The Butterfly Hunter, Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885) John Muir’s concrete descriptions often had no need of words like “beauty,” or “divine,” or “God”; but such language is frequent enough to indicate a pervasive dimension in his aesthetic experience. Muir’s expressions of delight in nature, the …
Beauty in difficult harmonies
Beloveds, I’ve started to conceive of each sequence on a certain topic (e.g., beauties of nature) as a month-long prototype for a course that I might develop. Most of the content that I present in this weblog comes from my forthcoming book, Values and Virtues: A New Philosophy of Living. As …
Expressiveness in nature: Empathy and imagination
Muir’s empathy for all life began with identifying with the mind of the creatures whose intentions and moods he came to know. "We worked with [oxen], sympathized with them in their rest and toil and play, and thus learned to know them far better than we should had we been only trained scientific …
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Whole-body and whole-souled perceiving
Three quotations from John Muir illustrate advanced perception. After listening to it in all kinds of winds, night and day, season after season, I think I could approximate to my position on the mountain by this pine music alone. If you would catch the tone of separate needles, climb a …
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Singing in the rain: The psychology of positive emotion
Singing in the rain When beauty touches us, it awakens our aesthetic response, ranging from contentment and satisfaction to delight, rejoicing, and awe: these modes of experience register our recognition of universal beauty. The most common positive emotions are joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, …
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What all goes into vitality?
Walking in beauty heightens the resonance between beauty in our surroundings and beauty in ourselves; and this resonance enhances vitality. Vitality is associated with energy, enthusiasm, zest, and vigor. As psychologists describe it, vitality involves the entire personality, …
