractive. The response to the sublime mixes liking, pleasure or delight with uneasiness, anxiety, fear, terror, and a feeling of being overwhelmed or overpowered (for example in accounts by Burke and Kant). Tragedy (as tragic drama) has been argued to involve a mix of negative and positive emotions, with negative or painful emotions such as fear or horror at the tragic events portrayed, and positive emotions in response to the artful representation of these events.

13 Hume, D., ‘Of Tragedy’, in Four Dissertations (1757)Google Scholar, reprinted in Neill, A. and Ridley, A., ed., Arguing About Art, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), 198Google Scholar.

14 See Kant, I., Critique of the Power of Judgment, Guyer, P. and Matthews, E., trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1790] 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, §48, Ak. 312, 190. See also Aristotle, Poetics (1448b); Eco, 2007, 19.

15 Budd, M., ‘The Aesthetics of Nature’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 100 (2000), 149CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Reported by Mark Carwardine in, ‘Last Chance to see the aye-aye?’ BBC Earth News, 18/9/09 http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8258000/8258569.stm. Accessed 2/11/09.

17 M. Cawardine, ‘The aye-aye’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/lastchancetosee/sites/animals/?set=ayeaye. Accessed 27/6/10.

18 See Hettinger, 2010.

19 Alexander, S., Beauty and Other Forms of Value (New York, 1968)Google Scholar, as quoted in Moore, 1998, 418. Carolyn Korsmeyer argues for this kind of position in ‘Terrible Beauties’, in Kieran, M., ed. Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art (Blackwell, 2005), 47–63Google Scholar.

20 Moore, 1998, 418.

21 Eaton, M., ‘Beauty and Ugliness In and Out of Context’ in Kieran, M., ed. Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 48Google Scholar.

22 On disgust, see Pole, D., ‘Disgust and Other Forms of Aversion’ in Roberts, G., ed., Aesthetics, Form and Emotion (London: Duckworth, 1983)Google Scholar; Korsmeyer, C., ‘The Delightful, Delicious and Disgusting’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 60:3 (2002), 217–225Google Scholar; Miller, W., The Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

23 Moore, 1998, 419.

24 Sibley, 2001, 192.

25 See Sibley, 2001, and also Eco's (2007) list, 16.

26 See Lorand, R., ‘Beauty and Its Opposites’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 52:4 (1994), 399–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Lorand, 1994, 402.

28 See Sibley, 2001; Glenn Parsons makes the claim that deformity only applies to organic nature, a point which he uses to support positive aesthetics in relation to inorganic nature. See: ‘Natural Functions and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Inorganic Nature’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 44:1 (2004), 44–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cf. Budd, 2002.

29 I'm not convinced that Sibley's second example is apt – a geologist tells me that we can understand deformity in rocks (particularly crystals) in terms of irregularities through malformation.

30 Eco, 2007.

31 For some other ways of classifying ugliness, see Stolnitz, J., ‘On Ugliness in Art’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 11:1 (1950), 1–24Google Scholar; Carmichael, P., ‘The Sense of Ugliness’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 30:4 (1972), 495–498Google Scholar.

32 Quoted in Sibley, 2001, 205.

33 See Moore, 1998; Stolnitz's (1950) discussion of Stephen Pepper's position, 8ff; and K. Rosenkrantz's study, The Aesthetic of Ugliness (1853).

34 Davies, S., Musical Meaning and Expression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 316–320Google Scholar.

35 Moore, 1998, 420.

36 See note 12; Korsmeyer, 2005.

37 See various essays by and interviews with Smithson in, Flam, J. (ed), Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

38 Lintott, S., ‘Ethically Evaluating Environmental Art: Is It Worth It’, Ethics, Place and Environment, 10:3 (2007), 263–277Google Scholar; Simus, J. Boaz, ‘Environmental Art and Ecological Citizenship’, Environmental Ethics, 30:1 (2008)Google Scholar; Heyd, T. ‘Reflections on Reclamation Through Art’, Ethics, Place and Environment, 10:3 (2007), 339–345Google Scholar.

39 See Godlovitch, 1998; Carlson, A., Aesthetics and the Environment (New York and London: Routledge, 2000)Google ScholarPubMed.

40 Parsons (2002) argues that although there can be a variety of aesthetic categories through which we can aesthetically appreciate nature, we ought to choose those as most appropriate via a beauty-making criterion, which gives us the best aesthetic value.

41 See also Korsmeyer, 2005; and Lintott, S., ‘Eco-Friendly Aesthetics’ Environmental Ethics, 28 (2006), 56–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 In so far as there could be some biological advantage to negative values in nature, disgust, fear, aversion, and alienation from nature, for example, have been seen as functioning in ways that provide security, protection, and safety. See Kellert, S.Values of Life (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996)Google Scholar.