Art, the Self, and Society:

The Human Possibilities in John Dewey's Art as ExDerience

Rosa Jakubowia

A tbesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfüment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts in Education

Department of Culture and Values in Education, Faculty of Education McGUl University

Montreal

Copyright @ Rosa Jakubowicz, July 1999

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Table of Contents

Abstract ........................................................................................................ i

.. ...................................................................................... ............ ~esum6 .... 11

... ....................................................................................................... Dedication 111

........................................................................................... Acknowledgments iv

. . .............................................................................................................. Preface vu

Chapter 1 .

Chapter 2 .

Chapter 3 .

Chapter 4 .

........... ............................................................. [ntroduction ,. 1

.......... 1.1 Dewey's Definition of the Aesthetic Experience 3

1.2 Methodology .................................................................. 4

.......................................................... Review of the Literature 6

......................................... 2.1 Situating Dewey's Aesthetics 6

2.2 The individual in Dewey's Aesthetics ............................ 7

2.3 A SeIected Review: Current Writing About Dewey's Aesthetic Theory ........ 9

2.4 Negative Reactions to Dewey's Aesthetics ................... 14

2.5 Summary ........................................................................ 18

................................................. Theoretical Framework 1 9

........................................................................ 3.1 Summary 22

An Examination of Art as Exwrience: The Aesthetic Reievance ......................................................... 23

4.1 Dewey's Aesthetics ....................................................... 26

4.2 Dewey's Aesthetics Define Experience: ............................ The Significance of Aesthetic Living 29

....................................................................... 4.3 Summary 3 3

Chapter 5 . Dewey's View of Experience: A Multi-Faceted Event ............................................................. 35

5.1 The Contiguous Seif: ..................................... Elements of Dewey's Aesthetics 35

................................... 5.2 Shaping the SeIf as a Work of Art 36

5.3 Experience as a Multi-Faceted Event .............................. 37

Chapter 6 . Dewey's Concept of the Aesthetic: ..................................................... Cultural and Social Coaiext 42

6.1 The Social Significance of Aesthetic Living: ............................................................ Broad implication 44

6.2 Aesthetics for our Times ................................................... 49

Chapter 7 . Conciusion ................................................................................... 52

7.1 Implicarions for Education ............................................... 55

7.2 Suggested Areas for Further Research ............................. 57

7.3 Postscript ........................................................................ 3 8

. . Bibliography ........................................................................................................ 61

Abs tract

In the ongoing critical discourse about edu cation, the status of aesthetics has

always played second fiddle to the main arguments about what constitutes a relevant

curriculum. Aesthetics is seen by many educators as a frivolous experience-at best a

weak substitute for serious learning. This is the issue that Dewey addressed in his

philosophy of aesîhetics, and this is also where my focus lies in this thesis.

The thesis is a persona1 and theoreticai examination of John Dewey's aesthetic

philosophy as it is p~c ipa l l y expressed in Art as Ex~erience. In exploring the personai

implications of the aesthetic experience, the thesis investigates Dewey's argument that

the aesthetic is an inhinsic part of life. It demonstrates Dewey's emphasis on the

productive presence of the aesthetic in the culturai life of society.

Dans les critiques courantes sur la pedagogie, la présence de l'esthétique a toujour

pris une place inférieure. L'esthétique n'est pas pris au sirieux parmi les pédagogues.

Ceci est la problématique à laquelle Dewey s'addresse dans sa philosophie de

l'esthétique, et c'est aussi L'aspect qui a retenu notre attention dans ce mémoire.

Ce mémoire analyse l'aspect personnel et théorique de la philosophie esthétique

de John Dewey tel qu'on Ia retrouve dans son livre Art as Exmience. II étudie la théorie

de Dewey selon laquelle I'esthetique forme une partie intrinsèque de la vie. il explore les

implications personnelles de l'expérience esthétique. De plus le mémoire tente de

démontrer I'imprtance que Dewey accorde a fa présence productive de l'esthétique dans

la vie culturelle d'une société.

1 want to dedicate this thesis to so many people. For want of space 1 will limit my

self. To my mother Sarah because she never stopped believing in my intellectual prowess

and never stopped calling me "the little professor." And to Tim Locke who rerninded me

that 1 am just another one of those 'Dewey-eyed Scholars." I'm eternaiiy grateful to ail

of you for having had such faith in me.

Acknowledgments

Giving credit to those who have helped me is no easy task. How do 1 thank a

lifetime of interactions and influences that have led me to this point? Lfnot for al1 of you,

it seems to me that 1 wodd never have ventured this far.

I have worked on this thesis for the last two years under the tutelage of Dr.

Elizabeth Wood. She traveled dong with me through one of the most difficdt tasks 1

have ever undertaken. I'm not sure that 1 would have been able to stay the course and

complete this manuscript without her. Had she not been there to assuage my angst, I'm

not sure that my m I y character codd have managed. She showed me courtesy, respect,

and patience during the three years that she worked with me. She served as my muse.

She encouraged me when 1 suffered h m self-doubt. 1 am deeply grateful to her for her

presence and availability throughout this tirne.

1 have a simiiar long-standing debt ta Dr. White. He was the k t to admit me to

the Department and this ailowed me the opportunity and the time to pursue my Lifelong

goal of research and learning. He also exposed me to Dewey's aesthetic philosophy

through his seminars, and these provided me with the essence of my thesis. My thanks

go as weii to Dr. LeMaistre, Dr. Lawlor, Dr. Lin, Dr. Studham and Dr. Smith.

My teachers have been sign-posts dong the way. Their kindnesses served as

essentiai bridges on my intellectual joumey. Their steadfast presences and confirming

responses reinforced my self-esteem and inner strength. They drove me forwards with

their challenging mitiques and confirmed for me that being an intellectual could coincide

with my many other professionai afiïliations.

1 want to express my gratitude to Ti. Locke. Meeting him was a fortuitous act of

fate. His absotute professionalism enhanced my efforts h m the t h e that 1 engaged him

as my editor for this thesis. He semed as my coach and my strength, and 1 never doubted

the success of my efforts with him at my side.

If 1 have ornitteci anyone by name it is because their influence wasn't there.

Everyone 1 met dong the way had an impact on my evolutioa. 1 hope that what 1 have

written here reflects your stringent requirements for a rigomus scholarship.

My wonderfiil family cleared a path for me to foUow during these difficult,

complicated, and challenging moments. Without them I would never have reached my

goal of complethg tbis work.

It is to John Dewey that 1 owe my final thanks. His compIexity h u i a t e d my

search for answers to my questions about learning. There was aiways more to uncover in

his aesthetic, f i s work served as a positive and encomaging beacon of hope even m the

v

loneliest moments of my quest for answers. I never abandoneci my quest to master his

aesthetic philosophy, even when 1 came up against what seemed to me to be

insurmountable diaculties in integrating his meaning. I took courage fiom his theory

that because the aesthetic experience was a i i pervasive in culture, it was available to dl,

including me. As Dewey so aptiy wrote:

The biography of one who defines Iiis impressions is not located inside his

own body and mind. It is what it is because of the interactions with the

world outside, a world which in some of its aspects and phases is common

with that ofothers (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 305).

Thus the information settled itself in my brain (what psychologists refer to as

pattern recognition, pattern completion, pattern correction), and my creative imagination

kicked in to organize my thoughts into this semblance of coherent new connections, the

thesis that foiiows.

Preface

A thesis ofien becomes a process recordkg the time vent researching a

challenging problem. This thesis is a discourse on and record of my expIoration of the

themes, assumptions, definitions of terms figured in Dewey's series of lectures on the

phiiosophy of art.' It is also a reflection of who I am. It echoes the organic process that 1

experienced in order to arrive at this manuscript, the result of my stud?.

My interest in Dewey's aesthetic had twa sources. One was a dare; a careiess

comment made to me one day that insinuated 1 was somehow inadequatety prepared to

undertake any study of the aesthetic? That someone should dare cuntest my intelligence

so infuriated me that 1 twk up the chdlenge Iike a warrior to the chase. The 0 t h source

was my secret cornmitment to maintain art education as an essentid component of the

school curriculum.

'These lecmes were presented at Harvard University as a series of ten taIks in 193 1 and were later pubfished as Art as Experience in 1934.

'1 had pursueci many avenues in my search for anmers over the years. This time it was to understand why John Dewey's Art as Experience (1934) was of signiscance in Our contemporary worId.

31 am not aiming to debate the problems in EpistemoIogy so much as 1 am addressing the way that we approach ourselves, or as I have referred to it, how we refine our selves.

This cornmitment came about at a late age, long after 1 had already established my

professional credentials as a psychiatrie nurse. It happened because 1 6naily had the

opportunity to reexamine my own experience as an art educator in the aesthetic field.

Given the challenge, 1 plowed into Dewey's philosophy. The harder it was, the

more 1 stuck to the course. The thesis was an opportunity for me to prove to myself that 1

could undertake a subject at once unfamiliar yet dear to my heart. It gave me the

opportunity to reexamine those philosophical issues which so piqued my cwiosity.

Once the seeds were planted 1 was set on my course. It was a jmp-start, on the

hunch that somehow Dewey was the right thinker to study in order to gain insights

regarding questions about the role of individuals in determining their own lives within the

broader context of social issues.

Somehow, the more time 1 spent on Dewey the more I felt an afnnity between his

ideas and mine. My thesis became an opening, an invitation to me to expand my

knowledge base about the possibilities for Ieadng in the aesthetic. It became an attempt

to demonstrate that John Dewey's aesthetic philosophy addressed itseif to the issues

about the individual, not as a separate entity but as an intrinsic elememt in the aesthetic

process. That it had as much relevance to our cment concerns about the miprocal nature

between ourselves and the world around us conkned for me that Dewey was devant in

today's world of contemporary thinkers.

