Aesthetic refers to the perception of sensations arising from being in contact with the world. Anaesthetic is the absence of this sensory experience, which is the effect of the class of drugs we call anaesthetics. So another way to describe this spectrum of presence is to say that one end is aesthetic (heightened sensory perception) and the other is anaesthetic (dulled or absent sensory perception). It’s interesting that so many objects we value for their ‘aesthetics’ (e.g. phones) in f...
