Aesthetics Commons^™

The Aesthetics Of Social Situations: Encounters And Sensibilities Of The Everyday Life In Japan, Garcia Chambers

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

What beauty could there be in mundane, interactive encounters in and observations of the everydayness of life in Japan? The answer rightly may be none whatsoever based on the Kantian, distancing, art-centered theory and practice of aesthetics. Refreshingly, however, contemporary social and aesthetic philosophers would argue that the use of the word ‘beauty’ was a misguided choice, as it repeats the common error of equating the aesthetic with the beautiful or pleasing. A more appropriate word, honoring the original sense perception meaning of aesthetics, would be ‘sensibility.’ True to this original meaning of aesthetics, this paper presents and analyzes two …