What is the point of everyday aesthetics?

This is a tricky question.  The different authors who have explored everyday aesthetics have different answers to it.  There are many motives for exploring the everyday.  One is environmentalist.  Some authors, for example Yuriko Saito, believe that fundamental to everyday aesthetics is recognizing that many of our consumer choices are not environmentally sustainable.  Things that give us pleasure shouldn't give us pleasure:  ultimately we should change our standard view of beauty, prettiness and so forth so that a green lawn which is not environmentally sustainable will no longer look beautiful, whereas a sustainable native plant garden will.  This is certainly a valuable project although I would hesitate to hang the significance of everyday aesthetics on this alone, and neither does Saito, by the way.  Another approach is to argue that everyday aesthetics encourages life-style changes that are good for us in that they promote happiness.  More specifically, we are encouraged to notice the little things in life.  This approach might generate a book that would go into the self-help section of the library.  The theme might be:  one ought to maximize happiness by maximizing the pleasures of life.  Do not just take a shower but see a shower as an occasion, as a possibility to pay attention to the multiple dimensions of experience, and hence to, in a sense, treat the shower experience as though it were a work of art.  This is a version of hedonism somewhat like Walter Pater's epicureanism.  It involves a kind of amalgamation of everyday aesthetics with utilitarianism, particularly of the sort that John Stuart Mill favored.  Mill stressed that the quality of the pleasure one maximizes is important.  Now Mill expressed this unfortunately by saying, contra Bentham, that pushpin is not as good as poetry.  The everyday aesthetician would insist that sometimes pushpin is as good as poetry:  life need not be a zero sum game when it comes to pushpin vs. poetry.  There are riches to popular arts, to sports, and to many other aspects of life, that need not be neglected in order to enjoy the riches of serious art.  Or at least the only zero sum aspect here is just the amount of time one has to spend on leisure pursuits.  Time spent on pushpin is time not spent on poetry.  But even then, there are times when we only have the psychic energy to indulge in pushpin, poetry be damned.  Probably the best approach to everyday aesthetics with regards to the debate between an environmentalist approach and a hedonist approach is to try to balance the two concerns/motives.

Another related issue is the ongoing question of whether one ought to base everyday aesthetics on special experiences or whether it should be based on the ordinary experiences of life.  This has been a point of contention between Dewey and myself on the one hand and Haapala, Melchionne, Saito and Naukkarinen on the other.  Let me propose a possible resolution by focusing on Saito. 

Saito in her book Everyday Aesthetics (45-53) wishes to oppose those who hold the aesthetic attitude theory even though they would certainly open up aesthetics to everyday aesthetics. (If you believe in the aesthetic attitude then you believe that anything can experienced aesthetically, although some things are much harder to so experience, and some reframing may be needed).  Saito grants that there are experiences in which there is some "dramatic break from our humdrum experience."  This might be caused by taking the aesthetic attitude, being disinterested in Kant's sense, being distanced in Bullough's sense, or having "an experience" in Dewey's sense.  She describes a couple such dramatic experiences in her own life.  She then says:  "However, I maintain that [these] views are...still too restrictive.  What is common to these theories is that the aesthetic (qua experience) is something which contrasts with the humdrum of everyday experience."  Dewey, for example, considers the humdrum the enemy of the aesthetic.  Saito goes further in her attack on this tradition (especially Dewey) arguing that in this tradition "the aesthetic experience is described as a kind of encapsulated unit that is hermetically sealed off from our ordinary engagement with daily life."  Bullough, for example, is cited as calling on us to cut our the practical side of life in having such an experience.  

