I live with a short person. My wife’s lack of height means that I am often helping her reach things in high places. This can range from higher shelves in kitchen cabinets to the top shelf of our bookcases. It occurs to me that a lot of storage elements are designed for tall people and their only recourse may be to pull out a step stool or short ladder and climb to that height in order to reach their desired items.

It seems reasonable to expect this to become tiresome, not to mention the burden of having yet another tool to store away. So for this project I’ve taken one of the tallest storage elements in our house–our bookcases–and sought to modify their design to make them more functional for people of all vertical stature.
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The Aesthetic – Richard Shusterman, Theory, Culture & Society. 23(2-3).

Not surprisingly, there is significant dissent to the Kantian orthodoxy of aesthetic disinterestedness and functionlessness. Nietzsche (1956: 238–40) mordantly mocks the dogma of disinterestedness as an expression of philosophers’ prudishness, innocence and second-hand, spectator’s view of art – contrasting it to the creative, hands-on view of the artist. The power of art and beauty, he argues, derives not from disinterest but rather from ‘the excitement of the will, of “interest”’ [‘die Errgeung des Willes (“des Interesses”)’].

When our estheticians tirelessly rehearse, in support of Kant’s view, that the spell of beauty enables us to view even nude female statues ‘disinterestedly’ we may be allowed to laugh a little at their expense. The experiences of artists in this delicate matter are rather more ‘interesting’; certainly Pygmalion was not entirely devoid of esthetic feeling.