Poiesis of Care: The Aesthetic-Performative Value of Delicacy

Poiesis of Care: The Aesthetic-Performative Value of Delicacy

María Jesús Godoy Domínguez

 

Abstract
In this paper, the ethics of care is addressed from an aesthetic perspective by analysing the poiesis of care, or care from the performative aspect of its physical execution. To this end, delicacy is understood as a sensitive property of care, an aesthetic language where the subject, assuming an active role, becomes an ‘artist’ in the everyday realm. The main thesis is that the subject is a caregiver who expresses delicacy in their everyday gestures and attitudes with the people and objects around them. To develop this idea, first, delicacy is conceptually characterized within the framework of modern aesthetics, while exploring its premodern antecedents. Then, body posing is analyzed, where the subject’s physical proximity to the beneficiary of care makes the sense of touch a priority factor. Lastly, the conclusion reached is that delicacy in care, when practiced universally and on a daily basis, makes the world a better place.

Key Words
care, everyday aesthetics, delicacy, poiesis, tact

 

1. Aesthetics of Care

Following Yuriko Saito, the spheres of ethics and aesthetics are intertwined and enrich each other by converging in the unique value of care. Therefore, it could be argued that there are both ethically grounded aesthetics –aesthetic care based on a certain set of morals – and aesthetically guided ethics –ethical care expressed through formal and sensory means.[1] However, while care from an ethical perspective seems to be clearly understood, care from an aesthetic perspective seems to be more ambiguous. This might be because the theoretical development of the ethics of care has had over forty years to consolidate the idea that care involves not only avoiding harming or simply respecting others –as set in the Kantian-derived ethics of justice[2]– but also safeguarding others’ welfare by performing appropriate actions to cover their needs. This is especially pertinent when the other to whom care is initially targeted is weak and vulnerable, and therefore needs help from others –who are presumably stronger– in order to restore and advance their well-being.[3] In contrast, in the emerging aesthetics of care, there is still a long way to go in order to define what it means to be caring.

For the time being and thanks to Saito, we have learned that care, in an aesthetic sense, can benefit the subject indirectly, who receives care via the object with which they are in close contact, and also benefit the object directly, which is then the recipient of care.[4] On account of James Thompson, we also know that collaborative artistic practices such as theater are good breeding grounds for this type of care, both on a small scale, within the artistic process itself –interdependence and a sense of responsibility among actors are essential for a successful performance– and on a large scale, as a model to be exported to human relationships in general.[5] The same author states, from this perspective, that care can be divided into three successive interconnected stages, namely preparation, execution, and exhibition.[6] However, in parallel, despite stressing the importance of caring gestures, care as performance and, ultimately, manners, we still do not know what the aesthetics of care actually is.[7]

The aim of this paper is to provide an answer, from an aesthetic perspective, to the following question: What does it mean to be aesthetically caring? In other words: Does care have an aesthetic language of its own? Is there a physical gestalt?[8] A kinesics of care? The intention here is to show that care as a form of non-verbal communication, both in giving and receiving, is expressed through the body, given that our caring or non-caring attitude is revealed to others via our gestures and corporal movements. Moreover, the objective is to establish that the physical expression of aesthetic care is essentially through one aspect: delicacy, presented here as the aesthetic and sensitive property of care. Thus, in this essay, the feminist-based moral category of care is correlated with delicacy, an eminently feminine way of being and acting in the world, according to Kant and the majority of Enlightenment thinkers.[9]

However, this approach differs substantially from Saito’s on bodily aesthetics in cultivating moral virtues.[10] For although the author includes care in her list of virtues, she does not give it a distinct status –as presented here– but treats it on an equal footing with respect, tolerance, acceptance and hospitality.[11] Even more significant is the treatment she gives to the aesthetic expression of these virtues, where the repeated mention of elegance, gentleness, grace, and subtlety contrasts sharply with the passing reference to delicacy, which is the entire subject of this paper.[12] Delicacy is thus undetectable even for the powerful aesthetic radar that Saito uses in her reflections to capture historically neglected aesthetic phenomena,[13] particularly in the case of the everyday.