I agree with Dewey that "the humdrum" experience is a deep problem and that it is the opposite of the aesthetic.  This is not however because I would want to make everyday aesthetics based only on the possibility of some very rare type of self-transcending experience that is itself sealed off from everyday life.  So how to resolve the difficulty?  This relates back to the beginning of this post.  The solution is to posit a range or continuum of possible aesthetic responses that avoids what appears to be a false dichotomy.  Instead of having to choose between focusing on unusual special experiences and the everyday as ordinary one needs to recognize a vast in-between area in this continuum.  The humdrum, on this view, falls just below the continuum of the aesthetic.  It is the vast region of everyday experiences that has nothing or every little aesthetically positive about it.   A large part of our experience is of this nature, and part of the motive of everyday aesthetics is to raise our everyday experience above the humdrum, to, in a sense, aestheticize it.  At the upper end of the continuum are certain self-transcending experiences, and these are ideals, but they need not define the field.  Dewey himself recognized many of the mid-level experiences.  He not only talked about that fine meal in a French restaurant that summed up all a meal could be but also the satisfaction a mechanic could get from doing a job well, and even the contemplative pleasure we experience in watching a fire in a fireplace.  Similarly, Bullough's idea of distance need not be tied simply to special once-in-a-lifetime experiences.  Yesterday my wife said to me as we were driving "look at the clouds:  they look like paint brush strokes."  I looked and enjoyed:  this was a low-level aesthetic experience that rose above the humdrum but certainly did not arise to the highest point in the continuum.  Metaphorical seeing can make some things just a little more special. (I have perhaps contributed to exacerbation of this debate by emphasizing the word "extraordinary" in my boo.  Ellen Dissanayake in her many books stresses the phrase "making special" which is much more mid-level or more to our purposes here.)  Moreover, a recognition of low-level and mid-level aesthetic experience allows for the kinds of activity-oriented responses that Saito stresses, for example seeing that a room is messy and cleaning it up.  However, here is where an important issues arises.  Sometimes, well usually, actually, cleaning up is humdrum.  Often, for the vast majority of workers in our world, work is tedious, boring, deadening, alienated.  So this comes back to the normative thrust I would wish to give to everyday aesthetics.  On my view it is a matter of encouraging us to attend to the aesthetic possibilities of ordinary experience in order to make it not humdrum.  Instead of sealing off certain experiences from ordinary engagement with everyday life the hope is to enhance these ordinary engagements.  

Saito writes about cases in which we "fail to achieve such a special experience." (46)  She speaks of these as cases "in which we form an opinion, make a decision, or engage in an action guided by aesthetic considerations without invoking any special experience."  She observes that "most of us attend to our personal appearance almost daily:  choosing what to wear and what sort of haircut to get, cleaning and ironing clothes..."  decision and actions which are guided by aesthetic considerations.  I agree:  we make these choices based on, for example, whether the aesthetic term "looks cool" applies to these clothes, etc.  However, many of these experiences of choice only rise very minimally above the humdrum.  They are hardly even aesthetic in any interesting sense of the term.  Why is this?  Well, for an answer to this we need to turn to William Morris, Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche.  In short, most everyday aesthetic choices are alienated, express false consciousness, are inattentive, and show a herd mentality lacking unity of style.  Certainly they do not rise to the level of a high level experience, but they also do not rise much above the lowest level.  They are shallow.  Saito and Haapala stress that we should focus on the everyday ordinarily experienced, and I agree that this should be a major focus.  But I would also suggest that what is ordinarily experience may just barely hover above the level of the non-aesthetic.  When Bullough says "we are not ordinarily aware of those aspects of things which do not touch us immediately and practically" he is calling on us to see things in a way that escapes what the Marxist critical theorists called "false consciousness."  Saito quotes Sartre with disapproval on this point, but I think he is on the mark when he describes the state of alienated consciousness so common in our society:  "There are no beginnings.  Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition." (40)  Sartre complains, through he character Roquentin, that there are no adventures or perfect moments in life like works of art.  This is a dour way to look at things, to be sure.  It asks us to exist only at the highest level of the continuum of aesthetic experience or not at all.  But Sartre's complaint about ordinary experience and his claim that in order to aestheticize the ordinary one has to relive it as a story:  this seems right. 

The Aesthetic Philosophy of Zehou Li

I have been reading Zehou Li and Jane Cauvel's Four Essays on Aesthetics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006).  The points I will raise here should not be seen as a book review but simply as notes about how Li's project can be applied to the aesthetics of everyday life and related issues.  I should say that Li and I were both strongly influenced by Marx's 1844 Manuscripts when young (my introduction, by Anatole Anton at San Francisco State University around 1973).  Li uses these early works by stressing Marx's quote:  "man therefore also forms things in accordance with the laws of beauty."  However Li also tries to incorporate aspects of several other schools of thought into his own, these including psychoanalysis, gestalt psychology, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Confucius and Lao Tzu. 


