The Role of Imperfection in Everyday Aesthetics

The notions of perfection and imperfection do not have the same prominent presence they once occupied in earlier aesthetics discourse. However, they still play an important role as criteria for aesthetic judgments today in our everyday life. The wide-spread and easily accepted aesthetic appeal of objects with perfection tends to overshadow the potential aesthetic value of imperfect objects that are considered to be defective or deficient. This not only impoverishes our aesthetic lives but also leads to some serious environmental and social consequences. I first argue for the need to cultivate an aesthetic sensibility to appreciate imperfection in our everyday experience. However, I also argue that such an aesthetic sensibility should not be applied indiscriminately. As newly emerging negative aesthetics indicates, in some cases it is critically important to maintain the negative assessment of imperfection, as it may indicate a need for corrective actions

Machines in the Ocean: The Aesthetics of Wind Farms

This is an exploration of the aesthetic opposition lodged against wind power facilities. Taking the recent controversy regarding the proposal of a wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod as an example, I analyze the opponents\u27 claim that such a construction ruins or spoils the otherwise pristine landscape. After suggesting some strategies of making the structure more aesthetically positive purely on the sensuous level, I propose that this specific issue must be discussed in the context of larger issues: civic environmentalism and the aesthetics of sustainability

The Role of Aesthetics in World-making

Arnold Berleant’s oeuvre spanning five decades is devoted to restoring aesthetics’ connection to the rest of our lives. In this paper, I shall join him by highlighting the crucial role aesthetics plays in shaping our lives and the world by interacting with objects, environments, and people. I show how our seemingly innocuous and trivial aesthetic tastes and preferences regarding everyday objects and activities have a surprisingly significant power to determine our attitudes, judgments, and actions, often with serious political, environmental, and moral implications. In light of this power of the aesthetic to affect the quality of life and the state of the world, I argue that all of us are responsible for cultivating aesthetic literacy, becoming vigilant about the ramifications of our aesthetic life, and directing our aesthetic life toward better world-making

The Ethical Dimensions of Aesthetic Engagement

This paper explores the ethical dimensions of aesthetic engagement, the central theme of Arnold Berleant’s aesthetics. His recent works on social aesthetics and negative aesthetics explicitly argue for the inseparability of aesthetics from the rest of life, in particular ethical concerns. Aesthetic engagement requires overcoming the subject-object divide and adopting an attitude of open-mindedness, responsiveness, reciprocity, and collaboration, as well as the willingness and readiness to expose negative aesthetics for what it is. These requirements characterize not only the nature of aesthetic experience but also, perhaps more fundamentally, our mode of being in the world and the accompanying ethical responsibility. Among the present paper’s principal aims is to show how this view of aesthetic and ethical stance is also shared by the important aspects of the Japanese worldview, aesthetics, and artistic practices

Everyday Aesthetics and Artification

Everyday aesthetics aims to illuminate the rich aesthetic dimensions of our lives that have been neglected in the modern Anglo-American art-centered aesthetic discourse. Artification, a new concept and practice, encourages us to experience various aspects of our lives normally not associated with art or aesthetics, such as business, education, and medical practice, from an artistic viewpoint. Both discourses are helpful in sharpening our aesthetic sensibility and enriching our aesthetic life. However, precisely because the aesthetic dimension of our lives exerts a considerable power in shaping our lives and the world, we need to cultivate aesthetic literacy and a vigilant attitude toward the use of this power. I argue against the indiscriminate and uncritical adoption of artification by exploring the ways in which the artification strategy can undermine the intended purpose and the value of art in a workaday environment and organizational practice