beauty changes everything
Our personal taste—for example in art, fashion, or music—does not develop by accident; it is not passive. People choose what they view, wear, and follow. But companies and organizations know how to exploit our natural desires for beauty and aesthetics. Before the Internet became a household necessity, people often trusted a friend or family member … Continue reading TikTok Aesthetics
The relation between morality and beauty continues to capture attention. Philosophers, especially moralists like Anthony Cooper (aka Shaftesbury), connected the ability to comprehend beauty to a person's virtue. Making this explicit, Shaftesbury referred to this innate ability to understand beauty as the moral sense. Part of the basis for this belief was the idea that … Continue reading Virtue and the Beautiful
Described by many as larger than life, Lance Hosey pushed for higher levels of excellence and beauty by architects and designers. He passed away in 2021, but he left a legacy of advocating for the use of aesthetics in green (or sustainable) design. Within his context of design, he held to a core idea that … Continue reading The Beauty of Green Design
Theories of taste ran rampant in the eighteenth century, but things have settled down a bit in academic circles. Despite all the books on aesthetics, few people (if any) have offered new theories of aesthetic taste. Yet we live in a time where the exercise of taste has become quite pervasive. Content creators and audiences … Continue reading What is Aesthetic Taste?
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
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
How aesthetics impacts our decision-making is often ignored or overlooked. Some researchers, for example, have claimed that our feelings (i.e., aesthetic responses) account for 85 percent of our decision-making for retail purchases. Another example from clothing helps to illustrate this point further. In Everyday Aesthetics, Yuriko Saito describes how natural fibers, such as wool and … Continue reading Ugliness and Climate Solutions
Art is supposed to express, rebuke, symbolize, inform, provoke, and so on. Few (if any) say that art is to just exist, and Jaume Plensa is one of them. As a sculptor, he says that he wants his work to exist, "to create beauty without any component of business in it." In this 2015 interview, … Continue reading Jaume Plensa: Sculptor of Beauty