Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Volume 11 Volume 11 (2013) Article 14
2013
What is 'Everyday' in Everyday Aesthetics?What is 'Everyday' in Everyday Aesthetics?
Ossi Naukkarinen
Aalto University, ossi.naukkarinen@aalto.fi
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What is 'Everyday' in Everyday Aesthetics?
  Ossi Naukkarinen
Abstract
The theme of everyday aesthetics has recently been addressed
by numerous authors.  However, the question of what is actually
the nature of the everyday, as contrasted with the non-everyday
and how this nature affects the aesthetics of the everyday has
not been sufficiently elaborated.  The purpose of this essay is to
clarify the everydayness of the everyday and combine the
general notion of everydayness with the key points of everyday
aesthetics.
Key Words
everyday aesthetics, everydayness, Leddy, Melchionne, Saito
1.  Introduction
In his article “The Definition of Everyday Aesthetics,” published in
Volume 11 of Contemporary Aesthetics, Kevin Melchionne takes
up an important issue.  While the concept of everyday aesthetics
has recently been addressed by more and more authors and the
theme has essentially developed into a sub-discipline of its own,
the question of what specifically defines the nature of the
everyday,  as contrasted with the non-everyday,  and how this
nature affects the aesthetics of our everyday life remains
insufficiently elaborated.[1] In his words:  “Yet the range of
objects or practices that one finds under the rubric everyday can
seem arbitrary and this calls for a definition of the everyday.”[2]
Moreover, it is not useful to see the everyday in the framework
of academic aesthetics as “a default third basket for what is not
comfortably categorized as fine art or natural beauty.”[3]This
means that everyday aesthetics should not be defined as the
aesthetics of everything that is not fine art or of the natural
environment, as sometimes has been suggested.[4]
Melchionne briefly introduces some promising points, however he
disregards still others that would be useful in moving the
discussion forward.  The aim of this essay is to take this next
step, and this will be done with the help of a graphic
presentation of the issues at hand.  Although not intended to
represent a complete coverage of the topic, the figure
nevertheless summarizes some of the central aspects important
for understanding what the everyday is.  The verbal analysis
following it explains the details of the image and connects the
general remarks on the everyday with its aesthetic aspects.  The
figure will be useful for dealing with the nature of the everyday
in various contexts, even if the focus of this essay is on everyday
aesthetics in particular.   
The aspects of the everyday summarized by the figure are not
necessarily completely neglected by other authors addressing
everydayness.  For example, Yuriko Saito touches on some of
them in her book Everyday Aesthetics.  Yet it is typical to scatter
the notions in different parts of texts, which makes it difficult for
the reader to form an overview of the issue.  This is what the
figure and its analysis seek to help.
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The figure looks like this:
 
2.  My everyday now
The kernel of the figure, the red area, represents the starting
point encompassing the basic precepts that  first, every one of us
has his or her everyday life; second, it is necessarily his or her
own; and third, the contents of it change over time.
Everyday life is the unavoidable basis on which everything else is
built.  Life without everydayness is practically impossible, and it
is difficult to even imagine a life that would be completely noneveryday-like.
 We may lack some other fields or aspects of life,
but not the everyday except in some very special cases that I
will explore later.[5]
My everyday consists of certain objects, activities, and events, as
well as certain attitudes and relations to them. Everyday objects,
activities, and events, for me and for others, are those with
which we spend lots of time, regularly and repeatedly.  Most
often this means objects and events related to our work, home,
and hobbies.  It is quite possible that my everyday is largely
similar to someone else’s.  As a professional academic, I spend a
large part of my day on my computer, working with various sorts
of texts, and in meetings and classrooms.  In my free time, I like
to do sports, cook, meet my friends, listen to music, and read
novels, but I also have to take care of chores that I don’t really
enjoy, such as shopping and cleaning. I happen to experience
these things in a country that has four distinct seasons of the
year and a democratic political system, which also strongly affect
my daily life.  I assume that I share these things with many
others, especially with other academics living in similar weather
and political conditions.[6]  On the other hand, my everyday life
is probably rather different from that of a Mexican nurse, a
Nigerian drug dealer, or a cook from Bhutan.