This paper is organized as follows: firstly, the aesthetics of delicacy is conceptualized by drawing on its theoretical references in the framework of modern aesthetics, primarily David Hume, but also by tracing some of its premodern antecedents, which date back to post-Aristotelian rhetoric. Secondly, the implementation of delicacy is analyzed, referred to here as poiesis of care, where physical proximity to the other –the one cared for– makes the sense of touch, and all that is tactile in general, a priority factor. To this end, Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology are brought into play, alongside concrete examples from everyday life that illuminate the presence and sensitivity of delicacy.[14] Finally, the conclusion is that the aesthetics of care, if practiced universally and on a daily basis –to paraphrase Saito–, makes the world a better place.[15]

2. Delicacy, Délicatesse, Suavitas

The conceptual design of delicacy in the eighteenth century is contemporary with that of taste as the capacity of the subject to formulate a sovereign judgement about the object. In this context, and primarily related to British aesthetics, delicacy emerges as a superior quality of taste, giving it a conspicuous sensitive acuity: delicate taste reaches what common taste is not capable and unravels the subtlest of nuances. David Hume illustrates this very well by using a passage from Don Quixote in which two wine tasters make different but equally delicate judgements of taste. Unbeknown to the wine tasters, there was a key attached to a leather cord at the bottom of the vat containing the wine; therefore, one detected the taste of leather and the other the taste of iron.[16] The passage also reflects the proximity, even the overlap, during that century, between physical taste and aesthetic taste, due to the immediacy with which both operate, despite Western philosophy regarding the former with contempt as it was too bound to the body, in contrast to other physical senses as sight and hearing, which, having little to do with the body, were regarded more favorably.[17] For the British aestheticians, in addition to the purely sensitive, aesthetic taste was delicacy, either because the imagination that fostered it was also considered so, as can be seen in Joseph Addison,[18] or because the sentiment that sustained it was also delicate, soft and tender, as in Hume, for example.[19]

In the eighteenth century, delicate taste also has an organic or social explanation, depending on whether the subject possesses the trait innately or has acquired it culturally. For Addison, the latter origin gives rise to the educated man without further ado, while for Hume, it leads to the true judge, who, apart from being born with perfect sensory organs and outstanding sensibility, practices continuous evaluation and critical judgement. With the true judge, delicacy, initially an aesthetic, sensitive category, a matter of taste, becomes an ethical category; something perfectly in keeping with the moralization of beauty that has been attributed to Hume’s philosophy.[20] This is because, as a foundational aspect of the true judge,[21] delicacy gives rise to a whole series of skills that are social in appearance yet ethical in essence, such as putting oneself in the place of the other, forgetting the self and a lack of prejudice. As the requisites of any true judge, these skills confirm that delicacy in Hume goes hand in hand with sympathy, which prompts us, by our very nature, to be sociable and live in harmony with our equals. This sympathy predisposes us to converge our individual tastes, however disparate they may be, into just one: the most acceptable for being also the most supportive and open to others.

However, if we analyze these skills in detail and follow the evolution from the young Hume –primarily in A Treatise of Human Nature (1740)– to the mature Hume –in Of the Standard of Taste (1757)–, what seems to be linked to delicacy is a fairly incipient empathy, from where the leap to care is easier.[22] Indeed, when the utilitarian object on which Hume had been theorizing in his early writings gave way to the artistic object –the poetic object, to be precise– to which his culminating essay is devoted, the affective and, consequently, the moral dimension are superlatively intensified. It is as though, at this point in his life, the mere exchange of emotions with others, to which sympathy was reduced in his youthful essays, fell short and Hume opted to delve deeper into what others feel.[23] He eventually opted for an affective, more intense, more profound and, therefore, more ethical bond, which the nineteenth century –although not yet Hume– would label empathy (Einfühlung), a concept that emerged in the field of historical hermeneutics as a type of sympathy capable of bridging temporal distance, as can be seen, for example, in Johann Herder.[24]

Not in vain, for Hume, delicacy, as a fundamental trait of the true judge, prevents them from succumbing to particular likes and dislikes, and the sympathies that naturally arise in every individual. Moreover, delicacy enables the true judge to travel mentally to the other –the audience that, in Homer’s time, attends the theatrical representation of the Odyssey, as Hume himself exemplifies[25]– to experience the other’s emotions there and then, in their own circumstances –the delight provoked by Ulysses’ trickery, according to the previous example– by intentionally abandoning their own emotions; something that Edith Stein would later explore with Einfühlung in the field of phenomenology.[26] In brief, delicacy lends legitimacy to true judges as subjects who are more empathetic than sympathetic and, therefore, incipient carers: they not only connect with the close and similar –as in the young Hume’s characterisation of sympathy–, but also with the different and distant other, and thus anticipate the co-feeling typical of empathy in which subjects are aware of what the other feels because they assume the other’s feelings as their own and, consequently, act in favor of that other.[27]

