Abstract: Chairs, cups, books, and utensils populate our everyday lives and are protagonists of much of our ordinary aesthetic experience. It would seem natural, therefore, for the philosophy of design and everyday aesthetics to constitute intersecting fields of inquiry. Yet the contemporary philosophical debate on the aesthetics of design, articulated through three…
Preview: “The study of aesthetics proceeds along many lines, containing both the theory of beauty and the theory of art, and investigating both aesthetic objects and aesthetic experiences, employing description, prescription, analysis, and explanation.” Thus begins Władysław Tatarkiewicz’s seminal work on the history of aesthetics from antiquity to the mid-eighteenth century, the…
Preview: /Review: Brian S. Dixon, Dewey and Design: A Pragmatist Perspective for Design Research (Cham: Springer, 2020), 200 pages./ Brian S. Dixon’s book Dewey and Design provides, as the book’s subtitle declaims, a pragmatist perspective for design research. Design research is an academic field that specifically deals with the design process. Its domain-specific…
Abstract: Pierre Hadot’s legacy is a vision of ancient philosophy not only as a system of abstract concepts and logical procedures but as a practical philosophical methodology. A key element of this interpretation is consideration of ancient philosophical practice as a series of spiritual exercises to improve one’s own life. The present paper aims to show, more humbly, that by highlighting…