Transmutations of climate – Darwin’s Stendhal and the legacy of “local nature” aesthetics

Abstract

In this paper I propose a novel interpretation of Darwin’s aesthetic theory that takes its occasion in his reading of the work of Stendhal. Leveraging Lorraine Daston’s concept of “local natures,” I argue that we can fruitfully understand Darwin’s work relative to a long European tradition of speculations regarding the power of climate and environment to shape living forms, psychology, and cultural expression. After exploring the relevant outlines of this tradition during the eighteenth century, I provide an exploration of Darwin’s early aesthetic theories, appraising the role played by the category of the “beau ideal,” and how Darwin tied together a broad range of resources through a hereditary theory of mind that was, in turn, opened to the logic of local nature theory. Moving outwards from transmutational theories of mind to those of physical forms, I ultimately claim that sexual selection does not represent the totality of Darwin’s aesthetics, and that we must rebalance our views by taking seriously the role of local nature theory in his thought, as well as nonselective mechanisms of evolution. Appreciated in this manner, Darwin’s thought takes on an unfamiliar complexion, destabilizing some of the fundamental frameworks and categories we use to understand cultural and aesthetic products. In a conceptual world of hereditary mental properties, where environments slowly shape the forms of beings within them, what does a natural history of aesthetics look like?