In my last post on beauty, I looked at two questions: Why would the artist make art? And why should the artist make art? I concluded any artist must create; to do so is not a choice, but an irrepressible pursuit of goodness. To make art, in whatever form, is to follow the divine.
This month, I turn my attention to nature. I am curious about how to explain its self-evident beauty. For those of us confined to cities far from the valleys and mountains depicted in the paintings of the Hudson River School or the pastures and forests described in Mary Oliver’s poems, how do we perceive and understand “natural beauty”?
A Montana Picture
First, I looked to Praxis Circle Contributor Sir Roger Scruton. From his book Beauty:
The primary exercise of judgement is in the appreciation of nature. In this we are all equally engaged, and though we may differ in our judgements, we all agree in making them. Nature, unlike art, has no history, and its beauties are available to every culture at every time. A faculty that is directed towards natural beauty therefore has a real chance of being common to all human beings, issuing judgements with a universal force (page 59).
To Scruton, we have a universal human ability to experience nature. Certainly, we will disagree individually and culturally as to what constitutes natural beauty, but the fact that we all judge nature, Scruton argues, shows that we all have an interest in and connection to it.
He distinguishes nature and art. Geological or biological history have happened over time, but in this case, nature does not have the human history that is prevalent in art;, therefore, natural beauty is an experience we can all share, regardless of cultural norms. As an American, I may not have total comprehension of the intricacies of Kawase Hasui’s woodblock prints, such as the ones I saw at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, but, through study, I can learn about and thereby appreciate the artist’s vision and skill. Meanwhile, at the base of Japan’s Mt. Fuji, I would feel the mountain’s beauty, majesty, and spiritual power.
During one summer in college, I participated in a research project about birds of prey populations near Dillon, Montana. Surrounded by the grandeur of the Beaverhead Mountains and the Grasshopper Valley, I lived in an area of old growth forest, cattle ranches, and a small ski resort. After some time, the landscape made less of an impression due to the routine of measuring the activity of nesting pairs of hawks. But one day, the scientists in charge took us to a different area to disrupt the rigors of our work. We traveled to a national park with a quiet stream meandering in the flats beneath the Pioneer Mountains. A rainstorm interrupted our picnic briefly, and then a rainbow appeared. I ventured away and snapped a photo of that rainbow arcing between two aspen trees illuminated by the sun descending behind me. That printed photograph later disappeared, but I can still see the image in my mind. I am always moved by that memory’s silent splendor.
Had I told Roger Scruton this story when he was alive, he may have responded much the way he did in his book:
The experience of natural beauty is not a sense of “how nice!” or “how pleasant!” It contains a reassurance that this world is a right and fitting place to be—a home in which our human powers find confirmation. … [By witnessing] a perfect form of the wildflower or the blended feathers of a bird, you experience an enhanced sense of belonging. A world that makes room for such things makes room for you (page 66).
Thus, in addition to the Creation as described in Genesis, this world possesses the power of God’s love to include me in it. Even though I could not have articulated it in this way back then, when I stood separated from the group and lifted the camera to my eye, when I observed that rainbow and those aspens, I wasn’t just marveling at the contrast between the colors of the rainbow and the white bark of the trees—I was practicing my faith. When I remember it now, I do the same.
Scruton and Kant
Scruton delineates how we comprehend nature and art by invoking Immanuel Kant’s “purposiveness without purpose.” To paraphrase, we can judge the beauty of a sea shell, for example, without understanding its purpose or God’s intention. The human interprets a “morality” that tends towards goodness and “orderliness.” In beholding the sea shell, we sense an “awareness of purpose, whether in the object or in ourselves” that leads to the “root question of theology, namely, what purpose does this beauty serve?”
I am no scholar of Kant, but Scruton explains an element of his philosophy useful to my inquiry:
Here, the limits of our reason render it impossible to ascertain the full purpose of beauty, yet we judge how the world appears. We cannot completely understand an object’s natural beauty because we cannot reason our way to either its creative purpose or some inherent, independent quality contained only in itself. Nevertheless, according to Scruton, we live in a world presented to us, and only through our thinking, however flawed, can we interpret our surroundings. Hence, when I saw the rainbow between the aspen trees, I made an aesthetic judgment about their qualities of form and beauty and, therefore, gained a sense of “purposiveness” without ever knowing its purpose. I used reason to the limit of what I could understand.
Final Thought
A peony from the author’s garden.
I return to the beginning: how can we understand the naturally beautiful? Consider the peony—its colors, its delicacy. The flower attracts bees and ants and emits a pleasing smell. As I gaze at it, I also come to know its goodness, an acknowledgement I have a place in a world that accepts my presence. I apply my reason, but I also feel this generosity, both reconciled through faith in God. And regardless of our individual tastes or various beliefs, nature affirms we all belong and have a place in our beautiful, ordered home.
Next month, we’ll look at how we harness natural beauty: gardens.
