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Environmental Aesthetics: Must Moral Issues Always Override Aesthetic Considerations?

Lok Chong Hoe

Discipline: Philosophy, Environmental Science

 

Abstract:

This paper attempts to distinguish the aesthetic approach to environmental protection from the practical approach. The practical approach has a definite goal—the protection of present and future generations of human beings from harm and destruction. Protection of the environment is therefore only a means to an end—this means that if there were alternative and less painful ways to achieve the same goal, then we might opt for those other ways to preserve humankind. The aesthetic approach, on the other hand, treats environmental protection as an end in itself. This is because certain aesthetic moods, feelings, or mental states can only be created by the objects we attend to; these objects (in this case the natural environment) are therefore unique, and their destruction must mean that we can no longer enjoy that peculiar feeling which it (and only it) will evoke.