Nevertheless, it is important to bear in mind that no single set of
objects, activities, or events as such constitutes one’s everyday,
and that there is a large degree of variation in the makeup of
such sets depending on a person’s way of life.  Even if cars,
kitchen utensils, clothes, and furniture form a core part of most
people’s everyday, it is still very important to think about the
relation or attitude we have to them.  Melchionne points out that
“There are five main areas of consideration:  food, wardrobe,
dwelling, conviviality, and going out.  Nearly all of us eat, dress,
dwell someplace, socialize, and go out into the world for work or
errands on a nearly daily basis.”[7]  He is right in saying that
these are typical “everyday areas” and even ones that often call
for aesthetic consideration.  But simply listing them does not
explain why and how they are of everyday kind.  What is their
everydayness?  Melchionne hints at an explanation but the issue
deserves deeper exploration.
The everyday attitude is colored with routines, familiarity,
continuity, normalcy, habits, the slow process of acclimatization,
even superficiality and a sort of half-consciousness  and not with
creative experiments, exceptions, constant questioning and
change, analyses, and deep reflections.  In our daily lives we aim
at control and balance.  The everyday is the area of our life that
we want and typically can trust, the sphere of life that we know
very well; or at least believe that we do, which is normally
enough to keep us contented.  Everyday life is not always only
made up of the nice and good, but is still something we are
familiar with.  Melchionne also refers to this characteristic:  "In
contrast [to seasonal or life-cycle events, requiring complex
planning and big decisions], everyday life is marked by an
economy of effort, a minimum of planning, and the easy
integration of the aesthetic into routines with amendments and
variations along the way."[8]  In my case, it means that I know
my home, its surroundings and my workplace quite well, and
that many things I do in these contexts are easy and obvious for
me.  There are lots of things that I don’t have to pay much
attention to but can perform almost automatically.  The positive
power of habits, which has been noted repeatedly in
philosophical pragmatism, is another variation on the theme.[9]
 All this can also naturally lead to downright lazy thinking, as
Daniel Kahneman illustrates from the point of view of psychology
in his best-seller Thinking, Fast and Slow.[10]  Trying to find the
easiest and least demanding solution is simply one central
operative principle of human behavior.  The diverse psychological
and biological backgrounds of this tendency, analyzed by
Kahneman, cannot be addressed in this essay.
Moreover, no one else has exactly the same everyday as I do
and no one else could live his or her life in quite the same way,
even if I share some strands of the world with others.  This also
means that I can have experience-based knowledge only of my
own everyday.  I have to build an everyday relation with things
around me; no one else can do it for me and no objects or
events act in an exactly similar manner for anyone else.  My
everyday right now is a special kind of relationship between me
and my surroundings.
This, of course, does not mean that I lead a completely
“monadic” life.  As human beings we are social creatures, and
although I have my own life I live it with others.  How I interact
with people around me:  relatives, family members, friends, foes,
colleagues, has a strong impact on me, just as I also affect
others; in fact, it forms me into what I am.  Hermits are rare
exceptions, and their being alone, in turn, shapes them into what
they are. Furthermore, this interactive relationship does not only
happen between me and other people; I also interact with
objects, materials, and processes, and all this results in what I
am and what my life is.  My life is not mine alone and there are
no clear-cut and definite borders between me and the rest of the
world.
If we don’t achieve a normal or routine relation with some issues
in our lives, or if we don’t want that, these objects, events,
actions, habits, skills, etc. are not really in the kernel of our
everyday.  For example, people who move to a new country or
to a foreign culture may find it very hard to adopt strange habits
and thus establish a smooth everyday life.  In an extreme case it
can happen for various reasons that one’s daily life is full of
anxiety and despair.  In this case, if most of one’s time is spent
in this emotional landscape, it is not possible to get used to it
and to the things that cause it, and to then be able to form
routines that can carry one further almost half-consciously.  In
such cases one probably cannot say that such people have an
everyday life in the same sense as most of us.  They live in a
crisis.  They have their daily life but without the routines,
easiness, and trust that normally belong to everydayness.
One’s everyday can be more or less positive or negative,
aesthetically or otherwise, but independently of its nature it
changes with time.  My everyday now is somewhat different from
what  it was a year ago.  This change is partly intentional and
controlled, partly not.  But it must be emphasized that the
change has particularly to do with objects, actions and events,
and not that much to do with the everyday attitude that, in the
end, constitutes the everyday.  In youth one’s living is filled with
play and toys, later with something completely different. 
