On Ecology and Aesthetic Experience a Feminist Theory of Value and Praxis

ETHICS & THE ENVIRONMENT, 11(1) 2006 ISSN: 1085-6633©Indiana University Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.Direct all correspondence to: Journals Manager, Indiana University Press, 601 N. Morton St.,Bloomington, IN 47404 USA [email protected]

ON ECOLOGY ANDAESTHETIC EXPERIENCEA FEMINIST THEORY OF VALUE ANDPRAXIS

WENDY LYNNE LEE

ABSTRACTMy aim is to develop a feminist theory of value—an axiology—whichunites two notions that seem to have little in common for a theorizingwhose ultimate goal is justice-driven emancipatory action, namely, theecological and the aesthetic. In this union lies the potential for a criticalfeminist political praxis capable of appreciating not only the value ofhuman life, but those relationships upon which human and nonhumanlife depend. A vital component of this praxis is, I argue, the potential foran aesthetic experience whose value is exemplified in those actions thattend to foster respect for biodiversity and ecological stability.

ECOLOGY, ETHICS, AND AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE

Having soundly rejected the Western tradition’s dualisms of mind andbody, male and female, culture and nature, along with the pejorative val-uation of each second term, feminist theorists would seem to bewell-positioned to articulate a viable emancipatory praxis, that is, an eth-ically grounded, politically practicable activism for the 21st century.Indeed, among the many lessons reinforced for us by feminist political

Crissa Holder Smith

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ETHICS & THE ENVIRONMENT, 11(1) 2006

activism in the 20th century is that it is morally unacceptable for theemancipation of some to come at the expense of others; hence, it is hardlysurprising that considerable critical attention has been paid to analyses of“Other” particularly with respect to the sex, ethnicity, indigenous status,ability, and economy of human beings. What is, however, somewhat lessobvious is whether feminists have fully appreciated the implications ofthese analyses for nonhuman beings and ecological systems. I would sug-gest that what the evidence shows, for example, continuing deforestation,desertification, pollution, and extinction is that we have not, at least notappreciably, and that we must if emancipation is to remain our reason forbeing.

In light of what we now know about the intimacy of the relationshipsbetween human beings, nonhuman animals, and ecological systems, anypraxis—feminist or otherwise—that does not take this intimacy seriouslyis destined to fail in its emancipatory quest. Freedom has no meaning out-side the endeavour to free those others who, in virtue of their capacity forlabor, their vulnerability, and/or their consumability, have sustained muchof Western culture, including Western feminism. This is not to say thatfreedom comes packaged in some universally accessible form; it does not.Indeed, one of our tasks is to reevaluate just what this family resemblanceterm means for a new century whose own distinct characteristics cannotfail to influence our pursuit of happiness. Among these distinct character-istics, however, is a far greater and more globally accessible knowledgeabout how this pursuit affects the welfare of nonhuman animals and eco-logical systems; hence whatever luxury we may have had with respect todefining freedom solely in terms of human welfare is clearly vanquishedin the recognition that an emancipation whose cost is the expropriationand extinction of nonhuman others, has no place in a morally or politi-cally defensible vision of the future.

With these observations in mind, the aim of this essay is to sketch afeminist theory of value—an axiology—whose mission it is to wed twonotions that may seem to have little in common, at least for a theorizingwhose ultimate goal is action, namely, the ecological and the aesthetic. Isuggest that in this union lies the potential for a critical feminist praxiscapable of appreciating those relationships on which not only our utopichopes for greater justice and freedom are pinned, but upon which humanand nonhuman life depend. In short, my aim is to show that a vital com-

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WENDY LYNNE LEE ON ECOLOGY AND AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE

ponent of a defensible ecological ethic is the potential for an aestheticexperience whose value is exemplified in those actions, individual andcollective, that tend to foster active respect for biodiversity and contributeto ecological stability. Such an ethic’s justificatory grounds are neitherholistic (deep ecology) nor individualistic (traditionally anthropocentric),but rather self-critically anthropocentric in the sense that its agents takeseriously the responsibility to understand what it means to occupy a par-ticular epistemic position relative to those (epistemic or otherwise) ofhuman and nonhuman others. Unlike the anthropocentrism which reck-ons the value of nonhuman beings in the instrumental terms of humaninterest, self-critical anthropocentrism has its impetus in the recognitionthat (1) “human-centered” does not necessarily mean “self-interested,”and (2) all points of view, however well-established, are relative in thesense that they are tethered to the particularities of a species-dependentperceptual and cognitive apparatus. There is, in other words, no viewfrom nowhere, no disembodied Cartesian perspective (although there aremany contenders). Our points of view are human-centered because we arehuman beings. Indeed, even where we endeavour to disavow our human-centeredness in favor of a more conscientious other-directed disposition,we remain situated animals whose cognitive, somatic, and perceptualabilities are fixed by our evolutionary history and informed by our epis-temic, geographic, and cultural conditions. Far from a birthright, asanction to dominate, or a coil to throw off, anthropocentrism is, on thisview, a potentially fruitful source of self-reflection and accountabilitywhich can ground a theory of value consistent with feminist emancipa-tory goals.

