A Philosophy of Gardens

Author: David E. Cooper
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199290342
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Book Description
Why do gardens matter so much and mean so much to people? That is the intriguing question to which David Cooper seeks an answer in this book. Given the enthusiasm for gardens in human civilization ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, it is surprising that the question has been so long neglected by modern philosophy. Now at last there is a philosophy of gardens. David Cooper identifies garden appreciation as a special human phenomenon distinct from both from the appreciation ofart and the appreciation of nature. He discusses the contribution of gardening and other garden-related pursuits to 'the good life'. And he distinguishes the many kinds of meanings that gardens may have, from their representation of nature to their spiritual significance. A Philosophy of Gardens willopen up this subject to students and scholars of aesthetics, ethics, and cultural and environmental studies, and to anyone with a reflective interest in things horticultural.

Gardens of Philosophy

Author: Arthur Farndell
Publisher: Shepheard-Walwyn
ISBN: 0856833657
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
Under the patronage of the Medici family, Marsilio Ficino translated into Latin and commentated on the meaning and implications of key works by Plato—including 25 of Plato’s dialogues and 12 letters ascribed to the philosopher. The 40 concise articles in this collection comprise the first English translation of Ficino’s works and provide an insightful glimpse into the philosophy that contributed to the Renaissance.

Philosophy in the Garden

Author: Damon Young
Publisher: Scribe Publications
ISBN: 1925693864
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Book Description
Why did Marcel Proust have bonsai beside his bed? What was Jane Austen doing, coveting an apricot? How was Friedrich Nietzsche inspired by his ‘thought tree’? In Philosophy in the Garden, Damon Young explores one of literature’s most intimate relationships: authors and their gardens. For some, the garden provided a retreat from workaday labour; for others, solitude’s quiet counsel. For all, it played a philosophical role: giving their ideas a new life. Philosophy in the Garden reveals the profound thoughts discovered in parks, backyards, and pot-plants. It does not provide tips for mowing overgrown couch grass, or mulching a dry Japanese maple. It is a philosophical companion to the garden’s labours and joys.

Gardens

Author: Robert Pogue Harrison
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1459606264
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 382

Book Description
Humans have long turned to gardens - both real and imaginary - for sanctuary from the frenzy and tumult that surrounds them. Those gardens may be as far away from everyday reality as Gilgamesh's garden of the gods or as near as our own backyard, but in their very conception and the marks they bear of human care and cultivation, gardens stand as restorative, nourishing, necessary havens. With Gardens, Robert Pogue Harrison graces readers with a thoughtful, wide-ranging examination of the many ways gardens evoke the human condition. Moving from the gardens of ancient philosophers to the gardens of homeless people in contemporary New York, he shows how, again and again, the garden has served as a check against the destruction and losses of history. The ancients, explains Harrison, viewed gardens as both a model and a location for the laborious self-cultivation and self-improvement that are essential to serenity and enlightenment, an association that has continued throughout the ages. The Bible and Qur'an; Plato's Academy and Epicurus's Garden School; Zen rock and Islamic carpet gardens; Boccaccio, Rihaku, Capek, Cao Xueqin, Italo Calvino, Ariosto, Michel Tournier, and Hannah Arendt - all come into play as this work explores the ways in which the concept and reality of the garden has informed human thinking about mortality, order, and power. Alive with the echoes and arguments of Western thought, Gardens is a fitting continuation of the intellectual journeys of Harrison's earlier classics, Forests and The Dominion of the Dead. Voltaire famously urged us to cultivate our gardens; with this compelling volume, Robert Pogue Harrison reminds us of the nature of that responsibility - and its enduring importance to humanity.

The Garden as an Art

Author: Mara Miller
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791413777
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Book Description
In this book Miller challenges contemporary aesthetic theory to include gardens in an expanded definition of art. She provides a radical critique of three central tenets within current intellectual debate: first, the art historical notion that art should only be studied within the context of a single culture and period; second, the philosophical belief that art should be conceived as a discrete object unrelated to our survival as persons, as cultural communities, as a species; and third, the notion that all signifying systems are like language.

Slow Gardening

Author: Felder Rushing
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603582673
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
Presents advice on low-maintenance gardening, with tips for easy landscaping, short-cut composting, container gardening, and reliable plant combinations.

Armchair Book of Gardens

Author: Jane Billinghurst
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0762767820
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
The Armchair Book of Gardens is a collection of indiviual essays focused on understanding gardens in a different light/perspective. The book concentrates on the emotional, social, spiritual, and politicial aspects of the garden.

Philosophy for Gardeners

Author: Kate Collyns
Publisher:
ISBN: 0711268215
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 146

Book Description
In Philosophy for Gardeners, Kate Collyns uses aspects of gardening to introduce and explore a range of philosophical ideas and schools of thought.

Onward and Upward in the Garden

Author: Katharine S. White
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590178513
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 393

Book Description
In 1925 Harold Ross hired Katharine Sergeant Angell as a manuscript reader for The New Yorker. Within months she became the magazine’s first fiction editor, discovering and championing the work of Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, James Thurber, Marianne Moore, and her husband-to-be, E. B. White, among others. After years of cultivating fiction, White set her sights on a new genre: garden writing. On March 1, 1958, The New Yorker ran a column entitled “Onward and Upward in the Garden,” a critical review of garden catalogs, in which White extolled the writings of “seedmen and nurserymen,” those unsung authors who produced her “favorite reading matter.” Thirteen more columns followed, exploring the history and literature of gardens, flower arranging, herbalists, and developments in gardening. Two years after her death in 1977, E. B. White collected and published the series, with a fond introduction. The result is this sharp-eyed appreciation of the green world of growing things, of the aesthetic pleasures of gardens and garden writing, and of the dreams that gardens inspire.

European Gardens

Author: Thomas Henry Duke Turner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780415496841
Category : Gardens
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This is the second of Turner's books dealing with the history of garden design following on from Asian Gardens: History, Beliefs and Design (published by Routledge in 2010). European Gardens: History, Philosophy and Design is an expanded version of the original Garden History book, published in 2005. It features new illustrations and additional text. Further details of all the gardens are available on the gardenvisit.com website, which the author edits. --Book Jacket.