## 1. Recent History



With the establishment of environmental aesthetics, efforts to open
the field of aesthetics beyond the fine arts started during the latter
half of twentieth century. Almost all writers on everyday aesthetics
derive inspiration from John Dewey's *Art as Experience*,
first published in 1934. In particular, his discussion of
"having *an* experience" demonstrates that
aesthetic experience is possible in every aspect of people's
daily life, ranging from eating a meal or solving a math problem to
having a job interview. By locating 'the aesthetic' in the
character of an experience rather than in a specific kind of object or
situation, Dewey paves the way for everyday aesthetics advocates to
explore diverse aspects of people's aesthetic lives without a
pre-configured boundary.



If Dewey's aesthetics can be considered as the classic for
everyday aesthetics discourse, Arnold Berleant's early works on
aesthetic field and engagement continue the trajectory. Despite
focusing on the experience of art and without specifically referring
to the term 'everyday aesthetics,' Berleant's early
works provide a phenomenological account of aesthetic experience by
emphasizing the interactive process between the experiencing agent and
the object of experience. This notion of 'engagement' as a
model for aesthetics is applicable to one's experience beyond
art. Indeed, his subsequent works on environmental aesthetics, both
natural and built, and more recently on social aesthetics and negative
aesthetics, have been consistently opening the scope of aesthetic
inquiry.



Besides works on environmental aesthetics that addresses built
environments (see the entry on 
 environmental aesthetics), 
 other notable
early works specifically addressing issues of everyday aesthetics
include Melvin Rader and Bertram Jessup's *Art and Human
Values* (1976), Joseph Kupfer's *Experience as Art:
Aesthetics in Everyday Life* (1983), David Novitz's *The
Boundaries of Art: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Place of Art in
Everyday Life* (1992), Thomas Leddy's "Everyday
Surface Aesthetic Qualities: 'Neat,' 'Messy,'
'Clean,' 'Dirty'" (1995) and
"Sparkle and Shine" (1997), Wolfgang Welsch's
*Undoing Aesthetics* (1997), Ossi Naukkarinen's
*Aesthetics of the Unavoidable: Aesthetic Variations in Human
Appearance* (1999), and Marcia Eaton's *Aesthetics and
the Good Life* (1989) and *Merit, Aesthetic and Ethical*
(2001).



The first anthology on this topic, *The Aesthetics of Everyday
Life*, edited by Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith, published in
2005, includes many articles that together lay the groundwork for more
recent literature on everyday aesthetics. Often cited among them are
Arto Haapala's "On the Aesthetics of the Everyday:
Familiarity, Strangeness, and the Meaning of Place" and Tom
Leddy's "The Nature of Everyday Aesthetics." 



The first monograph with the specific title *Everyday
Aesthetics*, accompanied by the subtitle *Prosaics, the Play of
Culture and Social Identities,* was written by Katya Mandoki and
published in 2007. She offers an extensive critique of the prevailing
Western aesthetics discourse burdened by what she characterizes as
"fetishes" regarding art and beauty, as well as a detailed
semiotic analysis of aesthetics involved in areas ranging from
religion and education to family and medicine. Almost immediately
after the publication of Mandoki's book, Yuriko Saito's
*Everyday Aesthetics* was published. These works were followed
by Thomas Leddy's *The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The
Aesthetics of Everyday Life* (2012). They together secured the
initial foothold for the subsequent development of everyday
aesthetics.



Paralleling these early works are monographs and anthologies dedicated
to specific aspects of daily life, such as gustatory aesthetics
(Korsmeyer 1999, 2005; Perullo 2016; van der Meulen and Wiese 2017),
domestic aesthetics (McCracken 2001), body aesthetics (Shusterman
1999, 2013; Bhatt 2013; Irvin 2016), functional beauty (Parsons and
Carlson 2008), the aesthetics of design (Forsey 2013), and olfactory
aesthetics (Drobnick 2005; Shiner forthcoming), as well as a
collection of essays dealing with the notion of
"artification" in practices ranging from business and
education to science and sports (Naukkarinen and Saito, 2012).



All of these works together have given rise to an increasingly lively
debate on the subject in journals such as *Aisthesis*, *The
British Journal of Aesthetics* , *Contemporary Aesthetics*,
*Espes*, *The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism*,
*The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics*, *Proceedings of the
European Society for Aesthetics*, and *Studi di Estetica
(Italian Journal of Aethetics)*, to name only a few that feature
or include articles in English. In addition, more anthologies on
everyday aesthetics have been published recently, namely the *Aisthesis* volume dedicated to the subject of Everyday Objects
(2014), *Experiencing the Everyday* (Friberg and Vasquez 2017),
and *Paths from the Philosophy of Art to Everyday Aesthetics*
(Kuisma, et al. 2019). These anthologies and journals are particularly
helpful to those Anglophone readers who lack the language facility to
access many European aestheticians' works, some monographs, that
are written in their own languages. Among them are Gioia Iannilli,
Giovanni Matteucci, Dan Eugen Ratiu, and Elisabetta di Stefano. Their
English language articles included in these anthologies and journals
are valuable in making their important works available to Anglophone
readers.



As was the case with her *Everyday Aesthetics*, Saito's
recent monograph, *Aesthetics of the Familiar: Everyday Life and
World-Making* (2017a) includes extensive discussion of Japanese
aesthetics. However, the first explicitly and specifically
multi-cultural exploration of everyday aesthetics appeared in the form
of an anthology, *Aesthetics of Everyday Life: East and West*
(2014), edited by Liu Yuedi and Curtis Carter, with a number of pieces
on Chinese aesthetics. Similar to the case of European languages, most
Anglophone readers lack the language ability to access many works on
Chinese aesthetics written in Chinese. English language papers
included in this anthology and other journal articles by scholars
provide a good entry into a rich legacy of living aesthetics in the
Chinese tradition that is garnering a renewed attention today.
Finally, although not specifically dedicated to everyday aesthetics,
many essays collected in the Special Volume 3 of *Contemporary
Aesthetics* (2011) on Aesthetics and the Arts of Southeast Asia,
the same journal's Special Volume 6 (2018) on Aesthetic
Consciousness in East Asia, and *Artistic Visions and the Promise
of Beauty: Cross Cultural Perspectives* (Higgins, et al 2017)
provide valuable resources for non-Western aesthetics.


## 2. 'Everyday' and 'Aesthetics' in Everyday Aesthetics



Because everyday aesthetics was initially proposed as a way of
overcoming modern Western aesthetics' limitation on what
comprises people's aesthetic life as its subject matter, its
scope has not been clearly defined except as including what has not
been covered by art-centered aesthetics. With the development of this
discourse, however, questions emerged as to what constitutes
'everyday' and 'aesthetics' in everyday
aesthetics. Inclusion of not only daily activities like eating,
grooming, dressing, and cleaning but also occasional and even rare
events such as parties, sporting events, holidays, weddings, and
travelling calls into question whether 'everyday' should
be understood literally. 



Furthermore, what may count as an everyday activity for one person may
be a special occasion for other people. Working on a farm constitutes
a farmer's everyday life, while it is a rare experience sought
by a city dweller who participates in a tour that incorporates work
experience, such as a day working in a vineyard. Besides
people's occupation and lifestyle, diverse living environments
determine what is included in their everyday life. For those residents
in a densely populated urban area with a developed network of public
transportation, as well as for those living in different parts of the
world, riding in a car may be a rare occasion, while it is a daily
routine for many living in typical American suburbs. Finally, some
people's daily lives consist of constant travels, as in the case
of a famed conductor, Valery Gergiev (Puolakka 2019).



