This volume is the result of an interdisciplinary symposium held in 1994 in the Sprengel Museum of Hannover and organized by the German Society of Aesthetics and the Studium Generale of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hanover. The symposium focused on the relationship between art and nature, although it is mainly the perspective of philosophy, art history, musicology and literary studies which complement each other. The subjects dealt with in the more than 30 articles range from the moly plant given to Odysseus in the adventure with Circe or the Parmedinian hymn of nature to explicit debates on aesthetics during the last three centuries, and these encompass a wide variety of perspectives of writers, composers and fine artists.