In this way, my thesis attempts to demonstrate that in some ways Dewey's

aesthetic theory is about the wiity of experiencean event in which the context of being is

reflected against the aesthetic.

Chapter One

Introduction

Demonstrating Dewey's congruity with ou . conternporary world is no easy task.

His approach to the subject of aesthetics is dry and scholarly (Alexander, 1987). Unlîke

today's fast-paced and entertainhg approach to scholarship (Postman, 1985), Dewey's

aesthetics does not offer any glitzy or fashionable slogans. In fact it is written as a dry

and old-fashioned senes of ideas about Ieaming and opportunities of learning; those tried

and true beliefs about people's ability to think and to learn if they are given the

opporhinities to have experiences that will expose them to stimuiating and new ideas.

1 have chosen to examine Dewey's concepts of the aesthetic experience through

the rnetaphor of the self as an ongoing work of art. At a tirne when issues of identity and

representation are at the center of our critical discourses (Kozol, 199 1), Dewey's aesthetic

philosophy provides some positive confirmation of our capacity to understand and to

reflect upon what we see in the world around us.

What 1 will try to show in my thesis is how Dewey utiiizes the metaphor of the

aesthetic as an active participle to explain his notion of the wmplementmity of the

complete experience in life; what 1 have caiied the metaphor of the self as the aesthetic

1

experience. This converts the self h m the passive to the alive state that can be reaIized

only in the continuous interaction of the individual with the surroundhg field of

experience: "In this process of intercourse, native capacities, which contain an eIements

of uniqueness, are transformed and become a self' (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 282).

Dewey's theory' suggests that this interactive event between me and the world

around changes me by the event of the interaction (Smith, 1990). My assumption is that

inasmuch as our world is a mass of these potentials for change, it is here that Dewey's

aesthetics matters most, both as a suggestion for recording the changes as weil as a

proposai for making some amenciments to the event that we refer to as our world.

I have chosen to see Dewey's aesthetics as a metaphor for the individual as the

aesthetic subject. in this way 1 try to show that Dewey's aesthetics is reflected onto a

human context of being and becoming. I mean by this that Dewey is suggesting a way

that the individual is better able to position herseifor himself in line with a world that

offers the individuai vast resources of opportunities and events which, aIthough present,

cm onIy be accessed if comprehended. The seifis viewed as the aesthetic experience; an

aesthetics that is reflected into the human context of being and becoming.

This is the core of John Dewey's thoughts in Art as Exmience as 1 am presenting

lA t h r y that challenges me to believe that I couid make something more of my experience than just be a passive recipient of experience.

them here. It is what fonns the central focus of my thesis, a focus that unites three of my

passions: learning, social justice, and art.

The conclusions that 1 have taken fiom Dewey's thinking in Art as Exuerience are

laden with the sense that the personal nature of the aesthetic experience cannot be far

removed fiom the politicai awareness ofwhat drives this society (Hamblen, 1987, p. 16).

This captures what 1 like to think of as the melduig of psyches into the wholeness of

being in a creative life-style that serves the universe.*

1.1 Dewey's Defimition of the Aesthetic Experience

Dewey defines the aesthetic experience as a enriched encounter between an

individuai and an event that "celebrates Me" (Dewey, 1934, p. 326; 1939, pp. 971,995).

He explains that the aesthetic is 'the most universal and freest fonn of communication"

(Dewey, 1934, p. 270). He desmies the aesthetic as a pervasive and purposefùi event

that characterizes "every intense experience of fiiendship and affection" (Dewey, 1934,

p.270). The aesthetic, as a perceptud experience, is a source for our enjoyment when it

stimulates our imaginations (Dewey, 1934, pp. 272,326; 1939, p. 971). As Dewey

articulates:

ZThis is my choice of terms.

Esthetic (sic) experience is a manifestation, a record and

celebratiun of the Life of a civilization, a means of

promoting its devebprnent, and is also the uItimate

judgement upon the quality of a civilization. For wbile it is

produced and is enjoyed by individuais, those individuals

are what they are in the content of their experience because

of the cuItures in which îhey participate (Dewey, 1934, p.

326).

From tbis Dewey contends that the aesthetic experience, as a subtle and intrinsic aspect of

our lives, should be cultivated so as to enrich ourseIves and ow world.

1.2 Methodology

This study will consist in a narrative exploration of John Dewey's Art as

Emenence. More than a theoreticai anaiysis, it is a meditative reflection the event of

creative hope for the individuai, an event of hope that 1 believe Dewey iinpiies and

intends by his discussion of the aesthetic experience.

1 intend to show th: for Dewey, the aesthetic represents the metaphor for aii

experience because, like experknce, the aesthetic fuses the objective and subjective

components of experience into Ieaming (Dewey, 1980 119345, p.281). In this way the

4

reciprocal nature of the interaction of our everyday needs with the world around us

is prefigured in Dewey's theory of the aesthetic experience (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 247),

and it is this figuration of personal and socid advancement in Art as ExDerience that

concems me.

My intentiou, in this thesis, is to discuss the theory as a distinctive option for a

richer personal life. To carry out this study, 1 wiIl begin with a seiected review of the

literature in order to situate the individuai within Dewey's aesthetic theory. The literature

review demonstrates the varied opinions elicited by his theory (Edman, 1964).

Proceeding with a sumrnary of what I understand to be Dewey's discussion of the

aesthetic experience, 1 will provide a theoreticai h e w o r k in order to establish a

context within which to clariQ Dewey's notion that we are able to understand the

aesthetic when we refi ect upon our raw sensations.

1 will follow with a discussion of the relevance of Dewey's aesthetic theory as

broadly assigning to the individual a boundless potentiai for experiential advance when

the aesthetic is also a part of this experience. Then 1 will discuss Dewey's text as a usefiil

social document. 1 believe that it can serve us today as a distinctive option for an active

and iife-Iong Ieaming experiencenot as some abstract or metaphytical polemic of the

spiritual but as an option in terms of the cultural significance of art. FiriaIIy I wiii

concIude my thesis with a discussion of the hplicatiom for education that Dewey's

aesthetic philosophy holds-both for leaming as weli as for fiiaher studies and research.

Chapter Two

Review of the Literature

2.1 Situating Dewey's AestheticsL

Very often writings in aesthetics ask traditional questions (Madeja, 1989). They

establish the questions why, what, when, who, how and ~ h e r e . ~ For example, why is art

what it is? What are the aesthetic and creative qualities that determine the worth or value

of art to an individual or a culture? Whose voice is expressed in the aesthetic object or in

the aesthetic experience? How does aesthetic discourse both affect and effect the artistic

process? Where does the merit of an aesthetic experience lie? 1s it in its descriptive or in

its anaiytic quaiities? They are questions about the fom and elements of the aesthetic

experience. To transpose these questions into my pivotal questions about what uitimately

matters in the leaming experience is to enter into what 1 think is Dewey's concern with

the aesthetic event.

'The reader is asked to note that whenever a gender designation occm in the foiiowing text, it is to be understood in the bivalent nature of mate and fernale as shehedher and he/his/hirn.

Wpling's most efficient "Six Serving Men".

Dewey takes the traditional approaches to aesthetic questions, and he entwines

this traditionai thinking into an inûicate and interactive process which he consolidates

into the aesthetics of experience as "a bond of union among men" (Dewey, 1980, 119341,

p. 328). As Shusterman (1992) describes it, he reconstructs the relationship between the

aesthetic and the individuai so that both become irreducible elements in the ongoing

episode of experience that constitutes our world (Shusterman, 1992, p. 5). The aesthetic

blends meaning so that experience can become purposefiil (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 334).

This is the way he weaves the aesthetic into the natirral relationship between a person and

his or her sunoundings by affLfmiflg the aesthetic as central to the developmental process

of the individuai (Roth, 1962, pp. 12- 13).

In posing the traditional aesthetic questions,3 Dewey takes a novel approach4

(Zeltner, 1975, p. 8) in that he underscores the individual experience as the complex

whole that operates in a symbiotic relationship with the surroundhg field. It is a

relationship that reflects, connects and associates the values and custorns of its associated

culture (Dewey, 1980 119341, pp. 44,179-180,196).

'Who is affected by the aesthetic? How does this effect occur? What is the aesthetic? Why is experience an aesthetic occurrence and when is experience an aesthetic event? Where does the aesthetic occurrence lead us?

What 1 have chosen to designate as an inward-focuseci aesthetics rather than the traditionai aesthetics which considers the aesthetic only in terms of its outward maniféstation, By this 1 mean an aesthetics that considers ody the transformation of the object-

2.2 The Individual in Dewey's Aestbetics

Dewey proposes that a person can apprehend the aesthetic through the experience

of nature (Dewey, 1980 [1934], pp. 18-1 9,133) despite social constraints or one's own

psychoIogical handicaps (Lukacs, 1972, p. 235; Gombrich, 1984, p. 55). It is an idea

offering everyone the opportunity to engage in a reflexive interactive event that expands

the possibilities of the individuai's repertoires of awareness (Berger & Luckmann, 1967

[1966]). It has the potentiai to lift us symboiicaily beyond the lirnits of our socially

defined imaginative constraints by assuring us that we are capable of doing so much more

with our tives than we are accustomed to believing about ourselvd (Lather, 1991, p.

156). This is what Rosenblatt (1978) cails the reflexive moment and to which Rich

(1994) ascribes an awakening force in the discovery of reality. Consequently, Dewey's

theory of the aesthetic experience is more than the psychological promise of inner

harmony and hlfillment (Dewey, 1980 119341, pp. 18-19). It becornes a counterpart to

the individuai's celebration of existence.

