Landscape Aesthetics

Landscape aesthetics can refer to 1) the aspects of a landscape that make it pleasant or enjoyable (e.g., “the aesthetics of the Tuscan Landscape”, i.e. its aesthetic characteristics, what we enjoy in that landscape), 2) the practices and activities aimed at designing the landscape to make it pleasant or enjoyable, or 3) the philosophical investigation of aspects of our relationship with and experience of the landscape that cannot be reduced to the purely sensory, scientific, or utilitarian, but that involve a feeling of satisfaction or dissatisfaction in the appreciation of the landscape’s value, in the light of our imaginative, creative, emotional, projective skills as well as our culture, memory, and feeling of identification (see D’Angelo 2014, 13-14). This entry will only deal with the latter meaning. Even within this restricted scope, and with the further proviso that I will not discuss landscape aesthetics as related to the genre of landscape painting, landscape aesthetics does not lend itself to a consistent definition, given the ambiguity associated with both words that compose the term.