1 Today’s irrelevant but important lesson in academic stuff
- “f.” means this page and the next (one) page
- “ff.” means this page and the next (more than one) page
Thus:
- pp. 76f. = pp. 76–77
- pp. 76ff. = pp. 76–….0
2 Methodology in philosophy
It can be unclear to a newcomer how to ‘do’ philosophy. When we ask questions, say, about the nature of knowledge, how should we treat data from the sciences about the physical constitution of our brain and nervous system? What importance should we assign to experimental results from psychology, or cultural data from anthropology and sociology? And, finally and perhaps most importantly, what importance do we assign our own intuitions?
When I refer to “intuitions” in this context, I mean just whatever ideas happen to occur to me. I can have more or less conviction about these ideas. I can be more or less studied in the area at issue. My intuitions can be my feelings. My intuitions can be informed by long study. Again, “intuitions” are just: whatever ideas happen to occur to me. What weight should my intuitions carry in asking about knowledge or anything else for that matter?
Now, determining the answer to that question is itself part of what it means to ‘do’ philosophy. Methodological questions (questions about how to carry a project out, what ‘method’ to use in exploring a question) are constantly live questions in philosophy. Methodological questions are also live questions in other fields, by the way, so this is not particularly unusual, but we might say that very little is formally settled about this in the case of philosophy (not to mention officially sanctioned; there is no ‘governing body’ or set of criteria about anything at all having to do with philosophy).
I’m raising this question here in part because Saito evidences an attitude toward intuitions that is particularly prevalent in contemporary philosophy, which is to derive claims of a philosophical sort (in this case, about everyday aesthetics) from her own intuitions (which she seems nevertheless to take to be general), and I think we have every reason to wonder about the validity of that sort of inference.
Here’s an example of immediate relevance. Saito is going to argue in this excerpt that cleanliness and dirtiness are ways in which the aesthetic appears in our everyday lives. And that’s fine, as far as I’m concerned. But now: What are “our” attitudes toward cleanliness and dirtiness? How do we determine what those attitudes are? And does it make a difference to the question how we set out to determine those attitudes? How do we manage evidence of different and conflicting attitudes?
To begin with, I think it is fairly obvious that
- attitudes toward ‘cleanliness’ differ in different people (although we may also find shared attitudes, too, of course) and
- what counts as ‘cleanliness’ for some is regarded by others as ‘messiness’ (in other words, views are not only different but contradictory).
Consider the following example. I would guess that many of you and your parents or guardians have or had at some point conflicting ideas about what counts as ‘clean’. Consider those ideas.
- Your parents perhaps see your messy room, for example, and think: This bothers me, and it bothers me because I cannot fathom you can find anything in here, and I’m also concerned you’re going to grow up and not care for your spaces, which will eventually become shared spaces, and so on.
- And you look at your messy room and think: This is just fine; I don’t want to waste time cleaning this; I have more important or interesting things to do with my time.
Now, notice two things here. The first is that you not only have different ideas but directly contradictory ideas. And here are two questions about this we might wonder:
- Is one of the views right?
- Does it matter to a question about the relative importance of the aesthetic in our everyday lives?
If your childhood was anything like mine, keeping your room clean was a major source of contestation. And this fact, if anything, points up the importance of the aesthetic in our everyday lives. And so far, so good, as far as Saito’s big-picture claim goes. But the second thing I want you to notice, which is directly emergent from the cleaning-your-room example, is that everyday aesthetics aren’t just a matter of making things look nice; they are also a site of control and coercion.
Indeed, we can think of other examples conducing to the same point: the policing of what you wear in school, for example. The aesthetic in these cases, notice, becomes as much a matter of coercion and control as it is a vehicle for self-expression and rebellion.
Let me recommend, as a caution, a way of employing ‘intuitions’ and examples in philosophy, and it is to think of them just as possible instances of the more general type under investigation. I’ll try to make clear what that alternative would look like as we work through this selection.
3 Cleaning, tidying
One way in which the aesthetic figures into our daily lives is in terms of cleaning and tidying. Cleaning and tidying, Saito argues, depend on preconceptions about the ‘ideal state’ of a room or an object (including ourselves). We could think of cleaning and tidying as ways of renewal of that ideal.
Cleaning is redistribution; dirtiness is a matter of an unwanted distribution of things. “There is nothing dirty about ketchup, unless it is on my shirt. Mud on our kitchen floor is dirty, but not outdoors on a rainy day” (p. 155). Concern for pollution is (or, among other things, is) an aesthetic concern about the distribution of objects. There is also a certain charm to some clutter. In other words, there isn’t one uniform attitude people adopt about what counts as dirt or clutter, and whether dirt or clutter demand redistribution, or cleaning.