As the leading eighteenth century theorist on delicacy, Hume traces the premodern antecedents of this category in his work Of the Standard of Taste, which, focusing on poetic questions, is set in a literary context dominated by Gallic rhetoric. In fact, the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Dubos is highlighted as one of the inspirational sources behind Hume’s essay;[28] even more, it is believed that, through Dubos, Hume might have come in contact with another Frenchman, Dominique Bouhours, for whom delicacy had already become significant when the classicist postulates of the French Academy became more relaxed in the wake of the Querelle des anciens et des modernes.[29] This enabled Bouhours to contrast the aesthetic ideal of clarity and exactitude of classical rhetoric with a different ideal that had its raison d’être in the tenuous, the vague and the imprecise. This explains so-called ‘delicate thought’ (pensée délicate), a succinct concept in which the subtlety of Cardano and the acuity of Gracián, and the exquisiteness and refinement of Castiglione’s The Courtier –a hugely influential treatise in seventeenth century France[30]– concurred. In the interest of délicatesse or ‘flower of the spirit’ (fleur d’esprit),[31] Bouhours lashes out at those who err on the side of excess and affectation[32] in the literary sphere or art of eloquence proper, as well as in the social sphere, as exhibited by Italians and Spaniards in their love of over-acting. Inordinate and artificial, both are antipodes of the man of fine manners who served as a model for the eighteenth century man of taste; an enemy of excess who was prone to refinement and moderation, as can also be seen in Hume.[33]

The Scottish philosopher also echoes older rhetorical antecedents, specifically post-Aristotelian, to which he alludes in different passages of his book Of the Standard of Taste. Delicacy, referred to as suavitas in the Hellenistic period, is aimed at persuading an audience to take action.[34] It is easy to reach the conclusion that the twofold influence of ethics and aesthetics, which would be seen later in the modern notion of delicacy, was already incorporated in the latter from its very beginning, given that the calm and tranquil tone of discourse is the ideal medium with which to direct the public towards a specific end. Moreover, due to the classical semantic similarity between suavis and dulcis,[35] Cicero, the most eloquent orator of ancient Rome in Hume’s view,[36] is at pains to separate the superior gentle –suavis– rhetorical style from the sweet –dulcis– style, which can easily be interpreted as mawkish, indigestible and unpleasant.[37] Thus, the moderate, balanced Ciceronian rhetoric, which symbolizes the term suavis, prevailed over the overabundance of sweetness, which had made amatory poetry reign supreme, and would do so until the end of the Renaissance.[38] As a result, delicacy was characterized as a matter of temperance and good judgement –a matter of suavitas–, hence in his dicendi peritus (‘expert in rhetoric’), Quintilian –another of the revered classical orators– identifies the vir bonus (‘good man’);[39] and, following his example, Hume’s man of taste will be the epitome of the true judge.

3. Poiesis of the delicacy of care

To speak of poiesis in care is to speak of care in its purely dynamic, creative aspect. To this end, poiesis needs to be understood not so much in its original classical meaning, as simple physical dexterity where the subject proves to be an expert in techne, but in its modern meaning, as spiritually elevated creation where the poietes has infinite resources –owing to their prolific imagination– to carry out their action.[40] This is the meaning of poiesis that comes into play in the performance of care through the body, which enables the observer to recognize it immediately. However, as Saito highlights, not all corporal expressions of care or other aesthetic virtues will do.[41] In order for care or other virtues to become authentic, the subject needs to pay careful attention to their execution; in other words, care must be delicate and therefore aesthetic, or it cannot be considered care. Coarse, rough, crude, unrefined or unpolished care, in short, careless care, is never care. To illustrate this, consider the common act of a goodnight kiss. This gesture may be executed with genuine affection and shared eye contact, conveying a sense of complicity and warmth. Conversely, it may be performed reluctantly, accompanied by a somber expression and a turning away of the face. In the former instance, the act exemplifies delicate care, representing care in its truest sense. In the latter, the absence of delicacy renders the action far removed from virtuous caring.

When care is passed through the filter of delicacy, it becomes authentic poiesis. It is then that the subject assumes a truly creative role, almost like an artist,[42] putting their body in delicacy mode in order to appear caring when practicing the virtue of care. In Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological terms, this is equivalent to saying that through the phenomenal body or knowledge of the many physical options that exist for expressing care, the subject modifies their objective body to express the delicacy option and thus succeed in being perceived as caring by others as well.[43] In other words, from the here and now where the self physically exists –the place and time where their objective body is before executing any action– the subject is able to anticipate the self in the there and then –in the form of their phenomenal body– which enables them to perform the action aesthetically.[44] The self of the here and now immerses itself fully in the self of the there and then and, by conscientiously preparing, obtains the desired –the delicate– performance of care.

