Comparative Everyday Aesthetics : East-West Studies in Contemporary Living

Leading international scholars present analysis and case studies from different cultural settings, East and West, exploring 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, from Confucian and Daoist aesthetics, and from the Japanese tradition. All indicate universal features of human aesthetic lives together with their cultural variations. Comparative Everyday Aesthetics is a significant contribution to a key trend in international aesthetics for thinking beyond narrow art-centered conceptions of the aesthetic. It generates global discussions about good, aesthetic, everyday living in all its various aspects. It also promotes aesthetic education for personal, social, and environmental development and presents opportunities for global collaborative projects in philosophical aesthetics. Table of Contents 5 Living with Everyday Objects: Aesthetic and Ethical Practice 9 Comparative Everyday Aesthetics: An Introduction 21 Part 1 Living Aesthetically 43 1 Dao Aesthetics: Ways of Opening to Sublime Experiences and Transforming Beautifully 43 2 Everyday Aesthetics of Taking a Walk: With Zhuangzi 59 3 Investigation of Things: Reflecting on Chinese-Western Comparative Everyday Aesthetics 73 Part 2 Nature and Environment 91 4 The Aesthetics of Nature and the Environment: From the Perspective of Comparison between China and the West 91 5 Cryosphere Aesthetics 107 Part 3 Eating and Drinking 125 6 Memory’s Kitchen: In Search of a Taste 125 7 Chopsticks and the Haptic Aesthetics of Eating 139 8 Taking Tea, but Differently: The Chinese Tea Tradition and its European Transformations 153 Part 4 Creative Life 169 9 Dô (Dao) in the Practice of Art: Everyday Aesthetic Life in Japan Through the Japanese Tea Ceremony 169 10 Skill Stories from the Zhuangzi and Arts and Crafts: Aesthetic Fit, Harmony, and Transformation: Toward a Developmental, Comparative Everyday Aesthetics 183 Part 5 Technology and Images 201 11 Why We Love Our Phones: A Case Study in the Aesthetics of Gadgets 201 12 Filming the Everyday: Between Aesthetics and Politics 221 13 Images and Reality 235 Part 6 Relationships and Communities 253 14 Aesthetics in Friendship and Intimacy 253 15 Morality and Aesthetical Lives: Real Stories of Two Hong Kong Women 269 Index 285