Aesthetic Choice in the Age of Ecological Awareness

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A3 Kirjan tai muun kokoomateoksen osa
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en

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15

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In this chapter, I discuss how environmentally conscious aesthetic values become explicit in the form of preferences and concrete choices in everyday situations in which one is able to choose between two or more equally accessible alternatives. Climate awareness, in particular, is affecting attitudes and the experienced responsibility for one’s personal aesthetic preferences and concrete situations in which one is choosing between two or more options with varying degrees of environmental implication. This type of accountability for the long-term sustainability of subjective choices and deliberation between different types of possibly conflicting values is present in many everyday situations ranging from the mundane to more complex matters. The chapter presents case examples in which the need to make everyday decisions is directly linked to aesthetic value and consumption choices. The broader claim made in the article is that these moments of everyday aesthetic decision-making cause mental friction and affect the well-being of an individual in complex ways. Environmental and aesthetic values can and do coexist but they do not necessarily align neatly and neither does one always possess required knowledge to make thoroughly informed decisions.

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Lehtinen, S 2023, Aesthetic Choice in the Age of Ecological Awareness. in M Poltrum, M Musalek, K Galvin, Y Saito & H Fox (eds), Oxford Handbook of Mental Health and Contemporary Western Aesthetics. Oxford University Press, pp. C19S1–C19P77.