Dewey beiieves that there is a place for the aesthetic in out iives (Dewey, 1980

[1934], p. 179) because it offers us the possibility of having a reflexive experience (Hook,

1939, pp. 52; 76-77). There is positive growth in this reflexive experience, but it tums

into a negative expenence when instead of chaiienging one's energy, the experience

5Angst and dienation of the individuai is a defining characteristic of the Modem era. Some use the metaphor of a cracked vesse1 to refer to t!is human dilemma (Wiseman, 1981).

overwhelms and blocks it (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 167). It is this sense of the aesthetic

experience that Dewey weaves in and out of bis discussion in Art as Exkence.

In a methodical, meticdous, and elegant mimer, Dewey achowledges the self-

mediating capacity of people to enrich their lives by becoming alive to the lived

expenence (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 287). It is also in this way that Dewey tells us that

we become empowered as our sensibility and understanding, our conscious awareness of

our surroundings, expand the contexts and foundations of our knowledge. According to

Dewey: "Where there is thought, things present as signs or tokens of things not yet

expenenced" (Dewey, 1910, p. 4).

2.3 A Selected Review of Current Wnting About Dewey's Aesthetic Theory

Currently, John Dewey and his ideas are experiencing a revival, and foremost to

tiiis inquiry is the reassessment of bis aesthetic ideas (Shustman, 1992, p. 4). Kis eariy

acbowledgment of a self-mediating capacity of humans to take charge of their affairs is

contemporaneous with our current concerns about social integrity and stability (Taylor,

1989). Moreover, Dewey was sufnciently insightfûi to link this capacity with the

experience of the aesthetic.

Much of what is currently written about Dewey's aesthetic theory focuses on his

reflective insightfuiness about the relationship of the aesthetic to human existence

9

because of tfie positioning of thought: 'Where there is thought, things present as signs or

tokens of things not yet experienced" (Dewey, 1910, p. 4). Richard Shusterman defends

Dewey's current importance because his theory is "future-lookiug" and vaiorizes change

(Shusterman, 1997, p. 135). He places him within the philosophy of the experiential

where adaptation and adjusment of the self to the environment becornes the determinhg

element in human development (Shusteman, 1992, p. ix). He argues that Dewey,

correcthg the Kantian distinction that wouid circumscribe the aesthetic as simply beyond

the reai, decIares the centrality of art within the cuiturai Iife of society (Shusteman, 1992,

pp. 8-10):

Dewey was intent on making connections rather than distinctions. Be was

keen to connect aspects of human experience and activity which had been

divided by specialist, compartmwtalizing institutions in which such

fragmented disciplinary thinking is reiascribed and reinforcd

(Shusterman, 1992, p. 12).

Anothm recent theoist, Philip Zeltner, defines Dewey's aesthetic meaning in

terms of its wholeness as "the unity of experience" that '~mvides the basis for aesthetic

quaiity" [Zeitner, 1975, p. 24). That it h a p p a for its own sake tums synchronicity

(ZeItaer, 1975, p. 24) into an individuai's experientiai encounter. By promoting this

reading of Dewey's aesthetics, Zeltner reflects Dewey's intentional empiiasis on the

aesthetic occurrence.

These theorists agree that Dewey clearly argues for the experiential as the

aesthetic in itself and as an ongoing event-not as in completion but a s in a dialectical

resolution that is ongoing and not final. As Dewey argues: "The experience rnay be one

that is h d l to the world and its consummarion undesirable. But it has esthetic (sic)

quality ..." and promotes a further seeking out for more than what is known (Dewey, 1980

f 19341, p. 39). Furthemore, for theorists like Shusterman (1992) and Zeltner (1975)' the

very heart of Dewey's aesthetic emerges out of this experimental element of experience

that situates itseIf within nature. As he asserts in the following:

A nahualistic account of esthetic (sic) experience requires nature as its

ground and yet this ground is never quite expenenced as its ground ... Thus

art is a conversion of nature (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 274).

It follows b m this that for Dewey the aesthetic experience serves to stimulate a

firrther quest of knowledge in that it enriches the encounter between the person and the

object of culture in an oblique manner (Torgovnik, 1990). Zeltner (1975) assigns a

cogitively innovative element to Dewey's aesthetic when he argues the folIowing:

A person attempting to solve a difficuIt problem may expend great

energies upon a certain procedure for resolution. He may not soIve the

problem satisfactorily but the meanings that have come into being as a

result of his efforts denote the aesthetic quaiity of the experience (Zeltner,

1975, p. 24).

11

Thus any indifference or obstacle to this reality does not diminish the critical relevance of

the aesthetic as it operates in such a way as '90 integrate human knowledge and activity in

the general framework of reality and natural processes"(Schilpp, 1939, p. 597).

Thomas Aiexander a fbns that nothing Dewey writes can be separated fiom his

criticai culturai views. As Alexander maintains:

Nor should we forget that Dewey's continued involvement with the theory

of democratic life, ranging h m education and conduct to political theory,

conûibuted toward his theory of culture and art (Aiexander, 1987, p. 58).

What this implies is that Dewey's aesthetic reflecl his culturai philosophy, "the

possibility of the fiilfilling, shared life where human beings realize meaning and value in

the creative process" (Alexander, 1987, p. 60). Experience for Dewey becornes the socid

screen through which the individual's thought is transformeci through the intemal-

extemal admixture known as life (AIexander, 1987, p. 59):

Experience for him meant a process situated in a naturai environment,

mediated by a sociaiiy shared symboüc system, actively exploring and

cespouding to the ambiguities of the world by seeking to render the most

probIematic of them detemhte (AIexauder, 1987, p. xiii).

12

Ifwe follow Alexander's thinking on Dewey's aesthetic, we see îhat for Dewey the

aesthetic serves as one of the defining contexts through which a feeling Iife c m be lived

He afEms that Dewey's criticai cultural philosophy leads to a positive integration for the

individuai within Me's experience.

Roth (1962) points to another facet of Dewey's aesthetic notion of the

individual's experience. He says that it addresses a traditionai aesthetic philosophical

question that had always quaiified the object of the experience as being the principal

object of interest in the central question about the aesthetic expenence (Madeja, 1989, pp.

ix-xi). Roth (1962) claims that Dewey's philosophy assigns the significance of the

aesthetic to the individual having the experience and not to the object being experienced.

This he justifies in the following way:

In Dewey's framework, the individual is a person with capacities and

potentialities that far surpass those of other natural beings in the universe,

in whose hands is committed the awesome responsibility of finthering in a

corporate way the ongoing processes of the universe and especially of men

(Roth, 1962, p. 58).

The coroiiary to this lies m Marianna TorgoMik's (1990) assertion that Dewey's

philosophy of experience assumes an oblique sort of vaiues hction for the aesthetic

within human society. She says that Dewey alIows that we seek in the aesthetic

13

experience the means "to tell us how to live better, what it means to be human, to be male

or female, to be dive and looking for peace, or to accept death" (TorgoMik, 1990, pp.

247-248).

What these theorists assert about Dewey is that our fhdamental association with

our experience informs out- joumey through life:

Truth grafts itseifon previous truth, modifyïng it in the process just as

idiom gr& itself on previous idiom, and law on previous law ... What we

say about reality depends on the perspective into which we throw it

(Goodman, 1975, pp. 66-67).

What these thinkers conchde is that Dewey's theory is a positively uplifting theory in

which we are constantly engaged as we experience the event of life.

2.4 Negative Reactioos to Dewey's Aesthetics

1 have s h o w conternporary critical approval of Dewey's aesthetics, but there

were also those who criticized him "for mdue emphasis upon intelligence and the use of

the method of thinking" (Dewey, 1987 [1935], p. 504). In its tirne, Dewey's aesthetic

phiIosophy sustained intense scnrtiny. To show Dewey without the controversy

surrounding him is to present him in a false light.

14

There were searing critiques h m "those who opposed him [and] treated him as

someone who needed to be answered" (TiIes, 1992, p. l), those to whom Irwin Edman

referred as the "unsympathetic and sometimes obtuse critics" (Edman, 1976 [1950], p.

47). Dewey was cailed a "philistine" and criticized "for a nilgar concern with means

rather than ends" (Edman, 1976 [1950], p. 50).

D.W. Gotshalk did not understand how Dewey was able to acknowledge the

piurality of ways that the individual could approach the aesthetic and yet not

acknowledge the absolute impact that the aesthetic wouid have in the viewer's life

(Gotshaik, 1992 [1962], pp. 326-333). Undoubtedly, Gotshalk acknowledged that Dewey

depicted the aesthetic experience as a bio-social adjustment between the shared

experience of the individuai and her or his setting (Gotshalk, 1992 [1962], p. 300). But

the problem for Gotshalk was that Dewey's aesthetics were less than precise about the

unique meaning that the aesthetic held (Gotshalk, 1992 [1962], pp. 327,333). Since

Dewey took a relativistic stance towards the aesthetic, this became too confiising and

contradictory for Gotshalk (Gotshalk, 1992 [1962], pp. 323,325,327).

Patrick Romane11 also stmggled with what for hmi seemed to be unconventional

implications of Dewey's aesthetics, which he defined as being empiricai and pragrnatic

(RomanelI, 1992 [1948], p. 467). He descriied Dewey's argument as being an iilogical

and an ambiguous attempt to tesolve the unresoIvable about what wouid seem to be snch

an aesthetic conûïuiiction-the nature of the aesthetic and the product of the aesthetic, a

15

"mixture of his two implicit, if not completely explicit definitions of aesthetic subject-

matter" (Romaneu, 1992 [1948], pp. 465-467).

