This article presents a view of European culture as defined by three constants (science, education and art), and then proceeds to articulate the role of nature in culture. This view of the relation of culture and nature is then applied to the epochal event of the European Enlightenment. Due to the Enlightenment, which on the surface is a commitment to Reason, the system of values is changed. Nature becomes not a goal, but is reduced to a means. This crucial change can be seen from the perspective of crime and punishment, as a series of unintended ecological catastrophes. On this background there arises an idea of ecological aesthetics, which will correct the course of development and show an exit from the crises of culture.