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Descriptive Aesthetics
Max Ryynänen
Whether aesthetics or any other form of philosophy has a methodology is a metaphilosophical question, where one can dive deep into asking where the boundary for using the method’s concept should be drawn. Those who walk in Paul Feyerabend’s footsteps tend to have a clear answer to this, accentuating how science should not be subordinated to any methodological rules, as some read Feyerabend’s manifesto,[1] simplifying it a bit; but more than that I’d like to be a pragmatist here and focus on evident cases of philosophy having a method, and remind the audience of the fact that although we might feel insecure without the safety net of methods in philosophy, at moments its presence is obvious. Just think of aesthetics, and how Martin Heidegger starts his Origin of the Work of Art[2] by discussing the hermeneutic circle, or the less trendy use today of necessity and sufficiency in analytic aesthetics. Practically speaking, these examples are somewhat vague. Quantitative and sometimes even qualitative methods in social sciences still are much more rule-driven, let alone laboratory experiments in natural sciences or mathematics. Also, thinking about the humanities, in semiotics the method really leads and restricts the study.
Arnold Berleant is one of the rare contemporary aestheticians who has come up with an idea and offered applications for its method. Methods have been present in his work in various ways. We find method-driven notes on terminology and the scope of environmental aesthetics in “An Emerging Aesthetics of Environment,” Chapter 2 of Living in the Landscape: Toward an Aesthetics of Environment (1997),[3] and in his note on René Descartes, “Duchampian Reflections on Descartes,” published in his own Festschrift (2022),[4] where Marcel Duchamp and René Descartes are shown to have worked in an analogous way. Discussing how Descartes did “the test of doubt to every opinion he held,” Berleant writes about the circular mode of Descartes’s dubito, where he had to accept it as a method before applying it.
Still, Berleant’s greatest gift to aesthetics lies not in these considerations, nor in his way of mashing-up phenomenology and pragmatism—which Crispin Sartwell has neatly called “supreme eclecticism” —but in his ideas concerning writing, where writing about aesthetic matters gains its own analytical overview and a proposition for the use of a new method less based in aesthetics than writing itself: descriptive aesthetics.
Descriptive aesthetics is one of the approaches that Berleant uses to work on the holistic nature of our lives, where aesthetic engagement is one of the key phenomena. In Gadfly, the undergraduate philosophy magazine of Columbia University, Wenny Iben asks Berleant, if “perception always has some sort of aesthetic element to it,” to which Berleant replies:
Yes. In saying that, I’m not saying that there’s beauty in it: I’m saying there’s a value in it. If you think perception is neutral, think of riding in a subway car. In seeing the ads above the windows, you are confronted with perceptual stimuli, and most of it is offensive, whereas good design can be comforting.[5]
This sort of holism, which has also been one of the leading ways to extend aesthetics in contemporary scholarly discourse, does not by any means take out the focus when we need it. In “A Critical Aesthetics of Disney World,” Chapter 7 of), Berleant writes that a rich description can help us understand Disney World as architecture, design, theater, landscape architecture, or just environment.[6]
Descriptions, as he writes in “Descriptive Aesthetics,” Chapter 3 of The Aesthetics of Environment (1995),[7] are something we already have around us in novels, poems, criticism, scholarly texts, and all kinds of texts about the environment, and they are partly narrative, phenomenological, evocative, and revelatory. Descriptive aesthetics, which happens more or less consciously and reflectively, is a “serious attempt (…) to enlarge the understanding of the aesthetic domain by guiding our perception through it.”[8] While it shares some aspirations with criticism, like a normative interest, we are not talking about judgmental attitudes but more about recognizing the central place of aesthetic appreciation and the attempt to lead the reader toward such experience. Its theoretical importance is something Berleant wants us to note in aesthetics: the way philosophy is already there, in these texts, both leading us to broaden our understanding and toward these experiences. He does not stop to note the existence of these “studies of specific environmental occasions,” where multisensory descriptions enrich our thinking, making us understand how we sense through our feet, how we feel kinesthetically through our bodies, or feel the sun and wind on our skins—without forgetting ” These continuities and their living sense is something Berleant also wants us to work on practically, through writing.
He shows the way to do this in ”a rich, textual exploration of a paddle trip, with associations, sensual notes, and facts guiding the reader to the kind of experience the author had along the way—and continues on this path in a chapter dedicated to these aesthetic(s) librettos in “Scenes from a Connecticut Landscape: Four Studies in Descriptive Aesthetics,” Chapter 4 of the same book,[9] where sailing and the circus take on notes that guide us to understand the holistic nature of aesthetic experience and its presence in life.
While we have noted Berleant’s great idea, extensive writing has not followed. Autoethnography openly uses methods from literature, but descriptive aesthetics is not an active part of aesthetics. I’d like to shed light on the very radical nature of Berleant’s idea, which is that if we want to understand aesthetics, we should start focusing more on writing descriptions. To take this seriously, we should have workshops in our studies to improve our ability to describe events and situations that we read as aesthetically important.
