This paper aims at showing the interdependence between aesthetic and ethic values in appreciating nature. The Kantian concept of sublime guides us in the first part, exhibiting the primacy of ethics over aesthetics, as the sublime reveals it self to be an analogon of the moral law and the respect due to it. The second part, based on the holistic tendency in Environmental Ethics hold by Holmes Rolston III and others, analyses how the relation is inverted by means of an aesthetic of the invisible, where the sublime in nature refers to the whole and is hidden under the apparent ugliness of the parts.

Notre propos c’est de méditer le rapport reversible d’analogie qui, d’après la Critique du Jugement de Kant, on doit supposer entre l’art et la nature (entre l’esthétique et la téléologie), et de voir en quel sens cette idée, si blâmée par Schopenhauer comme appréciée par Goethe, peut encore donner à penser autrement les problèmes qui pose la conscience é cologique contemporaine, dans la mesure où elle nous dévoile une relation de l’homme vis-à-vis de la nature qui n’est plus seulement de maîtrise et de possession, mais plutôt d’admiration profonde et de respect gracieux. Seront thèmes majeures de notre exposition la notion kantienne d’une “technique de la nature” (qu’on propose de traduire par “poétique de la nature”) et surtout le rôle qui joue l’expérience esthétique (du beau et du sublime) de la nature dans l’économie de l’esthétique kantienne et dans l’architectonique même de la troisième Critique.

This article aims at analyzing the relations between art and organism in Nietzsche’s thought, having as its guiding line the attempt to build a new interpretation of the nature, beyond the ancient and modern teleological models. Using Nietzsche’s critique to Kant’s and Espinosas’s models of organism, it is questioned if the creation of artistic matrix expresses the effective relations of power in the world, or if it is a manifestation of the will to power, while being human will for illusion.

The approach to landscape complexity, elapses from the interpretation of its visible face while constellation of objective signs, which landscape architecture engages to code, inferring the action of the systemic processes as the result of the actualization of patterns or changeable configurations of existing relations between the mosaic of ecosystems, that in its relation to socio-cultural Systems have a particular expression on landscape structure. The present article clears the need of landscape narratives generated by its complexity, approaching the concept of evolutions by instability, implied on the self-organizing-systems theory due to the high connection between spatial and temporal scales, that characterize the complex interactions and the determinism-indeterminism involved in its autopoietic behaviour, causing the need of environmental narratives.

Dans cette lecture de la “Philosophie der Landschaft” de Georg Simmel, on essaie de comprendre la signification profonde de l’expérience esthétique qui est immanente à la contemplation, vécue en présence, d’un paysage naturel. Prenant en considération les principes vitalistes de l’esthétique simmélienne, on montre que l’unité esthétique inhérente à chaque paysage naturel est l’expression d’un sentiment d’harmonie - vital et non seulement formel - entre l’être humain et ce paysage; leur unité s’éprouve comme une “ambiance” spirituelle (Stimmung) commune et partagée.

This dissertation aims to explore the role and potencial of Aesthetics to Landscape Architecture. Starting by discussing some of the most relevant aesthetical theories, this work explores the concepts of aesthetics of nature, environment and landscape, highlighting its differences and similarities. The implications of these philosophical theories to Landscape Architecture are critically reviewed. From the theoretical investigation, it may be concluded that has been a growing interest in the landscape concept. This increase can potentially be due to the growing need for identity, contextualization and contact with nature.

This paper aims to contribute for the clarification of the concept of Landscape, from the Portuguese Landscape Architecture school’s point of view. It begins to place the origins of this school within the occidental context. It describes synthetically the evolution of the concept since the word was registered and put in the context of earlier world representation symbolic Systems’. It tries to explain the meaning of Landscape, before the emergence of ecology, as a fundamental base to its scientific approach, and how did it evolve since then. A synthesis of the Landscape representation/construction modes along the times is presented, as well as a proposal of a classification of the correspondent paradigms.

This article introduces the Gulbenkian garden as an example of the idea of Garden in Portuguese Culture. Though the Gulbenkian garden was designed in the sixties and influenced by the modern movement the study of the ideas and of the all process of design reveals that this garden exceeds dogmatic principies of the modern garden. The garden is much more a framework where light, water, vegetation were designed by their materiality and their temporality than a product of artistic mediation. The reasons of this approach to the landscape design are cultural ones. Above all an aristotelic Nature’s idea and the sense of fraternity with Nature that we may find in our culture.

The Anthropocosmic responsibility of ethics is a reflection of the ambiental question above the ethics light. To take care of nature is beware of the present and future life. The anthropocosmic responsability is inside of complementary and necessity dialects idea, and this idea is also inside of man and nature. These perspective is showed by people that lived the nature experience, a way of been that express mutual respect. The ecology is an expression of harmony, the integration of all kind of life and nature ambient. The Chief Seatle had the conscience of this around 150 years ago and we are still in the beginning. We are looking for arguments to convince ourselves and other people that our intervention on nature is omnipotent and a strong power of destruction that could has no way back.