Experiencing the natural environment: A dialogue between “aesthetic” and “spiritual”

Abstract

The topic of this thesis is to show that the aesthetic experience of the natural environment can have a spiritual dimension; i.e., aesthetic qualities perceptually constituted from physical qualities can induce an experience of a deeper layer of reality. My attempt is to sketch a scenario when and under what circumstances such situations could occur by using and connecting theories by William James, Jan Mukařovský, Edward Bullough and Arnold Berleant to outline a scheme of the transformation of sensory stimuli in aesthetic qualities, which are subsequently enriched with symbolic meaning. Berleant's aesthetics of engagement creates a model of working with sensory stimuli that fulfills the aesthetic potential of the natural environment. That the aesthetic can become spiritual and even coexist in one situation at the same time is supported by Jan Mukařovský’s conception that no area of human experience has a fixed exclusive function. The theory of Edward Bullough demonstrates that even a situation in which physical immediacy reaches us can be perceived aesthetically, and that we are able to preserve the acquired aesthetic material from its dissolution in the field of practical perception. However, the aesthetic proposal prepared in this way will not succeed in its transformation into spirituality when spirituality is understood from a closed, predominantly religious sphere. I will therefore use the concept of spirituality by William James; i.e., spirituality as open and realized in the individual experience.

Through such an interconnection of the theories of these authors it will be possible to outline the concept of the aesthetic spiritual experience which attempts to appropriately reflect the dynamics and processuality of the aesthetic and spiritual dimensions in one experience.

I will try to do something that has not been given much space in theory so far, this work therefore serves as an input for further investigation of this issue.