A feminist axiology seeks to value less in terms of worn western bina-risms (intrinsic versus instrumental value, whole ecological systems versusindividual members), and more in terms of a deeper and more inclusiveappreciation for the complex and interconnected ligature of our collectiveexistential conditions. One aspect of this appreciation is, I suggest, thepotential for aesthetic experience. For where the motivation supplied bymoral obligation, assessment of possible consequences, or even empathyfor nonhuman subjects fails to move us to action, we may yet be able tobe moved by the awe we experience in the beauty of natural objects andphenomena (and, obversely, in the potential destitution we may experi-ence in the contemplation of their loss). Where the autonomic compulsion

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of duty fails to deliver sufficient moral impetus, aesthetic response maystand a better chance. Such motives are, of course, human-centered, butthis is no reason to eschew them. On the contrary: to include aestheticexperience in a theory of ecologically grounded moral value not onlygives us one more reason to behave in less destructive short-sighted waystoward the environment, but also prods us to consider deeper questionsabout why our complex relationship to nonhuman nature has netted somuch damage— despite our claim to value its aesthetic worth. While aes-thetic experience is itself anthropocentric, this need not imply that thevalue of nonhuman beings or systems is reducible to a judgment of theiraesthetic qualities. Instead, I suggest that a cultivated openness to the aes-thetic aspect of experience can move us beyond transitory self-satisfactionor hollow notions of “prettyness” or “cuteness” by deepening our appre-ciation for creatures and places not always regarded as beautiful. Whatsuch an openness requires, however, is the recognition that the intimacyof our relationships with nonhuman animals and systems is one of equalgirth regardless the aesthetic values represented in the popular culture.

Perhaps, however, the notion that moral action can be moved by aes-thetic experience is unrealistic. Indeed, perhaps it requires a kind ofknowledge available only to, say, a handful of naturalists, and thusrestricts its offer of moral opportunity to a very limited domain of agents.This worry, however, is a needless one, for aesthetic experience is not onlycognitive, but also somatic, perceptual, and contextually situated in thesexes, ethnicities, abilities, ages, and specific experiences of its subjects. Itcan appeal to us across a broad range of occasion, and it can make usmore acutely aware of the experiential conditions of many others—how-ever alike or different they may be from ourselves.

What I am proposing, moreover, is not that we replace other systemsof moral valuation with one based on aesthetic criteria, but rather that ifwe took the aesthetic value of natural objects more seriously than we donow as a value worth cultivating, we might find ourselves nearer to anethos whose vision of moral action—praxis—is justified at least in partby the possibility of experience whose loss we cannot endure, and whoseobjects we cannot but know to be vulnerable to our present state of envi-ronmental abuse. If aesthetic experience has moral value for ecology, it isbecause it can (a) encourage actions that condition the ecological stabil-ity requisite to aesthetic experience in the future, and (b) move us to

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greater recognition of the extent to which our conceptions of beauty arerelative to culture and historical moment, and thereby prod us to thinkbeyond often narrow notions about what is worth preserving (say, rain-forests and pandas) and what is not (say, abandoned coal “mountains”and animals judged to be less than cute). Moreover, if the aesthetic expe-rience of nature has moral value for feminist theorizing, it is because incultivating it we simultaneously cultivate those relationships upon whichit depends, relationships whose value, given this experience, are by defi-nition always more than instrumental. Far from anti-anthropocentric,such a view encourages the cultivation of qualities typically associatedwith aesthetic experience such as humility, connectedness, and a sense ofwonder.

Such an axiology has two central features: first, the potential to fos-ter the cognitive, somatic, and perceptual conditions for an aestheticexperience of natural objects and phenomena capable of strengtheningour commitment to a sustainable ecology, and second, its capacity toground an ethical sensibility toward the members, human and nonhu-man, and relationships that characterize any particular ecological system.The capacity for aesthetic appreciation—not just of the obvious candi-dates, sunsets and flowers, but also abandoned land mine fields, pollutedwaterways, and dirty beaches—can prod us to greater recognition of theintimate relationships that characterize an ecological system or move usto think more critically about why we regard one kind of natural objectas beautiful and another not. To include aesthetic experience in a theoryof value can help us to raise questions about, for example, what culturalmores determine what counts as beauty, whether notions like “beautiful”have meaningful application to a nature deeply permeated by human arti-fact, commodification, and technology, or how our conceptions of“nature” reinforce oppressive attitudes about sex, race, age, and ability.

That, for example, lighter skin should be regarded as more beautifulthan darker skin, and that this should be identified with a greater capac-ity for the production of culture clearly has bearing on the oppression ofdarker-skinned people in many cultures. That the history of Western dual-ism is pervaded by examples of the identification of women with a natureconceived as beautiful, but irrational and in need of control for “her” owngood suggests a nature (women’s or “mother nature’s) whose aestheticallure signals both a resource and a danger. Indeed, among the reasons

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stories of sirens, witches, mermaids, wood nymphs, or “fatal attractions”are so effective in their reinforcement of heterosexist stereotypes surelymust be included an aesthetic element which acts as a lure for unsuspect-ing, “innocent” men whose conquests are justified by their recognition ofthe dangers which lurk behind the beauty, dangers which are themselvesoften identified with/as “forces of nature.” That “nature” is identified inthe Western tradition with the female, the dark, the irrational, the emo-tional, the unconscious, the bodily, the changing, and the evil iswell-established in the critique of mind/body dualism. What I am suggest-ing, however, is that a better understanding of our capacity for theaesthetic appreciation of natural objects and nonhuman beings—particu-larly as this capacity is deeply imbued by the very institutions inquestion—can shed light on their ongoing oppression and expropriation.As philosopher Frederic Bender argues, in all of the richness of its repre-sentation and celebration of “nature,” we are nonetheless a “culture ofextinction” (Bender 2003).

