Everyday Aesthetics and East Asia’s Ars Contextualis

Abstract

This essay explores the proposal of everyday aesthetics as an alternative to the traditional art and life opposition generated in the modern system of the arts. Secondly, it holds that, since the deep roots against which everyday aesthetics stands, are located in Ancient Greek philosophy, coming to a summit in the Enlightenment period, a look at traditional arts and aesthetics alien to the Western tradition as is the case with traditional arts in East Asia, allows us to realise their wider compliance with many of the claims of everyday aesthetics. The text also aims at casting some light on the different cosmologies and metaphysical assumptions underlying  Greek-based and East-Asian-based aesthetic reflections as an explanatory key of their opposed views on the relationship between art and reality and between aesthetic and ordinary experiences.