The notion of 'everyday' thus becomes hopelessly unwieldy,
and it is impossible to come up with a list of objects and activities
that belong to it. However, one could point to some core activities
and objects that transcend individual and cultural differences, such
as eating, dressing, grooming, shelter, and basic utilitarian objects,
such as clothing, furniture, and eating implements (Melchionne 2013).
The most important factor for the purpose of everyday aesthetics,
however, is not so much an inventory of objects and activities but
rather the typical attitude we take toward them. We tend to experience
these objects and activities mostly with practical considerations that
eclipse their aesthetic potentials (Bullough 1912-13; Stolnitz
1969; Ziff 1997). These experiences are generally regarded as
ordinary, commonplace, and routine. Such characterization may be the
best way to capture 'everyday,' allowing diverse
occupations, lifestyles, and living environments that give rise to
different ingredients of everyday life. 



Many advocates of everyday aesthetics, however, also include rare,
standout, and more artistically-charged occasions in its scope. For
example, a holiday celebration is laden with all kinds of aesthetic
considerations, ranging from interior and exterior decorations to
special dishes, a carefully-arranged table setting and festive music.
Many of us specifically attend to these aesthetic aspects both as
providers and as receivers, giving aesthetics a predominant role in
these experiences. In light of these different kinds of experiences,
some suggest allowing gradation among various objects and activities,
with one end designating the most quotidian objects and activities
that are experienced primarily with a practical mindset, and the other
end those occasions standing out from daily life and marked by much
more conscious attention to the aesthetic dimension, rendering the
experience more like art appreciation (Naukkarinen 2013; Leddy
2015).



Thus, recent discussion of the notion of everyday emphasizes
relationality and lability, a temporary framework that responds to
specific time and place, whether it regards the course of an
individual's life (such as a painting becoming a part of
one's everyday life after being purchased and hung on the living
room wall), or a general societal change, such as the increasing
presence of the digital world today. Accordingly, the distinction
between ordinary/extraordinary, familiar/unfamiliar, and
event-like/routine-like that dominate the discussion of everyday
should not be understood as something stationary, static, and fixed
(Haapala 2017; Potgieter 2017).



Debates surrounding what constitutes 'aesthetics' in
everyday aesthetics are not unique to this discourse. The nature of
aesthetics has been a perennial point of contention in aesthetics at
large, whether regarding fine arts, nature, popular culture or
everyday objects and activities (see in particular the entries on the
Concept of the Aesthetic and Dewey's Aesthetics). However, there
are at least two points of particular interest and significance
regarding the notion of 'aesthetics' in everyday
aesthetics. First is the status of bodily sensations. They can be felt
by us as we receive sensory stimulation such as the wafting smell of
baked goods, the sensation of silk against our skin, the taste of
sushi, or the feeling of massage. They can also result from bodily
activities, such as running, chopping vegetables, using tools, or
mowing the lawn. The debate regarding whether or not these bodily
sensations belong to the realm of aesthetics proper is not new. The
best-known classical treatment of this issue is Immanuel Kant's
distinction between the beautiful and the agreeable or the pleasant.
Many contemporary art projects also give rise to this discussion
through the creation of olfactory art, art happenings that include
cooking and eating, and participatory art that requires the
audience's bodily engagement. However, the issue becomes more
acute with everyday aesthetics because our daily experience is
permeated by sensory experiences and bodily activities (see Sections 7
and 8 for further discussion).



Another important issue regarding the term 'aesthetics' in
everyday aesthetics is the distinction between its honorific and
classificatory use. In both aesthetics discourse and common
vernacular, the term 'aesthetic' is generally used in the
honorific sense. Hence, something having an aesthetic property is
generally regarded positively and gaining an aesthetic experience is
understood to mean that it is a meaningful and satisfying experience.
However, increasing number of everyday aestheticians return to the
root meaning of 'aesthetic' as sensory perception gained
with sensibility and imagination, whatever its evaluative valence may
be. Some things strike us with powerful positive aesthetic values, as
in a great work of art or a spectacular landscape, while other things
do not affect us much because they are boring, non-descript, or plain.
Then there are those objects and phenomena that offend or disturb us
profoundly because their sensuous appearance is hideous, monstrous, or
appalling, without any overall redeeming value such as an artistic
message. Everyday aesthetics casts a wide net for capturing these
diverse dimensions of our aesthetic life. It is noteworthy that in
academic discourses outside of philosophical aesthetics,
'aesthetics' is often regarded in the classificatory
sense, such as the aesthetics of manners, which includes both polite
and rude behaviors, and the aesthetics of politics which, among other
things, refers to the social and political construction of what counts
as the sensible (Mandoki 2007; Ranciere 2009; Vihalem
2018).



Some recent writers propose that everyday aesthetics will be better
served by characterizing the aesthetic as a specific mode of
perception. Everyday aestheticians who emphasize the difference of
everyday aesthetic experience from a typical experience of art tend to
characterize the former's passivity and minimize the mediation
of various conceptual considerations, emotional involvement, and
imaginative engagement typically required in experiencing art. While
it is agreed that the aesthetic is based upon our sensory perception,
without a more active, creative, and imaginative involvement, those
critics point out, there is nothing distinctly aesthetic about mere
sensations. One suggested solution is to characterize an aesthetic
experience as a dynamic and dialectic process of sensory perception
and reflectivity that form *aisthesis* which leads to a
dialogical relationship with the object we are perceiving (Matteucci
2017). This more general theory of aesthetic perception will help
overcome the aforementioned two issues everyday aestheticians were
grappling with, namely inclusion of all sensory modes and rendering
the term valence-neutral. As will be discussed later in Section 8, one
of the issues everyday aesthetics needs to determine is whether it
carves out an independent arena of aesthetics or it is rather a
continuation of aesthetics that had been established with art as the
primary model. Those who advocate the continuity model argue that the
dialogical mode of perception that integrates reflectivity provides
the specifically aesthetic character to everyday experience (Nielsen
2005; Mateucci 2017; Potgieter 2017).


## 3. Defamiliarization of the Familiar



If 'everyday' is characterized as the familiar, ordinary,
commonplace, and routine, regardless of the specific content that
varies from people to people depending upon their lifestyle,
occupation, living environment, and other factors, what makes its
aesthetic appreciation possible? The following response dominates
everyday aesthetics discourse: the aesthetic appreciation of everyday
life requires defamiliarization, making strange, or casting an aura.
Because we are most of the time preoccupied by the task at hand in our
daily life, practical considerations mask the aesthetic potential of
commonplace objects and ordinary activities. Furthermore, such
experiences lack any coherent structure consisting of unity, pervasive
character, and a clear beginning and an end. In short, according to
Dewey, our everyday humdrum proceeds mechanically without any internal
organic evolution, hence "anesthetic." Only when we have
*an* experience with all the structural requirements fulfilled
does our everyday life gain aesthetic merit. Once we have *an*
experience with a different attitude and perceptual gear and/or a
cohesive internal structure, we can unearth latent aesthetic values in
the most ordinary and routine. This view can be interpreted as a
faithful application of the claim made by the aesthetic attitude
theory that theoretically anything can be an object of aesthetic
experience. Mundane objects can acquire a kind of 'aura'
that heightens their aesthetic value (Leonhardt 1985; Tuan 1993;
Visser 1997; Gumbrecht 2006; Leddy 2008, 2012a; Al Qudowa 2017).
According to this interpretation, what is new about everyday
aesthetics is its illumination of those aspects of our lives that are
normally neglected or ignored because they are eclipsed by standout
aesthetic experiences we often have with works of art and nature. More
careful attention and a different mindset can reveal a surprisingly
rich aesthetic dimension of the otherwise mundane, non-memorable,
ordinary parts of our daily life. Many works of art are helpful in
guiding us through the morasses of everyday life toward a rewarding
aesthetic experience (Dillard 1974; Prose 1999; Stabb 2002; Martin
2004, Leddy 2012a; Nanay 2016, 2018). This trajectory of everyday
aesthetics is welcomed by a number of thinkers for its contribution to
enriching life experiences, encouraging mindful living, and
facilitating happiness without problematic consequences that often
accompany a hedonistic lifestyle (Irvin 2008b; Shusterman 2013;
Melchionne 2014; Leddy 2014b).