Benedetto Croce fadted Dewey's aesthetics because Dewey excluded the

metaphysical fiom the aesthetic experience as an intuitively spirituai event (Croce, 1948,

p. 206). Here too the cornplaint was focused on Dewey's failure to reinstate Kant's

absolute designation of the Platonic ideal. Such critics disapproved of Dewey's

unwillingness to concede that the aesthetic experience was exclusive of the context of the

culture of life. Other chtics attacked Dewey's physicai presentation of his aesthetic

theory ?

One of these faulüïnders was Stqhen Pepper (1953). He set out the analytic

weakness of Dewey's aesthetic philosophy in Dewey's use of the term "fusion." Pepper

decried the meaning of the aesthetic experience in Dewey's Art as Emerience as a

confusion and contradiction of the t em and rejected the entire thesis because "it is stili

not a very clearly defineci or indicated one" (Pepper, 1953, p. 171).

Dewey was denigrated as an adetician and he was denied any philosophicai

credibiIity @-s, 1972, pp. 325-33 1). George Boas fauited Dewey for bringing the

discussion of the aesthetic into the popular domain (Boas, 1953, pp. 178,182). It seemed

6By physical1 mean the actuai fonn of his presentation, the syntax and semantics of his arguments; how he said it and not whaî he said or why he said what he did

to rankfe some that Dewey had not retained art's esoteric exclusivity by separating the

aesthetic from the common arena of the plwality. As George Boas complained:

[It] clearly does not seem to have occurred to Dewey; that there is no

reason why any artist, whether painter or not, should communkate

anything other than his work or art to anyone eIse (Boas, 1953, p. 178).

Dewey called these detractors humdnun and limited in their imaginative

capacities in being unable to envision the aesthetic as being adjunctive to life (Van Meter

Ames, 1953, p. 146). He responded by clarifjhg that the significant contextual backbone

of his aesthetic philosophy was the reality of the presence of the aesthetic in the life of

people and their needs (Dewey, 1948, pp. 208,397).

Despite it dl, the philosophy that fused the aesthetic process into a reciprocity of

self and world could not be trivialized as some philosophical deviation (Alexander, 1992

[1979]) or as the ravings of a senile old man (Edman, 1976[1950], pp. 52-54; Vivas, 1992

[1938], p. 374). Nor could it be reduced to a debate over semantics, rhetoric, or syntax

(Vivas, 1992 [1938]; BeardsIey, 1969): 'Though Dewey wrote in his native tongue, he

has not been conspicuously successful in making himseifunderstood" (Kaplan, 1987

[1934], p. m. This situation challenged the view that it was possible, given the right

conditions, that the aesthetic notions of any philosopher could aIso be understood by

many (Demis, 1972, p. 325).

17

2.5 Summary

In this chapter 1 introduced my perspective on Dewey's philosophy of the

aesthetic as he wrote it in Art as Emenence. 1 suggested Dewey's theory of the aesthetic

experience presents the possibilities and the promise that, given the opportunity, the

individual can encounter an intrinsically reflective process that Dewey referred to as the

aesthetic expenence. It is a concept about the interactive operation that occurs in nature

as the reflexive intersection between the individual and the social construction cailed

reality (Hicban, 1998, p. 92).

Following that 1 presented an overview of selected literature, providing examples

of arguments both favouring and opposing Dewey's work. In the next chapter 1 will

provide the theoretical h e w o r k of rny study.

Chapter Three

Theoretical Framework

in my opening chapters, 1 briefly introduced the personal aspect of John Dewey's

aesthetic pbilosophy. in this chapter I wiI1 l in . this to the theoretical framework which,

in my view, supports Dewey's aesîhetic as he dehes it in Art as Exmience.

The world is, according to Dewey, what we make of it (Dewey, 1980 [I934], p.

152- 154). Underpinning this serendipitous event is an aesthetically funded experience

that is artisticdly shaped (Alexander, 1987, p. xii). It can be descriied as the push and

pull of existence as life presents itself in a series of shaping experiences, a continua1

interplay of adaptation {Jackson, 1998, p. 170; Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 150). To this

pmess and perception of experience Dewey couples the aesthetic as a shaping and

re%g element within human experience, an efement that invites the individual to

pursue a place for himself or herseif in the experiential contingency of life, given tbat

even the weakest individual h d s some sort of strength in the aesthetic (Dewey, 1980

[1934]), pp. 45,134,210). And he specines further by qyoting Tennyson's UIysses:

Yet ali experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd worId whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when 1 move (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 193)-

19

From this we c m see that Dewey is proposing a functional aesthetic in his

paradigm of the transformable exchange that occurs as we humans confinnt our

surroundings (Hickman, 1998, p. 92). He also sets out a step-by-step guide for having the

experience, which he assures us is innate to experience and understanding. In this way

Dewey provides the tools for understanding how to appreciate our lived experience as

aesthetically tived. It seems implicit that for the individual, the aesthetic serves as a

vehicle by which we can acquire the power to challenge our contextuai assumptions.

What is Ieamed is meaçured and considered as a matter of form with a hc t ion and a

purpose:

Interaction of the environment with the organism is the source, direct or

indirect, of ail experience and from the environment corne those checks,

resistances, Merances, equilibria, which when they meet with the

energies of the organism in appropriate ways constitute form (Dewey,

1980 [1934], pp. 146- 147).

This is the integrating force of Dewey's aesthetic: its capacity to blend the

discreet forces of the person into the continuous event of life, into the transformation of

the aesthetic experience (Shusterman, 1992, p. 140). Dewey refers to this transformation

as a modification of the self in the process of becoming (Dewey, 1980 [t934], p. 285). It

can also be seen as an event of self-actuaiization or seIf-realization. The process

underscores my thesis that Dewey's aesîhetic presents the possibility for experientiai

20

advance (Bernstein, 1971, p. 21 l), providing that a meaus for personal transformation is

aiso present.' This is what Rosenblatt refers to as a transactionai event (Rosenblatt, 197%

p. ix) that casts a simultaneous reciprocity of events through the aesthetic and not some

other unique expenence (Bernstein, 1971, p. 212). This presents a constant possibility in

the recurrent transaction that fünctions as life. The shape of possibility that the exchange

effects acts as a refinishing device within the reciprocd event that causes a transformation

to occur in experience. Like those unavoidable life's events coinciding with chaos,

conflict, and resistance-or with beauty, order and fonn-the aesthetic is also foremost in

the individual's experience.

Dewey endorses the aesthetic as an essentid component within the constnicts of

our mass reality and at the same t h e assigns to the individuai the metaphor for the

aesthetic expenence, the-work-of-iu2-in-progress>2 something that is more than just any

haphazard cultivation of the individual. This functiona13 aesthetic is a paradigm for the

'This personal transformation is what 1 mean by my use of the tenn self-cefinement. In the field of personality theory there are various descriptions clari&ing what 1 mean by my titIe "self-refinement." Rather than emphasize the psychological transformations connoted by the terms self-actualization or self-realization, I have felt it more appropriate to my purpose to keep the expression "self-refinement," which seems to me to suggest the aesthetic as a forming or scuiptural term; hence, my choice of the term "seIf-refinement".

IMy choice of expression.

31n our society there are my-riad ways for self-cuItivation or as is popuhriy refened to self-heIp1self-improvement. Our way of referring to these advocates are as gurus of the New Age. Many different suggestions are offered that promote individual cultivation. Among hem are the use of drugs, sex, pIastic surgery, diet, exercise, religion, What Dewey suggests is the active cultivation of the mind, This stimulahg activity, he contends, will promote an increased interest of the individual in his or her He.

rdationship of the person to ber or his environment in a continwus recreation of the

experience of learning, with the possibüities of adaptation and change. What Dewey

suggests is the active cdtivation of the mind. In the moments of thinking and feeling,

this aesthetic attention, even of the ordinary, cm heighten one's understanding of the

means by which we arrive at this discursive exchange of consmcted meaning.

The experience becornes the "as i f ' (Gordon, 1961, p. 37) moment as the aesthetic

encounter takes on the strength of the individuai's weaving (RosenbIatt, 1978, p. ix) of

the transaction in the event. Far greater than just the ordinary occurrence, the constnict of

f o m and arrangement in the aesthetic experience causes a transformation to occur

(Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 285).

3.1 Summary

This chapter presented the theoreticd Eramework which supports my reading of

John Dewey's aesthetic theory. in the next chapter 1 wiil explore the personal nature and

implications of this theory by exaxnining the aesthetic relevarice of Dewey's text.

Chapter Four

An Examination of the Aesthetic Relevance of Dewey's Art as Ex~erience

Thus far, 1 have presented what 1 understand to be the significant thnist of John

Dewey's philosophy, narnely that it is an aesthetic which focuses on the individuai's role

in experience as a persona1 event. In this chapter 1 will examine the relevance of this

aesthetic.

1 understand Art as a social document. Aithough it can be anaiyzed

as an absûact or metaphysical debate of the spirit of art, 1 have chosen to assess it as a

metaphor for rehning the self within our social fabric. 1 understand Art as Exuerience to

stand for the cohesiveness and wholeness of being, through the symbotic argument about

the aesthetic in terms of its cultural significance in the individual's experience. The

refinement of the self depends as much on what is inside us as it does on what experience

confiants us (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 251). The implications of this for the aesthetic

experience is that there are reflexive interactions between the individual and the event

(Rosenblatt, 1978), interactions that Iead to fiiaher interactions in a process of becoming

wide-awake to this worid (Greene, 1995, p. 4). As 1 descn'bed it in Chapter 2, it is the

23

obtique inter-juncture between the experience of the event and the individuai. It is the

confluence between what is and what is possible that rqresents the juncture between the

lived life and the aesthetically lived life as it is extended into a fiirther seekiag of

experience.

