自然壮观和环境伦理学

The Sublime and Environmental Ethics

从十八世纪自然壮观(sublime)理论淡出主流美学理论以来,自然壮观就受到了三个方面的质疑和批评:第一,历史发展使得自然壮观体验不再重要;第二,美学取消主义对壮观体验的形而上学因素的批评;第三,自然壮观的人类中心主义立场。本文系统回应了这三种质疑和批评,考察了自然壮观与环境伦理学的关联,并指出自然壮观的价值在于突显了人类介入自然时的一种独特的紧张审美,以及其中蕴含的美学—道德关系。它体现了人类面临自然的威胁和压迫时,在谦虚与对人类自身的肯定之间取得平衡的一种美学回应形式,也表达了一种更具挑战性的环境体验,为人类敬畏和尊重自然的道德态度提供了一种可能的基础。

Since the concept of sublime fell out of favor of the aesthetics, sublime in nature has been criticized and objected in three aspects： firstly, history change makes sublime experience not relevant nowadays; secondly, eliminativism＇s metaphysics argument; thirdly, its anthropocentric implication. This paper attempts to give response and considers the relations between sublime in nature and environmental ethics, and argues that sublime＇s value will lie in the natural aesthetic qualities it （still） identifies ; the way it characterizes a distinctive type of intense aesthetic engagement with nature; and the particular aesthetic-moral relationship that emerges through that. It embodies a form of aesthetic experience which balances elements of humility and humanity in relation to more threatening or overwhelming qualities and articulates a more complex side of environmental experience. The sublime delivers aesthetic responses that potentially ground moral attitudes, where we grasp the natural world as something that is to be admired, deserving of respect.