At the same time, some point out the danger of over-emphasizing
defamiliarization as a precondition for everyday aesthetics. That is,
this way of accounting for everyday aesthetics risks losing the very
everyday-ness of everyday experience, thereby becoming unable to
capture the aesthetic texture of everyday life characterized by its
familiar, ordinary, and mundane quality (Felski 2002, 2009; Highmore
2004, 2011a; Haapala 2005; Saito 2017a). The challenge then becomes
how to capture the very ordinary everyday-ness of everyday life while
engaging aesthetically. That is, experiencing and appreciating the
ordinary as extraordinary follows a rather well-trodden path in
aesthetics discourse, while experiencing and appreciating the ordinary
as ordinary poses a specific challenge to everyday aesthetics
discourse.



Several responses have been given to account for the aesthetics of the
ordinary as ordinary. One proposed response is to regard qualities
such as the familiar and the ordinary as positively appreciable as a
counterpart to those qualities that make some experiences stand out
for being intense and extraordinary. Though not stunning or intense,
those qualities characterizing ordinary life provide a quiet calm,
comfort, stability, and security to our life experience (Haapala
2005). It is difficult to imagine how we can handle, let alone enjoy,
a constant series of extraordinary, intense experiences with no
restful period. Many aspects of domestic life instead offer comfort,
stability, and respite, in short hominess, because of the very
ordinary and repetitive nature, and such qualities are indispensable
for good life and appreciable in their own right (Highmore 2004,
2011a; Irvin 2008b; Melchionne 2014).



However, this response is challenged for failing to explain what is
distinctly aesthetic about the sense of comfort and stability. The
value of these feelings, according to the critics, is rather
existentially-oriented and possibly relies on the instrumental role
they play in assuring a secure foundation for life. An alternative
solution to the dilemma proposed is to focus on the functional use of
objects of daily life that is not separate from our management and
flow of daily life or the cultural context and knowledge required for
its use. When an object functions particularly well, the pleasure we
gain is still embedded in our daily life and does not render the
experience out of gear from the flow of everyday (Forsey 2014).



This move can also be characterized as a variation of
cognitively-oriented aesthetics widely discussed in environmental
aesthetics regarding nature. Instead of natural sciences that inform
the aesthetic appreciation of nature, the suggestion is that everyday
aesthetic experience be informed by common sense knowledge about the
object's function, significance, and place in our lives that
provides the familiarity sought for in aesthetically experiencing the
familiar as familiar (Carlson 2014).



These solutions address familiarity experienced as familiar as a
positive value whether regarding hominess or excellent functionality.
However, those who are concerned with developing the classificatory
sense of aesthetics point out that the the lack of coherent structure,
slackness, monotony, and humdrum that, according to Dewey, generate
experiences that are "anesthetic" actually also
characterize the aesthetic texture of everyday life (Highmore 2011a;
Mollar 2014; Saito 2017a). Deficiency in positive aesthetic qualities,
such as exciting intensity, coherent narrative structure, or pervasive
unifying theme, does not necessarily mean lack of aesthetic qualities.
Those aspects of our lives can still be regarded as permeated by
aesthetic qualities, though negative, such as dreariness and painful
monotony. Such negative characterization of everyday life has often
been the subject of Marxist interpretations of workers' daily
lives, whether at work or at home, providing a platform for rebellious
movements, such as the Situationist International (Highmore 2010).


## 4. Negative Aesthetics



This account of everyday life as pervaded by negative aesthetic
qualities rather than lacking any aesthetic qualities gives rise to
'negative aesthetics.' This notion may at first appear to
be an oxymoron, if 'aesthetics' is understood in the usual
honorific sense. Katya Mandoki and Arnold Berleant stress the
importance of attending to this aesthetically negative aspect of
people's lives that is unfortunately all too common (Mandoki
2007; Berleant 2010, 2012). Negative aesthetic qualities such as
ugliness, grotesqueness, repulsiveness, and disgust have not been
absent in the prevailing aesthetics discourse, but they don't
occupy a prominent place (notable exceptions being Korsmeyer 2011,
Forsey 2016). Furthermore, more often than not, these negative
qualities become justified as a necessary means to facilitating an
ultimately positive aesthetic experience. For example, a disgusting
content of art may be necessary for conveying an overall message, such
as an expose and critique of social ills, or a repulsive sight
in nature, such as a predator devouring its prey, can be appreciated
as an integral part of nature's process.



Negative aesthetic qualities experienced as negative, in comparison,
are unfortunately quite pervasive in everyday life and they directly
affect the quality of life. They range from less noteworthy qualities
such as the boring, the monotonous, the uninspiring, the banal, and
the dull to "aesthetic violence," "aesthetic
pain," "aesthetic poisoning," or "aesthetic
assault," such as the hideous, the offensive, the repulsive, and
the vulgar (Mandoki 2007). These more dramatically negative qualities
can be experienced in a squalid urban space, deafening noise,
cluttered billboard with gaudy signage and sordid visual images,
stench from a nearby factory, and the like. In light of the fact that
aesthetics has tended to confine its scope to positive qualities and
experiences, everyday aesthetics challenges us to pay serious
attention to the aesthetically negative aspects of our lives because
of their immediate impact on the quality of life.



The focus on negative aesthetics is particularly important in everyday
aesthetics discourse because it leads to what may be regarded as its
activist dimension. When confronted with negative aesthetic qualities,
we generally don't remain a mere spectator but rather spring
into action to eliminate, reduce, or transform them. Even if we
don't or can't act, we wish we could do so and we think we
should. According to the prevailing mode of aesthetic analysis
regarding art, and to a certain extent nature, our aesthetic life is
primarily characterized from a spectator's point of view. We are
not literally engaged in an activity with the object other than
aesthetic engagement. Even if we are inspired to act by art or nature,
the resultant action is generally indirect, such as joining a
political movement or making a contribution to an organization.



In comparison, the action we undertake motivated by negative
aesthetics in daily life has a direct impact on life. On a personal
level, we launder a stained shirt and iron it, clean the carpet soiled
by spilled wine, repaint the living room wall, open a window to get
fresh air after cooking fish indoors, tidy up the guest room, reformat
a document for a clearer look, and the list goes on (Forsey 2016;
Saito 2017a). These actions are taken primarily in response to our
negative aesthetic reaction against stain, wrinkle, unpleasant color
of the wall, fishy smell, mess and clutter, and disorganized look. On
a community level, eyesore-like abandoned structures get torn down or
given a make-over, a squalid neighborhood gets cleaned up, and
ordinances are created to eliminate factory stench and cluttered
billboards. At least we often work, or believe we should work, toward
improving the aesthetics of everyday environment and life. Negative
aesthetic experiences are thus useful and necessary in detecting what
is harmful to the quality of life and environment and provide an
impetus for improvement (Berleant 2012).


