Callicot basically concludes that the West only began to understand aesthetics when "people saw landscape paintings in the galleries, enjoyed an aesthetic experience, and so turned to a painters' motifs for...gratification." Callicot derides the Greeks, Hebrews, and Medieval Europeans while holding up Japan and China as an ideal for proper environmental aesthetics. He dismisses the Greeks as too caught up in human beauty and the logical/mathematical sublimity (with only a look at their Socratic philosophers - which, as Socrates' trial and forced suicide demonstrates - does not necessarily represent the Greek view at large). Furthermore, he dismisses Homer as not celebrating nature. In my opinion, this criticism of Homer is unfair since we would hardly expect a modern war narrative such as Red Badge of Courage to revel in environmental aesthetics. Second, Greek polytheism does show an acute awareness of Nature, its uncontrollable forces and cycles. As evidenced in the cave paintings, polytheism contains an instinctual reverence for the natural world. However, ancient reverence contains a pungent mixture of awe and fear rather than love. Nature is overwhelmingly bigger than you. Ancients feared the gods - which is quite logical since the agents in Nature do indeed seem capricious. The hurricane does not care whether your house is destroyed nor the drought that you are starving to death due to lack of crops. "Mother Nature" proved a terrible parent. Of course, the Chinese and Japanese had the same view about the fickle spirits. In fact, I would argue true appreciation of Nature can only begin when humans remove themselves from "the cycle" and view nature as an orderly, rational kosmos - a view that begins with the philosophers of whom Callicot disapproves. To use an allegory, we left Mother Nature's household looking for a supposedly better life and now look upon that childhood fondly in retrospect. Is polytheistic "fear of the Lord" sublimity proper appreciation of aesthetics?
(I am of the opinion the ancients and cave painters were correct on this point - namely, that true reverence begins with fear and awe as well as admiration. To truly worship, one must understand he or she is in an unequal relationship with the object of worship - that the object is prior to you and you do not have to exist but are created.)
On one level, Callicot is correct. The Pre-Socratics such as Thales and Pythagoras followed by the three Socratics in many ways disenchant the material cosmos. By positing a realm of underlying structures - the abstract harmonies in music and mathematics, the logos, the atoms, or the forms, they pointed to a higher, uncreated unity to which the world can be reduced. As such, nature became an obstacle to perception of "the One" for the Platonic Gnostics or at best a proto-sacramental - that is, a material object participating in divine grace - for some Platonic Christians and Neo-Platonic philosophers. Nature became important insofar as the material world derived its existence from God. While Augustine lovingly depicted the material world acutely (the beauty of the human body, the brilliance of light playing against the world), he still divided between what can properly be "enjoyed" (which he defines as beheld for its own sake) and "used" (a sacred symbol along the road towards the Creator). Actually, Augustine typifies what Callicot criticizes - namely, that the bishop reveled in nature not for its own sake. However, I would point out that Emerson himself - in contrast with Thoreau - takes a more balanced version of the "sacramental" position. He states, "A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests universal grace...The world exists to the soul to satisfy this desire of beauty." (53) He then waxes on like a true Socratic seeking universals when he says: "Beauty is...is one expression for the universe...different faces of the same All." (53) Even though Emerson claims to love nature for its own being, he connects its being not as an ultimate end but as grace towards "the All."
Medieval Christians and Platonic philosophers then have always had a love-hate relationship with the natural world. If Callicot can be conceded one point, it is that sometimes an imbalance occurs where creation is maligned for the Creator's sake - an odd paradox, and one Emerson and St. Francis of Assisi tried to correct. However, I should note a less extreme version of this attitude is taken by any ascetic mystic of any religion - seeking to escape the world into the uncreated reality.
On a related note, St. Francis of Assisi and Jesus of Nazareth both praised the natural world as models for proper relationship with God - that is, radically innocent and dependent upon His grace. In this same vein, Jesus praised the poor and children. Of course, the latter makes me think of Emerson and why he praised children for seeing beauty because they are innocent. In other words, humankind is at its best "in its natural state" because it is closest to its own being - the end for which God created it. I cannot resist equating this view with Taoism wherein Nature is the archetype for proper human relationships with each other and the world.
Callicot's criticism of the Hebrews is odd. In Genesis, God creates the world and calls it "good" - that is, God makes it so in itself as its essence and independent from mankind (albeit the second creation story shows creation designed for mankind's benefit). This should be exactly what Callicot is searching for. Just as the cave painters examined nature closely in appreciation, the Book of Job shows the Hebrews as knowing the habits of various mountain goats and birds in poetic detail. Job is shown these things because God is demonstrating His sovereignty over everything, both death and life. Elijah hears God in the breezes and searches for Him in the earthquakes. If Callicot can criticize the Hebrews then, he could say nature is not praised on its own terms but as creations of God. God exists separate from Nature rather than where the gods are integrated forces within Nature born from the selfsame Chaos. Still, the Hebrews clearly nature's essence is beautiful on its own terms if still dependent on God.
This might be Callicot's point. The dominating strains of Western culture, monotheism and Platonic panentheism, both posit a higher reality beyond nature and greater than nature. Therefore, neither of these systems find their ultimate ends in the natural world but in another. The Chinese and Japanese - as animistic polytheists - could view these as ends. I would note, however, that Oriental landscapes are exceedingly "picturesque" in that they purposefully sought out classical images of beauty supplied in their culture, i.e., cherry blossoms, rivers, and mountains. This is the sticking point - that all peoples recognize some areas as more beautiful than others naturally even prior to landscape paintings. In fact, it is through recognizing a higher order (as in monotheism. panentheism of Taoist, Buddhist, and Platonic varieties, and science since everything exists in the "circle of life") that all things can be affirmed as beautiful. As Aquinas and Augustine would say, all things are beautiful because they meet their proper ends and conform to their natures. Hence, the only things ugly and evil are privations. It takes this training as we see in Emerson and Thoreau to see all things as beautiful. It is not natural to see all things as beautiful but exceptional, not the historical inheritance of one culture but the prehistoric inheritance of humanity.
(Blog 4)
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