Another objection to such an approach is that ethical action oughtnever be made to rely on experience as subjective as that of the aesthetic.This objection, however, also fails. For, as we will explore more fullybelow, while aesthetic experience does include subjective elements it alsorelies, first, on the perceptual and cognitive gear common to the species,and second, on the cultural context of the experience. Judgment arisingfrom this experience is thus no more reducible to the exclusively subjec-tive than other varieties of experience, including that of moral rectitude,guilt, or condemnation. Moreover, to include aesthetic judgment in suchtheorizing is not to rely on it as the sole arbiter of moral value; rather, theaesthetic provides an additional axis of value that, by connecting us toour own existential conditions, can encourage greater appreciation of theinterconnectedness of human and nonhuman life.

A last objection, then, is that if we tether aesthetic experience tomoral value we must be prepared to sacrifice disinterestedness; we can nolonger claim that aesthetic experience is, and ought to be, free from theinfluence of other forms of judgment. But, as I will show, this objectionalso falls short of its target. On one hand, to acknowledge that we areepistemically situated creatures implies that there simply are no forms ofjudgment that can meet a standard of disinterest which requires completedisconnection, but on the other, no theory of value can brook “anything

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goes” along any of its axes of valuation. The task, then, is to articulate astandard of “disinterestedness” consistent with a situated axiology of eco-logical praxis that can qualify particular experiences as aesthetic. Asecological aesthetician Emily Brady puts it: “if the environment is some-thing we want to protect, then we are required to adopt a moral attitudetowards it. If this is accepted, then it follows that we should seek a con-ception of aesthetic value that is consistent with this stance” (2003, 129),that is, a disinterest that is not indifferent.

AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE AND ECOLOGICALEPISTEMOLOGY: ENACTIVISM

In her work, Aesthetics of the Natural Environment, Emily Bradyargues for an ecological aesthetic grounded in the sensory or perceptualexperience of nature made available to us (and perhaps some other higherprimates) in virtue of our specifically embodied or somatic relationship tothe natural world. She writes that

in their [human beings] interaction with nature, they alter and modifynatural things, producing objects that are more or less cultural andartifactual, depending on the extent of modifications and interaction.Cultural landscapes are one case of an environment modified byhumans. Artworks present another case, but one which is artifactualthrough and through. . . . Degrees of naturalness, on the one hand, andculture on the other, will affect the character of the environments andobjects we appreciate, and shape the aesthetic qualities experienced.(55)

For Brady, aesthetic experience is not rightly understood as the passivereception of an object’s aesthetic qualities, but as the product of our activeinteraction with the material world.

Cultural artifacts and artworks exemplify one product of this inter-action, but, and as Karl Marx explains, every modification issimultaneously natural and artifactual in the sense that through suchinteraction we make not only the objects of our use and appreciation, butour own wherewithal. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of1844, for example, Marx argues that

[t]he universality of man appears in practice precisely in the universal-ity that makes the whole of nature into his inorganic body in that it isboth (I) his immediate means of subsistence and also (ii) the material

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object and tool of his activity. Nature is the inorganic body of man,that is, in so far as it is not a human body. That man lives from naturemeans that nature is his body with which he must maintain a constantinterchange so as not to die. That man’s physical and intellectualnature depends on nature merely means that nature depends on itself,for man is a part of nature. (112)

That nature is, for Marx, not only “man’s body,” but “his” means of sub-sistence signals an important feature of any ecologically oriented theoryof value. For in this case, what is valued, namely survival itself, can neverbe entirely divorced from interest. If, in other words, “man lives fromnature”“his” experience of it must always include the recognition of it as“his” body, and this recognition cannot but form an aspect of any othervalue “he” assigns to the objects of “his” experience, natural or artifac-tual. “Man,” according to Marx, is a “part of nature” not only materially,but intellectually, for “he” “makes his life activity the object of his willand of his consciousness” (113). “Man” creates “a world of objects by hispractical activity, in his work upon inorganic nature, man proves himselfa conscious species being, i.e., as a being that treats the species as its ownessential being, or that treats itself as a species being” (113).