When 1 began studying Art as Exuerience, 1 approached it as an iconography of

art, or the very least, a discussion of the psychology of the imaginative in art. Some

chapters analyzed the formal structures of paintings and ~cuIpture,~ and Dewey touched

on the psychology of creativity and its aspects in the imagination,' But my intuition told

me that it was not enough to view the work as a discussion of the formal elements of art.

It seemed to me that the text, rather than a document entirely concemed with the fonn of

art, elaborated a discussion of what was valuable in art. As Alexander (1987) explained:

It represents the possibility of the fulfilling, shared life

where human beings realize meaning and vaiue in the

creative process of intelligent growth (Alexander, 1987, p.

60).

'In Dewey's Art as Experience, Chapters iV-X address the formal elements and aspects of art like the subjects of art, the methods, materiais and the mediums used to ma t e the work of art.

'In Dewey's Art as Exaerience, Chapters X & XIT address the current concerns about foms of communication and their symbolic relevance to the human expexience.

Dewey designates to the aesthetic this social purpose as part of the "intimate.,.meaning of

group life ... with daily iife...[reflecting] the motions and ideas that are associated with the

chief institutions of social life9'@ewey, 1980 [1934], p. 7). He does not believe that

aesthetic appreciation is some rarefied and excepiionai experience of the elitist fewe3 He

argues that the aesthetic is as innate to human existence as any 0 t h ordinary event

(Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 144). It cm be had by anyone and anywhere. As Dewey

suggests:

the traits, the characteristics of the human experience that

have the quality that for iack of any 0 t h name we cal1 the

esthetic (sic)..,what it is that you and 1 and anybody that has

any kind of esthetic (sic) appreciation goes through

(Dewey, 1988, pp. 358-359).

Once 1 understood Dewey's argument as one concernecl with the relevance of the

aesthetic in the individual's milieu, 1 realized that it had profound social and cultural

implications in the context of the relevance of the everyday'. Richard Shusterman

descnlbes this as what is "revoIutionary" about Dewey's aesthetics (1992, p. ix). Not only

3Aithough 1 am focusing on the aesthetic aspect in Art as Experience, culture and pragmatism are continuaiiy interwoven and can not be distinctly separated.

I have referred to this as the social signincance of aesthetic living. This question, however, lies beyond the parameters of the present study, which is Iimited to examinhg the implications of the aesthetic for the individuai.

was Dewey anaIyziug the fonnal elements of the aesthetic, but he was also giving these

forma1 qualities a social context and cdtural relevance in the human experience. It was a

means to challenge those assumptions that were current at the time (Riis, 1901). The

cornplexit. of the society and its hctioning provideci the backdrop for Dewey's theory

that the aesthetic experience couid provide the context for change and learning.

4.1 Dewey's Aesthetics

The contribution of John Dewey's aesthetic theory lies in the emphasis he places

on it in terms of daily life. Dewey is removing the authority of the aesthetic fiom the

connaisseur and bringing it back to the individual. He argues that the aesthetic

experience is open to dl:

If we becorne more on the lookout for the moments of this kind of

experience we do not think of thcm as experiences we have to have by

going to certain places, but that we may have at any time of day in

comection with any, not everyone, but with contacts with objects, scenes,

persons that are not in any way Iabeled to be works of fine art (Dewey,

1988, pp. 358-359).

Here Dewey is suggesting that the experientid aliows one to play a part in the

connectedness between ourselves, the viewer and the abject or event discernai. What

26

this means is that anyone can experience the aesthetic given the human capacity for

thinking and for reasoning. It is not, accordhg to Dewey, something of a rarefieci

encounter that only a few individuds c m ever hope to understand.

Dewey writes that we mate ourselves in the objects we make (or experience) and

that sometimes we change in the process of creating (or expenencing) these objects. He

describes it as an excursion that "creates new sensitivities that in time absorb what was

aiien and naturalize it within direct experience" (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 282). Dewey

argues the foiiowing: ''1 think, again, that if we look at the whole matter more h m the

standpoint of what we do or what we feel and undergo we are less likely to get pettifid

by the old forms" (Dewey, 1988, p. 361). Its necessity lies in the compelling component

of nature and of our wodds. That despite the constricting definitions of any social reality

enclosing us, it demands a response and, if one is not forthcoming, it supplies the

feedback whether we achowledge this or not. In fact Dewey is simply reassuring us that

we can understand the contents of our lived expenences, ergo, manage our iives when he

says: "The sense of relation between nature and man in some form has always been the

actuating spirit of art" (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 339). And because we can do this the

aesthetic is just another facet of this dimension of human growth-a gmwth that thrives

within the chaos and unpredictability of reciprocal responses to al1 that surrounds and

envelopes us.

Seeing the broder implications of Dewey's aesîhetic brhgs us nght back to the

culturaI ramifications of a phiIosophy of the aesîhetic of culture where change is the

means for the inquiry into and criticism of the everyday experience which implodes on all

of us, given that reality is what it is. Dewey acknowledges the imperfections in human

civilization and agrees that Iife as reflected in the aesthetic (as every other element in

reality) exists in and emerges out of dissension and conflict:

Moreover, resistance and conflict have always been factors

in generating art; and they are, as we have seen, a necessary

part of artistic form. Neither a world wholly obdurate and

sullen in the face of man nor one so congenial to his wishes

that it gratifies al1 desire is a world in which art can arise

(Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 339).

Here Dewey is chiding those peopte who impose their cnteria of the aesthetic: "Anything

that hardens an expenence in certain Iines as if they were the proper lines in which it

should run becomes a burial to a genuine esthetic (sic) experience" (Dewey, 1988, p.

362). He insists that the reciprocal connectedness between the individuai and her or his

environment s h i h between the ''personal act" and the "objective result" of the dialectic

between life and the aesthetic (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 82).

ifwe entertain this phiIosophy of the aesthetic we enter into an understanding of

ourselves in our immediate surroundïngs as the willfùi participants of an ongoing process,

which demands our input and our active participation in a process not always cornfortable

28

or beneficial to our immediate need for positive confirmation or for gratification. In other

words, the distinction between me and you evaporates into a mutuai reciprocity of how

you and 1 interact.

4.2 Dewey's Aesthetics Define Experience: The Siguificame of Aesthetic Living

The greatest insight that Dewey has about the aesthetic is that it can hold a

significance for the individual beyond itselfas an object ofmaterid value. By this he

challenges our cornplacent assumptions that the aesthetic expenence is only about the

products outside ourselves, in any culturd setting. He suggests that the intrinsic worth of

the aesthetic experience lies within the individual, that its worth is more within the

process than just in the value of art as a materid product. It becomes a necessary

presence in the cultural evolution ofany society. It causes an oblique sort of equalization

to occur within the dynamic of human experience (TorgoMik, 1990). This broadly

implies that some movement cm occtr within our iives. Dewey holds that experience is:

a matter of the interaction of the artistic product with the self. . . It

changes with the same person at dament times as he b ~ g s something

mereut to the work. . . . So far as in each case there is an ordered

movement of the matter of experience to a fiilfiIlment, there is a dominant

esthetic (sic) quality (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 33 1).

He expands the tradition of formai outboks on aesthetics by conuecting it to its cultural

coniext. He argues that the segregation of the arts h m the experience of the popdation

leads to a divisive elitism in society (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 10). He descnies this as

'me story of the severance and the final sharp opposition of the usehl and the he":

The story of the severance and h a 1 sharp opposition of the

useful and the h e is the history of that indusûid

developrnent through which so much of production has

becorne a form of postponed living and so much of

consurnption a superimposed enjoyment of the bits of the

labor of others (Dewey, 1980 [1934j, p. 27).

Dewey beiiwes that this dienation of experience Ieads to the greatest dangers for a

society when its individuals beiieve that nothing W e r can be gained h m the

possibilities for the aesthetic experience, and then proceed to curtail it (Dewey, 1980

[1934], pp. 343-344). As Dewey argues, how we live determines the success or failure

of our society:

Dewey took the daily experience of individuals more seriously than he

took anything else, and he ultimatety evduated everytbing as an

instnrment for the enrichment of such experieuce ( F d e I , 1963 [1957], p.

156).

30

Dewey never ceases to offer the individuai the challenge of change through the aesthetic

experieace. He describes the aesthetic as a useful adjunct within our iives:

It is a matter of commIinication and participation in values

of life by means of the imagination, and works of art are the

most intimate and energetic means of aiding individuals to

share in the arts of living (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 336).

This experience-as-transaction becornes a heuristic device for the process of doing

and undergoing: "a highly developed form of the active dation between an organism

and its environment, a relation whereby change is effected" (Copleston, 1966, p. 358).

Underpinning the experience is the complex whole of the person's quest through Me, a

quest that Dewey acknowledges is circumsmid by the cdture and its values (Dewey,

1980 [1934], pp. 196-197). This symbolic mediation between the person and the

environment is understoud by Dewey to represent the aesthetic moment in the interval of

time and existence. This flow of energy hking the individuai to the enviromnent cm

occur in the experiential interchange that Dewey dehes as the aesthetic. As Dewey

proposes it:

ifwe approach the matter h m our end we get a more flexible approach

and one that is more inclusive, one that is more tolefaflt . - - it tends to

3 1

enlarge us. . . . it frees us and heIps us drop off some of the undue timidity

or awe with which many people feel that works of art ought to be

approached (Dewey, 1988 [1938], p. 357).

Experiencing the aesthetic aIIows the individuai to flower "because] experience is the

fulfillment of an organism in its sûuggles and achievements in a world of things, it is art

in gem" (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. t 9). in this way the aesthetic celebrates human

existence and complements it: "art celebrates with pecu1ia.r intensity the moments in

which the past reinforces the present and in which the future is a quickening of what now

is" (Dewey, 1930 [1934], p. 18).

