Taste and the Household: The Domestic Aesthetic and Moral Reasoning

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SUNY Press, 2001 M09 27 - 341 pages
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.
 

Contents

What Is the Domestic Aesthetic?
9
Phenomenological Intimacy and Distance
11
Phenomenological Distance and the Concept of Alieneation
16
Decorative Art and the Domestic Aesthetic
22
The Life of a Household
28
Intimacy Drama and Respect
32
Womens Roles and the Domestic Aesthetic
42
That Moral Reasoning is Developed through the Exercise of Domestic Aesthetic Skill
55
Baudrillard Barthes and Lurie
148
Bourdieus Distinction
153
Language and the Domestic Aesthetic
155
Peirce and the Later Wittgenstein
158
Fashion Tactics and Phenomenological Distance
167
Weird Signs
169
The Phenomenology of Fashion Tactics
177
Fashion Tactics and Entertainment
185

Reflection and Moral Learning
58
Practicing Judgment
61
Practice and Play
67
Platonic and Aristotelian Ethics and the Domestic Aesthetic
71
Plato
72
Aristotle
83
Postmodernity and Character
99
An Unsatisfying Freedom
102
MacIntyres Criticisms of Modern Ethics
110
Material Conditions and the Historical Relativity of Values
113
Ethics and the Labor Theory of Value
121
Rethinking the Effect of the Enlightenment
122
Mill
128
Kant
130
The Development of the Labor Theory from Locke
134
Smith
136
Marx
140
Language and Oppression Thinking and Working
145
Mass Production Nationalization Advertising and Vagueness
191
Mass Production and Nationalism
194
Linguistization and Advertising
201
Advertising Gender and Domestic Aesthetics
204
Three Tricks of the Trade
205
The Art Commercial
210
Four Representative Women Characters
219
The Feministe
223
The Model
230
A False Dilemma
237
A Brief History of the WomanoftheHouse
241
The Mom
255
The Working Woman
266
Motherilness Friendship and Criticism
273
Notes
281
Bibliography
309
Index
319
Copyright

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Page 1 - Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them. And the Lord God said, Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil...
Page 1 - When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

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About the author (2001)

Janet McCracken is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Lake Forest College. She is the author of Thinking About Gender: A Historical Anthology.

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