Therefore, the poiesis of care relates to somaesthetic, namely, to own’s own reflection on how one’s own body performs and feels as a living entity. In this regard, Richard Shusterman argues that in an attempt to overcome the classic mind/body antagonism, somaesthetics produces a twofold sense of pleasure: that of the bodily performance itself and that which is obtained when we subsequently examine our performance to improve and adjust it as much as possible to what we actually want to communicate.[45] Shusterman explains that self-knowledge through the body leads to greater control of our physical habits. This enables us to modify our habits if we believe they are erroneous or deficient, or to feel good about ourselves if we believe we have performed a well-executed action. The preliminary step towards self-knowledge is cognitive acuity, especially when poor performances have to be corrected or, as in this study, given a certain aesthetic aspect.[46] This can be achieved through training, which helps us to reconfigure our body and, once achieved, to perform the action to the full. Saito’s geisha example is very enlightening: geishas internalize gestures and movements through bodily discipline, which then materialize spontaneously when the occasion arises, turning such common actions as sitting, talking and walking into art.[47] Something similar happens with care: after an intense bodily awareness, we can practice so that our movements, our gestures, even our tone of voice, become progressively delicate in order to provide the best care we are capable of providing.

In short, once we realize that delicacy enables us to become as caring as we want, we adapt our bodies to become mellower and kinder. For instance, when assisting a person with physical disabilities to rise, we do so not by force, but by gently supporting their arms. We thus turn our bodies into an aesthetic place where everything is perfectly calculated –the result of learning, just like the eighteenth century man of taste–, which is not incompatible with naturalness, even improvisation, as documented in the geisha example.[48] The admirable thing about the geisha is that they appear delicate by nature, having let themselves be pervaded by the hard training they carried out. And this is precisely the point, for the geisha and for us, that sincere actions as caring do appear to be genuine to our fellow human beings, not as a whim, but as a necessity:[49] performing care is futile if the care we provide, deficient in form or expressed incorrectly –with no delicacy–, does not reach anyone;[50] even less, if that someone is the beneficiary. This situation turns particularly critical when the beneficiary is not a mere observer, as with the geisha, but a patient whose physical and psychological well-being hinges entirely on the quality of medical care provided. This explains the interest in redrawing ourselves physically, in exhibiting a certain pose with which we communicate to the observers that we are authentically caring.

However, whether we pose in care, or whether we wish to appear caring, does not detract from the moral character of our action, since posing is not understood here as appearance devoid of substance or indeed pretence.[51] Given our social idiosyncrasies and, to some extent, the theatrical and scenographic character of existence –we constantly observe and are being observed–, posing must be understood strictly as a posture adopted by the body in a situation defined by Edmund Husserl as ‘image consciousness,’[52] or awareness of being observed. As such, the intentional act of posing by the actor is as important as the deliberate examination by the spectator.[53] Following Roland Barthes’ analysis of the photographic image, posing subjects, aware that they are being permanently observed, transform themselves in advance into the image they want to project. Consequently, they prepare themselves, correct themselves and even, if necessary, physically force themselves to make ‘another body,’ to quote Barthes.[54] The aim is to induce a favorable image –ultimately, to be considered as good as beautiful– by turning their body into an object-image. According to the phenomenological distinction between body image and body schema, between the perceptual experience and awareness of one’s own body, it could be argued that once the mind becomes aware of the body schema –usually at a prereflexive, preconscious level– it exercises control over the body through posing, which is measured against the image of the body itself, impelling both to collaborate to make the actual image compatible with the desired image.[55]

Posing, with its cultural and symbolic component at the body image level –unlike body schema, which, limited to sensory-motor capacities, functions at a more personal level–plays with the different languages produced by itself for different situations; languages full of gestures, attitudes and movements, which are transparent to the observers familiarised with them. The subject who wishes to pose uses appropriate body language to deploy a series of characters that, while forming part of the repertoire of a culture, vary from one individual to another, and even for the same individual, from one staging to another.[56] Moreover, by controlling body images previously used in different situations, subjects can develop their own style.[57] In the case of care, in addition to those who provide care for work reasons –basically, nurses and domestic carers– this level can be reached by anyone who is fluent in the language of suavitas, which everyone generally knows or, at least, intuits[58]. In other words, anyone who can mentally picture themselves softening their voice when someone is asleep or placing a consoling hand on their shoulder during a difficult time, for instance, will be better equipped to physically execute these actions. Indeed, anyone who, having studied the body schema of care and put it into practice in public settings, knows that their moral action –for care is fundamentally a moral act—will be well received because it is highly regarded.