As I said above, there are many affinities between my own approach to everyday aesthetics and the philosophy of Li.  (This should not be surprising since Marx Wartofsky, a Marxist humanist himself, had a profound influence on me when I was a graduate student at Boston University.)  For example, Li introduces us to the concept of Zhutixing Practice which he also refers to as "historical ontology."  Like the American pragmatist John Dewey, Li rejects dualism.  So when he refers to ontology, bentilum, he is thinking literally of the study of the root or origin (ben) and stem or body (ti) of things.  Key to this is the idea that "being cannot be separated from the existence of human beings."  Further, "questions such as the possibility of cognition, morality, and aesthetic appreciation originate from and are subordinate to the question of the possibility of humanity." (40)  And it is through "using, making, and renewing instruments that humanity forms social existence" and hence also forms cognition, morality and aesthetics.  This reminds me of Wartofsky's seminal idea of "historical epistemology." [I have written the entry for Wartofsky in the forthcoming second edition of the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics.]  Of course this is Marxist in its origin:  the superstructure comes from material relations of production.  I would reject the bottom-up determinism of this, but not the dynamics of the interaction.

One of Li's most intriguing ideas is his notion of beauty as the practice of freedom, or, as he puts it: "beauty is the form of freedom."  Freedom is "the power to understand universal forms (laws) by overcoming natural necessity." (57) He also says it is shaping objects "in accord with natural laws."  At first this seems a contradiction:  how can it both be in accord with natural necessity and overcome it?  Li best explains (resolves?) this paradox in terms of the Taoist story told by Zhuanzi about Cook Ding (sometimes called Cook Ting).  Cook Ding was able to cut up an ox without dulling his knife because he could adapt to the emptiness within.  In Zhuanzi's writings he says, "I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are." Following "the Way" (in the Taoist sense) is, then, freedom.  So, what is beauty but the experience of this freedom, perhaps in one's practice or perhaps in the product of a  practice that is free in this way.  (But then, this product would also have to be experienced freely for beauty to be present.)  Freedom, as I understand it, then, for Li, is knowing something so well, and knowing a skill so well, one can do it intuitively.  I do not feel as comfortable as Li does with talking about "objective universal laws": there are so few of these outside the realm of science, and very few indeed in the world of human things.  But I can understand this to mean a self-transcending moment that comes through developing a practice (for example, when one knows how to play a piano piece so well that one senses a feeling of freedom when playing it, and in playing it beautifully).

Li also says that it is "during the process of humanizing both the external and internal natures that beautiful forms and pleasurable feelings come into being."  There is isomorphism of aesthetic pleasure and "interaction between various structures of symmetry, proportion, harmony..." (51), an isomorphism that has "both historical and social qualities." (52)  For Li, the question "what is the root of beauty?" is a philosophical question distinct from asking about aesthetic qualities and aesthetic objects:  the root of beauty, for Li, is humanized nature (the idea coming from Marx).  This aesthetic theory is neither a subjectivism or an objectivism, but a synthetic unity.  A large question that looms for Li and for those who read Li is how the human can attain this primacy given our current awareness of ecology and of the multiple complex relations between man and the rest of the natural world.  Is Li guilty of anthropocentrism?  One could say that he is not guilty of this simply because we cannot escape our humanness:  i.e. we cannot escape anthropocentrism, and so there is nothing to be guilty about in being anthropocentric.  We live in a world seen through human eyes and reconstructed largely according to human needs (i.e. the biosphere on this planet).  

Li writes:  "Because human's material production brings about isomorphic structures, the properties of natural objects (growth...) and their forms (rhythm, symmetry...) enter into the realm of beauty."  So, apply this to everyday aesthetics.  In everyday experience we engage in material production, for example in the home as we tidy up, or at work as we make whatever objects we make or shape whatever processes we shape.  Human production raises natural objects and their forms to the realm of beauty.  This is quite plausible, if not proved.  After all, as Li observes, the "psychological structure of beauty" results from millions of years of human (or hominid, at least) productive practices.  (I would include appreciative practices that go back just as far.)  

