The Environmental Presence of Ruins: On Zoltán Somhegyi’s Reviewing the Past: The Presence of Ruins [Book Review]

Philosophia 50 (4):1537-1551 (2022)
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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.

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Sandra Shapshay
Hunter College (CUNY)

Citations of this work

Reviewing the Past. The Presence of Ruins.Zoltán Somhegyi - 2022 - Philosophia 50 (4):1553-1562.

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References found in this work

Reviewing the Past. The Presence of Ruins.Zoltán Somhegyi - 2022 - Philosophia 50 (4):1553-1562.
The Triumph of Time: Romanticism Redux.Carolyn Korsmeyer - 2014 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72 (4):429-435.
Reviewing the Past: The Presence of Ruins.Dr Zoltán Somhegyi - 2020 - Rowman & Littlefield International.
The Aesthetics of Ruins.Robert Ginsberg - 2004 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (3):392-393.

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