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Art as Experience
Based on John Dewey's lectures on esthetics, delivered as the first William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1932, Art as Experience has grown to be considered internationally as the most distinguished work ever written by an American on the formal structure and characteristic effects of all the arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature.
371 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1934
About the author
John Dewey
824 books636 followersJohn Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey, along with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, is recognized as one of the founders of the philosophy of pragmatism and of functional psychology. He was a major representative of the progressive and progressive populist philosophies of schooling during the first half of the 20th century in the USA.
In 1859, educator and philosopher John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont. He earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University in 1884. After teaching philosophy at the University of Michigan, he joined the University of Chicago as head of a department in philosophy, psychology and education, influenced by Darwin, Freud and a scientific outlook. He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1904. Dewey's special concern was reform of education. He promoted learning by doing rather than learning by rote. Dewey conducted international research on education, winning many academic honors worldwide. Of more than 40 books, many of his most influential concerned education, including My Pedagogic Creed (1897), Democracy and Education (1902) and Experience and Education (1938). He was one of the founders of the philosophy of pragmatism. A humanitarian, he was a trustee of Jane Addams' Hull House, supported labor and racial equality, and was at one time active in campaigning for a third political party. He chaired a commission convened in Mexico City in 1937 inquiring into charges made against Leon Trotsky during the Moscow trials. Raised by an evangelical mother, Dewey had rejected faith by his 30s. Although he disavowed being a "militant" atheist, when his mother complained that he should be sending his children to Sunday school, he replied that he had gone to Sunday School enough to make up for any truancy by his children. As a pragmatist, he judged ideas by the results they produced. As a philosopher, he eschewed an allegiance to fixed and changeless dogma and superstition. He belonged to humanist societies, including the American Humanist Association. D. 1952.
In 1859, educator and philosopher John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont. He earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University in 1884. After teaching philosophy at the University of Michigan, he joined the University of Chicago as head of a department in philosophy, psychology and education, influenced by Darwin, Freud and a scientific outlook. He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1904. Dewey's special concern was reform of education. He promoted learning by doing rather than learning by rote. Dewey conducted international research on education, winning many academic honors worldwide. Of more than 40 books, many of his most influential concerned education, including My Pedagogic Creed (1897), Democracy and Education (1902) and Experience and Education (1938). He was one of the founders of the philosophy of pragmatism. A humanitarian, he was a trustee of Jane Addams' Hull House, supported labor and racial equality, and was at one time active in campaigning for a third political party. He chaired a commission convened in Mexico City in 1937 inquiring into charges made against Leon Trotsky during the Moscow trials. Raised by an evangelical mother, Dewey had rejected faith by his 30s. Although he disavowed being a "militant" atheist, when his mother complained that he should be sending his children to Sunday school, he replied that he had gone to Sunday School enough to make up for any truancy by his children. As a pragmatist, he judged ideas by the results they produced. As a philosopher, he eschewed an allegiance to fixed and changeless dogma and superstition. He belonged to humanist societies, including the American Humanist Association. D. 1952.
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May 11, 2024
Are there times in your life that are dull and dreary, a mechanical, mindless shuffling from one tedious task to another? According to American philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952), such moments in anybody’s life lack aesthetic quality. He writes in Art as Experience, “The enemies of the aesthetic are neither the practical nor the intellectual. They are the humdrum; slackness of loose ends; submission to convention in practice and intellectual procedure.”
We may ask, by Dewey’s reckoning, what will be needed to have an aesthetic experience? And when will an aesthetic experience be deemed artistic? As a way of answering these questions, we can take a look at the following example:
A woman is sitting on a bench in a city park. She listens to the children playing on a nearby playground, she feels the sun on her skin, she watches attentively as people walk to and fro. She feels connected to everyone and everything; life has such fullness and she will remember this afternoon in the park for a long time. Then, after about an hour of this very rich experience, she takes out her flute and starts playing. Since she is a world-class flutist, her wonderful music attracts a number of people who stand around and listen to her play. After playing several pieces, she nods her head and puts away her flute. The small crowd applauds and walks off.
Dewey would say the woman’s first experience of sitting in silence, fully present and awake to the richness of what life offers, has a certain completeness and aesthetic quality. Her second experience of playing the flute and sharing her music is an extension and intensification of the first experience. And because her playing incorporates a mastery and control of a particular technique (flute playing) and expression of emotions and feelings with others, it is a powerful artistic form of human communication.
Expanding on this example, a key concept for Dewey is ‘continuity’, that is, how all of life within the universe is part of a dynamic rhythm, forever alternating between disequilibrium and equilibrium, tension and resolution. And our human experience, including human making and crafting, is an outgrowth and amplification of these patterns of nature. Thus, for Dewey, viewing art and aesthetic experience as something set apart, restricted to museums, galleries, theaters and concert halls is a modern distortion.
Also, along the same lines, Dewey asks, “Why is there repulsion when the high achievements of fine art are brought into connection with common life, the life that we share with all living creatures? Why is life thought of as an affair of low appetite, or at its best a thing of gross sensation, and ready to sink from its best to the level of lust and harsh cruelty?” With such questions, we see how Dewey values continuity and integration of all aspects of our very human nature – mental, emotional, sensual, bodily, perceptive. He rebels against rigid dualism, setting spirit against flesh, mind against body. Applying this line of thinking to art and aesthetics, Dewey urges us to view human creativity as, ideally, involving the whole person. Unfortunately, he notes, such a holistic approach goes against the grain of our modern-day, highly-specialized, compartmentalized culture.
Yet again another aspect of continuity is linking an artist’s creation with the artist’s life as a whole. I recall reading about a court case where the judge asked great 19th century American painter James Abbott Whistler how he could charge so much for a painting since it took less than an hour to paint. Whistler replied, “Yes, but it also took a lifetime of experience.” It is this ‘lifetime of experience’ Dewey recognizes as being so important to artistic creation.
One area I find particularly fascinating is how Dewey defends abstract art against those thinkers and art critics who view abstract art as devoid of expression or overly intellectual. Dewey counters by citing how all art abstracts, for example, a painting portrays a three dimensional landscape in two dimensions. He also likens abstract art to a chemist’s abstraction of the material, visible elements of earth, water, fire and air into molecules and atoms.
Yet again another thought-provoking insight: Dewey notes how many people in our modern world are tormented since they lack the control and technical skill necessary to transform their powerful emotions and life experiences into a work of art in any form. One can only wonder to what extent vandalism and violent crimes would be reduced if men and women, young and old, were provided the training and opportunities to express themselves via music, literature and the arts.
