Aesthetics of behaviour

Abstract

Despite the recent and widespread interest in studying the aesthetic aspects of everyday life, our daily behaviour has not been properly explored yet. Even though a lot of books of good manners have been published from the Renaissance to the Nineteenth Century (Tasca 2004), etiquette has been related more to ethics than aesthetics (Kant) or it has been connected only to the mere form (Berleant 2005). Following Naukkarinen’s footsteps (2017), we consider the ordinary interaction of people with each other one of the most important areas of everyday aesthetics. This paper aims to investigate the aesthetics of behaviour according to a historical point of view (Elias 1939). First, some books on good manners will be analysed to highlight their aesthetic ideas (sprezzatura, politeness, taste); then the importance of an aesthetic education will be highlighted (Schiller, Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man, 1795); finally, the paper will focus on tact understood as a behavioural mode which is appropriate to given circumstances and respectful of others (Naukkarinen 2014). Doing so, it will demonstrate how the aesthetics of behaviour is not an etiquette understood as mere form but it has an “effective power” and could be a tool to make a better world in line with the goals of Everyday Aesthetics.