## 5. Everyday Aesthetic Qualities



However, questions can be raised as to whether qualities such as
messiness and clutter belong to aesthetics discourse. Appreciation of
more typical aesthetic qualities, such as beauty, sublimity, elegance,
grace, artistic excellence, powerful expression, and the like, is
thought to require a certain degree of aesthetic sensibility or
'taste' that needs to be cultivated. Moreover, their
appreciation often demands a certain conceptual understanding of
things, such as the object's historical and cultural context,
the artist's oeuvre, and some basic information regarding
nature, among others. Aesthetic experience, after all, is expected to
promote a dialogical process between the experiencing agent and the
object, thereby widening and deepening one's sensuous,
emotional, imaginative, and intellectual capacity. Sometimes
characterized as *Bildung*, it should be an educational and
empowering experience.



In comparison, the detection of the everyday aesthetic qualities in
question, such as messiness, shabbiness, cuteness, and prettiness,
seems to result from an almost knee-jerk reaction without any
background knowledge, aesthetic sophistication or reflective process,
and, as such, does not make a worthy subject matter for
aesthetics.



Two responses have been given to this challenge. First, even if some
qualities can be experienced without the same kind and degree of
aesthetic sensibility or sophistication required for art appreciation,
this alone does not render them outside the realm of aesthetics. Even
a seemingly unreflective response to qualities - such as dirty,
messy, and disorganized - is not free of a cultural and
contextual framework (Douglas 2002; Saito 2007). Second, it is
possible to provide a kind of sliding scale with one end requiring
utmost sensibility often obtained after extensive education and
practice, such as the ability to appreciate twelve-tone music,
Joyce's novels, Japanese Noh theater, and bogs, and the other
end requiring very little education and practice, such as Norman
Rockwell paintings, a military march, a sparkling jewelry piece, and a
colorful flower garden. Some aesthetic qualities can be considered
'major league' or heavy-weight while other aesthetic
qualities are 'minor league' or light-weight, without
disqualifying the latter from the realm of the aesthetic altogether.
After all, they refer to our qualitative response to the sensory
experience of the objects and phenomena and some experiences are more
intense and profound than others without thereby denying the aesthetic
dimension of more simple and easy experiences (Leddy 1995, 1997,
2012a, 2012b; Harris 2000; Ngai 2012; Postrel 2013; Mollar 2014).



If minor league aesthetic qualities lack sophistication and profundity
compared to major league aesthetic qualities, a case can be made that
they make up for this lack by their pervasiveness in daily life with
serious consequences. While we do experience beauty and sublimity in
our daily life, such occasions are rather rare. More often than not,
in our everyday life, we judge things for being pretty, nice,
interesting, cute, sweet, adorable, boring, plain, drab, dowdy,
shabby, gaudy, ostentatious, and the like. It is particularly
important to attend to these qualities because, due to their
prevalence and relatively easy recognition, they exert a powerful
influence on our decisions and actions regarding mundane matters.
Indeed, strategies in advertising, political campaigning, and
propaganda often make use of these qualities to direct people's
behavior (Postrel 2003; Mandoki 2007; Saito 2007, 2017a, 2018b;
Sartwell 2010). Those who are concerned with both the prevalence and
uncritical acceptance of aestheticization of life argue for a more
active, engaged, reflective mode of perception instead of passively
experiencing and being affected by aestheticization ploys, thereby
cultivating aesthetic literacy and vigilance (Vihalem 2016; Matteucci
2017; Potgieter 2017).



Another worry has been raised about the aesthetic worthiness, or
"aesthetic credentials," of some experiences (Dowling
2010). It concerns the purely bodily-oriented responses such as the
sensation of scratching an itch, receiving a massage, drinking tea, or
smelling fishy odor (Irvin 2008a,b). There is a concern that they are
too private and subjective to allow any inter-subjective discussion
and critical discourse, resulting in subjective relativism and
compromising the possibility of  *sensus communis*.
Kant's distinction between the beautiful and the merely
agreeable is often invoked to support this criticism (Parsons and
Carlson 2008; Soucek 2009; Dowling 2010).



In response, some thinkers point out that it is a mistake to treat
these bodily sensations as an isolated, singular sensory experience.
According to them, in ordinary life, we almost never have an
experience of smell, taste, or touch by itself. Instead, our
experiences are usually multi-sensory or synaesthetic and take place
in a specific context (Howes 2005; Howes and Classen 2014). Scratching
an itch can be a part of experiencing a mosquito-infested bog, or
experienced as an annoyance caused by the stiff fabric label sewn on
the inside of a new shirt collar. The taste of tea cannot be separated
from its aroma, visual appearance, and the tactile sensations of
texture and warmth as one holds the mug and presses the lip against
its rim. All of these sensory experiences take place in a certain
surrounding and situation with its own ambiance, as well as within the
specific flow of one's daily life. One may grab a cup of tea on
the run and gulp it down to get the caffeine kick as one rushes to a
meeting, or savor each sip as one sits in front of a fireplace
relaxing, or participate in the Japanese tea ceremony. Even if the tea
itself were to remain the same, the experience surrounding its
ingestion changes, sometimes even affecting our experience of the
taste of tea itself (Irvin 2009a; Melchionne 2011, 2014; Perullo 2016;
Saito 2017a). Thus, purely bodily sensation can be folded into the
atmosphere or ambiance constituted by many ingredients. Then what we
appreciate is not merely a singular bodily sensation in isolation such
as the tactile sensation or smell but the fittingness or, one may even
say, Kantian 'purposiveness,' or lack thereof, created by
the relationship between and among factors making up the
atmosphere.



Presumed subjective relativism regarding a purely bodily sensation,
therefore, can be mitigated at least to a certain extent if it is
regarded as one of the many ingredients that make up a larger whole
permeated by a unified atmosphere, such as a sense of well-being,
contentment, comfort, or negatively, a sense of isolation, discomfort,
uneasiness, or anxiety. Such an appreciation (or depreciation) allows
some degree of inter-subjective communication and sharing; indeed many
literary narratives provide a rich reservoir of such experiences.


## 6. Ambient Aesthetics and Social Aesthetics



This attention to atmosphere or ambiance of a certain situation
constituted by various ingredients has a long tradition in Japanese
aesthetics (Saito 2005). It was also the main point of the
associationist aesthetics advocated by Archibald Alison
(1757-1839). Today ambient aesthetics is garnering a renewed
attention primarily due to works by Gernot Bohme who suggests
that atmosphere should be the central focus of new aesthetics. In our
daily life, we often experience the atmospheric character of a
situation: tense or relaxed, cheerful or melancholic, exuberant or
subdued, inviting or alienating, electrifying or dull. Sometimes a
distinct character of a situation is intentionally orchestrated,
oftentimes in a special occasion like a wedding or a funeral, with
specifically selected music, decorations, attire, and choreographed
movements, to name a few. Some other times, a unified atmosphere
arises spontaneously when various elements making up the physical
environment and human interactions and movements within it happen to
congeal (Bohme 1993, 1998; Miyahara 2014; di Stefano 2017).



