The Aesthetics of Everyday Life - by Andrew Light & Jonathan Smith (Paperback)

About the Book

This imaginative new collection explores the aesthetic qualities of human relationships, sports, taste, smell, food, and natural and built environments. With essays from philosophers working in a variety of traditions in the humanities and social sciences, this collection offers an important contribution to and expansion of traditional aesthetics.

Book Synopsis

The aesthetics of everyday life, originally developed by Henri Lefebvre and other modernist theorists, is an extension of traditional aesthetics, usually confined to works of art. It is not limited to the study of humble objects but is rather concerned with all of the undeniably aesthetic experiences that arise when one contemplates objects or performs acts that are outside the traditional realm of aesthetics. It is concerned with the nature of the relationship between subject and object.

One significant aspect of everyday aesthetics is environmental aesthetics, whether constructed, as a building, or manipulated, as a landscape. Others, also discussed in the book, include sport, weather, smell and taste, and food.

Review Quotes

Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith have done a genuine service in assembling the essays in The Aesthetics of Everyday Life.--Theodore Gracyk "Philosophy In Review"

"After sleepwalking for several decades under the exclusive trance of fine art, philosophers are once again recognizing that aesthetics denotes a far wider and more significant field. In the real world of everyday living, aesthetics helps determine the clothes we wear and the food we eat, but also the company, the environments, and the beliefs we keep, and even the officials we elect. The Aesthetics of Everyday Life should be welcomed as a useful and wide-ranging collection that explores this fascinating domain."--Richard Shusterman

About the Author

Andrew Light is assistant professor of environmental philosophy, director of the Environmental Conservation program, and codirector of the Applied Philosophy Group at New York University. He is the author of Reel Arguments: Film, Philosophy, and Social Criticism and is the editor or coeditor of fifteen books on philosophy and environmental studies. He lives in New York City. Jonathan M. Smith is professor of geography at Texas A&M and is the coeditor of Re-Reading Cultural Geography; Worldview Flux: Perplexed Values Among Postmodern Peoples; American Space/American Place: Geographies of the Contemporary United States; and the journal Philosophy and Geography. He lives in Bryan, Texas.