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Arnold Berleant’s Engagement with the Aesthetics of Engagement
Fotini Vassiliou and Katerina Bantinaki
Arnold Berleant’s aesthetic theory was shaped by the multiple shifts that occurred in analytic aesthetics after the mid-twentieth century as a reaction to previously dominant approaches. Two main trends in early analytic aesthetics prompted these changes.
First, the most influential theories in the field of aesthetics focused mainly—or exclusively—on art.[1] Representative examples include Clive Bell’s theory of aesthetic feeling and significant form, Edward Bullough’s aesthetics of distance, Jerome Stolnitz’s theory of aesthetic attitude, Monroe Beardsley’s theory of the aesthetic object, and Virgil C. Aldrich’s theory of aesthetic perception. Even though some of these theories could be extended to natural objects, the primary focus remained on art. This orientation was reinforced in the early 1950s, when a number of philosophers—under the influence of Wittgenstein—shifted their attention to art itself, with Morris Weitz’s influential idea of art as an “open concept” standing as a prime example.
Second, both the theories that accepted the unity of the aesthetic phenomenon and the theories that focused exclusively on art approached artworks normatively in terms of detachment: perceptual detachment of the form from its content, critical detachment of the work from the creator and the context of its creation, or cognitive disconnection of the work from its external relations but also from the field of action or the practical interests of the perceptual subject. Until the 1960s, aesthetic experience was widely understood as an experience that has as its paradigmatic object the work of art, in the purity of its overall autonomy and the autonomy of its form.
The shift of analytic aesthetics away from the earlier paradigm emerged, first of all by realizing the myopic nature of the art-oriented model. Ronald Hepburn’s seminal essay, “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty,”[2] played a crucial role in that respect. Furthermore, a theoretical turn was prompted by a renewed focus on the nature of art itself. Beginning in the early 1960s, the hypothesis of autonomy came under scrutiny from a number of philosophers, often influenced by other philosophical traditions and responding to the challenges posed by movements like avant-garde. These thinkers sought to emphasize the historical and cultural character of art and the necessity of interpreting and evaluating it in light of the context of its own genesis. This paradigm shift brought about another equally significant transformation: it led to the emergence of environmental aesthetics as an autonomous field of philosophical inquiry.[3]
Berleant was among the philosophers who contributed to the paradigm shift in analytic aesthetics, recognizing that newly appeared artistic trends were exposing the limitations and distortions of the traditional model of aesthetic experience.[4] Performance works that intruded into the viewer’s space, installations that demanded movement or interaction, and artworks that aimed to provoke shock, disgust, or even erotic stimulation all challenged the aesthetics of distance and the notion of passive contemplation. Berleant’s aesthetic theory emerged within the context of these complex and interrelated changes, standing out as a radical and refreshing voice.
Berleant’s aesthetics, shaped by a deep commitment to experience in general, perception in particular, and the social embeddedness of art, calls for a reorientation of how we understand aesthetic value and aesthetic practice. Central to this reorientation is his seminal notion of aesthetic engagement, a concept that subverts the traditional model of disinterested spectatorship and instead insists on the participatory, embodied, and immersive nature of aesthetic experience.[5] Rejecting the traditional model, Berleant turned first to pragmatism and then more emphatically to phenomenology, finding in these traditions the tools for developing a new way of understanding aesthetic experience that could both accommodate emerging artistic trends and enrich the appreciation of traditional art forms, particularly architecture and music. From Dewey, Berleant adopts the idea of aesthetic experience as an interactive process in which human beings, as living creatures, actively engage with their environment through the unified exercise of all their psychological capacities. From Merleau-Ponty, he draws the understanding of aesthetic perception as a synthetic process that involves the body as a field of perception and action—yet extends beyond what is immediately perceived toward a totality that ultimately encompasses the world itself. Furthermore, Berleant echoes Dufrenne’s insight into the reciprocity between the perceiving subject and the object, a relationship that enables the aesthetic object to emerge as such in its glory.
