Abstract

The article considers the changing status of natural beauty in the twentieth century. This situation is presented with reference to extreme changes of interest connected with this field of value. The article begins by exploring some current theoretical presuppositions concerning this field . The focus of the following sections is on a pioneering text, which ended a long period of indifference to natural beauty – namely, Ronald W. Hepburn’s “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty” . This famous essay is considered in relation to both the general problem of the distinction and the subsequent development of models of the aesthetic appreciation of nature in the second half of the twentieth century , which were profoundly anticipated by Hepburn