A phenornenon emerges, with the above in view, when we realize that what

Dewey means by the aesthetic impIies an observationai attentiveness to our swroundings

through the cornmon experience of the ordinary. In Dewey' view:

the traits, the characteristics of the human experience that have the quaiity

that for lack of any other name we caU the esthetic (sic) . . . what a human

being undergoes and enjoys when he is in the presence of one of the works

of art, in its presence not merely physicaiiy but with his make-up, with his

full mind and feeling- . - Jt recognizes that we may have this experience in

the presence of aU kinds of things. . . ..Ifwe becorne more on the Iookout

for the moments of this kind of experience we do not tEMk of them as

experiences we have to have by going to certain places, but that we may

have at any tirne of &y . . . with contacts with objects, scenes, persons that

are not in any way labeled to be works of fine art (Dewey, 1988 [1938],

pp. 358-359).

ui this way the aesthetic experience becomes the lived experience in its myriad diversity

and facets. The aesthetic is not seen as an isolated and separated experience but as a

natural and intrinsic element with human culture. There c m hardly be a more attainable

resource that yet has been kept in such scarce availability. Its advantage transcends any

market value that might be ascribed to the aesthetic or to experience. Dewey emphasizes

the civilizing usefulness of art in the following m m e r

instruction in the arts of Iife is sornething other than conveying

information about them. It is a matter of communication and participation

in values of life by means of the imagination and works of art are the most

intirnate and energetic means of aiding individuais to share in the arts of

living (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 336).

Not only does the medium become the message as a tool for communication, but it aIso

carries dong with it various possibilities leading to firrther cornmimication.

4.3 Summary

As 1 have tried to show in this chapter, the cementhg force of the aesthetic for

Dewey is its capacity to blend the discrete into the continuous, because of its universaiïty

as a symbol system (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 335). Art is "a more universai mode of

language," and its evocative nature can transcend the baniers of human communication

and thus serve as a bonding and bridging device in the babel of conventional

misunderstandings. In this chapter 1 have discussed Dewey's concept of the experience

of the aesthetic so as to demonstrate its contemporary relevance. The aspects of his

theory that i have highlighted are, 1 believe, central to Dewey's philosophical approach to

the aesthetic question. With these issues in mind, in the next chapters 1 expand upon the

contemporary cultural and social implications of Dewey's aesthetic.

Chapter Five

Dewey's View of Experience: A Multi-faceted Event

5.1 The Contiguous Self: EIements of Dewey's Aesthetics

in Chapters 3 and 4,1 demonstrated the theoreticai underpinnings to my

contention that the individuai is intrinsic to Dewey's theory of the aesthetic experience.

With this focus in mind, 1 will further examine the self as it is placed within Dewey's

paradigrn of the aesthetic experience.

To the fractured and alienated individuai we are in life, Dewey offes an

aiternative, a more rneaningful existence. As Dewey outlines in his text (1980 [1934]),

experience and identity are inevitably quaiified by our integration of the cognitive,

intellectual, social and aesthetic elements in culture:

We are interconnected with our surroundings whether or not we

acknowledge this ... As nature presents us with challenges at each new cycle

of our development we take up the challenge and make our adaptations to

our best advantage (Dewey, 1980 [1934], pp. 147-148).

A vision of possibilities for the individuai drives Dewey's aesthetics as he

advances the argument that the individual is an active participant in her or his experience

of life. He takes the discussion of knowledge acquisition and literacy through the

aesthetic into the individual realm of self-determination and refinement in an account of

the possibilities of what lies beyond the moving horizon of our cultural encounters

(Dewey, 1980 [1934], pp. 193-195). This makes Art as Exoerience highly relevant today

in that it serves as a cultural guide, defining Our interrelationships and activities within

the constellations of our communities (Dewey, 1980 [1934], pp. 82-83; p. 212).

5.2 Shaping the Self as a Work of Art

Dewey argues that the contiguous self is one that is actively engaged in the

interactive possibilities of life:

if we approach the matter from our end we get a more flexible approach

and one that is more inclusive, one that is more tolerant . . . it tends to

enlarge us . . . it frees us and helps us &op off some of the undue timidity

or awe with wtiich many people feel that works of art ought to be

approached (Dewey, 1988 119381, pp. 359-360).

He maintains by this that we achieve knowledge not because it is dictated to us but

because we locate ourselves through our experiences, "because of the interactions with

the world outside . . . which in some of irs aspects and phases is common with that of

others" (Dewey, 1980 f 19341, p. 305). Dewey's elaboration of the aesthetic gives us a

way of knowing that has the most possibfities for "more empowering ways of knowing"

(Lather, 199 1, p. 85). He offers a rneaningful methodology without a concomitant

trivialization of knowledge acquisition associated with passive learning. As Dewey

argues:

In order to understand the esthetic (sic) in its ultimate and approved forms,

one must begin with it in the raw; in the events and scenes that hoId the

attentive eye and ear of man, arousing his interest and affording him

enjoyment as he looks and Iistens . . . . He does not remain a cold spectator

. . . The reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefiy by the

mechanical impulse of curiosity, not by a restless desire to anive at the

final solution, but by the pleasurable activity of the journey itself (Dewey,

1980 [1934], pp. 4-5).

53 Experience as a Mula'-Faceîed Event

Dewey implies that the aesthetic experience is a multi-faceted event, It is not

Iimited to "the cultivated with access to these aesthetic expetiences in select places"

(Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 6). Dewey contends that the aesthetic can be had by anyone if

one but feels, sees, and srneils the present. He States that any philosophy that does not Iay

such a foundation for praxis is deficient:

. . . sterilized unless it makes us aware of the function of art

in relation to other modes of experience, and unless it

indicates why this function is so inadequately realized, and

unless it suggests the conditions under which the office

would be successfulIy performed @ewey, 1980 [1934], p.

12).

The aesthetic experience becornes the "situated gaze" that is located in life and not kept

rernote (Featherstone, 1997 [1995], p. 34; Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 7). The experience

becomes rooted in the natural needs, constitution, and activities that constitute the

aesthetic expression as an adjustment and adaptation that is characteristic of Iife in

generd. Dewey describes this in the following:

Through art, meanings of objects that are otherwise dumb, inchoate,

restricted, and resisted are clarified and concentrated, and not by thought

working laboriously upon them, not by escape into a world of mere sense,

but by creation of a new experience . . . matter ordered through fonn

(Dewey, 1980 119341, p. 133).

Expression becomes a personal act of existence in the on-going event caiied time. Dewey

promotes a theory based in the strength of enhanced perception. He emphasizes the

possibilities that emerge when an active awareness or perception is developed:

No longer neuually aimed at faithfully representing the

concepts it examines ... [our active awareness is] engaged in

reshaping them to serve us better . . . the ultimate goal is

not knowledge but improved experience (Shusterman,

1992, p. viii).

It is in fact the capricious nature of the human being that enables Dewey's

rnethodology to penneate acquisition of knowledge through education in the aesthetic

object, without a guaranteed outcome. Maxine Greene describes this as the contingencies

of failible perception:

No form of literacy is taught for its own sake. Like verbaI

and numericai literacy, aesthetic Iiteracy provides

acquaintance with specifiable languages, as it does with

particular ways of perceiving and imagining. Not only rnay

this lead to heightened awareness of actuaI works; it may

bring about an enriched acquaintance with the appearances

of things (and the feel and the sound), even as it enlarges

the symboiic repertoh needed for thinking about the

world and expressing what is thought (Greene, 1981, 120.

The muIti-faceted nature of experience brought about through the "gaze" offers us a

means of active engagement witfi our wor1ds of rneanings:

Humanism posits the subject as an autonomous individual

capable of full consciousness and endowed with a stable

'self constituted by a set of static characteristics such as

sex, class, race, sexual orientation. Such a subject has been

at the heart of the Enlighrenment project of progress via

education. reflexive rationality, and human agency (Lather,

199 1, p. 5).

What is experienced can constitute a possibility for enhanced awareness as a

"rnirrof' {Foucault, 1984, p. 153) of self-reflection through this nebulous rnorphoiogy

that Dewey refers ro as the " r d experience . . . compIete in itself, standing out because

marked out from what went before and what came aftei' (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 36).

The individual is not isolated (Seigfned, 1991, p. 9), and the perceiving subject acquires

the possibility of an interactive exchange within the context of the aesthetic experience on

the "horizon of saciai p d s " (Seigiied, 1991, p. 9). AIert to the constructive

possibilities for human civilization, Dewey emphasizes the cognitive benefits that the

aesthetic experience is likeIy to bring as he establishes the paradigm sh i f i in bis focus on

the importance of the aesthetic fieId in the individuai's ordinary experience.

in this chapter I have emphasized the multiple connotations of Dewey's theory of

the aesthetic experience as an adjunctive element to our pool of referential knowledge. 1

have also presented Dewey's argument that this adjunct serves as a substantive rdective

presence (Sleeper, 1986, p. 193). 1 have established that Dewey integrates a pluraiity of

possibilities out of the experience that merges the aesthetic with the everyday by

demonstrating that Dewey's aesthetic embodies a multiplicity of views that through the

aesthetic experience bring the chdlenge of change to the individual, in the next chapter. I

will examine the culturai implications of John Dewey's aesthetic philosophy, not only as

it affects the individual but also as it offers a rnulti-varied possibility that extends beyond

the icdividual to society.

Chapter Six

Dewey's Concept of the Aesthetic: The Culturai and Social Context

Whereas in the preceding chapters 1 concentrated on Dewey's discussion of his

aesthetic theory in relation to the individual, in this chapter 1 focus on the cultural

implications of his theory.

