The Philosophy Of Japanese Gardens

Sailee Khurjekar says that size matters when it comes to horticulture.

- Sailee Khurjekar

It can be illuminating to bring resources and insights from other aesthetic traditions into the debates of Western philosophy. I want to introduce the philosophy of Japanese gardens, in an attempt to widen our pool of intellectual thought, primarily in the field of aesthetics, broadening the way in which we think about formal properties in analytic philosophy. I want to look briefly at how the Japanese tradition highlights our affinity to natural objects, the importance of the empathy we bestow upon them, and the idea that small can, indeed, is beautiful. I will use the following definitions: first, ‘natural objects’ are those which exist organically, independent of human interaction, for example, a conifer cone; second, an ‘aesthetic experience’ is one which is pleasurable for the observer as a result of any given perceivable property of the object perceived.

Since the seventeenth century, we have been intrigued by the size of living things. That was when Robert Hooke’s illustrated book Micrographia (1665) first allowed the general public to have visual access to the field of microscopy, to study objects which cannot be seen with the naked eye, such as onion cells or flea anatomy. In the art-historical dimension, the invention of the doll’s house also provoked a fascination with miniatures.