Beyond Beauty

The paper discusses what is beyond beauty in nature using the basis of the concept of trans-aesthetic experiences. In the West, fusions between beauty and other concepts (e.g. sacredness, holiness or revelation) are often seen as a deficit of pre-modern cultures that are not able to draw clear distinctions beauty and the sacred or holy. However, the author focuses on the borderlines between the aesthetic appreciation of nature and spiritual encounters with nature. He argues that these kinds of encounters and attitudes have remained alive in non-Western cultures and that revitalization from within the Western tradition could and should stimulate intercultural environmental dialogue.