On the universality of art and aesthetic experience, we read, “In the end, works of art are the only media of complete and unhindered communication that can occur in a world full of gulfs and walls that limit community of experience.” So, for Dewey, unlike politics and religion, subjects that have a tendency to cut people off from one another, painting and sculpture, music and dance, theater and literature and other forms of art provide us with a great opportunity to connect with other people and share our common humanity. Certainly, what we have going on with Goodreads is an excellent example of Dewey’s philosophy.
May 30, 2015
Some labyrinths are worth descending into just to get a glimpse of the Minotaur, even if you can't yet defeat him. Art as Experience is one of those. It will require several more descents to get the clearest picture of the Minotaur and more familiarization with the territory in order to be able to face it head on. But I have seen the face of the Minotaur, and it is beautiful and terrifying. This is my attempt to follow the threads back out of the maze.
Dewey's monstrous work - and I use this as a term of admiration, rather than derision - is daunting in scope, yet, at it's core, it is a simple argument: People change, their perception changes, so that every encounter with a potential "art" carries with it the possibility of an aesthetic experience. The imposition of one's preconceived theory on art interferes with one's direct interaction with art, since it imposes generic ideas on the mind that do not take into account both the artists and the viewers own experiences as influences in the interplay between creator and created, viewer and viewed.
This flies in the face of several philosophical traditions that tend to shoehorn art into their paradigms as an afterthought or even a necessary nuisance - philosophers seem to recognize that they ought to include art in their thought-system, but they don't really know where to place it on the map. From this springs the aesthetics-theory equivalent of Ptolemaic models of the geocentric universe, with their complicated, strained systems of deferents, equants, and epicycles.
Dewey's solution is to abandon philosophical preconception and begin from the ground up, defining the very word "experience" with some logical rigor, then examining whether or not that definition accurately communicates the difficult-to-quantify interplay between art and those who appreciate it (or not). His theory arises from art as an experience, the experience of production and enjoyment, rather than imposing his theory on art and aesthetic experience. He uses flowers as an analogy to show the difference between the mere appreciation of art and the understanding of art:
"Flowers can be enjoyed without knowing about the interactions of soil, air, moisture, and seeds of which they are the result. But they cannot be understood without taking just these interactions into account - and theory is a matter of understanding. Theory is concerned with discovering the nature of the production of works of art and of their enjoyment in perception."
Note that Dewey addresses not only the understanding of art, but the understanding of its production, as well. He gives importance to the conscious manipulation of materials during an artist's work (he is careful to identify "work" as more of what an artist does than of what an artist produces, though the word often works with both definitions simultaneously). While others work for efficiency, especially in the manufacturing and production sectors (I can vouch for this from my day job as a "Continuous Improvement Supervisor" - yes, that's my actual job title), the artist works to consciously form matter into a "work" of art that communicates meaning. I am struck particularly by Dewey's assertion that "It is possible to be efficient in action and yet not have a conscious experience." This is my experience in my day job. And this is why I love writing. Though writing is hard work, and believe me, it's a lot like real work, I am immersed when I write, fully conscious of the experience, and yet "lost" to the outside world. It's like making intellectual love with words and sentences - a very sensual, immediate experience, very much unlike the job I use to pay the bills.
That's not to say that someone can't produce something of great craftsmanship with efficiency. But Dewey is careful to indicate that the conscious work, bolstered by an emotional investment, something of the "heart" of the artist, again in an attempt to communicate meaning, is different than the work of creating a functional object. A chair is just a chair, unless the artist can somehow, in the chair's construction, communicate meaning beyond the mere utility of the chair, thus providing an aesthetic experience to the audience: "Without emotion, there may be craftsmanship, but not art"
Dewey also separates the art object from that which it represents. Once the artist has manipulated matter to create a work of art, it is its own thing, despite what it might represent. Thus, Dewey includes abstract art as fully capable of engendering aesthetic experiences, again depending on what the artist puts into it and what the audience brings to its viewing: "When someone complained to [Matisse] that she had never seen a woman who looked like the one in his painting, he replied: 'Madam, that is not a woman; that is a picture'."
The "unity" that occurs when the audience comes into dialogue with the artist through the work of art is what, ultimately, constitutes the aesthetic experience. The audience approaches the work of art with their own prejudices (Dewey uses the term "resistances") born of previous experience. The artist has also brought his or her prejudices, also born of previous experience, to the work(ing) of (the) art. In this interaction, the art itself acts as the device of communication between the two parties, and a sort of negotiation takes place. "There is unity only when the resistances create a suspense that is resolved through cooperative interaction of the opposed energies." The audience brings something of opposition to the table, and that opposition cannot always be resolved (take, for example, my utter loathing of The Catcher in the Rye which is loved by some of my close friends and many of those whose opinions on literature I hold in high regard). In the example of Matisse just quoted, one can surmise that either the prejudices of the woman speaking to him did not allow the art to "speak" to her, or that Matisse failed to create the art in such a way that the woman could understand. This is why the appreciation or rejection of art can be such a divisive discourse. Not everyone's communication style is compatible with everyone else's. As with speaking, so with art.
This leads to Dewey's criticism of criticism (!). This segment of Art as Experience is excellent in that it shows that any justification toward "objectivity" on the part of a critic is misplaced if the critic doesn't acknowledge his or her then current circumstances, which must inform the criticism. In other words, there is no absolutely true objectivity when it comes to critiques of art (or literature, etc), and such critiques can change over time, as the critics experience changes.
Now, I have merely scratched the surface. This is a work that demands to be read and re-read. I am shocked that this wasn't ever included in my studies as an undergraduate Humanities major. Perhaps the professors thought this should be reserved for graduate level studies and, if so, they might have been right. This book, like any labyrinth, is a challenge. But it is worth it, if only to get a glimpse at the horrible beauty of the Minotaur which, in my case, at least, is likely to go undefeated in this lifetime. I simply don't have enough years left to fully explore every nook and cranny of this monumental work, though what I've retained thus far will definitely inform all my own creative endeavors from now on.
Finally, I believe that the paragraph I quote below, by itself, speaks potential volumes. It might seem fairly straightforward, but, I believe, it contains subtle twists and turns that could inform ones study of art (in all its forms, whether visual art, statuary, architecture, dance, poetry, or music) for a lifetime.
"[The existence of art] is proof that man uses the materials and energies of nature with intent to expand his own life, and that he does so in accord with the structure of his organism - brain, sense-organs, and muscular system. Art is the living and concrete proof that man is capable of restoring consciously, and thus on the plane of meaning, the union of sense, impulse, and action characteristic of the live creature. The intervention of consciousness adds regulation, power of selection, and redisposition. Thus it varies the arts in ways without end. But its intervention also leads in time to the idea of art as a conscious idea - the greatest intellectual achievement in the history of humanity."
