When we make aesthetic judgments we do not, as a rule, praise things as beautiful, sublime, or transcendental, in the manner of the romantic artist. We say instead that this is right, that wrong; this fits, that jars; and so on. In other words we extend the language of manners to the world of inanimate things, and in doing so we make them animate: we bring them into the community and subject them to the rules of good behavior. Hence “right” and “wrong” have a far greater role than “beautiful” and “ugly” in the aesthetics of everyday life, and that is as it should be, since everyday life aims at accommodation and equilibrium. It does not aim at the great experiences that shake us to the core, and which we can absorb, if at all, only on the special occasions when we are consciously exposed to them.
This does not mean that beauty has no place in ordinary things. On the contrary; it means that it does have a place, but a place that is adapted to everyday experience, so as to guide our judgments of what fits, what harmonizes, what is right here and now. This judgment makes sense because it brings with it an incipient sense of community. It speaks for the indefinitely many others who stand at our shoulders when we ask the question whether this or that arrangement is right, or whether it “works.” Everyday aesthetic judgment is profoundly rooted in the sense of community, and also forms a part of the collective effort whereby communities are brought into being and maintained in equilibrium.
There is no clearer proof of this than the cities bequeathed to us by former civilizations, where we gaze with wonder at the way in which every nook and cranny, every corner and parapet, is embellished with ornament and fitted to its neighbor. We are presented with an overwhelming sense of a community united in its determination to be, in which buildings stand side by side in full acknowledgement of each other’s right, in which space is something shared, and each detail offers itself to the eye as a subject of judgment.
Sir Roger Scruton, from "The Beauty of Belonging"