Although in our daily life we experience and appreciate (or
depreciate) a certain atmosphere or ambiance quite frequently, it has
not received adequate attention in the aesthetics discourse primarily
because of the lack of clearly defined and delineated
'object' of the experience. Without a clear
'frame' around the object of experience, critics suggest,
inter-subjective discussion of its aesthetics is not possible. Nor are
there clear criteria, such as art historical conventions, that are
helpful in determining what is and is not a part of the aesthetic
experience (Parsons and Carlson 2008). Ambiance, air, or atmosphere is
indeed subjectively-oriented in the sense that one's experience
becomes colored accordingly. However, it should also be noted that it
is not purely subjective or private, as claimed by critics, insofar as
it refers to objectively identifiable features of the environment and
situation. Furthermore, some contemporary works of art specifically
aim at creating a certain atmosphere that envelops the audience (Z.
Wang 2018).



Ambient aesthetics also highlights the important role played by
non-visual sensory experiences that permeate our lived life. The
relevance of the so-called lower senses in everyday aesthetics has
already been mentioned (Section 5). However, possibly with an
exception of the gustatory, non-visual sensory experiences, namely the
auditory, the olfactory, and the haptic, tend to be eclipsed by the
visual, although their contribution to our everyday aesthetic
experience is undeniable (Ackerman 1991; Tuan 1993; Brady 2005; Howes
2014; Korsmeyer 2017; Interference Journal (Issue 7, 2019); Shiner
forthcoming). Sometimes they enrich an overall ambiance, such as a
calming ambient sound and a weather-beaten smooth surface of a
building, while other times they constitute negative aesthetics, such
as a blaring car stereo sound and a stench from a nearby factory.
Furthermore, the lack of sounds and smell may be a welcome relief
while at other times it may render the experience deficient (Drobnick
2005; Anderson forthcoming). Everyday aesthetics encourages attention
to these non-visual experiences, which helps sharpen our sensibility.
Attention to these sensory experiences is also critical in
architectural practice and urban planning which tend to be dominated
by the visual orientation (Pearson 1991; Pallasmaa 1999).



Part of what determines the ambiance or atmosphere is human
interactions. The character of such interactions is constituted by the
participants' personality and relationships with others that are
subject to aesthetic considerations. In addition to what one does and
says, one can be considered warm, cold, formal, aloof, friendly,
intimidating, gentle, and so forth, largely due to aesthetic factors
such as tone of voice, way of speaking, facial expression, bodily
gesture and posture, and outward presentation such as clothing, hair
style, ornamentation, and the like. Sometimes the moral character of
one's action is assessed by aesthetic dimensions over and beyond
what the action accomplishes. For example, one may gobble up a
lovingly prepared and meticulously arranged meal carelessly and
indifferently, or one may take time and savor every bite respectfully
and mindfully to show one's appreciation for the cook. One can
close a door roughly, making a loud noise and startling others, or one
can close it gently and carefully so as not to disturb others.
Finally, one can help a person in need grudgingly and spitefully or do
so with care and good cheer (Buss 1999; Sherman 2005; Naukkarinen
2014; Shusterman 2016; Saito 2016, 2017a).



In these examples, important desiderata in aesthetic experiences can
also be regarded as desirable in human relationships: open-mindedness
to accept and appreciate diversity, respect and reciprocity, full and
sincere engagement, among others. Established as a sub-category of
everyday aesthetics by Arnold Berleant, social aesthetics calls
attention to the fact that the aesthetics plays a surprisingly and
often unrecognized role in determining the moral character of actions,
persons, and human interactions (Berleant 2005b, 2010, 2012,
2017).



Furthermore, social aesthetics promotes cultivating virtues through
everyday practice. One's kindness, compassion, thoughtfulness,
and respect require appropriate expressions guided by aesthetic
sensibility and skills, in addition to accomplishing a certain deed.
Harmonious and cooperative interaction with others also requires not
only appropriate cultural knowledge but also aesthetic sensibility to
decipher group dynamics and determine how best to help create a
certain atmosphere (Naukkarinen 2014). A mere conceptual understanding
of the importance of aesthetics in these interactions is not
sufficient. Embodied practice is required to contribute to
aesthetically-minded social interactions.


## 7. Action-Oriented Aesthetics



Social aesthetics also sheds light on another new avenue of inquiry
ushered in by everyday aesthetics: the aesthetic dimension of
*doing* things instead of, or in addition to, the experience
gained as a spectator or beholder. The traditional mode of aesthetic
inquiry is primarily concerned with analyzing the aesthetic experience
of a spectator who derives aesthetic pleasure from contemplating an
object (or a phenomenon or an event). Even in such an experience, as
Dewey's characterization of 'undergoing' and
'doing' and Berleant's engagement model indicate,
the person is never passive; she is actively engaged with the object
through exercising imagination and interacts with it perceptually,
intellectually, and emotionally. However, in the most literal sense,
she is still an onlooker of the object: a painting, a symphony, a tea
bowl, a figure skating performance, a flower garden, a piece of
furniture, an automobile, a house, and a freshly laundered shirt.



While everyday aesthetics includes such spectator-oriented aesthetics,
a major part constituting the flow of everyday life is our active
engagement with doing things by handling an object, executing an act,
and producing certain results, all motivated by aesthetic
considerations. Until recently, very little had been explored of the
aesthetic dimensions of active involvement in painting a canvas,
playing a violin, skating, gardening, repairing a garment, hanging
laundry outdoors, and giving birth (Rautio 2009; Brook 2012; Lintott
2012). Perhaps food aesthetics illustrates this contrast most clearly.
Food aesthetics generally focuses on the taste of the food rather than
the experience of eating itself or the activity of cooking (except for
Curtin and Heldke 1992; Visser 1997; Giard 1998; Korsmeyer 1999;
Shusterman 2013; Perullo 2016).



The difficulty of accounting for the aesthetics involved in these
activities from the participants' perspective is the same
difficulty facing ambient aesthetics: the lack of clear delineation of
object-hood of aesthetic experience. The constituents of an aesthetic
object are more or less clear in the case of a painting or a flower
garden appreciated from the spectator's point of view.
Furthermore, there is an object one can point to for
intersubjectivity. However, there is no equivalent
'object' of aesthetic experience when it comes to an
activity one undertakes. This lack, according to some thinkers,
signals the demise of any reasonable discussion as the subject matter
becomes hopelessly private with little possibility of intersubjective
discourse. While we can meaningfully debate the aesthetic merit of a
painting or a flower garden by giving reasons to justify our judgment,
it is difficult to imagine an equivalent discussion of my experience
of bodily engagement when executing brush ink painting or digging the
ground and planting flowers for the flower garden.



If one accepts John Dewey's notion of having "an
experience" which gives an aesthetic character to whatever
experience one is undergoing, it becomes a challenge to facilitate a
critical discourse to determine whether or not one is truly having
"an experience." The act of planting flowers involves a
multi-sensory experience and bodily engagement, as well as designing
the garden's layout. These ingredients may come together in a
unified manner to give rise to a sense of joy felt by the gardener at
the arrival of spring and the anticipation of fully-blossomed flowers.
It is difficult to imagine how this gardener's experience can be
subjected to a critical discourse in the same way the flower bed gets
evaluated aesthetically for its design. Can we have a debate about
whether the gardener's experience was truly aesthetic or whether
it provided a rich or only mediocre aesthetic experience? If not, is
this aspect of our life forever closed to any mode of aesthetic
inquiry?