Go forth, Theseus. But please don't forget about the black sails, okay?
Dewey's monstrous work - and I use this as a term of admiration, rather than derision - is daunting in scope, yet, at it's core, it is a simple argument: People change, their perception changes, so that every encounter with a potential "art" carries with it the possibility of an aesthetic experience. The imposition of one's preconceived theory on art interferes with one's direct interaction with art, since it imposes generic ideas on the mind that do not take into account both the artists and the viewers own experiences as influences in the interplay between creator and created, viewer and viewed.
This flies in the face of several philosophical traditions that tend to shoehorn art into their paradigms as an afterthought or even a necessary nuisance - philosophers seem to recognize that they ought to include art in their thought-system, but they don't really know where to place it on the map. From this springs the aesthetics-theory equivalent of Ptolemaic models of the geocentric universe, with their complicated, strained systems of deferents, equants, and epicycles.
Dewey's solution is to abandon philosophical preconception and begin from the ground up, defining the very word "experience" with some logical rigor, then examining whether or not that definition accurately communicates the difficult-to-quantify interplay between art and those who appreciate it (or not). His theory arises from art as an experience, the experience of production and enjoyment, rather than imposing his theory on art and aesthetic experience. He uses flowers as an analogy to show the difference between the mere appreciation of art and the understanding of art:
"Flowers can be enjoyed without knowing about the interactions of soil, air, moisture, and seeds of which they are the result. But they cannot be understood without taking just these interactions into account - and theory is a matter of understanding. Theory is concerned with discovering the nature of the production of works of art and of their enjoyment in perception."
Note that Dewey addresses not only the understanding of art, but the understanding of its production, as well. He gives importance to the conscious manipulation of materials during an artist's work (he is careful to identify "work" as more of what an artist does than of what an artist produces, though the word often works with both definitions simultaneously). While others work for efficiency, especially in the manufacturing and production sectors (I can vouch for this from my day job as a "Continuous Improvement Supervisor" - yes, that's my actual job title), the artist works to consciously form matter into a "work" of art that communicates meaning. I am struck particularly by Dewey's assertion that "It is possible to be efficient in action and yet not have a conscious experience." This is my experience in my day job. And this is why I love writing. Though writing is hard work, and believe me, it's a lot like real work, I am immersed when I write, fully conscious of the experience, and yet "lost" to the outside world. It's like making intellectual love with words and sentences - a very sensual, immediate experience, very much unlike the job I use to pay the bills.
That's not to say that someone can't produce something of great craftsmanship with efficiency. But Dewey is careful to indicate that the conscious work, bolstered by an emotional investment, something of the "heart" of the artist, again in an attempt to communicate meaning, is different than the work of creating a functional object. A chair is just a chair, unless the artist can somehow, in the chair's construction, communicate meaning beyond the mere utility of the chair, thus providing an aesthetic experience to the audience: "Without emotion, there may be craftsmanship, but not art"
Dewey also separates the art object from that which it represents. Once the artist has manipulated matter to create a work of art, it is its own thing, despite what it might represent. Thus, Dewey includes abstract art as fully capable of engendering aesthetic experiences, again depending on what the artist puts into it and what the audience brings to its viewing: "When someone complained to [Matisse] that she had never seen a woman who looked like the one in his painting, he replied: 'Madam, that is not a woman; that is a picture'."
The "unity" that occurs when the audience comes into dialogue with the artist through the work of art is what, ultimately, constitutes the aesthetic experience. The audience approaches the work of art with their own prejudices (Dewey uses the term "resistances") born of previous experience. The artist has also brought his or her prejudices, also born of previous experience, to the work(ing) of (the) art. In this interaction, the art itself acts as the device of communication between the two parties, and a sort of negotiation takes place. "There is unity only when the resistances create a suspense that is resolved through cooperative interaction of the opposed energies." The audience brings something of opposition to the table, and that opposition cannot always be resolved (take, for example, my utter loathing of The Catcher in the Rye which is loved by some of my close friends and many of those whose opinions on literature I hold in high regard). In the example of Matisse just quoted, one can surmise that either the prejudices of the woman speaking to him did not allow the art to "speak" to her, or that Matisse failed to create the art in such a way that the woman could understand. This is why the appreciation or rejection of art can be such a divisive discourse. Not everyone's communication style is compatible with everyone else's. As with speaking, so with art.
This leads to Dewey's criticism of criticism (!). This segment of Art as Experience is excellent in that it shows that any justification toward "objectivity" on the part of a critic is misplaced if the critic doesn't acknowledge his or her then current circumstances, which must inform the criticism. In other words, there is no absolutely true objectivity when it comes to critiques of art (or literature, etc), and such critiques can change over time, as the critics experience changes.
Now, I have merely scratched the surface. This is a work that demands to be read and re-read. I am shocked that this wasn't ever included in my studies as an undergraduate Humanities major. Perhaps the professors thought this should be reserved for graduate level studies and, if so, they might have been right. This book, like any labyrinth, is a challenge. But it is worth it, if only to get a glimpse at the horrible beauty of the Minotaur which, in my case, at least, is likely to go undefeated in this lifetime. I simply don't have enough years left to fully explore every nook and cranny of this monumental work, though what I've retained thus far will definitely inform all my own creative endeavors from now on.
Finally, I believe that the paragraph I quote below, by itself, speaks potential volumes. It might seem fairly straightforward, but, I believe, it contains subtle twists and turns that could inform ones study of art (in all its forms, whether visual art, statuary, architecture, dance, poetry, or music) for a lifetime.
"[The existence of art] is proof that man uses the materials and energies of nature with intent to expand his own life, and that he does so in accord with the structure of his organism - brain, sense-organs, and muscular system. Art is the living and concrete proof that man is capable of restoring consciously, and thus on the plane of meaning, the union of sense, impulse, and action characteristic of the live creature. The intervention of consciousness adds regulation, power of selection, and redisposition. Thus it varies the arts in ways without end. But its intervention also leads in time to the idea of art as a conscious idea - the greatest intellectual achievement in the history of humanity."
Go forth, Theseus. But please don't forget about the black sails, okay?
