A beautiful specimen: The plant as a work of art

Abstract

Traditionally, philosophical aesthetics was limited to arts and hence not interested in nature. This paradigm was overcome by the exponents of environmental aesthetics who advanced a number of arguments against appreciating nature in terms of art and offered a theory that can be seen as an example of non-anthropocentric aesthetics. Following some of their claims, the article aims to analyze the aesthetic experience directed at individual natural objects as seen in museums, collections, scientific illustrations or photographs. The aesthetic experience of a specimen is discussed as an aesthetic experience of nature, which treats nature as if it were art, but at the same time it makes nature’s other-than-human character come to the foreground. Thus, it is different from other art-centered approaches criticized by environmental aestheticians.