Everyday Aesthetics

Prosaics, the Play of Culture and Social Identities

Bibliographic Data

ID4160443
AuthorsYuriko Saito (0009-0002-0452-9203, Rhode Island School of Design, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume48
Issue4
Pages461-463
Publication date2008-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe British Journal of Aesthetics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-0904 • E-ISSN: 1468-2842
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/aesthj/ayn037
OpenAlexW2014837420
LanguageEN
Citations received28

THIS book can be characterized as an proclamation of the emancipation of aesthetics. The author challenges almost all the assumptions underlying modern Western aesthetic discourse that have restricted and stagnated its development. By developing a systematic account of the aesthetics of everyday life, she takes the aesthetic discourse to a more open and wide-ranging set of possibilities. In so doing , she restores the true mission of aesthetics: to ‘safeguard the quality of life and the respect for the integrity of human sensibility’ (p. 97). Mandoki first reviews prevalent features of modern Western aesthetic discourse, characterized variously as ‘fetishes’, ‘fears’, and ‘myths’. They include an attempt to maintain its purely philosophical mode, exclusive focus on art and beauty, object-centered analysis in search of aesthetic qualities, the tendency to capture only out-of-the-ordinary experiences divorced from everyday life, separation of the aesthetic from the other spheres of human experience, and the synonymity of art and aesthetics. All of these assumptions are misleading and unproductive, according to Mandoki, because art and beauty constitute only a fraction of the aesthetic, our aesthetic life cannot be divorced from the rest of our life experiences, and its complex nature cannot be adequately captured by philosophical analyses alone. Her review of the major aesthetic theories of the past century is thorough and comprehensive, and her criticisms are direct and quite bold, making this one of the most exciting aspects of the book

Aesthetics · Art · Beauty · Emancipation · Epistemology · Everyday Aesthetics · Everyday life · Literature · Political science · Politics · Sensibility · Sociology · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art · Law · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy

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