April 13, 2021
210417: this is a later later later addition: in just reading deleuze, there is the idea that 'art' of any sort is not necessarily the uncovering of 'truth', as in heidegger, that this revealing is neither cause nor effect, but rather sort of 'side-effect', something essential to the project, yet not a goal, idea, sense, otherwise expressible. so perhaps learning 'pragmatics' of art is useful.....
this is a later later addition: have i mistaken the relative connotations of 'pragmatic' and 'practical'- well this is a poetic question. and perhaps i am thinking of 'pragmatic' as 'programmatic', that is, something of a scheme devised before application, before writing, with given goals and limits of the possible. for me, 'practical' is simply the 'practice' of writing, the doing, the words, which do not necessarily or instrumentally achieve a set goal or form or experience- that it is always a 'try' an 'essay'...
this is a later addition: i have now read some of dewey's poetry, not enough to review, but it is the exact sort i did not like studying- poetry that is self-consciously using language that is poetic, with rhyme schemes, stanzas, apostrophes, with sentiment rather dominant, but then as admitted i have not really read much poetry so maybe it is actually considered good... though in comparison with the translated Russian work just read from The Stray Dog Cabaret: A Book of Russian Poems in Petersburg it is very staid, very dull, very uninteresting...
250507, first review: this is an interesting, for me very different book on the arts. most of my reading on aesthetics has been continental phenomenologists, sartre, heidegger, merleau-ponty, so the ways of investigating this subject have been far more metaphysical. this is an american pragmatist writing. this is a historical document that seems even older than 1932 though it is a collection of lectures that year, where the emblematic works of art are primarily poetry...
i do not know whether 'pragmatism' has much to do with art. Pragmatism: A Guide for the Perplexed, 'practical' yes, in that any work requires close attention, awareness, alteration of this or that part of the object designed to encapsulate and offer an artistic experience. 'pragmatism' suggests in this word, to me, the effective-under-the-circumstances, as if there were some accepted limitation of the medium, some way this judgement, this correctness, can be measured, this possibility. 'practical' is a recognition that these aspects are malleable but specific to each experience, each work, and is rather the impossible, the unlimited, the intuitive, which any artist must discover in the process and each time no matter how similar the subject involved or means utilized...
but then, dewey is a 'pragmatist'. he starts with a metaphysics that proposes the 'live creature', the human, as both source and receiver of any work that pretends to the status of art, and gives argument why such experience is of human necessity. this is fine. this is not in dispute. then he talks of 'etherial things', 'having an experience', 'act of expression', 'expressive object', 'substance and form', 'natural history of form', 'organization of energies', 'common substance of arts', 'varied substance of arts', 'human contribution', 'challenge to philosophy', 'criticism and perception', 'art and civilization'... yes, there is a sense of great, perceptive, analytic thought, brought to bear on the experience of art, but i had some trouble shifting my mind to this inquisitive attitude. this work, this way, though he insists remains whole, an integration of subject and form, strikes me as too deliberately separated, dissected, simply in this logical dissertation...
this is partly, no doubt, that this is not the style of philosophy i find most congenial. this is not the attitude. though he is working at about the same time as heidegger's work there is a world of difference between their approaches, their assertions: though dewey insists he will be descriptive and not prescriptive, he cannot help in the examples he chooses, the approaches of both creators and critics, giving his idea of what counts as art. but this is not that poetry creates new words and thus worlds, not that art reveals any existential being, any truth, any clearing, such as is said in heidegger. this is very directly how the work of art 'works': goes from a to b, offers respite, offers something like correspondence truth, grows out of history, reflects cultures, and how we should evaluate somehow according to 'how it works'... this is pragmatism i guess...
this is good in its way, thus a three, but strikes me more as what a scientist might imagine best to address this most slippery topic of the arts: as a biologist determine your genus, your species, your population, as a chemist discover your elements, your phases, your combinations, as a physicist describe your movement, your interactions, your expressions- but this is art for a scientist. it seems rather naive. while it is best in critical papers of all disciplines, to pose as disinterested, academic, impersonal- i do not know if this is possible with the arts. for though i hear that dewey did write some poetry, not published in his lifetime, this entire book, this attempt to comprehend the experience of art conflicts with my experience- and should they ever deign to read it, probably that of my artist friends...
it does not help me that the art dewey uses most in his work is poetry, and this a tradition of which i am not much familiar. not the poetry heidegger tends to in his later work, not the poetry neitzsche uses to give his philosophy, but poetry that trends along the historical line through english 'greats'. but then merleau-ponty is heavily weighted to painting, particularly The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting cezanne, and neither thinker addresses abstract expressionism let alone pop art. (actually hd does deal with ab-x in an essay i read but forget the title) dewey does not, either, address that most synthetic art which involves so many other arts- and at least according to deleuze offers a new way of thinking- that seventh art of the cinema Gilles Deleuze: Cinema and Philosophy if there is any art which does best fit kant's organization of thought and so judgement, there is the cinema. dewey dismisses kant early on then in fact dismisses much continental philosophy on the arts. dewey is a pragmatist...
i read once a quote by poet charles bukowski (somewhere): 'the philosopher explains something simple in a very complex way, the poet explains something complex in a very simple way'- whether you like his work or not, he is on to something there...
this is a later later addition: have i mistaken the relative connotations of 'pragmatic' and 'practical'- well this is a poetic question. and perhaps i am thinking of 'pragmatic' as 'programmatic', that is, something of a scheme devised before application, before writing, with given goals and limits of the possible. for me, 'practical' is simply the 'practice' of writing, the doing, the words, which do not necessarily or instrumentally achieve a set goal or form or experience- that it is always a 'try' an 'essay'...
this is a later addition: i have now read some of dewey's poetry, not enough to review, but it is the exact sort i did not like studying- poetry that is self-consciously using language that is poetic, with rhyme schemes, stanzas, apostrophes, with sentiment rather dominant, but then as admitted i have not really read much poetry so maybe it is actually considered good... though in comparison with the translated Russian work just read from The Stray Dog Cabaret: A Book of Russian Poems in Petersburg it is very staid, very dull, very uninteresting...