The difficulty felt here regarding the aesthetics of ambiance and
actions could be attributed to the mode of contemporary Western
aesthetic inquiry which is predominantly judgment-oriented (Bohme
1993). Much of mainstream aesthetic debate surrounds the objectivity
and justifiability of aesthetic judgment. A judgment presupposes the
determinability of an object and its intersubjectively sharable
experience. Anything falling outside of it is considered hopelessly
subjective and relativistic. However, phenomenological accounts of
bodily engagement in cooking, sports, and other mundane activities are
plentiful not only in some aestheticians' writings but also,
perhaps more commonly, in writings by practitioners and literary
authors (Curtin and Heldke 1992; Giard 1998; Rautio 2009; Tainio
2015). Body aesthetics is also garnering more attention in recent
philosophy and a large part of its concern is the bodily engagement in
aesthetic experience (Bhatt 2013; Irvin 2016).



Furthermore, some agree that the practice of mundane activities,
domestic chores in particular, provides an opportunity for one to
exercise imagination and creativity to inspire an aesthetic experience
(McCracken 2001; Lee 2010; Highmore 2011a). For example, the activity
of outdoor laundry hanging can be a chance for the person to arrange
and hang the items in an aesthetically pleasing way to express her
respect and thoughtfulness toward her neighbors and passersby who are
inevitably exposed to the visual parade of laundered items. At the
same time, this activity will occasion her appreciation of the arrival
of spring after a long winter, as well as anticipation of the sweet
smell and crisp texture of dried items thanks to the sunshine and
fresh air carried by the breeze (Rautio 2009; Saito 2017a). Dismissing
these experiences from aesthetic discourse because they do not fit the
expected format of analysis and cannot be subjected to a
verdict-oriented discourse unduly impoverishes the rich content of our
aesthetic life. In addition, these experiences are not hopelessly
private and it is possible that they are generated and shared
communally. Gardening, cooking, and participation in sporting
activities can be a group activity and the participants can share and
help with each other to mutually enrich and enhance aesthetic
experiences by pointing out the aesthetic contribution of some aspects
that others may have missed.



Indeed, it is crucial for everyday aesthetics that these private
experiences to be intersubjectively communicable. If the aesthetic
dimensions of our everyday life are important (and this conviction is
what gave rise to everyday aesthetics in the fist place), then one of
its tasks is to justify the value of seemingly monadistic experiences
by facilitating what aesthetic experience in general does best:
encouraging openness by sharing others' experiences, viewing the
world from perspectives different from one's own, and enlarging
one's horizon and vision (Ratiu 2017a). Aesthetic experience
understood in this way supports its educability, educational value,
and contribution to enhancing life (Potgieter 2017).


## 8. Blurring the Line between Art and Life



The emergence of everyday aesthetics discourse parallels the
increasing attempt at blurring the distinction between art and life in
today's artworld. Although there have been many examples
throughout art history of *depicting* slices of everyday life,
such as Dutch still life paintings, twentieth-century art introduced
and experimented with different modes of appropriating everyday life,
most famously with the use of ready-mades. Since then, artists have
been trying to overcome the presumed separation between art and real
life in a number of ways: rejecting the art institutional setting as a
location for their art; denying the necessity of authorial authority;
embracing various changes made to their works both by nature and human
agency; blurring the creator/spectator dichotomy by collaborating with
the general public to create art as a joint venture; changing the role
of the artist from the creator/choreographer to a facilitator who
provides an occasion or an event for things to happen; literally
improving the environment and society by planting trees, cleaning a
river, and playing the role of a social worker to promote a dialogue
among people in conflict; and engaging in mundane activities like
cooking and farming with tangible products for consumption. These
attempts have given rise to a number of genres, including situationist
art, conceptual art, environmental art, happening, performance,
activist art, socially engaged art, and art projects characterized as
embodying "relational aesthetics" or "dialogical
aesthetics" (Kaprow 1993; Spaid 2002, 2012; Bourriaud 2002;
Kester 2004, 2011; Dezeuze 2006; Johnstone 2008; Bishop 2012).



Paralleling the movement of art to embrace everyday life, there is a
movement in the opposite direction: for everyday life to embrace art.
While aestheticization of life is not a new phenomenon, what is
noteworthy in the so-called organizational aesthetics and artification
strategy is that they deploy art and art-like ways of thinking and
acting in those areas of life which have not been traditionally
associated with art or aesthetics: medicine, business, education,
sports, and science, among others, as well as organizational life in
general (Darso 2004; Naukkarinen and Saito 2012; Ratiu 2017b).
These professional practices typically privilege rational discourse
comprised of logic and rules, but they cannot ignore their aesthetic
dimensions. Art and aesthetics in this context are not regarded as
decorative amenities or prettifying touches. Rather, organizational
aesthetics and artification strategy are based upon the premise that
humans negotiate life, whatever the context may be, through sensory
knowledge and affective experiences by interacting with others and the
environment. As such, working with the aesthetic dimensions of these
professional activities and environments cannot but help achieve the
respective goals and, perhaps more importantly, contribute to the
wellbeing of the members and participants. Art and aesthetics can be a
powerful ally in directing human endeavors and actions and determining
the quality of activities and environments. Such effects range from
facilitating creativity and imagination in educational and business
ventures and providing humane and healing environments for vulnerable
populations, such as hospital patients and nursing home residents, to
rendering scientific data easily graspable (Pine and Gilmore 1998;
Linstead 2000; Postrel 2003; Howes 2005, 2013; Duncum 2007; Tavin
2007; Dee 2010, 2012; Schulze 2013; Moss and O'Neill 2013, 2014;
Ratiu 2017b; Krawczyk forthcoming).



As stated at the beginning of this entry, everyday aesthetics was
first proposed as a way of accounting for those aesthetically charged
dimensions of our lives that had not been adequately addressed by
art-centered aesthetics. However, early works of everyday aesthetics,
such as given by Saito (2007), are criticized for a rather outdated
and overly restrictive characterization of so-called art-centered
aesthetics. The presumed distinguishing conditions of art-aesthetics,
such as a relatively clear frame, privileging higher sense, authorial
identity, stable identity of the object, and the spectator mode of
experience, are no longer applicable to many examples of art today.
Consequently, the critics urge everyday aesthetics to go beyond simply
providing a venue to enumerate those aesthetic dimensions of everyday
life that had previously been overlooked and to provide a conceptual
foundation. In particular, they advocate conceiving everyday
aesthetics as a continuation of aesthetics discourse that had
previously been focused on art (the view variously characterized as a
weak formulation, continuistic pole, extraordinarist stance, or
monolithist model), rather than as something distinct and separate
from art aesthetics (a strong formulation, discontinuistic pole,
familiarity stance, or pluralist model) (see Dowling 2010; Ratiu 2013;
Iannilli 2016; Matteucci 2016 for a clear and helpful
"mapping" and "nomenclature" of these strands
of everyday aesthetics).



