Is Climate Change Ugly? Considering Climate Change as an Aesthetic Problem

Authors : Melih Can Kızmaz, İbrahim Halil Polat
Pages : 335-358
Doi:10.20981/kaygi.1667264
View : 47 | Download : 19
Publication Date : 2025-03-28
Article Type : Research Paper
Abstract :Climate change inherently involves moral considerations, including the unequal distribution of responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions, the growing problem of desertification, the alarming loss of biodiversity, and other related issues. The central discussion revolves around three distinct aesthetic approaches. First, the paper critically evaluates formalist and subjectivist accounts, arguing that these perspectives are insufficient for comprehending the ethical and moral dimensions of climate change. Because, while formalist aesthetics develops a disinterested and abstract view on nature, the subjectivist approach is problematic due to the impossibility of reconciliation on the aesthetic judgments of nature. However, second, by integrating both cognitivist and moralist accounts, the paper offers a comprehensive perspective on climate change-driven aesthetic loss, incorporating both scientific objectivity and the moral significance of the issue. Illustrating this argument, in the paper, it examines specific examples of climate-related aesthetic loss, including Arctic ice melt, wildfires, and the aesthetic transformation of urban environments, framing these losses within the context of negative aesthetics. In conclusion, at the end, this paper aims to demonstrate that climate change should not be perceived solely as a political and ecological problem. Aesthetic theory, through a hybrid cognitivist and moralist account, offers crucial insights into the experience of climate change, while the moralist account offers the ethical and moral involvement, the cognitivist approach offers the scientific foundation for nature.
Keywords : Estetik, İklim Değişikliği, Negatif Estetik, Bilişsel Estetik Yaklaşım, Öznelci Estetik Yaklaşım, Ahlaki Estetik Yaklaşım, Biçimci Estetik Yaklaşım.

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