The Aesthetics Of Everyday Life

This book, a collection of newly commissioned essays by leading environmental philosophers, was originally to be published by Seven Bridges, a small scholarly press started by former editors at Stanford University Press. Seven Bridges is folding due to poor financing, and this book is now available. It is already in pages, with a cover design, and each chapter has been double-blind peer-reviewed and revised. Andrew Light is a professor of applied philosophy at NYU and a possible editor for a series in environmental philosophy.

The aesthetics of everyday life, originally developed by Henri Lefebvre and other modernist theorists, is an extension of traditional aesthetics, usually confined to works of art. It is not limited to the study of humble objects but is rather concerned with all of the undeniably aesthetic experiences that arise when one contemplates objects or performs acts that are outside the traditional realm of aesthetics. It is concerned with the nature of the relationship between subject and object.

One significant aspect of everyday aesthetics is environmental aesthetics, whether constructed, as a building, or manipulated, as a landscape. Others, also discussed in the book, include sport, weather, smell and taste, and food.

Andrew Light is assistant professor of environmental philosophy, director of the Environmental Conservation program, and codirector of the Applied Philosophy Group at New York University. He is the author of Reel Arguments: Film, Philosophy, and Social Criticism and is the editor or coeditor of fifteen books on philosophy and environmental studies. He lives in New York City. Jonathan M. Smith is professor of geography at Texas A&M and is the coeditor of Re-Reading Cultural Geography; Worldview Flux: Perplexed Values Among Postmodern Peoples; American Space/American Place: Geographies of the Contemporary United States; and the journal Philosophy and Geography. He lives in Bryan, Texas.