The above photo is a photo I took while on the 3rd floor of Thomas More College's Library. I want the reader of this blog to visualize being in this moment while I address key issues regarding the analysis of the aesthetic of nature model. George Santayana, addressing perceived problems of the aesthetics of nature, argues that the natural landscape is “indeterminate” and “promiscuous”. That is, nature is so diverse that it affects our concept of beauty; for we don’t know what aspect of nature to focus on to achieve an appropriate aesthetic appreciation. I propose that Santayana is wrong in making this argument. Firstly, it can be argued that the vast nature that he talks about is already is already being focused on based on the limitations of our field of view. We cannot view nature in whole, thus we are focusing an various aspects of nature involuntarily. Second, Within this field of view we need not concern ourselves with focusing further on nature to appreciate it. The above photo represents my limited field of view of nature, I need not focus more on various aspects of this area to determine if it is beautiful. Looking at the entire photo we natural say that this is a beautiful perspective. I am not saying that focusing further on nature does not give us an aesthetic experience, but rather, we can gain an aesthetic appreciation of nature from this perspective. Granted, if we focus just on the sunset we may have a great aesthetic experience in comparison to focusing on the car on the road. Looking at the big picture we see that every element of nature adds to its aesthetic appeal, but if we choose to focus more each individual element we may increase or decrease our aesthetic appreciation of nature.
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