Comparative Everyday Aesthetics: East-West Studies in Contemporary Living
Edited by Eva Kit Wah Man & Jeffrey Petts
(To be published by Amsterdam University Press in 2022)
Synopsis
This coming anthology is analysis and case studies in everyday aesthetic interest and experience from different philosophical and cultural settings, East and West, demonstrating their value for the good life.
16 leading scholars present case studies and explore aesthetic interest and experience in our daily lives at home, in workplaces, using everyday things, in our built and natural environments, and in our relationships and communities. A wide range of views and examples of everyday aesthetics are presented from western philosophical paradigms, Confucian and Daoist aesthetics, and from the Japanese tradition. All indicate universal features of human aesthetic lives together with their cultural variations. This book is a significant contribution to a key trend in international aesthetics for thinking beyond narrow art-centered conceptions of the aesthetic. It will generate global discussions about good, aesthetic, everyday living in all its various aspects. It will promote aesthetic education for personal and social development, and present opportunities for global collaborative projects in philosophical aesthetics. Fundamentally, it is about what we do aesthetically now and how that might shape future living, the way we live, work and play.
PREFACE by Yuriko Saito
INTRODUCTION by Eva Kit Wah Man & Jeffrey Petts
PART 1: LIVING AESTHETICALLY
Robin Wang: Dao Aesthetics: Ways of Opening to Sublime Experiences and Transforming Beautifully
Thomas Leddy: Everyday Aesthetics of Taking a Walk -- with Zhuangzi
Ouyang Xiao: Divergence and Reconnection: Reflecting on Chinese-Western Comparative Everyday Aesthetics
PART 2: NATURE AND ENVIRONMENT
Gao Jianping: The Aesthetics of Nature and the Environment: From the Perspective of Comparison between China and the West
Emily Brady: Cryosphere Aesthetics
PART 3: EATING AND DRINKING
Carolyn Korsmeyer: Memory’s Kitchen: In Search of a Taste
Richard Shusterman: Chopsticks and the Haptic Aesthetics of Eating
Gao Yanping: Taking Tea, but Differently: The Chinese Tea Tradition and its European Transformations
PART 4: CREATIVE LIFE
Jeffrey Petts: Skill Stories from the Zhuangzi and Arts and Crafts: Aesthetic Fit, Harmony, and Transformation: Toward a Developmental, Comparative Everyday Aesthetics
Tanehisa Otabe: Dô (Dao) in the Practice of Art: Everyday Aesthetic Life in Japan Through the Japanese Tea Ceremony
PART 5: TECHNOLOGY AND IMAGES
Janet McCracken: Why We Love Our Phones: A Case Study in the Aesthetics of Gadgets
Peng Feng: Filming the Everyday: Between Aesthetics and Politics
John Carvalho: Images and Reality
PART 6: RELATIONSHIPS AND COMMUNITIES
Kathleen Higgins: Aesthetics in Friendship and Intimacy
Eva K W Man: The Living Aesthetics and the Notion of Successful Aging Among Hong Kong Women
Back to Symposium Website
Link to Symposium Brief
Link to Symposium Schedule
Link to Presentation Abstracts and Speakers' Bio