Traditionally, the sense of touch—alongside the senses of taste and smell—has been excluded from the aesthetic domain. These proximal modalities are thought to deliver only sensory pleasures, not the complex, world-directed perceptual states that characterize aesthetic experience. In this paper, I argue that this tradition fails to recognize the perceptual possibilities of haptic touch, which allows us to experience properties of the objects with which we make bodily contact, including their weight, shape, solidity, elasticity, and smoothness. These features, moreover, may (...) be indicative of how well-suited an object is for its function, and in feeling them we can thus feel the positive aesthetic quality of functional beauty. (shrink)

This study looks at the emerging branch of everyday aesthetics from the perspective of the fracture which exists in its core, as a result of the double reading of the everyday: the first, which elevates it to the realm of the extraordinary and the second, in which it remains strictly ordinary. Our purpose here is to repair this fracture by turning to David Hume’s functionalist aesthetics, where disinterest and utility are reconciled through sympathy and the affective experience of otherness that (...) it provides. Once transferred to the everyday sphere, sympathy facilitates understanding between these two versions, since the aesthetic appreciation of everyday objects or common activities requires, like the second version, that they remain in the practical environment and, like the first, to see something special in them, which is the possibility of one’s own or another’s well-being. (shrink)

Este trabajo pretende abordar los juicios estético-morales establecidos por Yuriko Saito en el ámbito reciente de la estética de lo cotidiano, a la luz de la belleza funcionalista del pensador ilustrado David Hume. Para ello, se desentraña el mecanismo afectivo sobre el que descansa la experiencia estética tanto en el caso del objeto intrascendente de todos los días sobre el que teoriza Saito, como en el caso del objeto utilitario sobre el que discurre Hume y que demuestra que el juicio (...) de gusto es uno solo, en ambos pensadores, con el juicio moral. Se concluye así que la simpatía por obra de la cual existe la belleza en el joven Hume, al acabar virando hacia una empatía prematura en el Hume maduro, refuerza el entronque con Saito, con su preocupación por el otro y su deseo de alcanzar un mundo mejor. (shrink)

In this article, I enter into a discussion of how aesthetics can be conceptualized in the context of design and related to the field of human–computer interaction (HCI). I contest the current trend in design aesthetics that primarily focuses on beauty, pleasure, and the creation of emotional appeal by means of the sensual and visual elements of the design. Conversely, I advocate for a series of concepts related to aesthetics, such as reflectivity, representation, and epistemology, as these point aesthetics beyond (...) the immediate sensual and visual. Through these concepts, a deeper understanding of the character of the relationship between humans and design can be obtained: Design objects and HCI solutions can be more accurately described in their roles as interfaces for how humans approach the world. This broader perspective on aesthetics has implication for practice when designers set the task of creating new experiences for the users. (shrink)

In philosophical aesthetics, discussions on design objects place the notion of Functional Beauty at the fore. Such a philosophical approach can be found in Jane Forsey’s book The Aesthetics of Design that focuses on the notion of function to promote the aesthetic value of design and develops an interpretation of Kantian Dependent Beauty around it. Lucía Jiménez Sánchez has recently put forward several flaws of Functional Beauty accounts. She presented several practical cases as evidence for the narrowness of Functional Beauty (...) accounts. Two cases are presented against Jane Forsey’s theory of Dependent Beauty, holding that it excludes other properties from appreciation that are not necessarily related to functionality, i.e., expres- sive properties. The purpose of this article is to show that these criticisms leveled at Jane Forsey’s proposal for an aesthetic theory of design are unfounded and are based on a misun- derstanding of the structure of judgments of beauty in her system. Despite this, these criticisms highlight the need to clarify the purpose of the aesthetics of design. (shrink)

Everyday Aesthetics was born in the 21 st Century as a sub-discipline of Anglo-American Aesthetics and it has spread in the international debate. However, the contribute of historical perspective has not properly explored yet. Is it possible to trace the history of everyday aesthetics before the official birth of this discipline? I will try and give an affirmative answer by focusing on an exemplary category: that of the decorum. Using the history of ideas, I will analyse the Greek concept of (...) prepon and the similar Latin concepts of decorum which express the idea of ‘convenience’ or ‘fitness to purpose’ in the ethical and rhetorical sphere. Later I will analyse the evolution of the concept of decorum in the theory of Ancient and Renaissance architecture. My goal is to demonstrate that in Ancient and Renaissance culture decorum is a category that refers to the objects and practices of everyday life but also a principle that regulates appropriate behaviour in the sphere of good manners. Consequently, given its pervasiveness in the different areas of everyday life, the concept of decorum can be a paradigmatic example to trace the history of everyday aesthetics. (shrink)