The view that human consciousness is itself shaped by the activitieswe undertake to modify the environment toward our own subsistencefinds considerable support, however, not only in Marx, but in the recentecological epistemology of Christopher Preston’s Grounding Knowledge.Endorsing an essentially dialectical view modeled after Richard Levin’sand Richard Lewontin’s evolutionary biology called enactivism, Prestonwrites:

A close inspection of what is happening in the enactivist accountreveals not just the organism’s thoughts being shaped by sensorimotoraction but the environment itself in some sense being reconfigured bythe organism. Since an organism’s environment is always lent shape byhow he or she perceives it, the organism does not so much experiencean external environment as have one of his or her own. Environmentsare enacted by organisms as they go about their daily activities. (Pre-ston 2003, 51)

An organism, in other words, is not merely a passive recipient of stimuliwhich cause thoughts to occur, and “an environment is not just a spacethat surrounds an organism and supplies it with a fixed number of prede-

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termined stimuli” (54). Rather, on Preston’s account an environment “issomething that can be understood only relative to the activities and char-acteristics of the organism itself” (54). To have an environment is to havea specific set of interactive opportunities and obstacles embodied in arelationship governed not merely by reaction, but by the responses felici-tous to survival. Like all organisms, those capable of consciousness enacttheir environments through life-sustaining activities, but unlike, for exam-ple, bacteria and snails these activities include not only sensory but alsocognitive components.

Human consciousness instantiates a uniquely dialectical relationshipwith the world enacted not only through artifactual creation but throughconceptual creation. We do not merely experience thoughts, but havethoughts of our own: “Creating theories and beliefs is something thatorganisms do through interaction with their environments” (55). In cre-ating a human “world of objects” the environment is itself modified andreconfigured:

The organism cooperates with the environment in constructing beliefsat the same time as the environment is shaping what and how theorganism knows. . . . Not only are agents epistemically active, but envi-ronments are, too. Organism and environment actively co-determineeach other not only physically, but cognitively. (56)

What distinguishes the co-determination of human consciousness fromthat of most other species, however, is that in creating a world of objectsand concepts we also create a cultural world which, as Donna Harawaydemonstrates, “shapes what and how the organism knows.”

On her view, the activities through which we sustain ourselves are co-determined not only by our material conditions and evolutionary history,but by the political and social institutions created out of (but irreducibleto) human need and maintained through the labor accorded to species,race, and sex. In Haraway’s dialectics the natural and the political, theenvironmental and the cultural, are inseparably coupled. She illustratesthis point in her essay, “The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies,” where shedescribes the immune system’s role in the current biopolitics of Westernscience:

The immune system is an historically-specific terrain, where global andlocal politics . . . heteroglossic cultural productions . . . feminist science

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fiction, religious imagery, and children’s games . . . clinical medicalpractice; venture capital investment strategies . . . and the deepest per-sonal and collective experiences of embodiment, vulnerability, powerand mortality, interact with an intensity matched perhaps only in thepolitics of sex and reproduction. (1999, 204)

Like Marx, Haraway recognizes that among the active ingredients in theco-determination of organism and environment are included economyand commodification; consistent with feminist analyses, she shows howpower renders some more vulnerable than others to the material, but alsopolitical, dynamics of subsistence. An historically and culturally situatedenactivism, Haraway’s example underscores the contention that there areno environments uninterpreted by human interest; even wilderness isdefined in the anthropocentric terms of a parcel of nature human beingshave not (yet) despoiled. Moreover, there are no environments—not eventhose as autonomic and biological as the immune system—that fall out-side an interaction defined— especially in the case of human beings—asmuch by the political as the cognitive (or perhaps the political in virtue ofthe cognitive).

Indeed, we could do little better than immune system discourse totypify what philosopher Katherine Hayles calls the interaction model ofthe body/world relationship. Like Marx’s account of species being andPreston’s enactivism, Hayles’s argument for interactivity underscores thecontention that the point of contact between cognition, perception, andthe world is mediated and interpreted through embodiment:

interactivity foregrounds rather than obscures the importance ofembodiment. In the interaction model, the body does more than pro-vide a biological support system for the mind. Interaction is possibleonly because we are embodied, and the precise conditions of ourembodiment have everything to do with the nature of those interac-tions. The range and nature of sensory stimuli available to us, thecontexts that effect how these stimuli achieve meaning, the habituatedmovements and postures that we learn through culture and that areencoded for gender, ethnicity, and class—all effect how learning takesplace and consequently how the world comes into being for us. To beincorporated within a different body would be to be living in a differ-ent world. (Hayles 1995, 56)

For Hayles, embodiment comprises the specific perceptual and somatic

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disposition of an organism’s dialectical relationship to an environment.The frog’s world and the mastodon’s are different worlds than that of ahuman being’s, and a human being’s world in the Spain of 1560 is a dif-ferent world than that of a human being’s in the France of 2003 becausethe interactions of the frog, the mastodon, and the differently situatedpeople co-determines or enacts different embodied relationships to therelevant environmental conditions.

Similarly, the relationship of the frog to its own immune system—itself a crucial survival feature of the frog’s interface with its world—is adecisively different relationship than it is for the medieval Spaniard or thecontemporary French citizen because, as Haraway points out, the bodyfor us “is conceived as a strategic system, highly militarized in key areasof imagery and practice . . . the body ceases to be a stable spatial map ofnormalized function and instead emerges as a highly mobile field ofstrategic differences” (Haraway 1999, 211). Our relationship to ourimmune system is different from the frog’s because our embodied interac-tion with our worlds include possibilities that the frog’s does not have,namely, a fundamentally different perceptual and cognitive co-determina-tion which facilitates the production of the objects (such asbiotechnologies), discourses (including the use of military metaphors),artworks (including maps) and values (such as aesthetic appreciation forthe immune system itself) that characterize human interactivity.