However, everydayness remains on the level of the relationship
itself: whatever is routine and normal can be a part of our
everyday, be that play and toys, fixing a car, or sports.  Of
course, in some lives the constellation of objects, actions, and
events may remain rather stable for long periods of time, but
this is not necessary for everydayness to continue.
Although I emphasize the present tense in the figure, the now of
my everyday, it is clear that the past and the future influence all
that there now is.  I have memories and plans and my past
deeds have forged me into what I am.  My present experiences
are what I now have, continuously and always, but they can be
seen as condensed points or prisms of my whole life span, or
even of much longer cultural and nature-based processes.  The
present oozes what there was and what we believe will be. 
3.  Aspiring out, sudden and slow
Most of us don’t want to have the routine on all the time, to just
continue living the everyday.  There are also non-routine things
that we want to experience.  This is represented by the upper
and right areas of the figure entitled “Aspire.”  Such non-routine
things are considered positive breaks in or alternatives to the
everyday.
Some of these positive breaks can be achieved quite quickly.
Parties are a good example of this.  They are something non-
everyday by definition, and it is possible to start one very
easily:  ask some friends to join you, turn on the music and
open a bottle of champagne.  But if we partied all the time, and
always in the same way, it would become routine.  Parties and
festivals are supposed to be breaks in the routine.  They are
exceptions, occasions when we do other things than the normal.
 The same can be true of holidays and, sometimes, business trips
and activities related to our hobbies.  The key ideas of John
Dewey’s and Thomas Leddy’s aesthetics also refer to the
direction of rather special experiences that rise above the normal
stream of daily life, although without being in stark contrast with
it.  This extraordinary nature of Deweyan experiences is the
reason why Yuriko Saito, for example, questions whether
focusing on such experiences can really help us understand the
everydayness of everyday aesthetics.  In any case such
experiences, too, can come about rather suddenly.
One can also try to escape from routine and boredom in other,
slower ways.  This often means a process of developing
ourselves, widening our horizons, or learning something new,
which can be very demanding.  Studying arts, sciences, or sports
are examples of this.  In such processes we have to concentrate,
make a conscious effort, question the routines, analyze, reflect,
and get creative.  But as soon as new things become more
familiar to us, they can become a part of our everyday; this
happens when we are learning a new language and eventually
begin to master it. This can be compared with the process of
consciously acquiring a new taste for art.[11]
We can also sometimes de-familiarize ourselves with the things
that are normal to us, when we start to reflect upon and analyze
them in a different way.  This happens, for example, when we try
to change our diet.  Here, the point is to de-familiarize ourselves
with an old habit and develop a new one.  A diet won’t have a
long-term impact if it does not become routine, part of our
everyday.
On a more general level, it is possible to think that our every
attitudes, habits, and routines actually just conceal the real world
and blind us from seeing what is important.  In this case it would
be arts, philosophy, and the sciences that could help us
overcome the tyranny of this everyday sluggishness.  This has
been a standard issue in philosophy since Plato’s allegory of the
cave, and many major philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant,
Karl Marx, Edmund Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Martin
Heidegger have provided their own ideas about what to do to
open our eyes, philosophically, politically, and otherwise.
On the other hand, many philosophers of pragmatism, such as
Charles S. Peirce and John Dewey, noted the positive power of
everyday habits.  Our habits and normal practices don’t
necessarily (only) veil and encrust some kind of “deeper truth”
and blind us, but rather give us security and help us act in the
world and understand it in the first place.[12]
Art has an interesting role in this picture.  For an artist, many
things that are needed for creating art works (materials, tools,
spaces, skills) that are part and parcel of his or her everyday life.
Similarly, for art critics and researchers art is a fundamental part
of the everyday.  However, for many others art functions as a
means for opening up new vistas and understanding the world in
a fresh and different way, just as sciences can also do.  Arts and
sciences typically strive to surpass the typical by questioning and
presenting alternatives.  Artworks can also produce extraordinary
experiences, like parties do. 
