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Thinking through Landscape
Our attitude to nature has changed over time. This book explores the historical, literary and philosophical origins of the changes in our attitude to nature that allowed environmental catastrophes to happen.The book presents a philosophical reflection on human societies’ attitude to the environment, informed by the history of the concept of landscape and the role played by the concept of nature in the human imagination. It features a wealth of examples from around the world to help understand the contemporary environmental crisis in the context of both the built and natural environment.
Berque locates the start of this change in human labour and urban elites being cut off from nature. Nature became an imaginary construct masking our real interaction with the natural world. He argues that this gave rise to a theoretical and literary appreciation of landscape at the expense of an effective practical engagement with nature. This mindset is a general feature of the world's civilizations, manifested in similar ways in different cultures across Europe, China, North Africa and Australia. Yet this approach did not have disastrous consequences until the advent of western industrialization.
As a phenomenological hermeneutics of human societies’ environmental relation to nature, the book draws on Heideggerian ontology and Veblen’s sociology. It provides a powerful distinction between two attitudes to the tacit knowledge of earlier peoples engaged in creating the landscape through their work - “landscaping thought”- and the explicit theoretical and aesthetic attitudes of modern city dwellers who love nature while belonging to a civilization that destroys the landscape - “landscape thinking”.
This book gives a critical survey of landscape thought and theory for students, researchers and anyone interested in human societies’ relation to nature in the fields of landscape studies, environmental philosophy, cultural geography and environmental history.
Berque locates the start of this change in human labour and urban elites being cut off from nature. Nature became an imaginary construct masking our real interaction with the natural world. He argues that this gave rise to a theoretical and literary appreciation of landscape at the expense of an effective practical engagement with nature. This mindset is a general feature of the world's civilizations, manifested in similar ways in different cultures across Europe, China, North Africa and Australia. Yet this approach did not have disastrous consequences until the advent of western industrialization.
As a phenomenological hermeneutics of human societies’ environmental relation to nature, the book draws on Heideggerian ontology and Veblen’s sociology. It provides a powerful distinction between two attitudes to the tacit knowledge of earlier peoples engaged in creating the landscape through their work - “landscaping thought”- and the explicit theoretical and aesthetic attitudes of modern city dwellers who love nature while belonging to a civilization that destroys the landscape - “landscape thinking”.
This book gives a critical survey of landscape thought and theory for students, researchers and anyone interested in human societies’ relation to nature in the fields of landscape studies, environmental philosophy, cultural geography and environmental history.
- GenresPhilosophy
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
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May 13, 2020
This book discusses the origins of thinking regarding the landscape. The author contrasts landscape thinking and landscape theory; landscape thinking being the thoughts people living within the landscape have when interacting with it compared to landscape theory in which the landscape is the subject of thought. It traces the origins of this differentiation back to the division of labour with the elite lived in cities and theorized about nature. This disconnect is presented as the reason for “landscape killing” examples in the modern landscape. Such landscape killing includes building multi-storey apartment buildings in areas of traditional low-rise houses.
Birque often flashes back to Morroco and China in describing different views of the landscape. For example “the obscure female” is brought up in a description of landscape. This is a female spirit residing in the landscape common in ancient Chinese thought. It is the origin of life and manifested in the watercourses at the base of valleys.
Birque states that the concept of landscape appreciation originated in China but did not result in the landscape killing common in Europe due to the connection of landscape with religion. Birque suggests that the reason for the modern disconnect is subject-object dualism; the idea that either the human mind is above the physical world (Cartesian dualism) or that the physical world is above the human mind.
Examples of being above nature hark back to the poetry of ancient urban elite in describing the rural landscapes. These works fail to mention the work of the farmers which is described as a foreclosure of their efforts. Similarly this connected to the foreclosure of the natural world in the way we interact with the landscape. We do not consider the efforts being provided by the world in appreciating nature (flying around the world to destroy nature). He considers that the delusion of existing urbanity to enter the womb of nature exists throughout the populace. We confuse labour’s product (ie combustion of fossil fuels with the movement of nature itself).
The author states that tp revel in the landscape is to search for immortality. The separation between myth and science in western thought occurred around 600BC with the Greeks. Nature however was still very much associated with the gods. The neutral object of “the environment” occurred with the development of the common modern western paradigm (CMWP) with the Copernician revolution which states that we are all part of a system with no actual centre.
Birque presents a logical, positivist argument for how a connection with the entire biosphere can be achieved by residing in the landscape and developing a deep connection with it. This could be summarised by saying that the landscape is a perception and that we should consider that all landscapes are integrated in a form that affirms our authenticity. The modern world has separated us from landscape.
Birque is a philosopher and a geographer. The integration of these two fields could yield fertile results in the field of environmental ethics.
His assertion that it is ideology that caused “landscape killing” is interesting. I do not think that he addressed the fact that it may have been the CMWP that allowed the development of technology that allowed landscape killing. Once that technology came available landscape killing may be the inevitable result. It is once these catastrophes happen that we can now examine mays to prevent further landscape killing.
This is a book worth reading for people wanting to understand landscape thought and how we can be with the landscape to prevent further degradation.
Birque often flashes back to Morroco and China in describing different views of the landscape. For example “the obscure female” is brought up in a description of landscape. This is a female spirit residing in the landscape common in ancient Chinese thought. It is the origin of life and manifested in the watercourses at the base of valleys.
Birque states that the concept of landscape appreciation originated in China but did not result in the landscape killing common in Europe due to the connection of landscape with religion. Birque suggests that the reason for the modern disconnect is subject-object dualism; the idea that either the human mind is above the physical world (Cartesian dualism) or that the physical world is above the human mind.
Examples of being above nature hark back to the poetry of ancient urban elite in describing the rural landscapes. These works fail to mention the work of the farmers which is described as a foreclosure of their efforts. Similarly this connected to the foreclosure of the natural world in the way we interact with the landscape. We do not consider the efforts being provided by the world in appreciating nature (flying around the world to destroy nature). He considers that the delusion of existing urbanity to enter the womb of nature exists throughout the populace. We confuse labour’s product (ie combustion of fossil fuels with the movement of nature itself).
The author states that tp revel in the landscape is to search for immortality. The separation between myth and science in western thought occurred around 600BC with the Greeks. Nature however was still very much associated with the gods. The neutral object of “the environment” occurred with the development of the common modern western paradigm (CMWP) with the Copernician revolution which states that we are all part of a system with no actual centre.
Birque presents a logical, positivist argument for how a connection with the entire biosphere can be achieved by residing in the landscape and developing a deep connection with it. This could be summarised by saying that the landscape is a perception and that we should consider that all landscapes are integrated in a form that affirms our authenticity. The modern world has separated us from landscape.
Birque is a philosopher and a geographer. The integration of these two fields could yield fertile results in the field of environmental ethics.
His assertion that it is ideology that caused “landscape killing” is interesting. I do not think that he addressed the fact that it may have been the CMWP that allowed the development of technology that allowed landscape killing. Once that technology came available landscape killing may be the inevitable result. It is once these catastrophes happen that we can now examine mays to prevent further landscape killing.
This is a book worth reading for people wanting to understand landscape thought and how we can be with the landscape to prevent further degradation.
October 21, 2022
very short and a pleasure to read. the central thesis is interesting and true enough (urbanites begin to conceptualize landscape as such due to alienation) and i enjoyed the bits of chinese aesthetics and poetry. not too sold on his "this is what's wrong with modernity" spiel
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews