| dc.description.abstract | At present, owing to the ignorance of traditional Western aesthetics, the aims of contemporary Environmental Aesthetics are to present the issue of how to appreciate natural environment and to elucidate the interaction between the investigation and appreciation of the beauty and the environment.
My thesis starts from two perspectives, Positive aesthetics by Allen Carlson and Aesthetics of Engagement by Arnold Berleant, which respectively offer their visions of how to appreciate natural environment. Berleant’s Aesthetics of Engagement consists of three ideas. First, with the refusal of the application of traditional artistic appreciation mode upon natural environment, the subject should be engaged in natural environment both physically and mentally instead of distance/alienation. The second one is to break through the limitation centered on traditional aesthetics and develop the universality of real life environmental aesthetics. The last one is to develop environmental criticism against the environmental beauty-appreciation value in which people are situated. Carlson’s Positive aesthetics maintains that nature be aesthetically appreciated with a proper manner from the viewpoint of scientific information. The two scholars individually emphasize the interaction between human and nature or decent appreciation of nature with the aid of science as connections. These grounds simply transform traditional Western natural aesthetics into contemporary environmental aesthetics. Most importantly, they unveil a certain profound evolution of environmental aesthetics and adopt the assessment of sense of beauty, which consequently gives rise to a dilemma highly related with environmental ethics. The two scholars didn’t further elucidate the implications of environmental protection, which can be immensely influential. With Leopold’s land esthetic, my thesis will continue the discussion in an attempt to replenish the unsaid part and reconstruct land esthetic. The articles on conservation by Leopold are tinged with fragmental aesthetic thinking and beauty experience. Besides, the fourth chapter, also the ending chapter, of A Sand County Almanac , and Sketches Here and There indicates the point of conservation esthetic. We may presume that the motivation of these beauty experience or aesthetic activities is naturally embodied through ethics. All these can be experienced by human themselves. Therefore, I am going to use emergence aesthetics by the scholar, Shiau Jenn-Bang, to construct a modern interpretation of land esthetic.
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