Kant and Imagination and aesthetic atheism too

This is not going to be an effort to enter into any of the debates between Kant scholars over the true meaning of Kant's Critique of Judgment.  I am more interested in elucidating some comments I made today in explicating a selection from Kant's great work to my Introduction to Aesthetics students.  It seems to me that the key to Kant's aesthetics and its greatness is the idea of imagination, an idea that does not play an important positive role in Plato's aesthetics, in Aristotle's theory of tragedy, or in Hume's theory of taste.  (Here, we are talking about what Kant calls the "productive imagination" and not the reproductive imagination, which merely situates things in space and time and is more like Hume's associative notion of imagination.  The productive imagination is more like what we today refer to as the creative imagination and its key mark is originality.)  Kant demands that a person of taste be disinterested because only then can imagination be allowed to play freely.  Imagination does not function importantly in what Kant calls "the agreeable" or in appreciation of the good, but it is essential to beauty.  We mean many different things by "imagination" but one thing quite imaginative in the first moment of the "Analytic of the Beautiful" is Kant's idea that we should not be concerned with the existence of the thing represented.  That is, if the palace I perceive turns out to be just an illusion, or if the idea that I have inherited this palace turns out to be false, this will not matter with respect to its beauty.  Imagination places the object in a world of its own independent of relations to myself and to other things.   Being disinterested is an example of thinking imaginatively:  it is a type of imaginative thinking.  Moreover, imagination is a matter of "giving meaning" to the representation:  "in order to say that the object is beautiful, and to show that I have taste, everything turns on the meaning which I can give to this representation."  A good judge on Kant's view is distinguished from Hume's good judge in that the only important ingredient is disinterestedness (or disinterested attention to an object's look of purpose).  Kant does talk about the need for practice and comparison (i.e. of academic training) for the artist, but delicacy of imagination in Hume's sense of the word does not play a significant role in his thinking.  Rather, he takes Hume's idea of "lack of prejudice" and expands it to involve not thinking about a host of matters, not just things that are of practical personal interest (where prejudice would be most at issue) but also not thinking of concepts, for example not thinking of the concept of "church" and what would make a good church, when appreciating the church one is perceiving.  Here, Kant is almost the opposite of Plato.  Plato would probably insist that in order to adequately perceive beauty one must perceive it under science (episteme), by which he would mean under proper understanding of the eternal Forms.  (I think there is another Plato hidden behind the dialogues who would contest this standard view of him...but no need to discuss that here.)  Plato wants to get us as far away from imagination as possible.  Allen Carlson is like Plato in that he would insist that to appreciate a flower appropriately one should have the knowledge of a botanist with respect to that flower.  (There is one important problem internal to Carlson's overall view:  if his belief that all pristine nature is beautiful [his "positive aesthetics"] implies that we should not find a diseased flower less beautiful than a healthy one then functionality would have to fall out of the picture with regards to aesthetic appreciation, and yet I don't think he wants to allow this.)  Kant, by contrast thinks that one should not focus on the actual purpose of the flower's parts or whether the flower serves its function well but rather focus on its "form of finality":  we should focus on the look of purposiveness, i.e. its look of being designed.   It is a strange operation, admittedly:  we are supposed to not think about what it may actually be designed to do but look at and attend to its design as we would at an abstract pattern in wallpaper.  Imaginatively perceiving it is a matter, I would venture, of allowing the object to immediately stimulate our thoughts by way of its designed look in such a way as to make the object an aesthetic idea, i.e. a symbol, something that seems greater than itself.  We should allow this design to work on our imaginations, giving us a sense of contemplative detachment that is also pleasurable. Why focus on the object's look of purpose?  To allow the free play of the imagination.  Although I have been critical of Carlson on this point in the past, here I do not want to take sides.  It would seem better rather to favor what Peggy Brand and Ted Gracyk have called the toggle method of aesthetic appreciation.  We should toggle between disinterested and scientific knowledge in appreciating the flower.  This would be on one level to just toggle between Carlson's and Kant's approach.  But this might be unfair to Kant, for promoting the toggle idea is perhaps what Kant was trying to do himself unwittingly when he introduced the otherwise incoherent (because inconsistent with his broader theory) notion of dependent beauty.  Dependent beauty brings in the very concepts of the object and its purpose that were supposed to be excluded from any appreciation of beauty.  But what dependent beauty really is is toggled beauty:  beauty in which we shift back and forth from pure beauty to recognition of functional adequacy, enhancing the overall beauty as we go.  Dependent beauty could not be beauty at all if it were just recognition of functional adequacy.  Dependent beauty contains pure beauty as an aspect.  We can better understand this if we realize that Kant is arbitrary in his classification of flowers and free beauties and horses as dependent beauties:  we can avoid this embarrassment by seeing both horses and flowers as perceivable in the fully disinterested fashion as free beauties and perceivable in a functional way.  They are only dependent beauties (in this revised version of Kant) if they are toggled between the functional and the pure.  Imagination frees us from the world of experience which is governed by the categories of the understanding and cognized through the laws of science. 