Nevertheless, care not only appeals to the sense of sight, but also to the sense of touch, which means that, in addition to being seen, delicacy must also be palpable or feel physically. Intrinsically, care is characterized by emotional and physical closeness, in contrast to respect, although both are often confused despite the huge differences between them.[59] The main difference is that respect, or the ethics of justice which it serves, goes hand in hand with equality and freedom and, therefore, enables subjects to develop their own existential projects at the expense of disengaging from other individuals in order to avoid mutual interference. The ethics of care liberates subjects from this isolation and reminds us that the rights-based society is also a society of duties and obligations. It encourages commitment to our equals, especially to the weak, and seeks to adapt the general and abstract rules of the ethics of justice to their particular needs. Proximity to the defenceless, in contrast to the distance strong individuals of the ethics of justice keep from one another, is fundamentally affective as it requires the subject to empathically connect with the object, to mentally travel to their inner most being in order to discover their deepest needs.[60] Moreover, it is also a physical proximity, as it often involves working side by side to help people overcome their difficulties. This physical contact is much more than just lending a hand: it involves touching the other person, caressing, even hugging them, if necessary, in order to make them feel the support we are giving them in their own flesh.

Delicacy, or tact, is thus provided in a metaphorical and a literal sense, which, although related, are not exactly the same. The metaphorical, which is actually the moral –the intangible– sense, is articulated by the expression ‘to be tactful’ or ‘to be delicate,’ with which we express the special regard we have for others once we have empathized with them and understood their challenging circumstances. For instance, offering comforting words to a friend who has recently lost her father exemplifies this metaphorical dimension. The literal or aesthetic sense –the tangible sense– is activated when we come into physical contact with others; gently, delicately, in the form of a caress,[61] such as carefully combing a young daughter’s hair to avoid pulling it. However relevant the former may be as a regulator of social behavior, or the foundation of everyday ethics,[62] the latter is no less so, bearing in mind the epistemic value attributed to the haptic system since Aristotle’s time: it is by touching things that we know they really exist. This explains why, of the five human senses, touch is the one we trust the most and, consequently, cannot do without.[63] This also explains, as Korsmeyer says, why we automatically reach out to touch objects from the past with our hands to verify their authenticity.[64] All this leads, in the specific field of care, to turning roughness into the many different forms of gentleness.

Furthermore, since it is not possible to touch without being touched, because touch is a two-way street, ‘reversible,’ to use Merleau-Ponty’s expression,[65] this sense should be addressed from a two-pronged approach when it is combined with care: the approach of the toucher, who, by taking the initiative to care, implements delicacy in an active or poietic way; and the approach of the touched, who, as the beneficiary of care, relates to delicacy in a passive or aisthetic way.[66] From the perspective of the caregiver, touch is an obligation and duty: given that the recipient of care is usually a fragile being –whether an individual or an object–, they must be attentive in both body and soul to prevent or repair any damage –for example, when restoring a cultural asset by hand– or simply provide a certain level of wellbeing –such as massaging the aching feet of an elderly person. From the beneficiary’s perspective, touch is a right and a necessity: as a vulnerable being, they urgently need to be physically attended to by those who care for them. They only feel protected once they are in their carers’ hands. As two sides of the same coin, both actions endow touch with ethical and aesthetic properties: in the case of the caregiver, through delicacy, or by being kind and tender in their interaction with the being in their care, and in the case of the beneficiary, by responding delicately for the care received.

4. Conclusion

Currently, one of the most serious challenges facing the discipline of aesthetics is everyday aesthetics, which has reclaimed the aesthetics’ reflection of the mundane objects and banal activities that form part of our day-to-day. Of the many prosaic activities we perform, Yuriko Saito has become the advocate for one in particular: care. Although no one would dispute that care falls into a moral category, doubts are still raised in reference to its aesthetic category, considering the difficulty in judging the act of caring as beautiful/ugly, instead of the usual good/bad. Saito encourages us to appreciate care aesthetically and to understand that the forms through which care is expressed, like other moral virtues, have the capacity to change their nature;[67] these forms are clearly physical, given that their aesthetic character derives from the body performing sensitive care. Delicacy has been presented here as an attempt to complete this approach, by highlighting the concept as the ideal way to express care in the eyes of others: through delicacy, care is good but also beautiful.[68]

For Saito, the impact that everyday aesthetics has on people’s lives, as well as on the course of society and the world, is also decisive.[69] In everyday life with a focus on care, this impact is more evident considering that the welfare of the vulnerable is at risk. Our physical way of attending to their needs denotes our maturity as human beings, and, above all, the maturity of our present-day democratic societies, in light of their efforts to incorporate the protection of the defenceless into their bills of rights.[70] However, if we understand care as a modus vivendi, as Saito advocates, the impact is even greater, because it implies extending care to everything without exception: to everyone –weak and strong– and to all the objects with which we relate, even to the spaces we frequent. In short, it means weaving an infinite network of care in which we are all, in one way or another, called upon to participate.

