1. 2012/04/25 State Alumni Book Club
Book: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life
Discussant:
Dr. Chen Chao-ming,
Department of English, National Chengchi University

2. What is the aesthetics of everyday life?
“Concerned with all the aesthetic experiences that do arise when one contemplates objects or performs acts”
“In the fusion of sense and imagination… in the experience itself.”
Some aesthetic properties applied to everyday life
Good, right, neat, clean, etc.
(quote on p. 11)

3. Classical Aesthetics Beauty in forms Beauty in matters
Symmetry, immensity, variety, uniformity, etc.
Beauty in matters
Morally good, culturally agreeable, socially harmonious, spiritually inspiring, etc.
Aesthetic principles (ex, Kant)
Concepts of autonomous form (Kantian version of purposivenss without purpose)
Disinterest (Kantian version of indifference)
Symbolic embodiment (prior to reason and objectivity)

4. The agreeable vs. the beautiful
Starting from Kant’s the concepts of “the agreeable” and “the beautiful”
The agreeable vs. the beautiful
Disinterest
Relativity
Pleasures of senses
Prior knowledge
The agreeable and the beautiful
To please and to gratify
The play of the imagination and the understanding
More categories, such as design, party, or the use of the tiles in the bathroom.

5. Aesthetic attitude!
The aesthetic framework is constructed in the relation between subject and object that makes the particular experience of that object beautiful.
A right person with the right object at the right place?

6. Social aesthetics: Aesthetics as Contextual (subject vs. object)
Acceptance
Perception
Sensuousness
Discovery
Uniqueness
Reciprocity
Continuity
Engagement
Multiplicity
(pp , cultural and social meanings)

7. Place as aesthetic object
Familiarity and strangeness
Quote on P. 50
Ordinary everyday objects lack the surprise element or freshness of the strange, nevertheless they give us pleasure through a kind of comforting stability, through the feeling of being at home, and taking pleasure in carrying out normal routines in a setting that is “safe”
Is Taipei a beautify city?

8. Some everyday aesthetic experiences
Architecture as environmental object
Landscape
Places in cities
Sport
Weather
Smells and tastes
Food

9. Discussions
Any limitation on everyday aesthetic experience? Inclusive or exclusive?
Any criteria?
Your aesthetic attitude?
A collective aesthetic attitude?
Does aesthetic knowledge or understanding help?