INTERACTIVITY AND THE POSSIBILITY OF VALUE

If Hayles is right and “to be incorporated within a different bodywould be to be living in a different world,” then the very possibility ofaesthetic experience must be grounded not just in epistemic situation, butin the somatic, perceptual, and cultural interactions through which a“world” itself is made possible. The significance of this point is reiteratedin a different way in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Colour when heposes the following thought experiment:

What would it be like if people knew colours which our people withnormal vision do not know? In general this question will not admit ofan unambiguous answer. For it is by no means clear that we must sayof this sort of abnormal people that they know other colours. There is,after all, no commonly accepted criterion for what is a colour, unless itis one of our colours. (1977, para. 42; also see para. 97, 128–30, 155)

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Like Hayles, Wittgenstein recognizes that people whose vision is not like“ours” would not experience color in the same ways “we” do. What histhought experiment highlights, however, is that what counts as a colordepends on the conditions, perceptual as well as epistemic, for its being“one of our colors.” Colors, in other words, are not “out there” to beknown; rather, whatever counts as a color accrues to visual experiencequalified by nothing other than its being “ours” or not “ours.” Coloroccurs as a feature of perceptual experience without which no suchnotion would be available to us, “normal” or “abnormal.” Wittgensteinputs the point succinctly: “The question is clearly: How do we comparephysical objects—How do we compare experiences?”(para. 315). This,however, does not mean that what counts as a color is reducible to sub-jective experience like “how do I know that the sky I see as blue isn’t redfor you (even though you call it blue)?” Rather, what it means is thatbecause the experience of objects, including those of aesthetic apprecia-tion, include perceptual as well as cognitive components as constitutiveelements of the experience itself, any endeavor to draft criteria for whatcounts as “normal” or “rational” or “appreciable” must also include anaccount of the conditions of perception.

One of the virtues of the interaction model, then, is that according toit these conditions can be exhausted by neither an entirely objectivistaccount wherein the perception of color is subsumed by an explanationof the function of the eye, nor by a wholly constructivist account wherecolor experience is determined solely by cultural familiarity. Rather, theexperience of colored objects is a paradigmatic example of what Haylescalls constrained constructivism:

A model of representation that declines the leap to objectivity figuresitself as species- specific, culturally determined, and dependent on con-text. Emphasizing interactions rather than disembodied observations,it insists that embodied experience constructs a world, not the world.Recognizing that speakers and actors are always positioned . . . itindexes its conclusions to the contexts in which implied judgmentsabout accuracy are made. Yet it also acknowledges that every claim isnot equally valid. (Hayles 1995, 51–52)

On this view, the notion of a disembodied observation of a color makesas much sense as the notion of a round square. Color is a constitutivelyinteractive quality of experience. However much I may understand on the

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scientific evidence that my daughter’s dog, Disney, cannot see in color, thisdoes not mean that I understand how Disney “constructs her world.” Toknow this would require a kind of access to Disney’s experience I do nothave. However, it also does not mean that knowing something about Dis-ney’s visual apparatus is not useful; it is simply not exhaustive.

So too, argues Brady, for the interpretation of the aesthetic experienceof natural objects:

In aesthetic interpretation, meanings emerge through aesthetic quali-ties, as perceived by an individual who brings with her or him a set ofvalues, preferences, and more or less background knowledge, aestheticexperience, perceptual and emotional sensitivity, and imaginative abil-ity. Interpretation begins in exploratory perception and aestheticdescription, but does not end there. Through perception, we piecetogether what we apprehend through the senses, grasping shapes andcolors, sounds, smells and changing conditions. (2003, 73)

Contrary to objectivist views which locate the possibility of aestheticexperience in what science can reveal to us about an object’s functionsand qualities, aesthetic experience for Brady originates in the interactionof perception, imagination, and emotion. Whatever cognitive contribu-tion can be made to such experience through scientific understanding, itsground remains embodied and perceptual:

Aesthetic appreciation begins in perception. The immediate, firsthandexperience of environments and their objects constitutes the basis of allaesthetic valuing of nature. Perception, though, has many dimensions.It includes all of the different types of our sensory contact with theworld—seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, combined withthoughts, imagining and beliefs. (123)

Enactivist as well as interactionist, Brady’s account of aesthetic experi-ence situates its possibility in the “mutual determination of subject andobject” (124). She writes that: “We may consciously choose to experiencea lake by swimming in it rather than rowing through it. We can choosecareful attention or a more cursory glance, but environments and theirobjects significantly shape our perceptual perspectives” (124). At thismoment, for example, as I am writing I am nevertheless aware of severalaspects of my environment. From the gorgeous and gargantuan maplewith its spring leaves fluttering in the breeze outside my study window, tothe gurgling sound of the kitchen tap as my girlfriend washes up the sup-

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per dishes, to the post-supper playtime barking of the family dogs, Disneyincluded, my own activity is affected and engaged, as Brady puts it, multi-sensuously. More importantly, however, is that my appreciation of thiscolorful and cacophonous scene is, if Brady is correct, dependent on nosingle facet of my experience, but on a cultivated appreciation of the rela-tionships made manifest through it.

