| "Changing the Subject" by Elgin and Goodman, points to the cliches that separate art and science. 'Science is to reason as art is to emotion.' 'Art aspires to beauty: science to truth.' Ostensibly setting rigid boundaries, such aphorisms pose a threat to neither artists nor scientists, who frequently cross disciplines and pool resources. Only philosophical aesthetics suffers, which is left with the task of accounting for this common sense distinction on the one hand, while explaining the inter-animation of scientific values and concerns with art on the other.;Art integrates a variety of scientific, non-formalist concerns---most notably ecological and environmental concerns, and the last forty years have seen an explosion of environmental and eco-activist artworks. Aesthetics, as the philosophy of art, has a duty to keep pace with evolutions in art practice and take these works under consideration. Yet analytic aesthetics has largely ignored these works. Environmental and eco-activist art present a challenge to current philosophical concepts of art, and these, in turn, present challenges to current philosophical accounts of the aesthetic. An adequate notion of the aesthetic must be rich enough to meet this challenge, and to rightly account for the unique value of environmental and eco-activist art as the kind of art these works are: works that essentially incorporate ecological components, values, and concerns.;This dissertation calls aesthetic theory to account. I begin by providing a critical, historical survey of environmental and eco-activist artwork, and summarize their challenging values and dimensions. Next, I create a hybrid aesthetic model by culling from contemporary philosophy the best theoretical analytic aesthetics has to offer for the purposes of appreciating the non-formalist aesthetic value of art. To apply and evaluate this hybrid model, I adopt a case-study approach. In the final chapter, I consider some of the practical and theoretical implications of this project for philosophical aesthetics; most notably I discuss how expanding analytic aesthetics' ability to account for non-formalist aesthetic value weighs heavily against the doctrine of ethical autonomism: the position that ethical and aesthetic value are wholly separate and distinct. |
