Problem-Solving

The aesthetic approach to objects, events and other phenomena has often been characterized as being impractical and disinterested. The academic discipline of aesthetics, too, has typically been considered abstract, philosophical and theoretical, not practice-oriented. In this paper, we take an alternative approach and show how the aesthetic approach can have a role in practical problem-solving processes. We will address the broad general question by focusing on only one area that is currently of utmost importance to all of us: how the aesthetic approach could be of use in trying to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (henceforth SDG), especially SDG 12, Ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns. We argue that the aesthetic approach offers important qualitative insights that are often neglected in the quantity-oriented sustainability discourse. We suggest that the aesthetic approach to problem-solving processes emphasizes the following aspects: making the aesthetic aspects of the process clearly visible, or expressing and thus framing the problem in a certain way; valuing the nexus between “problem-solving” and “problem-intensifying” aspects of the process; first-person multi-sensory experience; emotionality; regulative practices that are not based on explicit rules or quantifiable measurements. Moreover, aesthetic problem-solving typically requires collaboration and we will offer examples of this. Lastly, we will emphasize that, unlike what is often suggested in the traditional aesthetic discourse, aesthetic considerations should not be seen as emphatically local and individual, and the SDG approach encourages us to notice the global impacts of our aesthetic activities; i.e., our aesthetic footprint.