beauty changes everything
This section is more for information about different books, rather than a stringent critique of them.
Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake describe the shift from tangible to intangible assets in the book, Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy (2018). Tangible assets consist mostly of those objects that take up physical space: machines, factories, vehicles, desks, and computers. Intangible assets involve things like patents or procedures. To get a … Continue reading Aesthetics are Intangible Assets
Tom Morris, philosopher to the business world, wrote an excellent book a while back called, If Aristotle Ran General Motors. The title, as he notes early on, is meant to be more symbolic than literal, with Aristotle standing in for philosophy and General Motors standing in for any business. What Morris presents is a way … Continue reading The Beautiful Business
In 2009, Rochelle Mucha published her book exploring "aesthetic intelligence." Mucha appeals to the origin of the word 'aesthetics,' rather than its current use in disciplines like philosophy. Aesthetics referred to the knowledge gained by the senses. Part of the motivation of her book is to show the value of getting all of our senses … Continue reading On Aesthetic Intelligence
Historically, philosophers wrote systems of philosophy that tried to connect the different branches—metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy—unifying the branches top each other. Steadily in the twentieth century, the academy became hyper-specialized. A few have attempted to systematically look at philosophy as whole again, as illustrated by Crispin Sartwell's 2017 book, Entanglements: A System … Continue reading Beauty: Objective or Subjective
When discussing taste, we often speak about good or bad taste as if they are passively present in a person. "You either have good taste, or you don't." But what we choose to experience, and either like or dislike, is part of the process of developing taste. What it means to dislike something has not … Continue reading Dislike and Taste
One of the more fascinating books I’ve read recently is Lauren F. Klein’s An Archive of Taste: Race and Eating in the Early United States. Klein writes that “in the late colonial era and into the early republic, America’s cultural and political leaders identified a causal relation between the cultivation of the American palate and … Continue reading Eating and the Tasteful Subject
John Dewey wrote about the disconnect that was forged between aesthetics and everyday. He describes how artistic practices were once part of the daily life of individuals in different communities. Dewey wanted to reconnect the aesthetic to the everyday, including our jobs. It is with this framework in mind that I present some ideas from … Continue reading Concerning Organizational Aesthetics
Bence Nanay published his book, Aesthetics: A Very Short Introduction, with Oxford University Press in 2019. Below you can read the opening paragraphs of my review of it for the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, and find a link to the full pdf. Opening to the review: With hundreds of titles in Oxford’s Very … Continue reading Review of Aesthetics by Bence Nanay
A previous post discussed the importance of considering aesthetics in business from the book Aesthetic Intelligence: How to Boost It and Use It in Business and Beyond by Pauline Brown. I wanted to follow up that entry with some insights from this book on how to develop aesthetic intelligence, specifically how to better curate your … Continue reading Aesthetic Intelligence, Part 2
In his book, Aesthetics: A Very Short Introduction, Bence Nanay writes, "What all things aesthetic have in common is something very simple: the way you're exercising your attention" (p.22). To illustrate what he means, Nanay uses as an example the painting The Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Landscape with the Fall of … Continue reading Attention to Beauty