The main question of the essay is: do ruins need a new definition? Ruins are not only destroyed architecture, but also everything that has been associated with it in the process of life. From the perspective of the question, the concept of ruins should be understood much broader than just architecturally, and they should be assigned not to the past but to the present, or rather between past and present. If we consider ruins from the standpoint which situates them between (...) culture and nature, there opens up another opportunity: here ruins are found on the juncture of nature and culture, becoming a natureculture hybrid. Here, degradation encompasses the cultural sense in the first place and the expectations it involves, but not from the perspective of nature. The order of nature translates into a new “life” of the ruin, which is attributed a new functionality, subordinated to other – non-anthropocentric – goals and values. Concluding, ruins require a new approach and a new definition that does not condemn them to degradation, but sees hope in the revitalizing forces of nature that ensure for them a new status and a different ontological significance. (shrink)

Garden and melancholy have been analysed by Alicja Kuczyńska from the standpoint of Renaissance Neoplatonism. I try to work out a common denominator for them, and attempt to compare Renaissance and Romantic melancholy—in the garden space. I see a positive moment in the notions developed by Kuczyńska, namely in that melancholy, as an expectation, acquires a positive dimension, approaching hope.

Following the suggestion expressed in the title of this essay, I deal with the idea which allows for considering landscape garden as a paradigmatic indicator of our relationship with nature. Focusing on the idea of landscape garden and its aesthetics I analyze two aesthetic notions: the picturesque and sublime, which are the background of the kind of experience accompanying a perception and participation of and in the landscape and environment. I analyse the kind of experience, which captures all the aspects (...) that situate the human in the environment instead of opposing it. The analysis will be conducted within the framework of aesthetics. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno aesthetics is considered as the last and the most important theory, which is formulated from a perspective of the aesthetics of art. It established an understanding of the contemporary art and its mechanisms. In spite of its wide reception, the interpretations of Adorno's conception often overlook his notion of beautiful nature. The notion is the main subject of my article. I want to show that it is not only vividly present in "Ästhetische Theorie", but also takes an (...) important part in Adorno's aesthetic theory and in his understanding of art and of aesthetic experience. Such an attitude allows me to interpret Adorno's theory from a perspective of the "extended aesthetics", which consider the aesthetics of nature as an important part of the field. Since Hegel, who rejected the concept of nature from the field of aesthetic, Adorno is the first aesthetician who re-entries the model of aesthetics understood as domain of both nature and art. Adorno admitted the notion of beautiful nature an important place in his aesthetics. For him, the acknowledgement of the beauty of nature is a condition of art and aesthetics experience. At the same time, the natural beauty is a medium of some utopian values. The involuntary perception characteristic of beautiful nature and a kind of memento "imprinted" in it are some archaic rudiments that do not correspond with the rationality of cultural industry. (shrink)