Publications

Ed. von Bonsdorff, Pauline & Arto Haapala (1999)
ISBN: 952-5069-07-09
ISSN: 1239-193X
204 p.
OUT OF STOCK

This collection of essays expands the scope of aesthetics to include areas of human life which lie outside the traditional core domains of aesthetics. It broadens the scope of environmental aesthetics in the traditional sense and investigates what aesthetics might be as it is applied to or developed in relation to nonartistic aspects of human life and culture. In this way it illuminates various philosophically neglected dimensions and phenomena of everyday life through aesthetic thinking. Writers include Arnold Berleant, Richard Shusterman, Cheryl Foster, Emily Brady, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Hilde Hein, Arto Haapala, Pauline von Bonsdorff, Ronald Hepburn and Yrjö Sepänmaa.

Ed. Naukkarinen, Ossi & Olli Immonen (1995)
ISBN: 952-5069-00-1
261 p.
OUT OF STOCK

The purpose of this volume is to present Finnish aesthetics to international readers. Aesthetics scholarship in Finland is on high level and general interest in the field is lively, but much of this remains hidden within Finland's geographic and linguistic boundaries. There has not been any general overview of Finland's contribution to aesthetics on any of the major languages before this book.

Art and Beyond combines two approaches to Finnish aesthetics. It begins with two general presentations, the first on the history of aesthetics in Finland and the second on the fields' current status. The rest of the book consists of articles by Finnish aestheticians and others who have dealt with the subject matter of aesthetics. None of the articles have been published in English previously, and some were written for this book only.

Ed. Haapala, Arto (1998)
ISBN: 952-5069-05-2
236 p.
OUT OF STOCK

The urban environment offers a variety of intriguing problems for scholars in different disciplines. The city milieu is rich and varied enough for different kinds of theoretical and practical approaches. In this collection, aestheticians, architects, art historians, geographers and philosophers address questions of the city from their perspectives. The concept of metaphor is the key term by which some of the variety of the urban environment can be captured.

Articles in the collection show how the urban milieu and metaphor are intertwined together both at theoretical and practical levels. The city is connected with wilderness and sin, it is studied through images and imagination, and cities such as Constantinople, Copenhagen, Helsinki and St. Petersburg are interpreted as metaphors or with the help of metaphors. The collection gives a fresh and many-sided picture to the problems we are dealing with daily when living in an urban environment.

by Naukkarinen, Ossi (1998)
ISBN: 952-5069-04-4
221 p.
OUT OF STOCK

Aesthetics of Unavoidable provides tools for understanding and structuring the complex field of the aesthetics of normal, daily life. The book indicates what kinds of things we should pay attention to if we want to make sense of the aesthetics of everyday world and compare different instances of it with each other. It also provides means to structure the contemporary discussion about the aestheticization of everyday life.

Aesthetics of Unavoidable concentrates primarily on human appearance and how it is dealt with through different types of aesthetics. In this context, aesthetics is typically tacit rather than explicit, volatile rather than stable, and unoriginal rather than original. What is possible to do through this kind of aesthetics is something else than can be done by academic theories. But it is exactly what is needed in dressing up, wearing clothes, or making up - in living one's life and showing one's aesthetic ideas and values through it.