The Useless Studying the Useless

Abstract

Aesthetics is a funny-sounding, funny-spelled, little-used word in our culture today, unless it is to say something is “aesthetically pleasing”―and even then, we usually mean some member of the opposite sex is attractive but we have grown tired of saying such a thing in the same old way, as if our taste in men or women is for the moment a refined, artistic interest. We are kidding, of course, when we say something like this, and part of the joke is that we might take aesthetics seriously.