However, again, it is not artworks as such that are of everyday
or non-everyday kind.  They can be both depending on our
relationship with them.  The same work can be extraordinary for
me and something quite familiar to someone else.  For this
reason everyday aesthetics cannot be defined by saying that it is
the aesthetics of non-art (or non-nature), or that art-related
aesthetics is necessarily something that is unsuited for the
everyday contexts.  Almost everything can be “artified and art
can be turned into everydayness.[13].  That is why the arrows in
the figure point in two directions and why there are no sharp
borders between the areas presented.  The relationship between
the everyday and non-everyday is dynamic, quite like the
relationship between art and non-art:  they affect each other –
quite independently of whether a particular case of art is, for
someone, part of her everyday or non-everyday.
Conceptions vary on whether the “beyond the everyday” that art
offers is at all comparable with that of the sciences, whether art
really opens up anything about reality or, rather, construes a
fictional reality of its own.  Furthermore, extreme skeptics may
also ask whether the sciences can achieve anything other than a
fictional conception of reality.  Nevertheless, even such
extremists can probably see the difference between the everyday
and its alternatives.  I would claim that even the most radical
thinkers have aspects of everydayness in their lives, their own
habits and routines; Kant, who was known for his extremely
punctual daily routines, may be a good example of this.
4.  Falling out, sudden and slow
Aesthetics has been typically interested in positive breaks with
the everyday, such as the ones described above, achieved with
the help of art or otherwise.  Both art and aesthetic value at
large can even be defined as something that is positively
extraordinary.  Still, there are also other kinds of breaks in the
everyday.  Not all changes are positive, but there are non-routine
things that we don’t want to experience; these are represented
in the figure by the area entitled “Avoid.”
Again, some of them can come about quite suddenly, literally in
seconds.  We can get into a car accident, our home may burn
down, or our loved one can tell us that she is leaving.  Incidents
like this disturb and can even destroy our everyday life.  We
cannot go on doing things we are used to and sometimes have
to learn new skills.  Sometimes we can get used to changes
caused by such events, and if this happens the new situation
becomes a part of our everyday.  However, before habituation
happens we are experiencing a negative break.  Typically, such
incidents happen without our will and control, originated by
outside forces.  This means that they are not optional, like things
we consciously and willingly pursue, even if some positive breaks
can also just happen to us, such as nice surprises, without our
conscious intent.
We can also slowly end up leading a boring and stagnant life
that is not positively balanced and controlled but simply
dispiriting, or we can gradually develop a terminal illness.  In
such cases the everyday is nothing reliable, safe, supportive and
trustworthy but restrictive, tiring, prison-like and without a
prospect for alternatives, a mental and even physical halt.  Such
a life is often called gray, and while it may require all our
attention and energy, we cannot have a routine and easy-going
attitude towards it.  In the worst cases this leads to a diagnosed
depression or to some other form of mental and social disability.
Political activists sometimes claim, in the spirit of situationists,
that we don’t necessarily even realize that we are being stupefied
like this; that we believe ourselves to have a normal everyday
life but that actually we are somehow stagnated.  This is again
close to what Plato meant by his allegory of the cave.  However,
I would claim that this is different from a situation where
someone understands her stagnation very well and suffers from
it, and thus cannot lead a normal everyday life.  People in Plato’s
cave do not understand their situation and can, in principle, live
happily.
5.  The limits of my life
All the things described above, balanced everyday life as well as
its positive and negative breaks, sudden or slow, are still parts of
our conscious life.  The size and contents of this area vary
between different individuals and with each individual’s life
situations.  However, all of us have limits to what we can know
and experience.  The rest of the world is outside these blurry
limits, and in the figure these limits are represented by the outer
dotted line.
A part of what is outside our own world consists of things we
have never encountered and know nothing of.  By definition, I
cannot name an example of things that are of that kind for me.
Yet I know that most people in the world have no idea of, say,
who Eija Lindström (my sister) is although I know her well.  It is
quite normal to widen the scope of our conscious world, and that
is exactly what we do as we grow older and learn new things.
Some of these novel things become parts of our everyday, others
remain more exceptional.  Sometimes things just enter into our
consciousness quite suddenly:  the rare occasion of a meteor
hitting our house! 
