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Shows how lousy food, cheesy clothes, and dingy homes can ruin our lives.
By exploring the connections between aesthetic sensitivity and moral character, this book connects them both to the larger cultural malaise. It locates the relationship between human nature and moral reasoning in what the author calls "domestic aesthetic skill," bringing together moral and aesthetic judgment about little things that are close to home-food, clothing, and furniture. McCracken combines the study of modern moral theory with the study of modern economics, contemporary popular culture, advertising, and design, to help understand how heady theories become translated into everyday actions.
"I like the author's insightful analyses of the moral importance and moral implications of everyday domestic choices. I especially like McCracken's criticism of the 'phenomenological distancing' and 'techniques of vagueness' of contemporary culture and her relating her ideas to points in Plato and Aristotle. She takes a fresh and interesting approach to the problem of moral choice, showing the relevance of ordinary domestic matters to grand, traditional, ethical topics like virtue, skill, and happiness." — Donald C. Abel, editor of Fifty Readings in Philosophy
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction PART I: The Domestic Aesthetic Foundation of Moral Reasoning
1. What Is the "Domestic Aesthetic"?
Phenomenological Intimacy and Distance
Phenomenological Distance and the Concept of Alienation
Decorative Art and the Domestic Aesthetic
The Life of a Household
Intimacy, Drama, and Respect
Women's Roles and the Domestic Aesthetic
2. That Moral Reasoning is Developed through the Exercise of Domestic Aesthetic Skill
Reflection and Moral Learning
Practicing Judgment
Practice and Play
3. Platonic and Aristotelian Ethics and the Domestic Aesthetic
PART II: Theory, the Domestic Aesthetic, and the Historical Relativity of Moral Reasoning
Plato
Aristotle
4. Postmodernity and Character
An Unsatisfying Freedom
MacIntyre's Criticisms of Modern Ethics
Material Conditions and the Historical Relativity of Values
5. Ethics and the Labor Theory of Value
Back to MacIntyre: Rethinking the Effect of the Enlightenment
Mill
Kant
The Development of the Labor Theory from Locke
Smith
Marx
6. Language and Oppression; Thinking and Working
PART III: Techniques of Vagueness
Poststructuralist Disappointments: Baudrillard, Barthes, and Lurie
Bourdieu's Distinction
Language and the Domestic Aesthetic
Peirce and the Later Wittgenstein
7. Fashion Tactics and the Phenomenological Distance
Weird Signs
The Phenomenology of Fashion Tactics
Fashion Tactics and Entertainment
8. Mass Production, Nationalization, Advertising, and Vagueness
PART IV: Women, Character, and Domestic Aesthetic Choice 9. Four Representative Women Characters
Mass Production and Nationalism
Linguistization and Advertising
Advertising, Gender, and Domestic Aesthetics
Three Tricks of the Trade
The Art Commercial
The Feministe
The Model
A False Dilemma
A Brief History of the Woman-of-the-House
The Mom
The Working Woman
Conclusion: Motherless, Friendship, and Criticism
Notes
Bibliography
Index