New Pragmatism View Of The Aestheticization Of Everyday Life

The aestheticization of everyday life is an increasingly prominent social phenomenon from the second half of the20th century, and its expanding influence caused sustained attention and study from the academic circle. Mike Featherstone is the man who put forward this term first time. Wolfgang Welsh studies this question from surface and deep. Of course, there is a big discussion about this question in China. Research on this issue presents a more profound and clear trend. The aestheticization of everyday life is a kind of phenomenon which shows aesthetic elements decorating the reality as well as the virtualization of the reality. Richard Shusterman’s new pragmatism aesthetics can play a more important role in this study for the pragmatism explanation of aestheticization of everyday life is more practical than other theories.Conventional wisdom suggests that pop art is always false, monotonous, and vulgar, and Richard Shusterman admits these criticisms are right partly, but we cannot negate all pop arts just for this reason. His convincing discussion suggests the aesthetic value of pop arts:true aesthetic enjoyment, creativeness, resistance. At the deep side, pragmatism hermeneutics can also give us some good suggestion. The truth that the reality is composed explanatorily doesn’t mean we live without solid foundation or our life can be shaped casually. The existence of’understanding’ doesn’t make that happen. Explanation will become understanding with long identification and understanding can be changed by new explanation. Understanding is unconscious, emotional, and experiential while something physical can be the tough foundation of our life.These points of view look very novel, but they are absolutely not Richard’s imagination. Without the classic pragmatism, new pragmatism will not have so much original ideas. From Peirce, James and Dewey to Rorty and Shusterman, pragmatism is like a continuous river. If new pragmatism is a grand waterfall on this river, the aestheticizaion of everyday life is the sheer cliff.Another reason to propose the new pragmatism is its inclusive position which can be used as the methodology in other fields of life. This position opposes all kinds of binary opposition and concomitantly exclusive resistance. In this position, aesthetics and utility, pop art and high art, art and life, art and nature can be partners that provide better living experience for us.