I have used the idea of descriptive aesthetics when teaching academic writing for art and design students, and they have found it very useful, as they often struggle in communicating their tactile knowledge. Many of them have later used this method in their masters and doctoral works. But increasingly I have started to think that this approach, which Berleant has shown to be useful, should be taken more seriously on an everyday level of scholarship. I am trying to use this method to grasp the aesthetics of martial arts, my current work in progress, and I have found it very useful in combination with writing about performances and body-mind phenomena. However, I think all kinds of arts and all forms of everyday aesthetics should be approached with the same method, more than what we have so far understood. Thinking about contemporary art, curators work hard to build a holistic net of meanings and experiences, and I find it awkward that we often enter exhibitions examining works one by one, or only connecting “the works” themselves, as if they’d been hanging in space devoid of context. Meanwhile, Manifesta Biennial has taken over empty warehouses, desolate army buildings with political implications; and Documenta takes place in parks in order to bridge art with these contexts. The wholes are too big to be grasped with perception or interpretation that is not based on extensive writing and description. Also, John Cage’s 4’33” (1952) shows an interest in the holistic nature of a concert, with all its coughing and movement in the seats. In a way, Cage creates description through the performance, but why hasn’t anyone written about those things? When does aesthetics follow? One possible path has been shown, and it’s based on what we already do a lot, anyway—writing.
Emily Brady had the following to say about descriptive aesthetics:
Descriptive aesthetics can help the field to interpret not only the past but, also, to consider what future aesthetic values, disvalues, and meanings may be for future generations. In a climate-changed world, aesthetics will undoubtedly matter, and it is essential that the field works toward an understanding about what the future holds.[10]
Even imagined worlds might be discussed through well-grounded inventive descriptions from an aesthetic point of view. And for those who have not yet understood how aesthetics can be found everywhere, from economy to politics, descriptions might be eye opening. Their value can also be seen in their potential for bridging aesthetics to other disciplines.
We cannot continue to just think of descriptive aesthetics as a great idea. We should take up the challenge and see where it leads us, practically. We could edit an entire book with aesthetic descriptions, from gardening to the stock exchange, from fashion shows to academic conferences and the cinema. We should remember how much we can learn from a well-built description. It is never easy to express tactile understanding, but when we succeed, it sheds light on new sides of reality. And when the accent is on aesthetics, we learn about aesthetics.
I could support my challenge for you by reading from my PhD defense (2009), to challenge others to take up similar tasks:
We enter the hall, the kustos, Arto Haapala, my own teacher, and the opponent, Arnold Berleant, and everybody stands up, following an ancient Central European choreography, which has gained some own spice in Finland, where an own local academic culture started to develop during the Swedish era. As we stop in the front part of the hall, I note that people are well dressed, but not in any exaggerated way, sort of ‘casual,’ as people in business would call it. I cannot but help but note that this is a bit like the white cube they talk about in the arts, a big empty space, leaving us only with our content. We sit down, and the verbal choreography starts. There is a bit of a mix of perfumes hanging in the air. I feel stiff in my suit. Arnold has a cloak on him, and he looks like a sage in a Medieval painting. After Arto’s introductory notes, which are very much formal, like a prayer, I stand up again, and start my speech. Soon the hall and the people are increasingly distant, as I immerse myself in Venice, the object of my dissertation, through descriptions and notes, and philosophical topics from interpretation to experience, including environment, pollution and tourism. My discourse feels intensifying even for me, like I’d be a listener too. Attention shifts between my immersion and the glimpses of the semi-sterile environment where I stand, the audience, and the other performers in this Medieval ritual. After a while I notice that I have read my paper.
Max Ryynänen
max.ryynanen@aalto.fi
Max Ryynänen is Principal Lecturer (equivalent of Reader in the UK, but based on pedagogical merits) in Theory of Visual Culture at Aalto University, Finland, and adjunct professor of aesthetics at the universities of Helsinki, Jyväskylä, and Eastern Finland. He is the ex-president of the Finnish Society of Aesthetics, Finland’s member of the board in the Nordic Society of Aesthetics, and the Chair of the Society for Dialogical Aesthetics. Ryynänen’s books are based on an extended way of using aesthetics and mingling with cultural studies, film studies, and idea history. Currently, Ryynänen works on a book on the aesthetics of martial arts. For more, see homepage: http://maxryynanen.net/.
Published on November 14, 2025.
Cite this article: Max Ryynänen, “Descriptive Aesthetics,” Contemporary Aesthetics, Volume 23 (2025), accessed date.
Endnotes
[1] Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (New Left Books, 1975).
[2] Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, in Off the Beaten Track, edited and translated by Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 3.
[3] Arnold Berleant, Living in the Landscape: Toward an Aesthetics of Environment (University Press of Kansas, 1997).
[4] Arnold Berleant, “Duchampian Reflections on Descartes,” Popular Inquiry 2022/1 (Special Issue: Liber Amicorum for Arnold Berleant, edited by Mădălina Diaconu and Max Ryynänen): 5-10.
[5] Wenny Iben, “The Values We Don’t Talk About: A Conversation with Arnold Berleant,” Gadly Magazine 12.6.2023: https://www.thegadflymagazine.org/home-1/the-values-we-dont-talk-about-a-conversation-with-arnold-berleant.
[6] Arnold Berleant, The Social Aesthetics of Human Environments (Bloomsbury, 2023), 71.
[7] Arnold Berleant, The Aesthetics of Environment (Temple University Press, 1992), 25-39.
[8] Berleant, 26.
[9] Berleant, 40-46.
[10] Emily Brady, “Learning from Aesthetics of Engagement,” Popular Inquiry 2022/1 (Special Issue: Liber Amicorum for Arnold Berleant, edited by Mădălina Diaconu and Max Ryynänen): 33-39.