As 1 argued in Chapter 4, the refinement of the self depends as much on what is

inside us as it does on what experience confronts us (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 251). This

acknowledges the self-rnediating capacity of individuals to become active participants in

the discursive exchange with their environments so as to consûuct meanings for

themselves (Jackson, 1998, p. xiv). This conception of the interactive process assures us

that we are more than passive recipients of the events around us.

For John Dewey the aesthetic as lived experience represents the intelligently lived

life as a possibility for self-realization (Alexander, 1987, p. 60). The aesthetic is

interwoven with the social fabric and facilitates an interconnectedness between ourselves

and our surroundings (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 144). In fact, Dewey argues, we can

maintain a sense of relation between ourselves and our milieus throngh the actuating

spirit of the aesthetic (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 339). It cushions us within the chaos and

unpredictability that comprises this imperfect world.

Dewey seems to support such a view when he points out that the aesthetic work

and by extension the aesthetic expenence emerges out of this excitement:

Moreover, resistance and conflict have always been factors in generating

art; and they are, as we have seen a necessary part of artistic form. Neither

a world wholly obdurate and d e n in the face of man nor one so

congeniai to his wishes that it gratifies al1 desire is a world in which art

can arise (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 339).

This draws attention to the dialectical reciprocity between personai experience and the

aesthetic event, one that surges into the cultural as an aesthetic occurrence (Dewey, 1980

[1934], p. 82).

6.1 The Social Siwcance of Aesthetic Living: Broad Implications

What drives Dewey's thinking is "its future-Iooking attitude and valorization of

change" within the aesthetics of experience (Shusterman, 1997, p. 135). That Dewey

amibes to the aesthetic a universa1 form of communication (Dewey, 1980, [1934], p-

270) gives it a bridging effect that extends the individual's power to communicate beyond

a narrowIy defined sphere. Dewey's aesthetic theory suggests that every living thing is

denved From and related to every other living thing (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p.204) in a

reciprocal event that o r m e s itself into an intensified association. It is based in the

acknowledgment that the aesthetic bas meaning beyond individual cultural ciifferences

and that the personal is an interactive event of politicai dimensions (Hurwitz et al, 2984,

p. 7; Hamblen, 1987, p. 16)-what Van Meter Ames calls Dewey's social emphasis, in

that "art changes society by changing man" (Van Meter Ames, 1953, pp. 160-161). This

moves Dewey's aesthetic into the contemprary world (Shusterman, 1992, p. 10;

Weintraub, 1996, p. 256), a world that is defined by continual transformations and

accommodations.

These metamorphoses occur as sweeping socid changes and technologicaI

transformations influence the adaptations of individuais and cultures (Hickman, 1998, p.

82). The rneans for such adaptations Iie in 'We action and its consequences," the

diaiecticai "relationship" that gives the experience its distinguishing quaiities (Dewey,

1980 (19341, p. 44). Dewey substantiates this position through a view of the aesthetic

experience that unifies and breaks through individual differences while at the sarne time

enriching each individual. Invin Edman expounds this aspect of Dewey's theory in the

following passage:

Ail thinking is art. . . Art is the name for that deliberate process by which

experience, out of its own fertilities and potentiaiities, renders itself more

perspicuous, more ordered, and more certain ... It is that conscious

technique by which, out of some uncertainty and aisis, desired goods, fmt

foreseen as ideai possibiIities, the self-suggesting hopes of an imperfect

present, are achieved and s tab ihd @hm, 1929, p. 124).

This is to Say that we project our values or transfer our feelings into the immediate

experience as a bridge for our differences (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 249). Raymond Firth

(1963 [1951]) describes this process as an innate sense of the aesthetic which swells

within us as the "special kinds of reactions and evaiuations based on feeking tones which

we cal1 aesthetic (Firth, 1963 [1951], p. 156). Dewey describes this need as human

adapration-the adjustment to Me's contingencies once the aesthetic becomes the protean

mechanism out of which this transformation occurs. As Dewey asserts in the following

passage:

Life grows when a temporary failing out is a transition to a more extensive

balance of the energies of the organism with those of the conditions under

which it Iives. These biologicaI cornmonplaces are something more than

that and they reach to the roots of the esthetic (sic) in experience (Dewey,

1980 [1934], p. 14).

By making the aesthetic foundational to human experience, Dewey provides a theoreticai

method for advancing a culture in a competent manner because his aesthetic mots "the

natural need, constitution, and activities of the human organism" (Shusterman, 1992, p.

6). It also organizes cultural differences into a corridor of communication that alIows for

difference (Dewey, 980 [1934], p. 33 1).

In this way the aesthetic becomes for Dewey a way to address the diiernma of

45

human differences. The incompleteness of the world gives our experience, in Dewey's

view of the aesthetic, "a combination of movement and culmination of breaks and

reunions" (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 17). As such, it serves to demystiQ an aspect of

culture that converges into a maze of nonproducuve chaos and collapses into the

conundrum which we define as culture. What Dewey proposes is the creative

advancement towards a natural promotion of social control within a society:

We understand it in the degree to which we make it a patt of our own

attitudes ... To some degree we become artists ourselves as we undertake

this integration, and, by bringing it to pass, our own experience is

reoriented (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 334).

The congruence lies in the reciprocal nature of the individual's experience of

environment:

There is no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is

sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the

learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the

leaming process, just as tfiere is no defat in traditional education greater

than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in the

construction of the putposes involved in his studying (Gray, 1952, p. 113).

By championing a place for the aesthetic through experience, Dewey is suggesting that

the presence or absence of the experience of the aesthetic cesides in the imaginative

interaction between the two: rational as opposed to irrational behaviour (Dewey, 1985, p.

193). As Win Edman argues: "In a rationai society, the free and aitical discrimination

which marks aesthetic appreciation would be applied to al1 human concerns" (Edman,

1929, p. 132). The aesthetic becomes the mediating variable relative to what the

individual can know. Tt serves as a vehicle for personal as weii as social discovery: "the

material of esthetic (sic) experience in king human-human in connection with the nature

of which it is a part-is social" (Dewey, 1980 [2934], p. 325). As Dewey contends in his

text:

Life is no uniform unintempted rnarch or flow. It is a thing of histories,

each with its own plot, its own inception and movement toward its close,

each having its own particular rhythmic movement; each with its own

unrepeated quality pervading it throughout (Dewey, 1980 [1934], pp. 35-

35).

In this way, Dewey challenges the attitude that would give an a priori credibility to a

master nanative:

We are now habituated to one mode of satisfaction and we take our own

attitude of desire and purpose to be so inherent in aü human nature as to

give the measure of al1 works of art, as constituting the demand which al1

works of art meet and should satisfy (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 332).

As Dewey States at the outset, the aesthetic deals with al1 experiential aspects of culture,

inctuding the economy of life and its nuances (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 44). Shusterman

interprets this as follows:

In freeing philosophy fiom its search for foundations, Dewey hoped to

enIist it for practicai refom, directing its criticai acumen and imaginative

energy to the resolution of concrete social and cultural problems

(Shusterman, 1997, p. 157).

It is here that Dewey argues for the ments of critical thinking and informed judgements

through the aesthetic experience:

Barriers are dissolved, and lirniting prejudices melt away . . . .This

insensible melting is far more efficacious than the change effected by

reasoning because it enters directly into attitude (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p.

334).

6.2 Aesthetics for Our Times

In order to understand the impact that Dewey's aesthetics has on culture, it is

crucial to understand that Our social attitudes are defined by what drives them:

"increasingly demanded and reinforced . . . Dy1 a production oriented, business-centered,

financially driven style of social organization" (Hermann, 1988, p. 21). Consequentiy

we must accept that there exists a battIe between two philosophies: "One of them accepts

life and expenence in al1 its uncertainty" (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 34) and the other is

synonymous with and grounded in the pursuit of a reductive and uncontested materialism

that everywhere counters the ubiquitous possibilities of the aesthetic experience.

Dewey Iikens the aesthetic experience to a mystery ride that will "deepen and

intensify its own qualities" (Dewey, 1980 [1934J, p. 355). His theory equates the

aesthetic with the natural evolution of organic wisdom that lies obliquely to ail that

surrounds us. Dewey believes that the aesthetic expenence may enhance the strength of

Our thinking abilities (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. tg) and ennch the quaiities of our

surroundings when life is seen as art and when the aesthetic is conjoined in a life that is

synonymous with the intelligence of the aesthetic. As Edman (1929) claims on behalf of

Dewey:

Experience is the name for Iife in so far as it is meaningful. Art is the

name for that intelligence by which meanings are suggested, realized, and

embodied. Art and intelligence become identical; they are synonyms for

that process by which life becornes articulate and deliberately d i t e d "

(Edman, 1929, p. 122).

Dewey's aesthetic is not an emphasis on the making of the art product so much as

it is a consideration of the social and personal benefits derived fiom engaging in the

aesthetic experience. It is a radical proposai for refining the Ieaming experience in

education through the arts:

Art throws off the covers that hide the expressiveness of experienced

things; it quickens us from the blackness of routine and enables us to

Forget ourselves by finding ourselves in the delight of experiencing the

world about us in its varied qualities and forms. Tt intercepts every shade

of expressiveness found in objects and orders them to a new experience of

Iife (Ikwey, 1980 [1934], p. 1 10).

It is the art of experience that is intnnsicaily bound to nature and not isolated and

removed from the naniral forces within which people live (Zeltner, 1975, p, 2). The

aesthetic experience becomes an inserumental benefit, one tfiat stimulates the senses and

quickens human growth.

in this chapter 1 have argued that, in my view, the greatest insight that Dewey

provided concerning the aesthetic was that it could serve as developmentai and

integrating force for the individual, well beyoad its materiai value as an art object. In so

arguing. Dewey challenges our passive and complacent assumptions about ourselves

(Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 24). In addition, he admonished society for its foolish blindness

to the possibilities of the aesthetic, in reducing the aesthetic to a marginal position in the

cumculum (Dewey [1934], p. 2; Lankford, 1995, p. 93).

