61

This paper aims primarily to show that the kind of aesthetics conceived of by Aristotle in his Poetics is cognitive. Accordingly, we provide a commentary on a short excerpt from Chapter 4. It appears that the crucial point is the passage about “the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies”; we try to show that it contains in nuce the main elements of an esthetics of carrion. We then suggest that this approach connects Aristotelian aesthetics to environmental aesthetics. In our conclusion, we attempt to look for insights and arguments with a view to developing an original variant of environmental esthetics.