250507, first review: this is an interesting, for me very different book on the arts. most of my reading on aesthetics has been continental phenomenologists, sartre, heidegger, merleau-ponty, so the ways of investigating this subject have been far more metaphysical. this is an american pragmatist writing. this is a historical document that seems even older than 1932 though it is a collection of lectures that year, where the emblematic works of art are primarily poetry...
i do not know whether 'pragmatism' has much to do with art. Pragmatism: A Guide for the Perplexed, 'practical' yes, in that any work requires close attention, awareness, alteration of this or that part of the object designed to encapsulate and offer an artistic experience. 'pragmatism' suggests in this word, to me, the effective-under-the-circumstances, as if there were some accepted limitation of the medium, some way this judgement, this correctness, can be measured, this possibility. 'practical' is a recognition that these aspects are malleable but specific to each experience, each work, and is rather the impossible, the unlimited, the intuitive, which any artist must discover in the process and each time no matter how similar the subject involved or means utilized...
but then, dewey is a 'pragmatist'. he starts with a metaphysics that proposes the 'live creature', the human, as both source and receiver of any work that pretends to the status of art, and gives argument why such experience is of human necessity. this is fine. this is not in dispute. then he talks of 'etherial things', 'having an experience', 'act of expression', 'expressive object', 'substance and form', 'natural history of form', 'organization of energies', 'common substance of arts', 'varied substance of arts', 'human contribution', 'challenge to philosophy', 'criticism and perception', 'art and civilization'... yes, there is a sense of great, perceptive, analytic thought, brought to bear on the experience of art, but i had some trouble shifting my mind to this inquisitive attitude. this work, this way, though he insists remains whole, an integration of subject and form, strikes me as too deliberately separated, dissected, simply in this logical dissertation...
this is partly, no doubt, that this is not the style of philosophy i find most congenial. this is not the attitude. though he is working at about the same time as heidegger's work there is a world of difference between their approaches, their assertions: though dewey insists he will be descriptive and not prescriptive, he cannot help in the examples he chooses, the approaches of both creators and critics, giving his idea of what counts as art. but this is not that poetry creates new words and thus worlds, not that art reveals any existential being, any truth, any clearing, such as is said in heidegger. this is very directly how the work of art 'works': goes from a to b, offers respite, offers something like correspondence truth, grows out of history, reflects cultures, and how we should evaluate somehow according to 'how it works'... this is pragmatism i guess...
this is good in its way, thus a three, but strikes me more as what a scientist might imagine best to address this most slippery topic of the arts: as a biologist determine your genus, your species, your population, as a chemist discover your elements, your phases, your combinations, as a physicist describe your movement, your interactions, your expressions- but this is art for a scientist. it seems rather naive. while it is best in critical papers of all disciplines, to pose as disinterested, academic, impersonal- i do not know if this is possible with the arts. for though i hear that dewey did write some poetry, not published in his lifetime, this entire book, this attempt to comprehend the experience of art conflicts with my experience- and should they ever deign to read it, probably that of my artist friends...
it does not help me that the art dewey uses most in his work is poetry, and this a tradition of which i am not much familiar. not the poetry heidegger tends to in his later work, not the poetry neitzsche uses to give his philosophy, but poetry that trends along the historical line through english 'greats'. but then merleau-ponty is heavily weighted to painting, particularly The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting cezanne, and neither thinker addresses abstract expressionism let alone pop art. (actually hd does deal with ab-x in an essay i read but forget the title) dewey does not, either, address that most synthetic art which involves so many other arts- and at least according to deleuze offers a new way of thinking- that seventh art of the cinema Gilles Deleuze: Cinema and Philosophy if there is any art which does best fit kant's organization of thought and so judgement, there is the cinema. dewey dismisses kant early on then in fact dismisses much continental philosophy on the arts. dewey is a pragmatist...
i read once a quote by poet charles bukowski (somewhere): 'the philosopher explains something simple in a very complex way, the poet explains something complex in a very simple way'- whether you like his work or not, he is on to something there...
April 24, 2014
The greatest book written by an American in the 20th Century. It's not just about aesthetics. He claims, in an even harder book to read, (I know, I know, but its worth the effort) Experience and Nature, that experience itself exhibits aesthetic characteristics (rhythm, flow, spatial and temporal relationships) and only when we understand this will we understand the nature of thinking, joy and fulfillment. This book goes with that insight and further elaborates on on the form of experience best suited for truly communicating with others--a form exhibited by art produced by many cultures at many times. This artful communication lies at the core of democratic community, the idea that animates all of Dewey's work. This book lies at the core of American philosophy and one of best gifts that 20th century America has given, unto this point, to humanity. Hyperbolic? Perhaps. But just try to read the book, and a few others by Dewey.
January 29, 2015
Below is a very glowing review. It's hard for me to recommend this book more. This review is fairly overwrought, because this book has given me some incredible insights, and it's made a big impact on how I see the world. It may be better for you to just stop reading, buy a copy, and struggle through it. (AAE is so dense that I was unable to read it whenever heating or air conditioning was on, because it wasn't possible for me to filter out the sound and read the book simulatenously.)
I went into this book with what I would consider a good aesthetic sense, an understanding of the fundamentals of creative processes, and a set of hunches about what it means to have a cultural zeitgeist, the meaning of a medium as a communal form, etc. Today, at risk of coming off as expressing misplaced epistemological confidence, I feel fairly confident in saying that I understand what art is, and how it functions, on a fundamental level. It has changed how I see the world in a serious ways, and to a degree that's very unusual.
Many works of philosophy progress by making an argument; the world can be split into X'es and Y'es, and each of these are Z, and so forth. Dewey follows no such pattern. Though his prose is dense (so, so dense), to read it feels almost like it's been divinely handed down. I don't want to make it sound like I failed to give it a properly skeptical reception, but his logic is so clear, and fits so neatly with the experiences of creating, experiencing and thinking, that it needs no further argument.
Art as Experience was published in 1934. Dewey starts the book with a shoutout to cartoons and 'jazzed music,' which he (quite controversially for the time) calls some of the most exciting mediums of his day. It's a curious fact that despite being revered in design schools, he's only rarely been followed up on in Aesthetic philosophy. Part of this is that he's hard to read, and his approach isn't typical. But mostly, I suspect that it's because once he's done speaking, there's not much more to say. There are passages that clearly anticipate pop art and conceptual art, and unlike many aesthetic philosophies from his time, his has been strengthened, not weakened, by their arrival.
I'm struggling to find a way to close this review. Dewey might say that I have an impulsion, but (as shown by the literary-review tropes above) not mastery enough of the medium to produce a work that expresses it. I say you should buy a copy of Art As Experience.
I went into this book with what I would consider a good aesthetic sense, an understanding of the fundamentals of creative processes, and a set of hunches about what it means to have a cultural zeitgeist, the meaning of a medium as a communal form, etc. Today, at risk of coming off as expressing misplaced epistemological confidence, I feel fairly confident in saying that I understand what art is, and how it functions, on a fundamental level. It has changed how I see the world in a serious ways, and to a degree that's very unusual.
Many works of philosophy progress by making an argument; the world can be split into X'es and Y'es, and each of these are Z, and so forth. Dewey follows no such pattern. Though his prose is dense (so, so dense), to read it feels almost like it's been divinely handed down. I don't want to make it sound like I failed to give it a properly skeptical reception, but his logic is so clear, and fits so neatly with the experiences of creating, experiencing and thinking, that it needs no further argument.