One potentially compelling objection to Brady’s view is that, in virtueof its constructivist elements, it offers too little upon which to establish abasis for aesthetic judgment; such an account is simply not consistent withany practicable notion of disinterest. Moreover, the appellation of “con-strained” to criteria of aesthetic judgment cannot be more than salutarysince, unlike science, there are no facts of the matter for which judgmentsof truth and falsity are appropriate; in the end, then, aesthetic judgment iswithout any objective validity. To this objection, we will consider two pos-sible responses: jettison the constructivist account in favor of a moreobjectivist view of aesthetic appreciation, or show how a constrained con-structivism can accommodate for a defensible notion of disinterest.

In Aesthetics and the Environment, Allen Carlson champions the firstof these options. Carlson agrees with Brady that the aesthetic qualities ofnatural and artifactual objects “appear to have to depend upon how theyare perceived” (Carlson 2000, 89). However, argues Carlson,

to appropriately appreciate the objects or landscapes in question [nat-ural objects] aesthetically . . . it is necessary to perceive them in theircorrect categories. This requires knowing what they are and knowingsomething about them. . . . In general, it requires knowledge given bythe natural sciences. (90)

The correct categories, according to Carlson, are those which correctlyidentify, for example, a whale from a fish, and annual from a perennial,or a limestone from a shale. In other words, a correct category is thatgiven in the relevant scientific nomenclature, and these, in turn, are “thosethat we find aesthetically good” (93). As Carlson puts it, “a more correctcategorization in science is one that over time makes the natural worldseem more intelligible, more comprehensible to those whose science it is”(91). On this view, then, aesthetic justification “falls within the scientificworld view” (94). Carlson argues that

our appreciation of nature is aesthetic and is analogous to that of artin both its nature and its structure. The significant difference is that

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while, in art appreciation, categories of art and the knowledge given byart criticism and art history are relevant, in nature appreciation, thecategories are natural categories and the knowledge is that provided bynatural history—by science . . . scientific knowledge is essential forappropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature; without it we do notknow how to appreciate it appropriately and are likely to miss its aes-thetic qualities and value. (90, my emphasis)

Putting aside problems with Carlson’s view of the objectivity of sci-ence, one constructivist objection is that such a view of aestheticjudgment cannot accommodate for the intimacy of the relationshipbetween the subjects and objects of aesthetic experience (including natu-ral and artifactual objects). In a word, Carlson’s view cannot account forthe interactive character of aesthetic experience, and thus misconstruesnot only the subject as perceiving interpreter but the object as an interac-tive agent in the experience itself. It is as if Carlson, committed first to apicture of science as a faithfully impartial register of fact, and second toa conception of a subject whose perceptions are unbiased by experience,culture, or situation, misses the simple but crucial point that aestheticexperience may be more like the experience of color.

As Wittgenstein’s example of color illustrates, however, the object ofjudgment or appreciation lies not merely in the thing perceived, but in therelationship of experiencing subject and perceived object. Objects do not,as Carlson’s view implies, exist to be appreciated; rather, their apprecia-tion is made possible in the experience itself. Without a perceiving subjectthere are no aesthetic qualities. Just as it is true that an understanding ofcolor’s scientific character (photons bouncing off of retinas, and so on) isneither necessary nor sufficient for appreciating its variety and richness,so too an understanding of, say, Disney as a canine who sees only in blackand white, is long and squat and fuzzy, is neither necessary nor sufficientfor appreciating her Dachshund-Pomeranianness aesthetically. Bradymakes this point when she observes that “[s]cience may also be exclusivein narrowing the range of appreciations that are considered appropriate,such as those that are not informed by science [including] perception,non-scientific knowledge, emotion, imagination” (Brady 2003, 197).

Phenomenologist Alphonso Lingis, however, makes the ontologicaland experiential point more forcefully:

The reality of the field of perception itself is not open to doubt; everyother order of entities we set up, by science or by metaphysics, could

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not be more real than a field of perceived things, since everything sci-ence posits has to be verified by empirical observation. (Lingis 1998,65)

For Lingis, the ontological ground for the construction of any claimabout any object is the phenomenal or perceived object. It is not merelythe case, then, that science provides too narrow a basis for appreciation,but that science is itself a construction whose underpinnings are experi-ential. In treating the objects of aesthetic appreciation as primarilyscientific, accounts like Carlson’s mistake object for their construction;that is, he mistakes what “could not be more real,” namely, the perceivedthing for the theory or law of which it is an instance:

Our environment that unfolds coherently is not a text we understand;its ordinance is not a set of universal and necessary laws from whichwe can deduce the particular things. . . . The layout of our environmentis not a Euclidean space. (Lingis 1998, 66)

