Literary Art in the Formation of the Great Community: John Dewey’s Theory of Public Ideas in The Public and Its Problems (original) (raw)
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Artistic practice and human experience
PORTO ARTE: Revista de Artes Visuais, 2017
In this article, I argue that the singularization of the artistic discourse in the 15 th century encouraged philosophers in the 18 th century to conceptualize on the aesthetic experience, taking it as a distinct kind of common experience. The description of this experience, as being one that is disinterested and lacks purpose, led to the progressive consolidation of an autonomous art, that is free from social contracts and takes refuge in museums. These have developed their physical space in accordance to this definitive presupposition. If, in contrast, we understand aesthetic experience as any complete experience, as Dewey sustains, our understanding of art and its institutions will be different.
“Dewey’s Art as Experience: The Psychological Background”
The year 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of John Dewey's birth and also the 75th anniversary of the publication of his aesthetic masterpiece "Art as Experience"--a book that has been extremely influential within the field of aesthetics, not only in philosophical aesthetics and aesthetic education but also in the arts themselves. In this essay, the author reexamines "Art as Experience" by briefly tracing some of its major themes and clarifying its generative context of production and philosophical roots, while also suggesting, in passing, how some of these themes and roots contribute to its continuing philosophical relevance. The author first offers two preliminary cautions: (1) Dewey's aesthetic magnum opus is obviously too rich and masterful in ideas and influence for any brief commemorative essay to hope to do it sufficient justice; and (2) as Dewey defined philosophy as "a criticism of criticisms," so the author's remarks will include a critical dimension. Then, the author illustrates how the essential unifying qualitative element in Dewey's philosophy of mind is transformed into the core of his aesthetic theory in "Art as Experience." The author comments on passages in the book that echo Dewey's formulations in "Qualitative Thought." Finally, the author shows how Dewey's views on the pervasive underlying unifying quality of immediate experience strongly echo William James's account of the immediate experience of thought as formulated in "The Principles of Psychology."
Live Painting as Experience: Deweyan Aesthetics and Neo-Idealism
By “meaning,” aestheticians are concerned with how art is interpreted. The contemporary art form, “live painting,” is predominantly understood in terms of neo-idealist conceptions of meaning. However, meaning in art entails context. Neo-idealist analyses are out of touch with everyday life and how live painting actually functions in society. Since neo-idealism appeals to meaning outside of experience, it says little about the natural conditions of live painting’s process. Understanding how live painting works in life, then, demands a theory of what it means on its own terms. The leading task, in response, is to justify a method denoting the rules of how live painting expresses meaning. This analysis addresses a lacuna in the contemporary conversation of aesthetics by developing a naturalistic defense for live painting and a critique of neo-idealism in “visionary art.” In service of offering a naturalistic account of live painting’s aesthetic value, John Dewey’s aesthetic theory enables an instrumentalist account of lived experience. “Instrumentalism” is not concerned with the truth of theories, rather in their value to describe phenomena. So, Dewey radically understands “experience” as it is experienced. Since live painting transpires in shared experience, Dewey’s insight offers the theoretical materials to examine the context of how meaning is communicated. The contextual preconditions of experience establish a basis for approaching live painting in terms of its situational environment and social activity. In live painting, the communication of meaning is funded by the natural qualities of the situational context. Further, live painting produces expressive objects capable of producing added aesthetic experiences. Meaning expressed in a naturalistic explanation lends itself to scientific statements. These features of live painting, understood in light of Dewey’s theory, can be leveraged to criticize neo-idealist trends in live painting. Concluding, I discuss the philosophical implications of my work and its baring on Deweyan scholarship and art.
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, V/2013
The purpose of this paper is to consider Dewey's influence on American artistic culture between the nineteen-twenties and the nineteen-fifties by focusing on the social and political implications of his approach to art in terms of experience. This entails recapturing, in a concise form, the impact of Dewey's thought on the development of the Federal Art Project and on Abstract Expressionism. On the basis of the pragmatist assumption that the soundness of a theoretical proposal is to be measured according to its capacity to meet the difficulties arising in our everyday interactions, the present paper systematically examines the theoretical implications of Dewey's aesthetics in the light of the historical consequences of a specific cultural policy. Dewey's conception of art and aesthetic experience appears to have made a decisive contribution by providing new opportunities to enjoy the arts and by widely promoting practices with the potential to be aesthetically satisfying. Dewey's ideas actually led to an undermining of the hierarchy between the fine arts and crafts, between popular culture and design, etc. More problematic are their connections with questions of cultural identity and of art market. Dewey's influence on the Abstract Expressionists is evident in the way it shifted the artistic focus from art objects toward the experiential dimensions of artistic practices. Some problems regard the accessibility of this kind of works for a general audience and a certain reinforcement of the conception of the artist as creative genius, included the related interpretation of artistic creation as extreme subjective expression.
John Dewey and the Artful Life: Pragmatism, Aesthetics, and Morality
2016
The overriding question Stroud confronts in John Dewey and the Artful Life is how to render more of life's experiences, including the ensuing benefits, as aesthetic or artful as possible. The answer to this question is challenging and complex. The claim most aesthetic theories make is that an object, activity, or experience is artful if and only if it has intrinsic value. Although what constitutes intrinsic value is widely contested, having value in and of itself is a necessary and sufficient condition for an object to be art or an experience aesthetic. This value gives art and aesthetic experience their unique quality and separates them from everyday objects, activities and experiences with only instrumental value; that is, value for the sake of something else. Such a view of art and aesthetic experience has long dominated not only our cultural narrative and practices, but our individual thoughts and behaviors as well. As Dewey has shown repeatedly (e.g., in Experience and Nature, The Quest for Certainty, Art as Experience), this view of art and aesthetic experience is grounded in a distorted understanding of experience. This view is pervaded with intellectually fallacious dualisms, especially the belief that items of reflection are the constituents of primary experience. In contrast, for Dewey, the constituents of primary experience are noncognitive or pre-reflective, consisting of deep-seated habits (as acquired predispositions to manners or modes of response) of which we are minimally aware, at best. The fallacy of dualism and its consequent separation in experience fractures the unity of individual and collective experience and, in turn, the unity of self and community. John Dewey and the Artful Life consists of eight chapters. In the first chapter, Stroud establishes the overall context for his project and introduces the reader to its basic structure in broad outline. The second chapter introduces the problem of the value of aesthetic experience using contemporary scholarship in art theory, and sets the stage for Stroud's subsequent Deweyan analysis of experience. In the third chapter, Stroud presents a Deweyan account of aesthetic experience he refers to as "experiential" as an alternative to traditional "causal" theories. The fourth chapter
Two Faces of Art – Public and Private – In John Dewey's Aesthetic Experience,
Aesthetic Energy of the City, eds. A. Gralinska-Toborek, Wioletta Kazimierska-Jerzyk, Łódź 2016., 2016
According to American pragmatist John Dewey (1859–1952), art is an experience (not necessarily an object) and as such it might potentially cover all human interactions. To put it otherwise, an aesthetic experience is needed to create a meaningful piece of art. For human beings, the most stimulating environment for having aesthetic experiences is social life. Two main spheres of the aesthetic axperience are distinguished: private and public. At first it seems that Dewey followed the modernist distinction, because he coined the terms of private consummatory experiences adn public aesthetic experiences. However, in many respects, the distinction seems artificial and does not explain the phenomenon of Dewey's aesthetics. The paper addresses the issue and tries to capture the spirit of Deweyan aesthetics by analysing various aesthetic experiences.