On the other hand, there are things, everyday or otherwise, that
have played a role in our lives at some point but we have
forgotten about them.  Most adults have probably forgotten lots
of things that were dear to them in their childhood.  Some of the
things that we are not aware of affect our lives strongly, some
not at all.  Physicists assume that something they call dark
matter and dark energy exist.  If they do, they must have had a
quite central impact on our lives as long as human beings have
existed, even if no one knew anything about them before our
days.  Or somewhat more understandably, an economic
recession may affect a child’s life even if he doesn’t know it.  On
the other hand, things that happen right now on the streets of a
small town somewhere in Brazil don’t affect my life and I will
never even know about them.  They don’t exist for me.
6.  Aesthetics of the everyday
All or at least most of us have our own everyday in the sense
described above, normally partly shared with some others.  It is
unavoidable.  Many probably have their own everyday aesthetics,
too, although I assume that there are also people who simply
don’t pay much attention to aesthetic issues and thus have no
extended aesthetic experiences in their lives.  This, of course,
does not mean that they would not do and make things that
others could evaluate aesthetically if they wanted to.  We cannot
avoid producing aesthetic objects and events of some kind even
if we ourselves don’t always intend it or notice the outcome.
I would think that in principle whatever belongs to our everyday
can be approached aesthetically or from the aesthetic point of
view.  It is possible to evaluate anything aesthetically, although
it is by no means always necessary.  Often we can choose our
point of view.  If we approach something aesthetically, we
typically pay attention to such issues as appearance, feel, look,
touch, sound, and other perceivable qualities of the things we
encounter and interact with:  their emotional and sensory
aspects.  As Melchionne says, it is quite common to adopt such
an approach in the context of the most typical everyday chores
that have to do with food, wardrobe, dwelling, conviviality, and
going out.  But one’s everyday can consist of some other kinds of
things in addition to these, and whatever they are they can be
approached aesthetically.
Some people, of course, emphasize that aesthetic approaches
fairly often are, or at least should be, colored by artistic or artrelated
notions.  The latest carefully developed example of this
point of departure that I know of is a book by Laurent Jenny, La
vie esthétique.  Jenny interprets various kinds of things in his
daily life by drawing connections between them and art forms,
such as painting, poetry, and music.[14]  If so, then everyday
aesthetics is something that is compared with values and
practices developed in the (fine) arts.  Leddy also suggests that
the borderline between art and non-art is not tight and that
everyday aesthetics would benefit from admitting this.  Saito, in
turn, has argued that this might direct our attention to things
that are not relevant for everyday aesthetics.  I tend to think
that art-related everyday aesthetics is simply another option
available for us, not necessarily better or worse as such.  As said
before, art and art-relatedness can be an essential part of one’s
everyday life.  There is no single best definition of what the
aesthetic is; instead, there are several intertwining
interpretations as, for example, Wolfgang Welsch has pointed
out.[15]  All of them can be relevant to everyday aesthetics.
There are several layers and ways  to develop and express our
aesthetic approach to our everyday.  We can simply make
choices and do things silently, and still pay attention to aesthetic
matters: dress up, clean our house, cook, or drive a car in a
certain way. If we do that, others may not even know that we
are paying attention to aesthetics even if we did this quite
consciously and deliberately and did not content ourselves with
easy and unreflective bodily pleasures, for example.  In everyday
situations we do not have an obligation to publicly defend our
opinions even if we could probably do that if we wished.
We can also openly and verbally discuss aesthetic issues.  When
we do this it is normal to use expressions like nice, cool, neat,
messy, pretty, awesome, awful, rude, and many others.  I think
Leddy is right when he points out that everyday aesthetic
vocabulary and its use are often different from art talk.[16]  We
can just say that something is neat, and in our everyday settings
it is rare to really analyze and give good and deep reasons for
our opinions.  If someone goes deeper, at some point the
everydayness of the everyday situation gets lost and we
eventually enter into a specialist discourse.  This is why
specialized analyses and critics of, say, restaurants, wines, cars,
or fashion are not really examples of everyday aesthetic
discourse, even if they have to do with something other than art
and natural environments, i.e., areas that some think constitute
the core of everyday aesthetics.  This does not mean that we
could not critically discuss our everyday aesthetic choices and
opinions or share our ideas,.  Some theorists, such as
Christopher Dowling, emphasize that possibilities offered by such
discussions, which can come close to art criticism, should not be
excluded from everyday aesthetics.[17]  However, claiming that
critical discourse must be the paradigmatic way of addressing
aesthetic issues in everyday situations would be taking the point
too far.