Perhaps even more significantly, however, is that in treating theobjects of aesthetic experience as scientific, Carlson also tacitly treatstheir subjects as primarily cognitive entities whose ability to understandis as objective as his view of appreciation requires. Far from groundingknowledge in experience, this objectivity is dissociated from perception,feeling, and imagination; Carlson’s subject is methodologically Cartesiannot only because its primary relationship to the world is cognitively medi-ated, but because such a relationship excludes other avenues of knowing,hence, appreciating this world. As Brady puts it: “cognitive theories’ cen-tral reliance on scientific knowledge excludes other legitimate stories ofthe environment” (2003, 197). Again, however, Lingis makes the ontolog-ical point:

It is not with a conceptual apprehension of the system and the laws butwith out postural agility and tractability that we know the way land-scapes develop and unfold. . . . This knowledge is not a program weformat moment by moment for our nervous circuitry and muscula-ture. . . . The imperative in the environment of things is not received onour conceptual understanding and reason; it is not first an imperativeto conceive for each sensible pattern a universal and necessary cate-gory. . . . The imperative in our environment is received, not on ourunderstanding in conflict with our sensuality, but on our posturalschema which integrates our sensibility and mobilizes our motorforces. (Lingis 1998, 66–68)

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We are not, in other words, minds whose embodiment is incidental to ourexperience, but rather epistemically and perceptually situated (postured)beings for whom it is imperative to sense and reason, feel and think, knowand imagine if we are to navigate the environments in which we find our-selves. We cannot be indifferent. The issue now, then, is whether it ispossible to articulate a defensible notion of aesthetic disinterest underthese ontological conditions.

CONSTRAINED CONSTRUCTIVISM AND THE“INTEGRATED AESTHETIC”

Drawing inspiration from “the non-cognitive nature of [Immanuel]Kant’s aesthetic theory,” (122) Brady argues for a view of disinterested-ness which embraces Kant’s appreciation for natural objects whileeschewing his (arguably dualistic and sexist) disregard for the emotionalaspects of aesthetic experience. Grounding her view of disinterest in anaccount similar to the one I have expounded here, Brady argues thatalthough disinterest is often mistaken for indifference to or detachmentfrom a context, nothing in the concept itself requires this interpretation(2003, 134). “There is nothing in the concept of disinterestedness whichexcludes an approach that is sensitive to context, narrative, and the situ-ation of both subject and object” (134). Comparing aesthetic to moraljudgment, Brady points out that in neither case does the endeavor to beimpartial require adopting a standpoint wholly abstracted from theobject of judgment. To support this point she gives an example of a juror:

[A] juror in an armed-robbery trial acts as an impartial observer of theproceedings because she is expected not to act on personal biasestowards the defendant. . . . Nonetheless, the juror deliberates from asituated perspective rather than a view from nowhere . . . let’s say thatshe is a young woman with a keen eye for detail, which she will use toexamine carefully the facts of the case, to make a reasonable judgmentas to innocence or guilt. She herself has been robbed once and is thusable to relate to the situation of the victims, but she adds to this factthat it must have been even more frightening for them because herassailants were not armed. She uses her own past experience to relateto the victims, yet she tells herself not to assume the guilt of the defen-dant out of her own fear. (134–5)

Similarly, Brady argues that “although the aesthetic standpoint does notinvolve the practical reasoning and deliberation of a moral agent, we can

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begin to see how a disinterested, embedded standpoint works in theappreciation of aesthetic qualities” (135). She gives an example of a but-terfly in flight where she identifies, perhaps, with its appearance of gaietyor with the freedom we may associate with it: “My own experienceshapes and deepens my appreciation of the aesthetic object; it is shapedby who I am and deepened by the meanings that I attach to the object”(135).

Key to Brady’s approach is that although the many facets of the sub-ject’s situation may inform and deepen her/his aesthetic response, thesubject need not be preoccupied by these or by any considerations thatare especially self-interested. Just as a scientific understanding of the but-terfly can enhance or detract from the aesthetic experience of watching itin flight, so too identifying with it as a symbol of freedom may enhanceour appreciation of its graceful wing span or detract from it, say in thecase of the shackled prisoner who longs for release. Given, moreover,Lingis’s emphasis on the embodied nature of judgment, disinterest cannotbe a simple matter of detachment; our ontological conditions make suchCartesian dreams both unrealistic and undesirable.

I have, for example, several highly visible tattoos of lizards on myforearms. My tattoos symbolize both freedom and integrity in NativeAmerican mythology and a certain resistance to cultural conformity. I amalso the happy “co-parent” of a baby iguana named Savanna. When I amwatching Savanna bounce about her aquarium, I appreciate her litheness,her sprightliness, and her agility. I marvel at the many shades of green sheevinces in her miniature wilderness of greens and browns, and I enjoy herability to bend and sway as she climbs and explores. I see in Savannamany of the qualities I associate with my tattoos, but like the objectivejuror, I am capable of reaching beyond these qualities to appreciateSavanna as something much more than what iguanas represent in theindigenous mythologies of the American West. My aesthetic appreciationof Savanna is, then, by no means indifferent or detached; indeed, if Bradyis correct, what aesthetic experience itself requires is quite the reverse,namely, that context or embeddedness which provides those objects ofcomparison against which judgment, reflection, revision, in short, disin-terest is made possible.

