28 (Featherstone 1991, 71)

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(Featherstone 1991, 71)

It is clear that we need to work towards a more precise sense of what is meant by the aestheticization of everyday life. More generally aesthetics has sought to investigate the nature of art, beauty, aesthetic experience and the criteria for aesthetic judgement (Wolff, 1983: 13, 68ff). Since the development of modern aesthetics in the eighteenth century one influential tradition has developed from Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement in which the distinguishing characteristic of aesthetic judgement of taste is disinterestedness and from this perspective anything can be looked at in the aesthetic attitude, including the full gamut of objects in everyday life. Hence Simmel shows the influence of this tradition when he refers to the pleasures involved in looking at objects from a detached, contemplative point of view, without direct immersion (Frisby, 1981:151). This distanced, voyeuristic attitude is to be found in the stroller in the large cities whose senses are overstimulated by the flood of new perspectives, impressions and sensations that flow past him. [Featherstone, Mike. 1991. Consumer culture and Postmodernism. London: Sage.]