Continuing with the subject of the `landscape experience' raised in my last Post... Before addressing the question of whether it has `its own existence" something ought to be said about its characteristics.

  I'm glad that Tittivulus quoted from Haezrahi's book The Contemplative Activity; she is widely quoted on account of that falling leaf  bit but, to do her justice, her thorough and insightful analysis of the nature of the aesthetic experience is a far more important contribution. According to Haezrahi, the elements involved in the aesthetic experience are:

"First: a subject, an individual consciousness. Second: an object grasped by this individual consciousness, or (to use epistemologically more precise terms) an object constructed by the individual consciousness from a complex of ordered and objectified sense impressions. And third: the relationship between the two, the manner in which the object is grasped by the individual consciousness on the one hand, and the attitude adopted by this individual consciousness to what it has grasped, on the other hand" (my bolds).

   Applying this to a hypothetical landscape experience (whose `own existence' remains to be proved): First: the subject, the individual consciousness (IC in the following) which I'll skip it for the time being. Second: the object constructed by a given IC is of course the landscape; the idea being that there's something out there, ( a chosen slab of Nature) that generates a group of sense impressions from which our mind 'constructs' a landscape. Whether these impressions are objectified or not is a big question that I'll also skip. Third: the relationship between the landscape thus constructed and the IC; this is a capital point because, depending on the nature of this relationship, an ordinary landscape situation may or not lead to a landscape experience. 

      According to Haezrahi the relationship is made up from the manner and the attitude.  I hesitate to affirm though that, in the case of a landscape experience, (as opposed to a aesthetic experience that she discusses) manner and attitude are independent terms. I'd venture to say, tentatively, that there is in our case a recurrent interplay (a feedback loop, if you wish) between both so that manner affects attitude and vice versa.

       My cautious "I'd venture to say" stems from the doubts concerning the actual role that an IC may adopt in a landscape experience. There are quite a number of possible roles: spectator, watcher, viewer, onlooker, observer, participant, etc. These words are sometimes used synonymously (although participant is antonym of watcher) but other times are ascribed differing connotations, mostly according to the differing philosophical stances regarding the IC/Nature relation.   Such is the case of Martin Buber's string: Observing, Looking On, Becoming Aware which I'll discuss in a following post.