By rejecting dualism, Berleant affirms the unity and reciprocity between subject and object. Rather than a passive spectator evaluating a static object, the aesthetic subject becomes a participant, dynamically interwoven with the aesthetic environment. In the framework of this relational ontology of aesthetics, beauty and meaning do not exist in objects as inherent and fixed qualities that we passively recognize but rather emerge through the interaction between perceiver and environment. Furthermore, by rejecting the detachment of the aesthetic object from its historical and cultural context, Berleant advances a broader horizon of meaningful situatedness. Most significantly, for him aesthetic experience is not a passive or disembodied contemplation, but rather an active, embodied, multisensory, and interactive engagement with the world—a world that not only includes us but is inextricably continuous with our very existence. Engaged aesthetic experience is multisensory, situated, and embodied. It is shaped by movement, affect, and spatial awareness. And since Berleant’s appeal for a “reconstruction of philosophy”[6] requires a profound understanding of what it means to experience, to be affected, to create, to be involved, and to belong, it goes beyond mere theoretization of aesthetics and the development of “a new aesthetics,”[7] serving as an exhortation to reengage fully with life itself.
It is also important to underline that engagement is not reserved for an elite few trained in aesthetic appreciation. Rather, it is a basic human capacity, accessible to anyone willing to be present, attentive, and open to experience. In this sense, aesthetic engagement challenges hierarchies of taste and expertise, replacing them with a pluralistic, inclusive model of aesthetic value.
Moreover, Berleant’s theory has clear political and ethical dimensions. It reclaims aesthetics from the domain of museums and galleries and resituates it in the contested spaces of public life. Whether through participatory art, community design, or public architecture, aesthetic engagement enables a collective reimagining of space and meaning. In this framework, art is not about passive consumption but shared creation, social interaction, and transformative encounter. This perspective aligns with traditions in pragmatism, phenomenology, and even strands of critical theory, all of which emphasize the political and ethical potential of aesthetic experience.
Originally developed through the analysis of specific artistic examples, Berleant’s theory offered—and continues to offer—a productive theoretical framework for understanding the aesthetic experiences these works invite. However, the field in which he was to have a particularly decisive influence was environmental aesthetics, where he is widely recognized as one of its pioneers.[8] His conception of aesthetic experience as an embodied, active, multisensory engagement with the world not only provided a valuable direction for the development of environmental aesthetics but also enabled the field to expand beyond the narrow confines of the physical environment.
While the ocularcentric aesthetics of distance reduced nature to a spectacle—whether framed as the picturesque or the sublime—Berleant’s theory allowed for the recognition of the rich aesthetic character inherent in our participatory contact with nature. That is, it emphasized those forms of experience in which we engage actively and bodily, using all our senses in interactive unity with the diversity of the natural environment—such as navigating a wooded area, kayaking through the bends of a serpentine river, or walking barefoot on wet sand, surrounded by the sounds and scents of the sea.
By offering a more comprehensive account of the human aesthetic relationship with nature, Berleant’s aesthetics of engagement became a widely influential paradigm in environmental aesthetics. Moreover, it spurred the development of other approaches that further expanded the field: some highlight specific dimensions of participatory experience more emphatically,[9] while others attempt to reconcile participatory aesthetics with revised notions of disinterestedness,[10] or propose alternative criteria for appropriate aesthetic appreciation.[11] But the aesthetics of engagement contributed to the expansion of the field of environmental aesthetics in another, equally important way: by thematizing—under the influence of phenomenology—the lifeworld as the realm of the aesthetic, it encouraged a focus on the urban environment within which the contemporary subject lives, moves, and acts, and on the things, activities, and experiences that make up the matrix of everyday life. Urban aesthetics and everyday aesthetics now have developed as branches of environmental aesthetics, extending its boundaries to the horizon of the culturally and historically conditioned lifeworld.
Now, Berleant’s theory of aesthetic engagement has received several arrows of critique.[12] Some scholars have questioned whether the ideal of engagement is too optimistic, perhaps insufficiently attentive to the ways in which people can become alienated, excluded, or numbed in aesthetic contexts. Not all environments are equally engaging, nor are all subjects equally capable of engagement due to social, cultural, or psychological constraints.
Furthermore, one might ask whether engagement risks collapsing the critical distance necessary for reflective judgment. Immersion may obscure the value of critical distance—the capacity to reflect, judge, or interpret aesthetically without being fully absorbed, for example in cases of politically charged art and avant-garde artworks. If we are fully immersed in an aesthetic field, do we lose the capacity to evaluate it from a thoughtful, and perhaps ethical or political, perspective?
It could also be said that the theory of aesthetic engagement allows for inclusiveness across art forms and contexts but risks becoming too vague or elastic to offer precise analytical or evaluative tools. For example, if all forms of participatory or immersive experience are ‘aesthetic,’ the term risks losing explanatory power. In the same spirit, there is a risk of collapsing all aesthetic experience into a general mode of embodied interaction, thus flattening distinctions between art forms. And there are also artforms that deliberately resist engagement, for example, minimalism, conceptual art, and works meant to provoke rather than immerse.
