Leading international scholars present analysis and case studies from different cultural settings, East and West, exploring aesthetic interest and experience in our daily lives at home, in workplaces, using everyday things, in our built and natural environments, and in our relationships and communities. A wide range of views and examples of everyday aesthetics are presented from western philosophical paradigms, from Confucian and Daoist aesthetics, and from the Japanese tradition. All indicate universal features of human aesthetic lives together with their cultural variations. Comparative Everyday Aesthetics is a significant contribution to a key trend in international aesthetics for thinking beyond narrow art-centered conceptions of the aesthetic. It generates global discussions about good, aesthetic, everyday living in all its various aspects. It also promotes aesthetic education for personal, social, and environmental development and presents opportunities for global collaborative projects in philosophical aesthetics.

Eva Kit Wah Man is Kiriyama Professor of The Center for Asia and Pacific Studies at University of San Francisco. She is also an Emeritus Professor of Hong Kong Baptist University. She publishes widely in comparative aesthetics, comparative philosophy, woman studies, feminist philosophy, cultural studies, art and cultural criticism. She was named AMUW Endowed Woman Chair Professor of the 100th Anniversary of Marquette University in the US. She was awarded Outstanding Award in Public Services by Home Affairs Bureau of HKSAR.

Jeffrey Petts is an independent scholar. He has published work in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, the Journal of Aesthetic Education, Historical Materialism, and the British Journal of Aesthetics. He also has papers translated and published in Chinese journals, China Book Review, and Tianjin Social Science. His book Aesthetics and Design: Value in Everyday Life is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic.

Foreword: Living with Everyday Objects: Aesthetic and Ethical Practice —Yuriko Saito
Comparative Everyday Aesthetics: An Introduction —Jeffrey Petts and Eva K W Man
Part 1: Living Aesthetically
Dao Aesthetics: Ways of Opening to Sublime Experiences and Transforming Beautifully —Robin R Wang
Everyday Aesthetics of Taking a Walk: With Zhuangzi —Thomas Leddy
Divergence and Rejoining: Reflecting on Chinese-Western Comparative Everyday Aesthetics —Ouyang Xiao
Part 2: Nature and Environment
The Aesthetics of Nature and the Environment: From the Perspective of Comparison between China and the West —Gao Jianping
Cryosphere Aesthetics —Emily Brady
Section 3: Eating and Drinking
Memory’s Kitchen: In Search of a Taste —Carolyn Korsmeyer
Chopsticks and the Haptic Aesthetics of Eating —Richard Shusterman
Taking Tea, but Differently: The Chinese Tea Tradition and its European Transformations —Yanping Gao
Part 4: Creative Life
Dô (Dao) in the Practice of Art: Everyday Aesthetic Life in Japan Through the Japanese Tea Ceremony —Tanehisa Otabe
Skill Stories from the Zhuangzi and Arts and Crafts: Aesthetic Fit, Harmony, and Transformation: Toward a Developmental, Comparative Everyday Aesthetics —Jeffrey Petts
Part 5: Technology and Images
Why We Love Our Phones: A Case Study in the Aesthetics of Gadgets —Janet McCracken
Filming the Everyday: Between Aesthetics and Politics —Peng Feng
Images and Reality —John Carvalho
Part 6: Relationships and Communities
Aesthetics in Friendship and Intimacy —Katherine Higgins
Morality and Aesthetical Lives: Real Stories of Two Hong Kong Women —Eva Kit Wah Man
AUTHORS’ BIO