The point of my approach is that should our aesthetic approach
really be of an everyday type, we should evaluate and handle
things rather routinely, easily and repeatedly, not
experimentally, not in atypical and challenging ways, not aiming
to broaden our possibilities.  Instead, we should aim at what is
normal and non-spectacular to us, at something that does not
stick out from the mat of normalcy but supports the routine.
 This, in any case, might feel good, safe and satisfying, not
simply uninteresting and boring, as Leddy suggests.[18]  Often
we share the idea of what is “just right” – not too bad but not
too great either – with many others.  This is partly what the
“business look,” for example, is all about.  It is based on socially
shared and formed tastes.  We gradually learn to discern what is
normal, learn to like it, and all this becomes more and more
automatic over time.  It may happen that we only really notice
our everyday preferences when the normalcy becomes disturbed.
 We may, for example, suffer if we for some reason happen to
wear different kinds of clothes than others on a certain occasion.
Most of us have our non-everyday aesthetics as well:  a “party
look” on the positive side and bad-hair moments and aesthetic
catastrophes on the negative, avoidable side.  Some of us may
even try to develop our aesthetic life in slow and demanding
ways, just like artists or designers do, and some may stagnate
aesthetically.  However, those processes move beyond the scope
of the everydayness into the realm of extraordinary.
It is another matter to consider which things are aesthetically
positive and which are negative to whom and why, both in
everyday and non-everyday processes, and I cannot go into that
issue here.  In any case, it is by no means self-evident that that
we would have universally accepted conceptions of aesthetic
positivity and negativity because of the complex reasons that I
have tried to analyze elsewhere.[19]  Which things are examples
of aesthetic “parties,” “catastrophes,” “stagnations” and
“developments,” and which ones are aesthetically good and bad
in the everyday, remains a matter of endless dispute.
Everyday aesthetics becomes especially important and influential
if a large group of people share similar aesthetic preferences that
guide their behavior.  This, I would say, plays a role in the
success story of Apple, for example.  It is not unusual to hear
that people want to use iPhones, iPads, and other Apple products
because they just look better and feel nicer to use than others.
 Seen from a somewhat different angle, many political
movements can also be claimed to have aesthetic aspects at
their core, as Crispin Sartwell has suggested.[20]  Both economic
and political spheres offer large-scale examples of cases where
certain aesthetic issues have become the normal characteristics
of the everyday.  Such everyday mass phenomena leave deep,
long lasting and large ecological, economic and aesthetic
footprints on different parts of the planet and thus make them
worth serious attention.[21] Everyday aesthetics is far from
trivial spare-time tinkering, and this is why it is so important to
understand what it is.[22]
 
Ossi Naukkarinen
ossi.naukkarinen@aalto.fi
Ossi Naukkarinen is Vice Dean at the Aalto University School of
Arts, Design, and Architecture, Helsinki, Finland.  He has
published books and articles, both in English and Finnish, on
everyday aesthetics, mobile culture, and environmental and
visual arts. 
Published on September 16, 2013.  
*Editor's note:  For further discussion of this topic, see Thomas
Leddy's blog Aesthetics Today.
Endnotes
[1] Recent publications that are relevant for the theme include,
for example, Arnold Berleant, Sensibility and Sense: The
Aesthetic Transformation of the Human World (Exeter: Imprint
Academic, 2010); see also earlier books by Berleant), Yuriko
Saito, Everyday Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2010), Katya Mandoki, Everyday Aesthetics: Prosaics, The Play
of Culture and Social Identities (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), and
Thomas Leddy, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics
of Everyday Life (Broadview Press, 2012).  Other contemporary
authors who worked on the theme a bit earlier are, for example,
Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living beauty,
Rethinking Art (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, also several other
publications by Shusterman), Joseph H. Kupfer, Experience as
Art: Aesthetics in Everyday Life (Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press, 1983), Wolfgang Welsch,  Ästhetisches Denken
(Stuttgart: Reclam, 1990, 7th edition 2010), David Novitz, The
Boundaries of Art (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1992),
and Ossi Naukkarinen, Aesthetics of the Unavoidable (Lahti:
International Institute of Applied Aesthetics, 1998).  Still earlier
and interesting contributors, in addition to well-known authors
such as John Dewey and Charles Baudelaire, were Jean-Marie
Guyau, Les problèmes de l'esthétique contemporaine (Paris: F.