Chapter Seven

Condusion

This research has investigated Art as Exmrience as a multi-faceted text with many

layers of meaning. 1 have show how it offers the reader a myriad of possibilities for

extrapolation. 1 have investigated what Shusterman (1992) refers to as a somatic

naturaiism, an explmation that suggests that there is a contextual element to the unity of

human experience. The aesthetic then becomes a heuristic device, a methodology, a kind

of connective aesthetics that aIlows for individual expansion within the experientiai

(Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 43). By this Dewey seeks the generating beliefs that underlie

Our culture. This gives his theory contemporary value as we search for cultural

guideposts by which to define ourseIves and by which to relate to our cornmunities

(Dewey, 1980 [1934], pp. 82-83; 2 12).

Dewey weaves a tapestry of knowing (Zeltner, 1975, p. SO), which is how Zeltner

describes Art as Exuerience. Accordiig to Dewey, it is a fact of existence that, out of the

construction of time and through the interactions that occur, people do have contact with

their environments. His main contribution, 1 have shown, is that Iife experiences can

become permeated by the aesthetic experience.

A combination of al1 practical and incidentai events that confront us in our

ordinary lives become promises for enrichrnent and empowerment of our lives, if we

allow them to. Out of this serendipity of change, a sequence of life events is ordered to a

variation of changes (Dewey, 1980 [L934], p. 150) which becomes the "continual

interplay" (Jackson, 1998, p. 170) of our perception to the adaptive process called

aesthetic experience (Dewey, 1980, [1934] p. 282). It is the aesthetic that forms the

connective links chat bind and unify experience.

The aesthetic experience becomes a purposeful interaction (Dewey, 1980 [I934],

p. 276). What is learned is measured and considered as form, function and purpose,

when adaptation as a factor of king is coupled to Dewey's aesthetic theory and becomes

the means to the refining element within human experience (Alexander, 1987, p. 197).

And indeed the experience assumes some purposeful component when what is learned

becomes incorporated into one's ongoing repertoires of responsive adaptations. The

aesthetic becomes the mode through which individual living is made possible and

realizable1-as the self fin& expression by and through the aesthetic object (Dewey, 1980

[1934], pp. 65; 77; 255). Life then becomes a series of transactions when what is known

becomes reflected as a facet of that experience which is dtimately determined by the

rnind that knows it. Thought aad imagination becomes something that transforms

experience and the aesthetic is that vehicle which enhances this transformation. .

'IIewey's theory suggests a meliorism, that espouses popular art as a viable critical approach to discriminating the artistic.(Cwper, 1995 119921, pp. 336-339.)

Or as Kestenbaum argues:

His conception of organic interaction, and his later conception of

transaction, were attempts to capture the reciprocal implication of self and

world in every expenenced situation (Kestenbaum, 1977, p. 1).

Thus transaction, reciprocity, and transformation become fundamentai to the aesthetic

experience-as the aesthetic illuminates the path of life, and experience promotes this

growth and development. As Thomas Alexander says of Dewey:

Art is not some by-product of experience, a refreshing wayside in the

arduous highway of our instrumentaiist affairs. It is the reveIation of what

experience is al1 about (Alexander, 1987, p. 60).

The manner in which we give symbolic expression to Our means of communication

justifies its capacity to enrich us. In addition, Dewey's philosophy of the aesthetic dso

points to the afEinning tendencies of the aesthetic experience, in its capacity t~ promote a

social reconciIiation within a culture (Greene, 1995, p. 125). His text serves as a

discussion of culture, the shared life of humans king given uItimate expression in the

aesthetic as a twl for communication beyond Our social and cultural barriers:

in the end, works of art are the only media of complete and unhindered

communication between man and man that cm occur in a world full of

gdfs and waüs that Iimit comrnunity of experience (Dewey, 1980 [1934],

p. 105).

In this way, the aesthetic expenence suppties a unifying energy that enhances the quality

of our interactions and the substance of our Lives.

7.1 Implications for Education

Clearly, what has been discussed in this thesis has relevance to Iearning and

therefore to education in the broadest sense. It is worth pointing out, however, that it is as

a liberal democrat and as a philosopher that Dewey underscores the relevance of the

individual's encounter of the aesthetic as both meaninghl and productive:

Implicit in this view is a valuing of peopIe as the experts in their own

lives, who have an important stake in how issues are resolved . . .

knowledge is not something that stands done or is produced in a vacuum

by a sort of 'pure' intellectual process. Instead a11 knowledge is value

laden and shaped by historie, socid, political, gender and econornic

conditions (Berman et al., 1998, p. 3).

According to Dewey, completeness and finality are never an element of learning, and thus

the learning experience is always on-going and changing (Greene, 1973, p. 108). This

theme of beliefs and values adds an axiological dimension to Dewey's aesthetic

philosophy, a dimension that extends out into the schools. There the teacher becomes the '

facilitator whose task is to remove barriers to the aesthetic experience (Lather, 199 1, p.

ix). The teacher enables and empowers the student by holding up the possibility of

encountering multiple realities (Greene, 1995, pp. 56.64). This process gives the person

a practical advantage. The old takes on a new colour and meaning in king employed to

grasp and to interpret the new (Dewey, 1958 [1929], p. ix). Just as the form collapses

into a new form as the creative work emerges, if allowed to, so too experience collapses

into new experiences (Mandelbrot, 1999; Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 155). in this way these

facets emerge:

Each kat, in differentiating a part within the whole, adds to the face of

what went before while creating a suspense that is a demand for something

CO come. It is not a variation in single feature but a modulation of the

entire pewasive and univng qualitative substratum (Dewey, 1980 [1934],

p. 155).

As 1 have tried to emphasize throughout this analysis, Dewey identifies this

dynamic as the process of king dive to one's surmundings and to oneseIf, a process in

which our past experiences and expectations establish how or if we will use these

experiences. As Holder argues:

James and Dewey viewed thinking as a process emergent from and

continuousIy controlled by non-cognitive levels of experience, levels that

include experientiai structures such as emotion, habit, and imagination

(Holder, 1995, p. 1 1).

Dewey's claim for the sipificance of the aesthetic to learning underscores his

prernise that, without the aesthetic, understanding and knowledge become disabled and

impoverished. It is his focus on the direction of beliefs and values that allows Dewey to

delineate his aesthetic philosophy from an axiologicai perspective.

7.2 Suggested Areas for Further Research

What are the implications for educational research in Dewey's aesthetic

philosophy? Richard Shusterman argues that the need for the implementation of Dewy's

aesthetic is greater than ever (Shusteman, 1992, p. 45). He argues for the inclusion of

the aesthetic experience in the curriculum because of the dire state of education

(Shusterman, 1992). Given this, 1 wiil concIude with a series of qualitative research

questions that might be used to advance the delivery of worthwhüe education programs in

our schools.

Firstly we might explore whether there is any axiological worth in the inclusion of

aesthetic Iearning in the cu~culum. Can the reflexive nature of the aesthetic experience

influence our decision making either positively or negatively?

Secondly, can the aesthetic experience be used to test our values and assumptions.

If, as Dewey argues, the aesthetic experience serves as a complement to empiricd

experience, then we should be able to test this through stories and iIlustrations within the

classroom, We would rhen be in a better position to establish whether the aesthetic

experience can influence our abilities to manage our affairs in a more effective manner.

FinaIIy, we might be better able to examine the validity of Dewey's aesthetic

assumptions if we could demonstrate that students are cognitively ernpowered by having

aesthetic experiences. This merits further investigation.

In the time that it twk me to achieve my goal of finding a meaning in Dewey's

text, 1 dissdved one relationship, gained another, and set out on a new course in life.

Thus the knowiedge derived from my experiences has becorne reconstructive in my life,

in that as a Iearner 1 have becorne my own work of art-in-progress (Boydston, f 973, p. 80;

Schilpp, 1939, p, 45; Dewey, 2980 [1934], p. 246).

In this sarne way, the reciprocal event cafied my life, my experience, caused a

transformation to occur in me when things previously extema1 to rny world became

contextually relevant and significant. Art as Experience assurned a much greater

dimension than that which 1 had UiitiaiIy intended. My Me became the litmus test of

Dewey's theory of the aesthetic experience.

Simultaneously, the transformations and exchanges in my life made for an even

greater personal evolution as I went about leaming what Dewey's philosophy was al1

about. As Dewey put it: "Experience is rendered conscious by means of this fusion of old

rneanings and new situations that transfigures both [intol'a transformation that defines

imagination" (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 275).

As my creative imagination went to work to organize my thoughts2 into this

semblance of coherent new connections, intuition turned into insight and 1 gained some

understanding of what it was that Dewey meant. In the end my efforts also assurned the

possibilities for new expressions as the aesthetic "operates through the medium of

individual temperament and the peculiar, unique, incidents of an individuai life" (Schilpp,

1939, p.44).

' ~ o ~ e r Penrose (1939. p. 437) refen to this p m m s as the following: "by synapses becorning activated or deactivated through the growth or contraction of dendritic spines" a cognitive evolution cded perspicacious or creative thinking cornes into existence-what I prefer to cal1 the acquisition of insight, and which couid daim to be the corollary to the aesthetic experience.

Dewey's paradigrn affiims the individual's continuous evolution, and thus it

serves as a vehicle by which to affirm a multipIicity of possibilities for us. It also

continues to drive researchers in their continuous search for more acute expianations of

Dewey's meaninp, understandings through which the individual could share in the

aesthetic experience if given increased opportunities for doing do so.

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