Sensibility and Sense: The Aesthetic Transformation of the Human World

The subject matter and the many insights in this text make it a significant book for the new century. It raises the questions that need to be asked of the academic discipline of aesthetics. Moreover, it indicates the scope of the task before us if we are to take the social role of aesthetics seriously. As a book it is somewhat hampered by some lack of cohesion between its parts. It still bears the traces of being constructed with the use of separate essays: these make up six of its twelve chapters. This introduces a loosening of the narrative thread and overall argument and, in places, both repetition of a point and even seeming contradictions. This is unfortunate because what it does have to say is fresh, true, and tremendously important. Chapter 1 discusses philosophical method and introduces the reader to the particular components that will be brought to bear in the discussion: phenomenology, an understanding of aesthetics that is related to the immediacy of perceptual experience, and a form of pragmatism that requires consideration of the consequences of one's practices. In chapter 2 the aim and ambitious scope of the book is explained: As a domain of normative experience, the aesthetic has a powerful and pervasive presence in the human world. This book's central purpose is to reveal that presence and to explore how the aesthetic is incorporated in the texture of the world. Further, by recognizing the profound implications and the transformative possibilities of the aesthetic, we can help shape that world to make our place in it more generous and fulfilling. (p. 31)