The existence of experiences of pure beauty itself is training however for something higher, which is the development of what Kant calls aesthetic ideas. (See my book for further discussion of this.) "Aesthetic ideas" are products of the the imagination at even a higher level in which the artist genius creates his/her own world, a world which follows its own rules.  (By the way, despite what many authors have said, and despite some sexist things he says in an early work, Kant cannot logically exclude women from the category of genius.  He is deeply committed to the idea that all humans are equal.)  The genius creates his object "by virtue of the harmony of his faculties" by which is meant specifically the faculties of the understanding and the imagination.  The products of genius are works of art and hence dependent beauties and hence approachable through toggling.  They have a pure beauty side which is allied with the imagination, and the impure side which is allied with the understanding.  In the end, Kant believes that the Critique of Judgment will provide us with a bridge from the world of experience to the supersensible realm.  The way this happens is through the aesthetic ideas.  The aesthetic ideas provide us with an intimation of a transcendent realm.  They give us unending thoughts, which is to say that, when we experience a work of art as an aesthetic idea (as a symbol in this rich sense of the word), we experience it as freeing us from ordinary experience, as a moment of self-transcendence, as a moment that is sublime in both its fearsomeness and its delight.  We feel as if totally free, and this is as good as it gets:  hence aesthetic atheism.

Student Thoughts on Edmund Burke's Concept of the Sublime

One aspect of the sublime that is not much discussed but which comes up frequently in my student's comments is the temporal nature of many sublime experiences.  For something to be sublime in Burke's sense it must be both terrifying and delightful.  This particular combination is almost self-contradictory.  If it is terrifying then how can it be delightful at the same time?  One way around this is to see the experience as a whole which has both a terrifying moment at first and then a delightful experience later.  So, for example, you almost have a car crash, but then avoid it at the last second, and feel a rush of delight afterwards.  The delight comes when there is no longer a threat.  But what about experiences in sports, for example in running, in which we are afraid we will collapse from pain and exhaustion, and yet make it and feel delight.  Could this feeling of delight also be seen as an experience of the sublime?  Probably not:  the experience of the sublime must incorporate the prior fear, not simply be a sense of relief after a moment of fear.  Another question is how we distinguish between sublime experiences and ones that are simply thrilling.  If you are just getting an adrenaline hit, for example, in a dangerous situation, are you experiencing the sublime?  It seems to me that there must be some sort of thought of something grand for the sublime to exist, but Burke himself allows us to have sublime experiences in the face of dangerous snakes, and there is nothing grand about that.

Art Review Sin Agua, Sin Vida, Mazatlan, Mexico

From time to time I do art reviews.  Like Arthur Danto, my model in this, I always try to find a philosophical angle.  My latest art review, of a show in Mazatlan, Mexico,“Sin Agua, Sin Vida”: “Without Water, Without Life.”  is posted with illustrations in Erin Goodwin Guerrero's web site here  under "West Coast Art Musings."  The review will also appear in a Spanish version at the current location of the show in Guadalajara.  I am excited to have my first publication in Spanish! 

