Adam Smith's ''Sympathetic Imagination'' and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Environment

Journal of Scottish Philosophy 9 (1):95-109 (2011)
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Abstract

This paper explores the significance of Adam Smith's ideas for defending non-cognitivist theories of aesthetic appreciation of nature. Objections to non-cognitivism argue that the exercise of emotion and imagination in aesthetic judgement potentially sentimentalizes and trivializes nature. I argue that although directed at moral judgement, Smith's views also find a place in addressing this problem. First, sympathetic imagination may afford a deeper and more sensitive type of aesthetic engagement. Second, in taking up the position of the impartial spectator, aesthetic judgements may originate in a type of self-regulated response where we stand outside ourselves to check those overly humanizing tendencies which might lead to a failure in appreciating nature as nature

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Emily Brady
Texas A&M University

References found in this work

Critique of the power of judgment.Immanuel Kant - 2000 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Paul Guyer.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith.Adam Smith - 1976 - Indianapolis: Oxford University Press UK. Edited by D. D. Raphael & A. L. Macfie.
Aesthetics of the natural environment.Emily Brady - 2003 - Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

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