Everyday Aesthetics

by Yuriko Saito

Everyday aesthetic experiences and concerns occupy a large part of our aesthetic life. However, because of their prevalence and mundane nature, we tend not to pay much attention to them, let alone examine their significance. Western aesthetic theories of the past few centuries also neglect everyday aesthetics because of their almost exclusive emphasis on art. In a ground-breaking new study, Yuriko Saito provides a detailed investigation into our everyday aesthetic experiences, and reveals how our everyday aesthetic tastes and judgments can exert a powerful influence on the state of the world and our quality of life.

By analyzing a wide range of examples from our aesthetic interactions with nature, the environment, everyday objects, and Japanese culture, Saito illustrates the complex nature of seemingly simple and innocuous aesthetic responses. She discusses the inadequacy of art-centered aesthetics, the aesthetic appreciation of the distinctive characters of objects or phenomena, responses to various manifestations of transience, and the aesthetic expression of moral values; and she examines the moral, political, existential, and environmental implications of these and other issues.

Genres: Philosophy, Art, Nonfiction, Design

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Yuriko Saito (斉藤 百合子 Saitō Yuriko?) is a professor of philosophy at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

Saito joined the faculty at RISD in 1981 and was the head of the Special Studies department from 1989-1992. Saito was born in raised in Sapporo, Japan and attended International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree. She then attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for graduate school and received a PhD in Philosophy with a minor in Japanese literature. Saito received the RISD Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1999. She serves on the editorial board for Environmental Aesthetics, is an editorial consultant for The British Journal of Aesthetics, and was a trustee member for the American Society for Aesthetics. She has many publications in the fields of everyday aesthetics, environmental aesthetics, and Japanese aesthetics, and has written and reviewed numerous book chapters. One of her most recent book publications, entitled Everyday Aesthetics was released in 2008 by Oxford University Press. She has presented at University of Houston, Babson College, Baruch College, University of Montana at Missoula, Hampshire College in Massachusetts, University of Texas at Austin, as well as at various locations in the U.S., Japan, and Finland. Saito currently resides in Rhode Island with her family.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Nathan]

Will not think about philosophy any more but I forgot I finished this while doing my diss, v v good, forever altered my mind

[Angella Dagenhart]

While Saito makes a good argument for being aware of and making time for the things and situations that may hold aesthetic value in our everyday, she does so through some import of Eastern culture. The problem here is that Saito, first, presents an idealized Eastern philosophy of the aesthetic and, second, does so without giving much guidance of how we could import these types of attitudes, behaviors, and awarenesses into our hyper-stressed, hyper-fragmented, and hyper-disconnected Western culture.

With that said, there are valuable ideas worthy of contemplation throughout the book.

[Claudia Rojas]

I had high hopes for this book. I'm disappointed that Prof. Saito's wealth of bibliographic sources was not fully addressed or challenged. This is supposed to be a Philosophy book, yet it swims on the surface of topics. This is especially noticeable when the author dissents or calls for caution.
An example of this is her caution about the Kantian sublime as a problematic limit of aesthetic appreciation (pp.138-140). She criticizes that the sublime entertains a false sense of safety in the face of real natural disasters. Ok, I thought she would challenge Kant. That's interesting, so let's read on. Then, she tries to expand it to other "extreme" experiences and falls into a trap when jumping from natural phenomena to extreme man-made situations, for example, poverty: "ghetto areas" displaying "extreme hopelessness" as an experience of the sublime. This immediate leap from nature to manmade things feels strange since Kant's writings on beauty and the sublime are exclusively based on nature. While one understands how small humans can feel when faced with insurmountable aggregate behavior that gets out of control, such as poverty or an oil spill, this aesthetic experience lacks proper translation, analysis, and substance, especially on the ethical front. If the critique of contemplating the sublime is morally problematic, why is it ok to include man-made things in that category? Is that excess part of human nature? If so, that would seem to extricate humanity/the spectator of the "man-made sublime" from the responsibility of that unfolding distress green aesthetics aims to problematize. That lack of definition is unnerving.
Proposing new fields of study is difficult. These texts often sacrifice precision to open new territory for future scholars. That said, I cannot find the philosophical rigorousness this text deserves. I value this text as a conversation starter and look forward to future developments on this topic.

[Francisco Ferreira]

Even the most ordinary items, like a toothbrush or a chair, can become sources of visual or emotional engagement. Also, the emotional connections we form with everyday objects, whether due to their design, cultural significance, or personal memories, add layers of meaning that transform these items into more than just tools.

[Sunsunetis]

Después de este libro, mis paseos por NYC se viven distintos. No puedo dejar de buscar objetos cotidianos llenos de significados sobre los modelos de convivencia y sus implicaciones ético-políticas. Da gusto leer como la estética se puede abrir a la vida cotidiana y al cultivo de un juicio estético consciente.

[Thomas Maher]

Read Ch. 4 and Ch. 5 for a seminar. Interesting if read as a loosely connected serious of neat observations, but found it hard to discern a clear argumentative through-line. Learned some interesting things about the British picturesque movement, Japanese wabi aesthetics, and their particular views on both disorder and decay, but it was unclear to me how this related to what was ostensibly the general thesis of Ch. 4, which I gather is that disorder/decay is some general evaluative framework for all everyday artifacts. Likewise, Ch. 5 had an interesting discussion of how the placement of stones in Japanese gardens is meant to shape the flow of your temporal experience in the garden, but again it was unclear how that fits in to the general thesis of the chapter, which is that our evaluation of everyday artifacts is in some sense morally-laden. I do agree with the general sentiment that the design of the built environment has some impact on quality of life, and we should be more attentive to it.

[Xibrele]

Good, but a bit stilted in its prose and reasoning; it's an absolutely brilliant idea that could have been taken to even more radical conclusions.

[Michael Farrell]

topics like this for general readers are predictably dissatisfying for readers who want to be stimulated

[Alexander Asay]

UGA: Aesthetics