Some Student Questions to Allen Carlson on the Aesthetics of Nature

Mica:  "Is it really so wrong to appreciate scenery from nature as scenery, even if it is appreciated as part of its environment."  Carlson attacks the Landscape Scenery Model of aesthetic appreciation of nature.  One should not, on his view, appreciate nature as if it were a series of paintings.  But even if this is true, is it wrong to appreciate scenery as scenery?  Carlson and Malcolm Budd emphasize that one should appreciate art as art, impressionist art as impressionist art, and nature as nature:  why not also scenery as scenery?

Sneha asks "How does Carlson feel about the word 'picturesque' being used for scenic places as a positive adjective rather than as degrading the natural ambiance?  Nature is being appreciated through an artistic point of view, but why is it necessarily a bad thing to think of scenery as being captured in a picture?"  Can the term "picturesque" have no role in environmental aesthetics?  

Wadeaa:  "Wouldn't an artist taking the time to articulate each detail of nature in order to paint it be his way of appreciation it?"  Wadeaa raises an interesting question.  Carlson assumes that nature can only be appreciated from a scientific perspective and that artistic approaches to nature do not encourage appropriate appreciation.  But what if that artistic approach is aimed towards realist portrayal?  Couldn't an artist capture aspects of nature through realistic portrayal that a naturalist would fail to see?

 

Recent Debates in Everyday Aesthetics

The Definition of Everyday Aesthetics.  

Melchionne, Kevin. "The Definition of Everyday Aesthetics"  Contemporary Aesthetics  Vol. 11, Jan. 7, 2013.  I reply to Melchionne in this blog. 

Naukkarinen, Ossi.  "What is 'Everyday' in Everyday Aesthetics"  Contemporary Aesthetics  Vol. 11, Sept. 16, 2013.   I reply to Naukkarinen in my blog   Naukkarinen then replied to that blog entry, his reply also to be found on this blog.  

Responses to my book The Extraordinary in the Ordinary.  There have been two reviews of the book and then some further discussions.

Dowling, Christopher.  "Thomas Leddy:  The Extraordinary in the Ordinary:  The Aesthetics of Everyday Life."  Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. May 19, 2012.  I reply to Dowling in my blog.

Forsey, Jane. "The Promise, the Challenge, of Everyday Aesthetics," Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico, 7, no. 1 (2014): 5-2. Available at: <http://fupress.net/index.php/aisthesis/article/view/14608/13652>. Date accessed: 21 Jun. 2014. I reply here.


Melchionne, Kevin.   "Leddy, Thomas.  The Extraordinary in the Ordinary:  The Aesthetics of Everyday Life."  Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.  71 (3):296-298 (2013).

-   "The Point of Everyday Aesthetics." Contemporary Aesthetics 12 (2014) here

Poullaka, Kalle.  "Dewey and Everyday Aesthetics - A New Look,"  Contemporary Aesthetics 12 (2014)  here

Ratiu, Dan Eugen.  "Remapping the Realm of Aesthetics: On Recent Controversies about the Aesthetic and Aesthetic Experience in Everyday Life" Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics  Issue 1,  Jan 1013, to be found here.  

Discussions of Everyday Aesthetics Issues 

Freeland, Cynthia.  review  Jane Forsey, The Aesthetics of Design (Oxford U. Press, 2013).  Freeland provides an excellent overview of some of the issues in the context of discussing Forsey's book.

Leddy, Thomas.  

Di Stefano, Elisabetta. "Estetica e oggetti quotidiani ?".

“ Everyday Aesthetics and Photography.” Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico, 7, no. 1 (2014): 45-62. Available at: <http://fupress.net/index.php/aisthesis/article/view/14610 

Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico,   7 no. 1, (2114): 119-128.  Available at: <http://www.fupress.net/index.php/aisthesis/article/view/14615/13638>. Date accessed: 21 Jun. 2014.  [You can translate this by going to Google translation] Iannilli, Gioia Laura. "Inter-facing Everydayness From Distance to Use, Through the Cartographic Paradigm," Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico, 7 no. 1, (2114):