Obviously, such care is then interpreted by each individual in their own way within the general expressive framework of delicacy. Nonetheless, it is the aesthetic excellence of care that constantly puts us to the test and requires us to be creative, poiético, everyday artists. By practicing the delicacy of care, each one of us in our own way, day after day and in our own environment, together we can build a pleasant atmosphere that makes living worthwhile. This atmosphere, as a diffuse and indeterminate space, may not be visible to the eye, but it is perceived in other potential ways. According to Böhme,[71] it can be inhaled because it floats in the ambiance and can be touched because it envelops us bodily; it traps us affectively and conditions our way of interacting with our surroundings. Therefore, when we all create this atmosphere between us by caring for each other delicately, our lives are enriched because we are all involved in making life a more comfortable place to be, somewhere where we all pull together.

 

María Jesús Godoy Domínguez
godoydom@us.es

María Jesús Godoy Domínguez is a Full Professor in the Department of Aesthetics and History of Philosophy at the University of Seville, Spain. In 2014, she co-founded the Spanish Society of Aesthetics and Theory of the Arts (SEyTA) and served on its Board of Directors for ten years (2014-2024). Her research interests include aesthetics, gender studies, and mass culture. She’s also explored the aesthetics of negative affects. More recently, her publications focus on the aesthetics of the everyday, a subfield she’s helped introduce in Spain by coordinating the first Spanish-language monograph on the subject (Anuario Filosófico, 2025).

Published on May 29, 2025.

Cite this article: María Jesús Godoy Domínguez, “Poiesis of Care: The Aesthetic-Performative Value of Delicacy,” Contemporary Aesthetics, Volume 23, (2025), accessed date.

 

Endnotes

 

[1] Yuriko Saito, Aesthetics of Care: Practice in Everyday Life (London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2022), 13.

[2] For Kant, human beings deserve respect by virtue of the dignity conferred by their rational identity. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, ed. A.W. Wood (Yale University Press, 2002 [1785]), 54. With the advent of biocentric environmental ethics, the Kantian inherent value of humans has also been extended to non-humans.

[3] In Saito, care extends to everyone and everything, whether vulnerable or not, as it is a way of being in the world and defines our relationship with others. Saito, Aesthetics of Care, 2.

[4] Ibid, pp. 126-132.

[5] James Thompson, “Performing the Aesthetics of Care”, in Performing Care: New Perspectives on Socially Engaged Performance, ed. Amanda Stuart Fisher and James Thompson (Manchester University Press, 2020), 215-229.

[6] James Thompson, “Towards an Aesthetics of Care”, in Performing Care, 36-48. See p. 45.

[7] For caring gestures, see Luigina Mortari, Filosofía del cuidado (Concepción: Rafaello Cortina, 2015), 82; for care as performance, see Maurice Hamington, “Politics is not a Game: The Radical Potential of Care”, in Care Ethics and Political Theory, ed. Daniel Engster and Maurice Hamington (Oxford University Press, 2015), 272–293 (especially, p. 279); and for manners, see Lucinda Holdforth, Why Manners Matter (New York: Plume, 2009) and Karen Stohr, On Manners (New York: Routledge, 2012).

[8] Eric Mullis, “Thinking through an Embodied Confucian Aesthetics of Persons”, in Artistic Visions and the Promise of Beauty, ed. Kathleen M. Higgins, Shakti Maira and Sonia Sikka (New York: Springer, 2017), 139-149. See p. 142.

[9] It is important to note that the ethics of care is a feminist theory that claims that private care, which, in some societies has been regarded as the responsibility of women, is a public matter and challenges the distribution of social roles established by men for their own benefit, as argued by Carol Gilligan. See her play In a Different Voice (Harvard University Press, 1982). On the other hand, for Kant, delicacy is a genuine virtue of women, of a physical –‘her figure is in general finer, her features more tender and gentler’ (p. 35) – and emotional nature –they are ‘closely related to the finer feeling’ (p. 37) –, just as nobility, he believed, belonged to men; hence he associated the feminine sex with the beautiful and the masculine sex with the sublime. Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, ed. Patrick Frierson and Paul Guyer (Cambridge University Press, 2011 [1764]).

[10] Yuriko Saito, “Body Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues”, in Body Aesthetics, ed. Sherri Irvin (Oxford University Press, 2016), 235-242.

[11] Saito later gives care a distinct status in Aesthetics of Care.

[12] Delicacy only appears in Saito’s text on the virtues when she echoes the words of Simon James in a footnote where she distinguishes it from gentleness (“Body Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues”, p. 234). Although a close cousin of elegance, gentleness, grace and subtlety, we agree with Naukkarinen that delicacy and, by extension, tact, have an aesthetic character of their own. Ossi Naukkarinen, “Everyday Aesthetic Practices, Ethics and Tact”, Aisthesis 7, no.1 (2014): 23-44.

