Law, aesthetics and the environment: Some thoughts on sustaining natural beauty in New Zealand.

Abstract

This article presents some thoughts on law, aesthetics and the environment in the context of New Zealand. The conflict between lifestylers and large scale, professional farmers is used to provide focus for the discussion. In addition to relevant statutory texts and judicial decisions, the article draws on Western conceptions of beauty and ugliness, in particular Immanuel Kant’s notion of a judgment of taste, to engage with sustaining natural beauty. The New Zealand regulatory framework is first sketched and the principle of amenity values examined. Consideration is then given to Kant’s judgment of taste and how it may apply to landscapes. Tentative proposals are made for developing a discourse about sustaining natural beauty and the language in which it might be conducted.