Abstract
This paper explores the general characteristics of the aesthetics of life. Our approach will be in thinking about the aesthetics of life as a domain independent from the realms of ethics and morality. This thesis discusses some of the theoretical debates around those concepts. The notion of ‘pleasure’ in those practices will be discussed as the one that gives shape to ‘the art of life’. Pleasure also makes it possible for a person to perform these practices for a long period of time; what we call the ‘life-long character of the aestheticization of life’.
However, this effort endeavors to demonstrate another central theme of this style of life; the individual/social character of those practices is the one that exemplifies ‘the art of life’. Thinking simultaneously about ‘oneself’ and the ‘other’ is the main concept that helps us the most to appreciate these practices. These debates are elaborated further in some case studies that have been researched between 2016 and 2019. These are real examples of peoples’ lived experiences who, in different ways, try to give meaning to their lives by turning their existence into a work of art.
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Notes
Deleuze makes the same distinction between morality and ethics. He explains, “Ethics, which is to say, a typology of immanent modes of existence, replaces Morality, which always refers existence to transcendent values. Morality is the judgment of God, the system of Judgment. But Ethics overthrows the system of judgment. The opposition of values (Good–Evil) is supplanted by the qualitative difference of modes of existence (good—bad)”(Deleuze 1988, 23). Levinas, with a different philosophical background but in a similar way, tries to re-define the concept of ethics to differentiate it from the traditional understanding of morality that reduces ethics to only norm-making and norm-obeying (Levinas 1985). Habermas makes such a distinction as well in Justification and application: Remarks on discourse ethics, (Habermas 1993, 115–119). For Ricoeur’s contribution to this ethical turning see: Ricoeur (1992).
It seems that such a dilemma is not even resolved among some contemporary philosophers such as Levinas. For Levinas, need does not belong to the relationship with the other, and need makes an action unethical because there is the expectation for something in return. The need is the absorption of the other to gratify the self in a one-linear relationship (Levinas 1985).
Barry Smart argues the question of responsibility in Foucault’s thought and maintains there is an absence concerning the question of moral responsibility. Smart emphasizes vividly an ethical responsibility as an agent for Foucault’s practices of the self (Smart 1997, 82–3). Responsibility is an ethical attitude for Smart.
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Dastooreh, K. The Aesthetics of Life: More than Ethics and Morality. Stud Philos Educ 41, 173–189 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-021-09812-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-021-09812-6