Art as Experience was published in 1934. Dewey starts the book with a shoutout to cartoons and 'jazzed music,' which he (quite controversially for the time) calls some of the most exciting mediums of his day. It's a curious fact that despite being revered in design schools, he's only rarely been followed up on in Aesthetic philosophy. Part of this is that he's hard to read, and his approach isn't typical. But mostly, I suspect that it's because once he's done speaking, there's not much more to say. There are passages that clearly anticipate pop art and conceptual art, and unlike many aesthetic philosophies from his time, his has been strengthened, not weakened, by their arrival.
I'm struggling to find a way to close this review. Dewey might say that I have an impulsion, but (as shown by the literary-review tropes above) not mastery enough of the medium to produce a work that expresses it. I say you should buy a copy of Art As Experience.
April 20, 2008
Perhaps this is anachronistic in our current mash-up culture (or maybe it isn't?), but I think writers should do some reading in aesthetic theory. Dewey's book, originally delivered as a series of lectures in 1932, is one I'd recommend, either to argue with or from which to seek inspiration. I first read this for a philosophy seminar and that kind of systematic studious reading is far different from how I read it now, which is to open it at random and read for a bit and then see where that takes me. Here's an example: "The determination of the mot juste, of the right incident in the right place, of exquisiteness of proportion, of the precise tone, hue, and shade that helps unify the whole while it defines the part, is accomplished by emotion. Not every emotion, however can do this work, but only one informed by material that is grasped and gathered. Emotion is informed and carried forward when it is spent directly in search for material and in giving it order, not when it is directly expended." (73) Something similar to ponder on any page you open. Here's one more: "Refusal to acknowledge the boundaries set by convention is the source of frequent denunciations of objects of art as immoral. But one of the functions of art is precisely to sap the moralistic timidity that causes the mind to shy away from some materials and refuse to admit them into the clear and purifying light of perceptive consciousness." (197) And speaking of anachronisms, unlike critical works published today, this book is not weighted down with endless footnotes or endnotes. What a fresh reading experience that is, aesthetically pleasing, you might say. Whether you want to weigh in to a philosophic debate on aesthetic theory, or just browse for inspiration on the function and form of artistic endeavors, you'll find something useful in Dewey's book. Besides, he's an American pragmatist, the perfect antidote if you've been reading too much French post-structuralist theory.
May 16, 2012
Every page is brilliance--seriously, I am not exaggerating. Dewey's insights and thoughts are as refreshing and relevant to us today as when the lecture was presented at Harvard (1932). As I read through the first few chapters, I found myself copying pages of each chapter to use in my classroom. He provides necessary theory to challenge and discuss the relevancy of education and function of English Education.
Nice thoughts:
"The moment of passage from disturbance into harmony is that of intense life" (16).
"Most European museums are, among other things, memorials of the rise of nationalism and imperialism" (7). Yikes..Aligns a bit with Edward Said, here.
"The idea that the artist does not think as intently and penetratingly as a scientific inquirer is absurd" (47).
I have to admit, that I would never pick this book randomly off the shelf. It is on my reading list for a grad course; however, as I read the fist first chapters, I couldn't help wondering why I didn't know more about this "local" genius (significant professor at UofC and their lab school)
Nice thoughts:
"The moment of passage from disturbance into harmony is that of intense life" (16).
"Most European museums are, among other things, memorials of the rise of nationalism and imperialism" (7). Yikes..Aligns a bit with Edward Said, here.
"The idea that the artist does not think as intently and penetratingly as a scientific inquirer is absurd" (47).
I have to admit, that I would never pick this book randomly off the shelf. It is on my reading list for a grad course; however, as I read the fist first chapters, I couldn't help wondering why I didn't know more about this "local" genius (significant professor at UofC and their lab school)
April 15, 2015
Masterpiece. Thanks John Dewey for writing this book, even more because it was written in 1934.
This should be obligatory read for anyone studying/researching Art Communication. Before the domain of Communication Sciences even existed, before Emotion Studies were seriously accepted by the academy, Dewey has written a profound and dense work on the subject of Art Experience. It was done from a philosophical approach, however Dewey, clearly influence by his Pragmatics companion, William James, the father of Functional Psychology, does a magnificent cognitive analysis of the relation between the Art Work and the Subject Receptor. Dewey never refrains himself to talk about emotion, to go in depth in the analysis of the experiential human construct.
To fully understand how this book came to exist, it's necessary to go back and research Pragmatism, a movement founded by Dewey, James and Peirce.
The book is dense, it takes time to read, but it rewards yo, the more you invest in it.
This should be obligatory read for anyone studying/researching Art Communication. Before the domain of Communication Sciences even existed, before Emotion Studies were seriously accepted by the academy, Dewey has written a profound and dense work on the subject of Art Experience. It was done from a philosophical approach, however Dewey, clearly influence by his Pragmatics companion, William James, the father of Functional Psychology, does a magnificent cognitive analysis of the relation between the Art Work and the Subject Receptor. Dewey never refrains himself to talk about emotion, to go in depth in the analysis of the experiential human construct.
To fully understand how this book came to exist, it's necessary to go back and research Pragmatism, a movement founded by Dewey, James and Peirce.
The book is dense, it takes time to read, but it rewards yo, the more you invest in it.
December 2, 2018
This is the most dense book I've read so far. Every page on this book provides rich perspectives on what we perceive as art, aesthetics and experience - each of them calling for a sound discussion. I particularly enjoyed the sections where Dewey defines what an experience is and at the end goes onto share his thoughts on criticism of art. This would be a great read for anyone who's curious about learning why they experience what they experience in the way they experience (in my opinion not limited to art or aesthetics).
I took a long time to complete this book mainly because of the cognitive load that each line put on me :-). However I'm not sure if Dewey could've simplified the concepts any further. I'm certain I'm only half way in truly understanding every bit of what he wrote and will certainly read the book again after a few years to learn what changed in my understanding of his teachings.
I took a long time to complete this book mainly because of the cognitive load that each line put on me :-). However I'm not sure if Dewey could've simplified the concepts any further. I'm certain I'm only half way in truly understanding every bit of what he wrote and will certainly read the book again after a few years to learn what changed in my understanding of his teachings.
June 6, 2022
ترجمهاش سختخوان و گاهی مبهم هست هر چند نویسنده سرشناس و محتوای(زبان اصلی) جذابی دارد.
June 27, 2023
(The following has been written under a flurry of inspiration and admiration, and since my understanding of Dewey’s book is a mixture of fuller appreciation and intuitive “nods”, this summary might be found lacking. I would be very grateful indeed, if the reader of this review would like to correct me upon points or point out crucial omissions.)