[13] Yuriko Saito, Aesthetics of the Familiar: Everyday Life and World-Making (Oxford University Press, 2017), 24.

[14] I thank an anonymous reviewer of this journal for prompting me to address this point.

[15] Yuriko Saito, Everyday Aesthetics (Oxford University Press, 2007), 12, 52 and 68.

[16] David Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste”, in Essays: Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Eugene Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985 [1757]), 226-249. See pp. 234-235.

[17] Carolyn Korsmeyer, Making Sense of Taste (Cornell University Press, 2002), 11-37.

[18] In Addison’s words: ‘a man of polite imagination (…) can converse with a picture and find an agreeable companion in a statue’. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator, ed. A. Chalmers (New York: D. Appleton, 1879 [1712]), p. 31.

[19] For Hume, these sentiments contrast with those of the ‘rougher and more boisterous emotions’. “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion”, in Essays: Moral, Political and Literary (1985) [1742], 3-8. See p. 6.

[20] Kivy underlines the moralisation of beauty in Hume in contrast to the beautification of ethics in Francis Hutcheson. Peter Kivy, “Hume’s Neighbour’s Wife: An Essay on the Evolution of Hume’s Aesthetics”, British Journal of Aesthetics 23, no. 3 (1983): 195-208.

[21] Stephanie Ross, “Humean Critics: Real or Ideal?”, British Journal of Aesthetics 48, no.1 (2008): 20-28.

[22] Although delicacy is evident in Hume’s writings i.e. Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion, Of Refinement in the Arts and Of Eloquence, here we focus on Of the Standard of Taste as a major work not only of the philosopher but of the entire eighteenth-century aesthetics.

[23] For the young Hume, sympathy is a tendency towards communicability and transference of feelings ’however different from, or even contrary to our own’. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Shelby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987 [1740]), 316. However, the mature Hume speaks of the effort ‘to enter into the sentiments of others’. Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste”, 244. In Hume, we differentiate between sympathy and empathy as distinct emotional links, in line with Fernando Infante (“Simpatía, naturaleza e identidad en Hume”, Eikasia. Revista de Filosofía 51 (2013): 179-204), despite the indistinction in scholars such as Stephen Darwall and Imola Ilyes. Darwell, “Empathy, Sympathy and Care”, Philosophical Studies 89, no. 2 (1998): 261-282; Ilyes, “Empathy in Hume and Smith”, in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Empathy, ed. Heidi Maibom (Londres: Routledge, 2017), 98-109.

[24] Johann G. Herder, “Another Philosophy of History”, in Another Philosophy of History and Political Writings, ed. Ioannis D. Evrigenis and Daniel Pellerin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2004 [1774]), 3-97.

[25] Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste”, 228.

[26] Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, ed. Erwin W. Straus (The Hague: Springer, 1964 [1916]), 17.

[27] ‘There needs but a certain turn of thought or imagination to make us enter into all the opinions, which then prevailed, and relish the sentiments or conclusions derived from them’. Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste”, 246-247.

[28] Peter Jones, Hume’s Sentiments (Edinburgh University Press, 1982), 93-106.

[29] According to Cassirer, the phenomena reflected upon by Bouhours in the seventeenth century on the periphery of the aesthetic are later brought to the fore by Dubos (p. 302) and culminated by Hume (pp. 304-305). Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, ed. Fritz C. A. Koelln and James P. Pettegrove (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961).

[30] Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics, ed. D. Petsch (The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 1974), vol. 3, 383.

[31] Dominique Bouhours, La manière de bien penser dans les ouvrages d’esprit (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1974 [1687]), 214.

[32] ‘Au reste l’afféctation qui regarde les pensées vient d’ordinaire de l’excés où on les porte’. Ibid, 322.

[33] David Hume, “Of Refinement in the Arts”, in Essays: Moral, Political and Literary, 268-280.

[34] Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1.2.1 and 11.

[35] Mary Carruthers, “Sweetness”, Speculum 81 (2009): 999-1013.

[36] David Hume, “Of Eloquence”, in Essays: Moral, Political and Literary, 97-110. See p. 98.

[37] Cicero, Orator, 3.26.103.

[38] Anne-Gaëlle Cuif, La “soavità” come dolcezza e medicina dell’anima nell’opera di Dante Alighieri, unpublished PhD dissertation (Università di Torino/Université de Tours, 2020), 9.

[39] Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 12.1.

[40] Emilio Lledó, El concepto “poíesis” en la filosofía griega (Madrid: Dykinson, 2010), 48-49.