4 Cleanliness
I suspect many of the intuitions Saito makes relatively casual use of are not general. Let me generalize this point like this: What counts as ‘clean’ and ‘cluttered’ can be culturally and individually specific. Saito herself mentions an exhibit at a museum in which the paintings were displayed “in the old fashioned way” (p. 157). To its contemporary viewers it looked strange.
Why clean? What’s wrong with dirt? “Probably the most readily available explanation has to do with the decreased functionality, whether real or perceived” (p. 159). Perhaps then “our generally negative attitude toward qualities such as disorder, mess, and filth is based upon utilitarian reasons” (ibid.). But this practical concern doesn’t exhaust our reasons for wanting tidiness. “Our negative reaction to those qualities is not always motivated by these practical considerations; sometimes it is directed exclusively toward their appearance even when their functionality is unaffected” (ibid.). “Likewise, our effort for clean-up is sometimes motivated by aesthetic considerations, without any function ramifications. A little coffee stain on my clothes, carpet, or sofa does not interfere with its function” (pp. 159–60). The desire to clean them must stem from reasons other than utilitarian or functional ones.
It’s unclear whether Saito means for all of us to have the same aesthetic concerns (same regions of aesthetic interest, say) or for us to have the same sort of aesthetic judgments (same attitudes about what counts as cleanliness, for example). One reason to wonder about this is of course that not everyone has the same attitude about “a little coffee stain” here or there. Another reason is that people sometimes have exactly the opposite attitudes. Consider “graffiti and vandalism.” Some people think it’s ugly and vandalism (Saito evidently agrees with these people). Others find it beautiful. As I mentioned at the beginning, our question at this point should be whether this actually makes a difference to the questions Saito is posing.
5 Appearance and morality
Saito claims that “the impression we give to others” is an issue that goes “beyond aesthetics” inasmuch as “the way we and our possessions appear plays a significant role in other people’s assessment, not only of our aesthetic taste, but perhaps more importantly of our character” (p. 160). Again I’m left wondering how general some of the attitudes Saito appeals to are. For example:
One cannot help questioning the neighbors’ moral character, even if one doesn’t know them, if their house looks shabby with peeling paint, broken windows, backyard sheds half falling down, rusted and broken-down cars permanently parked in the driveway, front yard overgrown with weeds and littered with garbage (of course assuming that they are able-bodied people with adequate income). (p. 160)
I for one certainly can help questioning someone’s “moral character” based on the perceived tidiness of the exterior of their home, even leaving aside questions of able-bodiedness and income.
There are gendered dimensions of appearance, and an associated morality, that make for parallel concerns—which Saito acknowledges. We often judge people unfairly based on what they’re wearing, for example (pp. 161ff.).
6 Order and disorder
Consider Philip Johnson’s Glass House. Would you live there? Saito seems to endorse the view of Kelvin Melchionne, who evidently “claims that, while it may be successful as a work of art, it fails as a domestic space” (p. 169; my emphasis). Sait draws from Melchionne’s view of Glass House that “domestic space as a lived space certainly should be cleaned, tidied up, and organized, but it should also allow some degree of mess and disorganization” (ibid.). That is certainly a possible reaction to Glass House. Is it the only possible one? (I for one would very happily live in Glass House.) If our concern is for understanding the aesthetics of the everyday, what do we make of individual judgments of this sort?
I think one specific lesson here might be that not everyone seeks order and disorder in anything like a fixed blend of the two. I have certainly known, for example, people who would take every measure of more order into their lives that they could. Are they ‘wrong’? I can at least imagine that the answer to this question is no. Aesthetic judgments differ from judgments of fact. There are no official answers.
Inversely, I’m not sure that I mind an ‘unruly’ garden. Saito claims “nature that is left to its own device often produces a messy appearance, discouraging our appreciation and attachment” (p. 170). Does it? Consider the classic English landscape garden. A total mess. Is your “appreciation and attachment” “discouraged” owing to the messiness?
To be somewhat more charitable, we may take Saito’s point to be merely that, without any specific judgment about how this balance is to be figured out, “the aesthetic appreciation of order/disorder or neatness/messiness is based upon their complementarity” (p. 172). Orderliness and disorder, neatness and messiness, are significant because they are aesthetic categories, and because we deploy them in arranging and interacting with our everyday environments. Moreover, “whether or not we can have a positive appreciation of order or disorder seems to be context-dependent” (ibid.).
And I think probably more generally that I wouldn’t contest Saito’s main point and even axes of interpretation. I mean: She’s right (I think anyway) to say that the aesthetic infuses our lives in all sorts of immediate and ‘everyday’ sorts of ways, and one of the ways that shows up is in considerations of order and disorder, tidiness and messiness, that go beyond practical (or even moral), technical, functional and other concerns.