Indeterminacy and reciprocity: contrasts and connections between natural and artistic beauty

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Keywords:
aesthetics of nature, Kant, Adorno
Available in:
JVAP 5.3 - about JVAP
Funded by:
NAFAE - about NAFAE
Pulished:
November 2006

Article abstract

This article offers a vindication of the indeterminacy of natural beauty, first through a dissolution of the antinomy between a critical and a positive aesthetics of nature, then through a resolution of the frame problem. These arguments are developed, finally, through a defence of the reciprocity thesis prominent in post-Kantian aesthetics, which claims that there is a conceptual connection between the aesthetic appreciation of art and that of nature. I am concerned to defend indeterminacy against objections from environmental aesthetics and aesthetic realism, and to give qualified support to Adorno's historicist position in Aesthetic Theory. Underlying my approach is a Kantian emphasis on the ubiquity of the aesthetic and the democracy of taste.

Written by: Andy Hamilton

Other articles in: JVAP Volume 5 Issue 3