Re-consideration on the Beauty of Nature in Modern Aesthetics

Abstract

In recent years, Ecological Aesthetics has become the hot spot issue in China. This perspective will provide a theoretical booster for our perception of the beauty of nature. However, it is quite questionable whether ecology can be regarded as an aesthetic issue since the beauty of nature cannot be replaced by the beauty of ecology, because the latter lacks the flexibility of the former when discussed in terms of phenomena and nature. Therefore, the significance of the discussion of Ecological Aesthetics does not lie in the establishment of a new branch of study, but in its providing a philosophical basis for the reconstruction of a kind of Neo-Natural Aesthetics. The newness of the Neo-Natural Aesthetics can be demonstrated in the follow three dimensions: firstly, with ecology, landscape and environment as its study objects, it enlarges the scope of the beauty of nature; secondly, the essence of the beauty of nature will be redefined. The organic view of nature of modern ecology provides the aesthetic essence for the self-realization of the beauty of nature; thirdly, the aesthetic relationship between human and nature is reestablished. The previously one-dimensional relation of ”man surveying nature” now gives place to the new relation of the interaction and co-appreciation between man and the natural objects.