Indigenous and Local Knowledge and Aesthetics: Towards an Intergenerational Aesthetics of Nature

Abstract

In a recent paper, Allen Carlson moves away from a purely scientific–cognitive framework for environmental aesthetics towards a ‘combination position’ based on the ecoaesthetics theorised by Xiangzhan Cheng. Carlson argues that only an aesthetics informed by ecological knowledge can offer the correct foundations for the continued relevance of environmental aesthetics to environmental ethics. However, closer analysis of Cheng's theory of ecoaesthetics reveals a number of problems related to questions of anthropocentrism and in particular, the issue of an ethic based on love. In this paper, I offer an alternative approach for the future of environmental aesthetics in the form of an intergenerational aesthetics based on Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK).