Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content

Plants as Objects: Challenges For an Aesthetics of Flora

John C Ryan

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    This paper presents the conceptual challenges to an aesthetic model of living plants based in embodied interaction with flora through smell, taste, touch, sound and sight. I argue that the science of aesthetics is deterministically visual. Drawing from theories of landscape aesthetics put forth by Carlson and Berleant, I outline four primary obstacles to an embodied aesthetics: plants as objects of sight, plants as objects of art, plants as objects of disinterestedness and plants as objects of scientific discourse. A multi-sensorial aesthetics of flora requires auto-centric proximity and degrees of intersubjectivity between the appreciator and the appreciated plant that raise important philosophical questions about aesthetic experience of the natural world.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)222-236
    JournalPhilosophy Study
    Volume1
    Issue number3
    Publication statusPublished - 2011

    Keywords

    • Literary Studies
    • Philosophy and Religious Studies
    • Literary Theory

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Plants as Objects: Challenges For an Aesthetics of Flora'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this