I can sit comfortably in the company of Dewey. His voice is calm, his manners amiable, and he talks at length on the most evocative topics with the air of a humble connoisseur. He does not rush, nor does he hastily drop a non sequitur, but he weaves a fine tale which showcases both an enviable perspicacity and rigorous consistency, which is—mirabile dictu!—not marred by sullen intractability or hostile scorn towards nay-sayers.
Dewey does not patronise or popularise: he demands your attention through his composure, knowledge and the evident understanding of the aesthetic. While literature is full of beautiful passages and voices on the matter of art, Dewey stands alone in how damnably well he brings his message across, pregnant with powerful significance.
In Art as Experience, Dewey sets forth by stating, that various aesthetic theories and attitudes have alienated art from the common experience—not unlike the fate of spirituality—which comes with inevitable consequences such as the focus on a restricted set of qualia or artistic elements or emaciating frameworks of a priori judgement. Now, one might puff their cheeks in acrid anticipation: “Right, so here’s another airhead who wants everyone to enjoy whatever they wish and is flippantly ready to consign aesthetics into the cesspool of subjectivism.” Not so. Dewey definitely wants to point out that art, even the so-called difficult art, is actually more accessible than what it was (or is) cracked out to be, but he does not say this at the cost of making “everything lawful”, to pilfer a Dostoyevskian phrase. He does not downplay art or skill or experience. His great feat is to embed art into the domain of aesthetic experience, which is a mode of experience; the latter being common to every live creature.
By taking this as his point of departure, Dewey manages to build a magnificent edifice of academic rigour and aesthetic brilliance (obviously not using the words “academic” and “aesthetic” here in the way Dewey uses them in his book). The experience of the live creature is grounded on its interaction with the environment—this is something that cannot be escaped, and Dewey hammers home quite well all the minutiae on which this interaction takes place from bodily functions to fluctuating levels of energy. Obvious stuff, but so very easy to forget in high-flown matters.
Now, this interaction takes place in space-time, which has the consequence that nothing should be thought of as happening solely in space or solely in time. This is a powerful weapon against many theories that either consciously or unconsciously seem to acknowledge such a notion—such as treating music only as something happening in time, or treating pictures as something that can be taken in all at once. This interaction is also a constant source of subtle interests that impel men to do whatever their unconscious or conscious or subconscious self does��a fine example for this being that even the sheer act of seeing has the concomitant of a desire to see. This is especially important when Dewey comes to talk about Kant’s “contemplation” and “disinterestedness”, but it also crucial to the understanding of similarities and differencies between different “modes” such as scientific thinking and artistic expression, neither of which is free from the “shinies” after which we run, whatever the degree of rigour exercised.
This interaction can lead to a desire to express oneself. Here Dewey makes a very interesting differentiation: expression is not the same as a discharge of emotion. If someone expresses a feeling, it is done implicitly, say, through words. It is not expressed like the Greek women purportedly expressed their sorrow. This expression of a feeling is something that comes about through an inner impulsion that is propelled out of the expressor through turmoil, and then it begins to take shape through a medium. Not directly, through a medium. Art, according to Dewey, is always expression, and thus it always takes place through a medium. This means that when the artist is creating art, whatever the medium, they use their personal feelings and experiences that have accumulated over time to form and shape the raw material at hand—and this laborious compromise, this elimination of superfluities in accordance with the “vision” or “instinct” or “inspiration” then takes the form of an artwork.
But it is not a work of art! This is another fine, subtle difference Dewey makes: the work of art is never an object. For as Dewey speaks of interaction, he inevitably stresses both doing and undergoing, and art, being not beyond the pale of experience, cannot escape this in any way. The work of art is the act of perceiving the artwork: literally the work that is needed for the aesthetic experience to take place.
In the work of art, the perceiver perceives the artwork and judges it according to the organisation of its media, ultimately deeming whether the perceived intention has been achieved in harmony with the raw material. First of all, the intention principle is at play: if something that seems man-made appears later to be a natural artifact, for Dewey it becomes a curiosity in light of the information. There is no need to be able to know a priori whether there is a specific intention or not—the views can be corrected later on, no rush. Secondly, the perception needs to be of a certain kind in order to fulfill the criteria of Dewey’s “aesthetic experience”, and before I launch into a description of this beautiful concept, let me just state one thing: Dewey does not insist that this experience is the dog’s bollocks. He is describing a type of experience, he is not forcing down a standard down anyone’s throat. This approach is the best one there is, since the beauty and even usefulness of the concept shines through best when it is not served to you under duress.
Aesthetic experience, then. What is it? It is a mode of experience, in which a live creature perceives an intentional artwork and progresses through consummative steps towards an even greater consummation—something that never can truly end. This is a bit abstract, but it means that aesthetic experience is not simply looking at a painting with quick curiosity: it is a progression of steps, where every step (ideally) includes the previous step within it, always working towards a fuller appreciation of the artwork as a whole. For someone like me, who is quick to catch details and can find “shinies” wherever he goes, this is an essential reminder not to overlook the relations and the rhythm of the composition (whether a piece of music, painting, poem, building etc.)—the whole should not be left outside at the expense of details. Through these consummative steps, one begins to form a judgement upon the success of the work in expressing what it seems to express.
But this “seems to express” does not mean, for Dewey, that the perceiver is merely imagining things or simply associates stuff according to their own peculiar whims. First of all, Dewey is loth to employ the term “association” due to the idea that, in association, the engendered ideas are somehow separate from what caused them. The artwork brings about those ideas and emotions through itself, not simply through a whim of the brain—it is because of the artwork that the person received the ideas. Dewey takes a bold step to unite the perceivers of art with the artist: the expressed things in artworks are there in actuality, not simply by “association”. Art is pure communication, since the medium from which art has been made has been shaped in accordance with the emotional impulsions and turmoil of the artist. These things are brought to the perceiver, who then can detect them through aesthetic experience. (I cannot express how powerful this idea is for me, who finds it very easy to succumb to the confines of his own body, mind and soul from time to time.)
