Everyday Aesthetics, by Yuriko Saito.

Yuriko Saito’s Everyday Aesthetics is an excellent introduction to what is perhaps analytic aesthetics’ newest topic: the aesthetics of everyday life. It is also the most important contribution to this topic to date. Saito draws on her experience teaching at Rhode Island School of Design, on her previous research in the area of environmental aesthetics, and on her personal and scholarly acquaintance with Japanese aesthetic traditions. The result is a volume that presents an array of powerful new ideas, employs a remarkable range of sources, and is illustrated by a stunning variety of examples. The aim of the book is threefold: first, to address what Saito sees as a deficiency in recent analytical aesthetics, which, due to its emphasis on either or both of works of art and a special kind of aesthetic experience, has neglected our aesthetic experience of the ordinary objects and activities of everyday life; second, to enrich and enhance both our understanding and our appreciation of this kind of aesthetic experience; and third, to argue that such aesthetic experience has important social, environmental, and moral ramifications and occupies a central place in our lives and in society at large.