Abstract

Zoltán Somhegyi’s Reviewing the Past: The Presence of Ruins takes the reader on a captivating journey through the phenomenon of ruins. It is a remarkable achievement that, I believe, only someone like Somhegyi--a philosophical aesthetician as well as an art historian, and one who has studied ruins on a global scale--could pull off so brilliantly.What I focus on in this essay, however, is on the side of ruins that I believe gets shorter shrift in this book, namely, the environmental side. First, I take up some difficult cases for Somhegyi’s ontology of ruins, which I believe his account handles quite well, namely, the phenomenon of contemporary industrial and commercial ruins and the case of so-called ruins brought about through the destruction of war. Next, I turn to my main criticism of his treatment of ruins: that he looks at them predominantly through the lens of art, and not enough through the lens of nature. I suggest that Somhegyi is not sufficiently alive to consequences of the ruin’s artistic/natural hybridity; more specifically, I think he neglects some of the consequences of nature being a co-creator of the ruin. Finally, I propose further attention to the environmental views embodied in the change from the picturesque to the sublime treatment of ruins in art.