Aesthetic Values in Everyday Life: Collaborating with the World through Action

Aesthetic value cannot be discussed separately from aesthetic experience. According to Western aesthetics discourse, the paradigm of aesthetic experience is a spectator’s reactive response to an object, leading to a judgment of its aesthetic value. Despite Dewey’s (1934) account of aesthetic experience which integrates undergoing and doing, being receptive and creative, and Berleant’s (1991) notion of aesthetic engagement that also involves the experiencing agent’s creative and imaginative activity, a typical characterization of such an agent is a receiver of the effect the object produces. Aesthetic experience also tends to be regarded as out of the ordinary, disengaging us from the humdrum of daily life and transporting us to a different dimension. Commonly invoked aesthetic values, such as beauty and sublimity, are often stunning and rare, whether they are attributed to the inherent features of the object or our changed perception and attitude through distancing and disinterestedness. Furthermore, positive aesthetic values garner almost exclusive attention. In comparison, until recently, negative aesthetic qualities, such as bland, ugly, disgusting, dehumanizing, and depressing, unfortunately present in many corners of our lives and lived world, have not received due regard.