Blog #2

I think reading the introduction to Historical Foundations of American Environmental Attitudes definitely helped me understand the reading. It gave a good overview of major philosophers such as Emerson and Thoreau. Emerson said that everything was natural, including art, except for the soul- that was the only thing he thought was nonnatural. Emerson also used nature to describe essences unchanged by man. With keeping this in mind and the other backgrounds for the other philosophers, it was a little easier to see the big picture in the first chapter. I am not sure if I understood everything correctly when I was reading it on my own but after the class discussion I had a much better concept of the big picture. After the class discussion the four main  things that were touched upon is what I re-read. This was the beatiful, the picturesque, the sublime, and the interesting. I thought it was interesting how over time that nothing was considered ugly anymore and simply placed into one of these categories.