The Slovak Journal of Aesthetics
Enjoyment in Levinas and the Aesthetics of Everyday Life
Abstract
Through the concept of enjoyment in Levinas, this paper examines the phenomenological and ontological dimension of everyday aesthetics. Enjoyment, in Levinas, forms an essential element in the constitution of the subjectivity of the human being and is no longer to be seen as a moment of ‘inauthenticity’ or ‘alienation’. The experience of the objects of everyday experience is not related to that of objects of representation or of tools, but rather to that of a system of nourishment into which the subject is integrated, as in an ‘element’ or ‘atmosphere’. This constitutive closeness of enjoyment indicates the fundamental difference between what we understand as everyday aesthetics and other aesthetics characterised by contemplation or disinterest.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDF (English)References
Adorno, T. (1997) Aesthetic Theory. Translated by R. Hullot-Kentor. New York: Continuum.
Adorno, T. (2002) Dialectics of Enlightenment. Translated by E. Jephcott. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
Benjamin, W. (2007) Illuminations. Translated by H. Zohn. New York: Schocken Books.
Carreño, F. (2019) ‘The aesthetic value of the unnoticed’. In Kuisma O; Lehtinen S. and Mäcklin H. (eds) Paths from the Philosophy of Art to Everyday Aesthetics. Helsinki, Finnish Society for Aesthetics. pp. 148-166.
Dewey, J. (1958) Art as Experience. New York: Capricorn Press.
Haapala, A. (2005) ‘On the Aesthetics of the Everyday: Familiarity, Strangeness, and the Meaning of Place’ in Light, A. and Smith, J.M. (eds.) The Aesthetics of Everyday Life. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 39-55.
Haapala, A. (2018) ‘Wonder and the Everyday: Hepburnian Considerations and Beyond’, Journal of Scottish Thought, 10, pp. 139-152.
Hainic, C. (2015) ‘The Heideggerian Roots of Everyday Aesthetics’, Filozofski vestnik, 36(1), pp. 230-249.
Harman, G. (2005) Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things. Chicago: Open Court.
Heidegger, M. (2001) Being and Time. Translated by J. Macquarrie, E. Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell.
Highmore, B. (ed.) (2002) The Everyday Life Reader. London: Routledge.
Høffding, S. and Roald, T. (2019) ‘Passivity in Aesthetic Experience: Husserlian and Enactive Perspectives’, Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology, 6(1), pp. 1-20. DOI: 10.1080/20539320.2019.1589042.
Husserl, E. (1983) Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy. Translated by F. Kersten. New York: Springer.
Kant, I. (1987) Critique of Judgement. Translated by W.S. Pluhar. Indianapolis; Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.
Leddy, T. (2014). ‘Heidegger on everyday aesthetics’. Aesthetics Today. Available at http://aestheticstoday.blogspot.com/2014/04/heidegger-on-everyday-aesthetics.html (Accessed: 22 June 2021).
Levinas, E. (1987) Time and the Other. Translated by R.A. Cohen. New York: Duquesne University Press.
Levinas, E. (1991) Totality and Infinity. Translated by A. Lingis. London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The visible and the invisible. Translated by A. Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2004) The World of Perception. Translated by O. Davis. London: Routledge.
Ortega y Gasset, J. (1975) ‘An Essay in Esthetics by Way of a Preface’, in Phenomenology and Art. Translated by P. Silver. New York: Norton, pp. 127-150.
Proust, M. (2014) Time regained. Translated by S. Hudson. Available at: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300691h.html (Accessed: 1 December 2021).
Rancière, J. (2004) Malaise dans l'esthétique. Paris: Galilee.
Saito, Y. (2017) Aesthetics of the Familiar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sartre, J. (2004) The Imaginary. A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination. Translated by J. Webber. New York: Routledge.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5866431
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
ESPES. The Slovak Journal of Aesthetics (ISSN 1339-1119) is published biannually by University of Presov, Slovakia and the Society for Aesthetics in Slovakia. Registration number of the journal in the Register of Periodical Publications of the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic: EV173/23/EPP.
This journal is open access and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.