Alcan, 1884) and Yrjö Hirn, The Origins of Art: A Psychological
and Sociological Inquiry (London: MacMillan, 1900).  Unlike it is
sometimes claimed, academic research on everyday aesthetics is
actually nothing very new.
[2] Kevin Melchionne, ”The Definition of Everyday Aesthetics,”
Contemporary Aesthetics, (Vol. 11, 2013), Section 1,
“Introduction,”
http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume
/pages/article.php?articleID=663.  Downloaded on 15 March
2013. 
[3] Ibid.
[4] Here, Melchionne refers to Leddy, The Extraordinary in the
Ordinary, pp. 8-9.  Also in his essay “The Nature of Everyday
Aesthetics,” in The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, ed. Andrew Light
and Jonathan M. Smith (New York: Columbia University Press,
2005), pp. 3-22, ref. on p. 3, Leddy claims that “It would be a
mistake to take the term everyday too literally.”  I disagree.
[5] The idea of the everyday developed in this essay can be
compared with the concept of Lebenswelt as presented by
Edmund Husserl and Jürgen Habermas.  Both concepts refer to
something on which other layers of life and culture are built.
Especially for Habermas, however, the inter-subjective and
communicative aspects of the Lebenswelt are even more strongly
accentuated than they are in this essay’s interpretation of the
everyday.  A deeper comparison must be left to another
occasion. See Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen
Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine
Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, Husserliana VI,
Hrsg. von W. Biemel (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954) and
Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns I-II
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981).
[6] It would probably be possible to analyze also the concept of
culture from the point of view of shared everyday experiences:
members of a culture share similar habits and everyday
surroundings and experiences.  Such an analysis, however,
cannot be developed in this essay.
[7] Melchionne, Section 3, “Conclusion.”
[8] Melchionne, Section 2.
[9] A concise overview on several versions of pragmatism
emphasizing this aspect of habits is offered by H. O. Mounce,
The Two Pragmatisms: From Peirce to Rorty (London and New
York: Routledge, 1997).  A still further, Heideggerian variation on
the theme is developed by Arto Haapala in his essay “On the
Aesthetics of the Everyday: Familiarity, Strangeness, and the
Meaning of Place,” in The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, ed.
Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2005), pp. 39-55.
[10] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (London et al.:
Penguin Books, 2012).
[11] Melchionne has an interesting essay also on this theme.
Kevin Melchionne, “Acquired Taste,” Contemporary Aesthetics,
Vol. 5 (2007), 
http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume
/pages/article.php?articleID=485.  Downloaded on 15 March
2013.
[12] See Mounce.
[13] On 'artification' see Contemporary Aesthetics, Special
volume 4 (2012),
http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume
/pages/journal.php?volume=49.
[14] Laurent Jenny, La vie esthétique (Lagrasse: Éditions
Verdier, 2013).
[15] Wolfgang Welsch, Undoing Aesthetics (London: Sage,
1997).
[16] Thomas Leddy, ”Defending Everyday Aesthetics and the
Concept of ’Pretty’” in Contemporary Aesthetics, Vol. 10 (2012),
http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume
/pages/article.php?articleID=654.  Downloaded on 15 March
2013. See also Leddy’s “The Nature of Everyday Aesthetics” and
his “Everyday Surface Aesthetic Qualities: ‘Neat’, ‘Messy’, ‘Clean,’
and ‘Dirty,’” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53:3 (1995),
259-268.
[17] Christopher Dowling, “The Aesthetics of Daily Life,” The
British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 50, No. 3, (July 2010), 225-
242.
[18] Leddy, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary, p. 111-112.
[19] Ossi Naukkarinen, “Why Beauty Still Cannot Be Measured,”
Contemporary Aesthetics, Vol. 8 (2010),
http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume
/pages/article.php?articleID=603.
[20] Crispin Sartwell, Political Aesthetics (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2010).
[21] I have compared something that I call ‘aesthetic footprints’
of human activities with other footprints in more detail in my
article “Aesthetic Footprints,” Aesthetic Pathways, Vol. 2, No. 1,
(December, 2011), 89-111.
[22] I would like to thank Arto Haapala and Yuriko Saito for their
comments and wise advice.