Abstract I argue for a Kantian proto-environmental aesthetics by focusing primarily on §42 of the Critique of the Power of Judgement. I propose an alternative interpretation of this section, which reveals a latent morally normative aesthetic theory regarding the aesthetic appreciation of nature per se. When it comes to the appreciation of nature, Kant is decidedly not a pure formalist; rather, he implicitly recommends intellectually interested and cognitively laden appreciation, albeit of a rather specific kind. What he implicitly recommends in the aesthetic appreciation of nature qua nature lays the ground for a proto-environmental aesthetics in the third Critique.
Corey A Beckford (2025) studied this question.