Aesthetics of the Familiar

Yuriko Saito, born and raised in Japan, is Professor of Philosophy at the Rhode Island School of Design in the United States. She has written and lectured widely on everyday aesthetics, environmental aesthetics, and Japanese aesthetics. Her Everyday Aesthetics was published by Oxford University Press in 2008. In addition to serving as an editorial consultant for a number of journals on aesthetics and environmental ethics, she works as Associate Editor of the first free-access, peer-reviewed, online journal on aesthetics, Contemporary Aesthetics.

Yuriko Saito explores the nature and significance of the aesthetic dimensions of people's everyday life. Everyday aesthetics has the recognized value of enriching one's life experiences and sharpening one's attentiveness and sensibility. Saito draws out its broader importance for how we make our worlds, environmentally, morally, as citizens and consumers. Saito urges that we have a social responsibility to encourage cultivation of aesthetic literacy and vigilance against aesthetic manipulation. Yuriko Saito argues that ultimately, everyday aesthetics can be an effective instrument for directing the humanity's collective and cumulative world-making project for the betterment of all its inhabitants.

Everyday aesthetics has been seen as a challenge to contemporary Anglo-American aesthetics discourse, which is dominated by the discussion of art and beauty. Saito responds to controversies about the nature, boundary, and status of everyday aesthetics and argues for its legitimacy. She highlights the multi-faceted aesthetic dimensions of everyday life that are not fully accounted for by the commonly-held account of defamiliarizing the familiar.

Yuriko Saito, the leading figure in the field, explores the nature and significance of the aesthetic dimensions of people's everyday lives. She argues that everyday aesthetics can be an effective instrument for directing humanity's collective and cumulative world-making project.