Those who support the continuity model are specifically concerned to
provide a basis for intersubjectivity and normativity for everyday
aesthetics by referencing these features that support aesthetics
discourse in general. Without such a framework, the worry is that
everyday aesthetics may degenerate into a totally subjective, laissez
faire affair which would render the entire project trivial. Unless we
presuppose the possibility of a *sensus communis*, that is,
communicability though not necessarily commonality, which makes
sharing and understanding the other's experience possible, we
are locked into a subjective, solipsistic silo. Furthermore, they
point out that the monadic characterization of everyday aesthetics
within the general aesthetics discourse is not conducive to fruitfully
accounting for the ways in which everyday life and art interact and
form a continuous, ongoing flux of a person's embodied
experience of the lived world. Popular and socially engaged forms of
art permeate people's everyday life more than ever and there is
no reason not to consider experiencing them as a pervasive dimension
of their lived world. Ultimately, the nature of art is open and
dynamic and is very much an integral part of people's life, and
everyday aesthetics is better served by considering the continuity
between art and everyday. In other words, the initial reactionary mode
of everyday aesthetics needs to be recast as a proactive mode that
addresses the totality of our aesthetic engagement with the world,
which includes art, nature, and everyday (Ratiu 2013; Potgieter 2017).
Although approaching the issue from a different angle, another
possibility is to develop Ranciere's distribution of the
sensible and explore what is deemed aesthetically relevant within a
specific cultural/historical/social context. For the consideration of
the regime of the sensible, the presumed distinction between art and
life becomes irrelevant (Vihalem 2018).


## 9. Significance of Everyday Aesthetics



As the increasingly prevalent phenomenon of aestheticization of life
indicates, the aesthetic has a significant power to influence,
sometimes determine, the quality of life and society. While the power
of everyday aesthetics can be harnessed to improve the quality of
life, it can also be used to serve a political agenda or a business
goal. As stated in the sections on the Everyday Aesthetic Qualities
and Action-Oriented Aesthetics above, everyday aesthetic responses
often guide people's actions in the most direct way. If
something attracts us with its aesthetic appeal, we tend to protect
it, purchase it, or try to maintain its aesthetic value; on the other
hand, if we don't find an object or an environment aesthetically
appealing, we tend to be indifferent to its fate, discard it, or try
to make it more attractive (Nassauer 1995; Orr 2002). In particular,
today's global capitalist economy is fueled by 'perceived
obsolescence' regarding products' fashionableness and
stylishness with little to no improvement in their functional values.
Additional aesthetic 'hidden persuaders' include branding,
advertising campaigns, and environments aesthetically orchestrated for
stores (Pine and Gilmore 1998, 2013; Postrel 2003; Schulze 2013;
Bohme 2017). These positive aesthetic values of and surrounding a
product often hide various instances of 'ugliness'
involved in its manufacturing process and afterlife. The negative
aesthetics associated with manufacturing includes environmental
devastation caused by resource extraction and pollution, and dismal
working conditions of the factory workers, often in developing
nations, who are forced to endure aesthetic deprivation, not to
mention health and safety hazards. The negative aesthetics of the
product's afterlife can be seen in the ever-increasing volume of
discarded items, no longer considered trendy and fashionable, not only
in municipal landfills but in the ocean. Such 'trash' is
also shipped to developing nations where re-usable, and often toxic,
parts are harvested by local people with no protective gear (Saito
2018b).



Negative consequences of people's aesthetic preference can also
be found in the uniformly perfect appearance of fruits and vegetables
on the store shelf. The deformed and misshapen items are sometimes
discarded, causing not only literal waste but also creation of methane
gas from rotting produce. Some other times, a niche market emerges to
divert such imperfect items earmarked for free giveaway to the needy
and to commodify them for cheap sale to the general public, thereby
exacerbating the food insecurity of the vulnerable population. The
American attraction to the weed-free, velvety-smooth, uniformly green
lawn has serious environmental ramifications, such as excessive water
use and chemical fertilizer, herbicide, and insecticide. When outdoor
laundry hanging and wind turbines are judged to be an eyesore,
communities create an ordinance to prohibit them, preventing the
opportunity to create a more sustainable way of living (Duerksen and
Goebel 1999; Gipe 2002; Saito 2004, 2017a; Gray 2012). 



Contrariwise, the success of sustainable design and goods produced
under humane conditions often depends upon the acceptance of new
aesthetic paradigms, such as gardens consisting of wildflowers or
edible plants, garments and furniture made with recycled or reused
materials, and green buildings that reduce literal footprints on the
land as well as carbon footprints (Walker 2006, 2017; Salwa 2019).
Some work has also been done to explore the ways in which moral
virtues such as respect, thoughtfulness, and humility can be expressed
not only by persons but also by the aesthetic features of objects and
built structures and environments (Norman 1990; Whiteley 1993, 1999;
Sepanmaa 1995a, 1995b; Pallasmaa 1999; Taylor 2000; Orr 2002;
Berleant 2005, 2010, 2012; Berleant and Carlson 2007; Saito 2007,
2017a). In addition, as indicated by social aesthetics, cultivation of
aesthetic sensibility and practice of aesthetic skills can contribute
to facilitating respectful, thoughtful, and humane social
interactions



The relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical has been one of
the contested issues in the aesthetics discourse regarding art.
Debates ensue regarding the aesthetic relevance of the moral content
of art, the artist's or performer's character, and the
process involved in creating a work of art. The positions range from
their complete separation supported by aestheticism to their
integration advocated by moralists. However, the ethical implications
of art (at least in its more conventional form) do not have a
*direct* bearing on changing the world. They may affect the
audience's perception, attitude, and worldview, which may lead
them toward a certain action, but the impact is indirect. In
comparison, the aesthetic impact of everyday affairs often leads to
direct consequences that change the state of the world. Just as in
art-centered aesthetics, however, there are differing views on whether
or not and to what degree the ethical implications should affect the
aesthetic value of the object. Some prefer to separate them and
protect the autonomous realm of the aesthetic (Forsey 2013). Others
advocate integration by calling for an aesthetic paradigm shift (Orr
2002; Saito 2007, 2017a, 2018b; Maskit 2011) not only by explicitly
including the moral dimensions of objects and environments in their
aesthetics but also by rethinking the fundamental ways in which we
humans interact with the material world. At least according to the
Western tradition, the material world lacks any agency in a morally
relevant sense and its value is exhausted by its instrumental utility
to humans. However, just as the long-held Western anthropocentric
attitude toward nature has come under scrutiny, some thinkers propose
a more respectful attitude toward and interaction with the material
world (Ingold 2000; Nielsen 2005; Brook 2012; Perullo 2016; Saito
2018b).



The moral, social, and political significance of everyday aesthetics
is perhaps most acute in body aesthetics. Culturally- and
socially-constructed, and often impossible to achieve, aesthetic
standards of the human body lead people to engage in various beauty
practices, ranging from cosmetic surgery and extreme dieting to
ingestion of dangerous substances and bleaching of the skins, which
often compromise health (Brand 2000, 2012; Lintott 2003; Rhode 2010;
Archer and Ware 2018; Widdows 2018). Aesthetics is also implicated as
a primary instrument of justifying the societal oppression of
disabled, sexed, gendered, or racialized bodies. Those individuals
whose bodies do not meet the aesthetic standard suffer from an
unfounded perception that their physical appearance correlates with
their competence, intelligence, and moral character, and are subjected
to many forms of injustice and discrimination in employment, social
standing, personal relationships, and economic status. Aesthetic
qualifications for an ideal body can be explicitly institutionalized
as in Nazism or policies requiring a certain appearance of employees,
or implicitly referenced to reinforce the existing stereotype of the
oppressed groups (Garland-Thomson 2009; Siebers 2010; Irvin 2016; P.
Taylor 2016; also see the entries on
 feminist perspectives on the body,
 feminist perspectives on disability, and
 feminist perspectives on objectification).
 



