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Gardens, Ethics

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Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy

Abstract

Gardens were favorite places for discussing ethical problems concerning the relationship of nature and man in the Renaissance. What is more, moral-philosophical aspects accompanied the very idea of the garden. Gardens were supposed to reflect an image of the world, the view of the world as conceived by its creator, and thus their order shed light on the virtues and character of the latter. The ethical dimension of gardens is closely related to their emblematic identification with paradise found expressed in literature, the visual arts and garden architecture alike. Moral meaning applied to gardens increased according to the growing importance of their representational and didactic function tended to increase.

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Correspondence to Simone Kaiser .

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Kaiser, S. (2015). Gardens, Ethics. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_66-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_66-1

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