Aesthetics of Care: Practice in Everyday Life

(Hardback)

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Building upon her previous work on everyday aesthetics, Yuriko Saito argues in this book that the aesthetic and ethical concerns are intimately connected in our everyday life. Specifically, she shows how aesthetic experience embodies a care relationship with the world and how the ethical relationship with others, whether humans, non-human creatures, environments, or artifacts, is guided by aesthetic sensibility and manifested through aesthetic means. Weaving together insights gained from philosophy, art, design, and medicine, as well as artistic and cultural practices of Japan, she illuminates the aesthetic dimensions of various forms of care in our management of everyday life. Emphasis is placed on the experience of interacting with others including objects, a departure from the prevailing mode of aesthetic inquiry that is oriented toward judgment-making from a spectators point of view. Saito shows that when everyday activities, ranging from having a conversation and performing a care act to engaging in self-care and mending an object, are ethically grounded and aesthetically informed and guided, our experiences lead to a good life.

Reviews

Yuriko Saitos exploration of ethical and aesthetic sensibility in the care relationship is rich and subtle. As she proceeds, the interweaving of persons, objects, and situations grows in meaning and significance. Profound yet always accessible, her new book is rich with insight. It can and should be read and re-read. * Arnold Berleant, Professor of Philosophy (Emeritus), Long Island University, USA *
Inspired in part by Japanese traditions, Aesthetics of Care is a compelling development of Saitos insight that authentic care - for ourselves, others, objects and environments should determine our integrated aesthetic and ethical modes of living. The book is an eloquent challenge to mainstream Western ethics and aesthetics alike. * David E. Cooper, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Durham University, UK *
With meticulous research and characteristic insight, Yuriko Saito integrates ethics and aesthetics in this study of objects and the treatment they deserve. Her thought-provoking reflections draw attention to the care we should extend to material things and, reciprocally, the ethical and aesthetic significance of designing objects that care for us. * Carolyn Korsmeyer, Research Professor of Philosophy, University at Buffalo, USA *
Yuriko Saitos brilliant book brings her influential ideas on everyday and environmental aesthetics into a deep dialogue with our ethical lives. Drawing on ethics of care, Japanese aesthetics, and concepts such as engagement, relationality, and social aesthetics, she creates a new direction for the field by articulating the mutually enhancing commonalities between aesthetic experience and caring relationships. * Emily Brady, Professor of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, USA *

Author Bio

Yuriko Saito is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the Rhode Island School of Design, USA. She is author of Everyday Aesthetics (2008), Aesthetics of the Familiar (2017) and Editor of the journal Contemporary Aesthetics.