The utilization of aesthetics as a strategy for consumerism and
political agenda has thus been a concern for everyday aesthetics.
Aesthetic appeal can entice people to embrace, support, and promote
problematic causes that may be ultimately contrary to their wellbeing
and quality of life, as well as to the ideal of justice and democracy.
Instead of nurturing citizens and civil society engaged in a
thoughtful and informed exchange, discussion, and critical reflections
of ideas, aestheticization of everyday life is often used to cultivate
consumers for the market, audience for political spectacles, and
accomplices in perpetuating oppression and injustice. However, this
danger of aestheticization of everyday life is not necessarily
inevitable. Some argue that it is possible and indeed critical that we
encourage an aestheticization strategy in the service of promoting
justice, democracy, citizenry, and civil discourse (Nielsen 2005;
Matteucci 2017; Saito 2017a, 2018b).


## 10. New and Future Developments



While everyday aesthetics has matured significantly since its
relatively recent emergence in the Western aesthetics discourse, there
still remain many tasks to be tackled. In light of the new
developments described below, possibilities and opportunities abound
to guide the future of everyday aesthetics.



First, many critics, as well as supporters, of everyday aesthetics
point out that it needs to be anchored in a firm theoretical
foundation (Forsey 2013a; Ratiu 2013; Iannilli 2016). Among the
possibilities suggested are finding roots in phenomenology,
structuralism and poststructuralism, in addition to pragmatism that is
often cited as the primary root (Potgieter 2017). Also suggested is to
frame everyday aesthetics as a practical philosophy with its emphasis
on practical knowledge that is contingent and relational as well as
providing agency for acting for common good (Vihalem 2016; Ratiu
2017a). Another suggestion is to provide a theory of aesthetic
perception based upon a specific mode of attention (Nanay 2016, 2018).
These suggestions are made specifically to address and possibly
resolve the perceived conflicts and tensions debated by everyday
aestheticians between everyday and non-everyday, life and art, theory
and practice, ordinary and extraordinary, routine and non-routine,
familiar and unfamiliar, and bodily-oriented (lower) senses and
cognitively-oriented (higher) senses. A firm theoretical footing
should also support intersubjectivity of aesthetic experience so as
not to render everyday aesthetics hopelessly subjective and trivial,
one of the common criticisms lodged against it. In addition, a
theoretical foundation is thought to help illuminate the political
dimensions of everyday aesthetics, specifically the politically
charged regime of the sensible and the increasing aestheticization of
commerce and politics that treats people more as consumers than as
citizens.



Second, as was discussed in Section 2, what counts as everyday is a
complicated matter, and one of the complications is the fact that our
lived world is changing rapidly due to technology as well as climate
change. We cannot imagine our everyday life today without the use of
internet, social media, Googling, big data, virtual reality, and the
like. The future with self-driving vehicles, wearable technology, and
AI is already here. Although it is safe to assume that in the
foreseeable future we humans will still negotiate our lives surrounded
by and interacting with various objects in the way that has always
been familiar to us, our everyday life will increasingly include and
be affected by technological advancements. Furthermore, many
people's physical environments consisting of nature and built
structures are bound to be transformed by climate change, drastically
changing their everyday affairs and cultural practices (Nomikos
2018).



If everyday aesthetics has been focused on what has been characterized
as a relatively stable environment consisting of familiar surroundings
and material objects, the challenge is to explore whether and how
rapid changes to the familiar everyday affects the nature of everyday
aesthetics as a discourse. Some works have already begun, indicated by
the research on the effects of self-driving vehicles (Mladenovic,
et al 2019), cartographical tools (Iannilli 2014; Lehtinen 2019), and
the prevalence of all kinds of machine in general (Naukkarinen 2019).
These researches explore whether and how these machines facilitate an
engaged experience of the users, how they move aesthetics discourse
from the emphasis on contemplative experiences to immediate,
bodily-engaged experiences guided by the functionality of the object,
and how they impact privacy as well as the nature of aesthetics as an
academic discipline. It may be the case that the new normal for our
everyday world becomes a rapid and constant change rather than
stability and familiarity that have been considered a hallmark of
everyday life to date. This future projection may require everyday
aestheticians to review some of the presuppositions that have
supported their discussion.



Third, everyday aesthetics has become influential in various
disciplines and practices outside of philosophical discourse. As
indicated by many works included in the bibliography, everyday
aesthetics has been embraced as providing both principles and
strategies by fields ranging from business, consumerism, healthcare,
sports, law, science, and education to urban studies, sustainability,
fashion, and design. This wide acceptance and utilization of everyday
aesthetics is due to its insight regarding the prevalence of
aesthetics in everyone's lived world, as well as its aspiration
that cultivation of aesthetic literacy and sensibility will contribute
to improving one's wellbeing, social interactions, and the state
of the society and the world. But the challenge, as well as
opportunity, posed by these heterogeneous discipline-specific
practices is to inquire whether there is an overarching unifying
notion of aesthetic experience and aesthetic practice. Even if there
is a unifying notion, a further question is whether we should arrive
at such a notion by building on case studies from these various
disciplines (Vihalem 2016).



Finally, in light of an increasing attention to the culture-specific
nature of various discourses, everyday aesthetics faces both the
opportunity and challenge for situating its place in a global context.
Globalization of aesthetics is actively sought particularly regarding
art, as indicated by decolonizing the discourses of art, art history,
and museum practice. It was explained at the beginning of this entry
that everyday aesthetics' emergence was historically and
culturally situated to challenge what was considered to be
art-centered aesthetics that dominated the Western aesthetics of the
last century. In many cultural traditions, including those that do not
have a concept equivalent to the Western notion of art, there is a
long legacy of aesthetic interests and concerns permeating, informing,
and guiding people's lives, whether regarding the management of
daily life, social relationships, spiritual rites, cultural
activities, or creation of objects (see Higgins 1996 and Higgins, et
al. 2017 for a collection of essays representing diverse non-Western
aesthetic traditions). For example, the long-held Chinese tradition of
"aesthetics of living" that has been practiced as a way of
enhancing the quality of lived experience and contributing to
people's happiness and wellbeing, rather than conceived as an
abstract theory, is receiving a renewed attention by Chinese scholars
who are working on a cross-cultural dialogue (Liu 2014, 2017, 2018;
Pan 2014; Q. Wang 2014). Similarly, Japanese cultural tradition is
garnering an increasing interest by those who are exploring how its
aesthetics goes beyond the established arts to inform people's
everyday lives (Ikegami 2005; Sasaki 2013; Otabe 2018). Researching
how different cultural traditions promote their respective everyday
aesthetic practices helps to highlight the cultural situatedness of
some of the assumptions of Western philosophy and aesthetics, such as
the relationships between art and life, the theoretical and the
practical, the subject and the object, as well as between and among
the aesthetic, the moral, the social, the practical, the existential,
and the spiritual.



Everyday aesthetics began its task in the spirit of inclusivity by
expanding the materials for deliberation. The discourse continues its
task with the same spirit of inclusivity by encouraging
culture-specific, discipline-specific, and future-speculative
explorations, while at the same time searching for a theoretical
foundation that allows for intersubjective, intercultural, and
interdisciplinary exchanges.