Berleant, however, is not naïve on these fronts. For example, he explicitly addresses the pathologies of aesthetic experience; the ways in which aesthetic environments can be manipulative, commodified, or oppressive. His concept of negative aesthetics reflects an awareness that engagement can be distorted or instrumentalized. Thus, even within the concept of engagement, there is space for critical self-reflection, for a dialectic between immersion and critique.
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It is difficult to situate Berleant’s aesthetic theory, particularly his theory of aesthetic engagement, within a single philosophical tradition. This difficulty is reflected in the fact that his work appears in surveys of analytic aesthetics, is associated with the legacy of pragmatic aesthetics, and is also discussed within the context of phenomenological aesthetics. Berleant drew insights from all of these traditions while maintaining a critical stance toward each. He developed his philosophical position without strict allegiance to any single methodological framework or conceptual vocabulary. Berleant’s philosophical aesthetics is founded on pluralism and openness—both in theory and in philosophical practice.
It is precisely thanks to its pluralism and openness that environmental aesthetics has developed dialogically, becoming, in the words of Maskit, “one of the few fields where philosophers from different traditions both respect and learn from each other.”[13] Perhaps, then, this exemplary model of philosophical communication best captures the vision to which we might aspire: a philosophy that is historically conscious, yet free from dogmatism and narrow-mindedness. Undeniably, we owe a debt of gratitude to Berleant, whose philosophical ethos of engagement—inviting, dialogical, and responsive—played a crucial role in making this possible.
Fotini Vassiliou
fvassiliou@philosophy.uoa.gr
Fotini Vassiliou is Assistant Professor in Phenomenology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her primary interests lie in nineteenth- and twentieth-century continental philosophy, especially in the phenomenological and existential traditions.
Katerina Bantinaki
bantinaki@uoc.gr
Katerina Bantinaki is Associate Professor in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art at the University of Crete. Her research interests focus on depiction, art and emotion, issues of authorship and narrativity in the representational arts, and issues that lie at the intersection of aesthetics and ethics.
Published on November 14, 2025.
Cite this article: Fotini Vassiliou and Katerina Bantinaki, “Arnold Berleant’s Engagement with the Aesthetics of Engagement,” Contemporary Aesthetics, Volume 23 (2025).
Endnotes
[1] See, for example, Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant, “Introduction: The Aesthetics of Nature,” in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments, ed. A. Carlson and A. Berleant (Broadview Press, 2004), 11-42.
[2] Ronald Hepburn, “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty,” in British Analytical Philosophy, ed. B. Williams and A. Montefiore (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1996).
[3] See, e.g., Allen Carlson, “Environmental Aesthetics,” in The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, ed. B. Gaut and D. Lopes (Routledge, 2013), 486.
[4] Paradigmatically: Arnold Berleant, The Aesthetic Field; A Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience (C.C. Thomas, 1970); Arnold Berleant, Art and Engagement (Temple University Press, 1991).
[5] See, e.g., Arnold Berleant, The Aesthetics of Environment (Temple University Press, 1992).
[6] Arnold Berleant, Rethinking Aesthetics: Rogue Essays on Aesthetics and the Arts (Ashgate Press, 2004), 50.
[7] Arnold Berleant, “Aesthetics and the Contemporary Arts,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 29, no. 2 (1970): 163-64.
[8] See, for example, Berleant, The Aesthetic Field; Arnold Berleant, Aesthetics beyond the Arts (Ashgate, 2012).
[9] E.g., Noël Carroll, “On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History,” in
Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts, ed. S. Kemal and I. Gaskell (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
[10] E.g., Emily Brady, (1998). “Don’t Eat the Daisies: Disinterestedness and the Situated Aesthetic,” Environmental Values 7 no. 1 (1998): 97-114.
[11] E.g., Yuriko Saito, “Appreciating Nature on Its Own Terms,” Environmental Ethics, 20 no. 2 (1998): 135-149.
[12] See, for example, Allen Carlson, “Aesthetics and Engagement,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 33, no. 3 (1993): 220-27; Renee Conroy, “Engaging Berleant: A Critical Look at Aesthetics and Environment: Variations on a Theme,” in Ethics, Place and Environment 10 no. 2 (2007): 217-244; Thomas Leddy, “A Dialectical Approach to Berleant’s Concept of Engagement,” ESPES 6, no. 2 (2017): 72-78.
[13] Jonathan Maskit, “Editor’s introduction,” Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology 3, no. 2 (2016): 86.