[41] Saito, “Body Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues”, 226.

[42] James Thompson, “Artful Care”, in Care Aesthetics: For Artful Care and Careful Art (London/New York: Routledge, 2023), 107-137.

[43] For the binomial objective body/phenomenal body, see Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (París: Gallimard, 1945), 81-113.

[44] Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, Husserliana I, ed. Eduard Marbach (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950).

[45] Richard Shusterman, Body Consciousness. A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 6.

[46] For conscious human activity in relation to aesthetic sensibility and choice, see also the recent works of Noora-Helena Korpelainen, such as “Cultivating Aesthetic Sensibility for Sustainability”, ESPES. The Slovak Journal of Aesthetics, 10(2) (2021), 165-182. I thank an anonymous reviewer of this journal for providing me with this reference.

[47] Saito, “Body Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues”, 238. Herrigel’s example of Japanese flower arranging is equally illustrative: mastery is achieved through the continuous repetition of bodily practice, which brings the internal and external into perfect harmony. Gustie L. Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Flower Arrangement (London: Souvenir Books, 1999), 18.

[48] For Naukkarinen, tact and delicacy are closely related to the ‘here and now’. Naukkarinen, “Everyday Aesthetic Practices, Ethics and Tact”, 10.

[49] This idea is developed at length by Julia Driver in “Caesar’s Wife: On the Moral Significance of Appearing Good”, The Journal of Philosophy 89, no.7 (1992): 331-343.

[50] Di Stefano has studied this same correlation between internal virtue and external expression in decorum. Elisabetta Di Stefano, “Aesthetics of Behaviour,” in Applying Aesthetics to Everyday Life: Methodologies, History and New Directions, ed. Lisa Giombini and Adrián Kvokačka (New York: Bloomsbury, 2023), 154-164.

[51] Sherman emphasizes that manners, the pose (p. 286), is not necessarily superficial or deceptive. Nancy Sherman, “Of Manners and Morals”, British Journal of Educational Studies 53, no. 3 (2005): 272-289.

[52] Edmund Husserl, Phäntasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung, Zur Phánomenologie der anschaulichenVergegenwartigungen. Texte ausdemNachlass (1898-1925), Husserliana XXIII, ed. Eduard Marbach (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980).

[53] We leave aside the possible registration of the pose in the image by a third agent that may or may not coincide with the second agent, i.e., the viewer; we also leave aside all reflection on the contemporary phenomenon of the selfie.

[54] “Now, once I feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes: I constitute myself in the process of ‘posing’, I instantaneously make another body for myself, I transform myself in advance into image” (emphasis added in both cases). Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 10.

[55] Fernando Infante, “Estética y fenomenología de la pose”, Investigaciones fenomenológicas 16 (2019): 85-108.

[56] For variability and the consequent problem of intersubjectivity, see Naukkarinen, “Everyday Aesthetic Practices, Ethics and Tact”.

[57] Nick Riggle, “Personal Style and Artistic Style”, The Philosophical Quarterly 65, no. 261 (2015): 711-731.

[58] However, when this knowledge or intuition is lacking, even a careful subject cannot exhibit delicacy, as seen in some individuals with autism.

[59] Robin Dillon, “Respect and Care: Toward Moral integration”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (1992): 105-132.

[60] In the journey from consciousness to consciousness that occurs in empathy in the phenomenological explanation, the affect awakened in the empathic subject is more complex than the co-feeling defended by Theodor Lipps. By means of the binomial primordiality/non-primordiality, Stein argues that there are two affective states that converge in the subject: one is oriented towards the feelings of others, which the subject mentally reproduces as non-primordial; the other is provoked by a primordial feeling that is exclusive to the subject. Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, 16-17.

[61] Mortari, Filosofía del Cuidado, 160.

[62] Naukkarinen, “Everyday Aesthetic Practices, Ethics and Tact”.

[63] Aristotle, On the Soul, 2.9-11 and 3.12-13.

[64] Carolyn Korsmeyer, Things. In Touch with the Past (Oxford University Press, 2019).

[65] In Merleau-Ponty, reversibility is never absolute as it is impossible to experience oneself bodily as subject and object at the same time: we either feel our hand touching or being touched. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, 109.

[66] Here, we identify aisthesis with sensory perception and poiesis, with the creative act.

[67] Saito, “Body Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues”.

[68] According to the classical tradition of kalokagathia that goes back, at least, as far as Plato.

[69] Saito, Aesthetics of the Familiar.

[70] European democracies in particular, whose extensive social care has given rise to the so-called welfare state.

[71] Gernot Böhme, Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces (London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 18 and 72-76.