However, while Brady confines her use of the concept of disinterestprimarily to aesthetic experience, she clearly recognizes that it may also

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have wider axiological application to those issues with which I began thisessay, namely, the meaning of notions like freedom and happiness for the21st century’s political activists. It is hardly surprising given its Kantianroots that disinterestedness is both an aesthetically and morally usefulnotion. The challenge is to connect it to the possibility of a praxis capa-ble of translating some facet of aesthetic experience into a defensiblepolitical activism. Brady herself offers some clues:

Disinterestedness as the basis of aesthetic appreciation defines a stand-point that backgrounds the concerns of self-interest and utility inrelation to nature and foregrounds the aesthetic qualities as valuable intheir own right . . . it supports appreciation that is sensitive to the par-ticularities of the experience and works positively to shift focus awayfrom the self and towards aesthetic qualities for their own sake, ratherthan as a means to fulfilling some practical or personal goal . . . disin-terestedness characterizes [a] valuing of nature that achieves a degreeof distance, but does not detach us from features of ourselves andnature that enable us to become aesthetically intimate with it. (141–2)

By encouraging an experience of natural objects and phenomena whosequalities are not defined merely as resources for use, a contextualized dis-interestedness provides an avenue of valuation which can connect theaesthetic, the ecological, and the ethical. Neither commodifiable norinstrumentalized, the natural object of aesthetic appreciation—whether arain forest vista or a strip mine—commands that appreciation appropri-ate to our recognition that what enables us to become “aestheticallyintimate” with that object just are the particularities of our humanembodiment. Equipped with such a perspective, we can acknowledge oursituatedness without necessarily being confined to it; we can becomemore open to the aesthetic dimension of our experience of nature in waysthat can encourage an ecologically centered feminist praxis.

Contrary, however, to Brady’s claim that “disinterestedness supportsa less human-centered approach to aesthetic appreciation of nature”(142), I suggest that it supports a more anthropocentric approach in thespecifically moral sense that it prods us toward that critical self- reflectionout of which a more ecologically defensible praxis might be borne. A dis-interestedness grounded in the enactivist/constructivist account above isintrinsically human-centered in the sense that it takes seriously theresponsibility not only to acknowledge but to critically evaluate the epis-

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temic positions from which we act, to be aware of the practical and some-times destructive effects of both our privileges and our destitutions. Inother words, it is precisely because disinterest is contextualized on thisaccount that opportunities for critical self-reflection about how ouractions affect the relationships sustained in a particular context becomepossible.

As Brady rightly points out, because disinterest encourages therespect of the other as an other, it can help to foster a greater respect forbiodiversity as a value in itself (142). I agree; however, Brady’s positiondoes not require (or even make desirable) that we eschew anthropocen-trism, but asks us rather to embrace it in that self-critical fashion whichacknowledges simultaneously our undeniable power to dominate andexploit and our status as members of a species dependent upon otherhuman and nonhuman nature. We are not simply another species of crea-ture in the global forest; in virtue of our very capacity for disinterest—acapacity not shared by (at least most) other species—we have a responsi-bility not borne by because not available to others, namely theresponsibility to reflect upon our actions. The meaning of “anthropocen-trism” does not, then, necessarily imply the instrumentalizing dominationof nature, but rather the moral responsibility made possible through self-reflection upon the somatic and reasoning context of our knowing andexperience.

Perhaps, however, of most importance to articulating a feministpraxis for the present century is that a contextualized disinterest offers asharp analytical tool for evaluating those institutions and practices withrespect to how the distribution of privilege affects the welfare of thoseupon whom it has traditionally been sustained. By encouraging the devel-opment of a feminism which takes as its primary emancipatory goal notmerely the improvement of women’s lives, but that of all those others val-ued, like nature “herself,” in terms of utility, disinterestedness offers aperspective from which to value ethically and aesthetically in a fashionthat portends something more sustainable than either offers alone.

WORKS CITED

Bender, Frederic. 2003. The Culture of Extinction. Amherst, NY: HumanitiesPress (Prometheus).

Brady, Emily. 2003. Aesthetics of the Natural Environment. Tuscaloosa: Univer-sity of Alabama Press.


Carlson, Allen. 2000. Aesthetics and the Environment. New York: Routledge.Haraway, Donna.1999. “The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies: Determinations

of Self in Immune System Discourse.” In Feminist Theory and the Body: AReader. Eds. Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univer-sity Press, pp. 432–44.

Hayles, Katherine. 1995. “Searching for Common Ground.” In ReinventingNature: Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction. Eds. Michael E. Soule andG. Lease. Washington, D. C.: Island Press, pp. 47–63.

Lingis, Alphonso. 1998. The Imperative. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Marx, Karl. 1964 [1932]. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

Translated by Martin Milligan and edited by Dirk J. Struik. New York: Inter-national Publishers.

Preston, Christopher. 2003. Grounding Knowledge: Environmental Philosophy,Epistemology, and Place. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1977. Remarks on Colour. Translated by Linda L. McAlis-ter and Margarete Schättle. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Documents

On Ecology and Aesthetic Experience a Feminist Theory of Value and Praxis