But now it needs to be said that aesthetic experience is not intellectual, nor is it a verbalisation of one’s admiration or even a verbalisation of the impressions one has received from the artwork. Aesthetic experience is immediate. This does not mean that Dewey frowns upon the intellectual side of art or these wordings: they help the intuition to detect things in the upcoming aesthetic experiences, acting as sort of signposts towards a more meaningful consummation. But to be there, perceiving the artwork, and—like I sometimes do—forming finely-wrought sentences inside one’s head about a stellar painting means that the immediacy is lost, and more layers are added between the perceiver and the artwork. This idea, this idea of immediate consummative steps is ineffably brilliant: it does away with the mocking idea that “being present” by an artwork is just dumbly staring at it or taking it in without any effort, simply for pleasure. Dewey is incisive enough to point out that a work of art (mind, not an artwork) is always an absolutely unique experience into which we all arrive with our unique accumulations of experiences, thoughts, whims and itches. These cannot be avoided, and should not be avoided, but it does not mean that consummation cannot be achieved through admirative silence.
The examples that are instances throughout the book show that the author is no charlatan or an abstracted thinker. The way he speaks of Cézanne and van Gogh, Keats and Browning, Shakespeare and Milton, Dante, Beethoven et cetera, shows the reader that Dewey has had his fair share of meaningful aesthetic experience as well as intellectual stimulation from the works of the artists he admires. Not only is this book an inimitable tour de force of philosophy, it also teaches the reader through personal example, just like Socrates. I for one really would not mind reading a compendium of critical reviews or even personal musings of Dewey the individual.
Nor does Dewey the philosophers stop at the individual. He already has averred that art is pure communication that enables people to commune through expressed feelings, and he has also pointed out the perks of such enhancements of experience and imagination. After all, art is an enhancement of experience, the added direction or rhythm that seeks to consummate itself—this is how it differs from normal experience. And what beautiful benefits does this not hold? But as the drab everyday experience, which Dewey terms as the prime motivation towards seeking such enhancement, is made better and imagination thrives more and more, more understanding and moral good is created on a societal level. Mind—moral good is not created through Tolstoian ideas of edification through art: the sheer enhancement of experience and imagination is by definition morally edifying. Thus the aesthetic experience is even more broadly wholesome, and what’s even more significant, it allows us to connect with long past civilisations with actual knowledge. It is not through historical accounts that we know everything: it is through the feelings and experiences that the past civilisations have left behind in pure form. Through art, their ways of experiencing the world can be integrated into ours—precisely how we form friendships not through propositions but through sympathy.
There is so much that could be said, yet I find it difficult to construct the review to add everything here, without turning it into a difficult jumble. I could have said more about the more objective qualities in aesthetic experience (debunking the idea that art is just subjective), the impossibility of copying in art, the conditions of the emergence of new art and new ways of creating experience (a powerful statement against eccentricity and obscurantism), how the juxtaposition of object and subject is done away with in aesthetic experience, what constitutes proper criticism (guiding the senses of the perceiver, not focusing on the ideological / intellectual side of things), the absolutely necessary concept of rhythm… I suppose I’ll reserve those topics for later, to be whispered gently in honeyed words into the sleeping ear of my dear lady. So I must content myself with one more, rather menacing mention: The humanity’s alienation from art, whatever the cause, has grave consequences for Dewey, for he states: “As long as art is the beauty parlor of civilization, neither art nor civilization is secure.”
What might seem quaintly fay or turgid in my writing is fortunately much more beautifully expressed by Dewey, a Messiah of beauty. While he would gainsay the usefulness of the concept of beauty due to its ambiguity, I am more free to use it in my encomia: Dewey is just the kind of master who helps us slow down, stop and behold the world in glorious fire.
I can sit comfortably in the company of Dewey. His voice is calm, his manners amiable, and he talks at length on the most evocative topics with the air of a humble connoisseur. He does not rush, nor does he hastily drop a non sequitur, but he weaves a fine tale which showcases both an enviable perspicacity and rigorous consistency, which is—mirabile dictu!—not marred by sullen intractability or hostile scorn towards nay-sayers.
Dewey does not patronise or popularise: he demands your attention through his composure, knowledge and the evident understanding of the aesthetic. While literature is full of beautiful passages and voices on the matter of art, Dewey stands alone in how damnably well he brings his message across, pregnant with powerful significance.
In Art as Experience, Dewey sets forth by stating, that various aesthetic theories and attitudes have alienated art from the common experience—not unlike the fate of spirituality—which comes with inevitable consequences such as the focus on a restricted set of qualia or artistic elements or emaciating frameworks of a priori judgement. Now, one might puff their cheeks in acrid anticipation: “Right, so here’s another airhead who wants everyone to enjoy whatever they wish and is flippantly ready to consign aesthetics into the cesspool of subjectivism.” Not so. Dewey definitely wants to point out that art, even the so-called difficult art, is actually more accessible than what it was (or is) cracked out to be, but he does not say this at the cost of making “everything lawful”, to pilfer a Dostoyevskian phrase. He does not downplay art or skill or experience. His great feat is to embed art into the domain of aesthetic experience, which is a mode of experience; the latter being common to every live creature.
By taking this as his point of departure, Dewey manages to build a magnificent edifice of academic rigour and aesthetic brilliance (obviously not using the words “academic” and “aesthetic” here in the way Dewey uses them in his book). The experience of the live creature is grounded on its interaction with the environment—this is something that cannot be escaped, and Dewey hammers home quite well all the minutiae on which this interaction takes place from bodily functions to fluctuating levels of energy. Obvious stuff, but so very easy to forget in high-flown matters.
Now, this interaction takes place in space-time, which has the consequence that nothing should be thought of as happening solely in space or solely in time. This is a powerful weapon against many theories that either consciously or unconsciously seem to acknowledge such a notion—such as treating music only as something happening in time, or treating pictures as something that can be taken in all at once. This interaction is also a constant source of subtle interests that impel men to do whatever their unconscious or conscious or subconscious self does��a fine example for this being that even the sheer act of seeing has the concomitant of a desire to see. This is especially important when Dewey comes to talk about Kant’s “contemplation” and “disinterestedness”, but it also crucial to the understanding of similarities and differencies between different “modes” such as scientific thinking and artistic expression, neither of which is free from the “shinies” after which we run, whatever the degree of rigour exercised.
This interaction can lead to a desire to express oneself. Here Dewey makes a very interesting differentiation: expression is not the same as a discharge of emotion. If someone expresses a feeling, it is done implicitly, say, through words. It is not expressed like the Greek women purportedly expressed their sorrow. This expression of a feeling is something that comes about through an inner impulsion that is propelled out of the expressor through turmoil, and then it begins to take shape through a medium. Not directly, through a medium. Art, according to Dewey, is always expression, and thus it always takes place through a medium. This means that when the artist is creating art, whatever the medium, they use their personal feelings and experiences that have accumulated over time to form and shape the raw material at hand—and this laborious compromise, this elimination of superfluities in accordance with the “vision” or “instinct” or “inspiration” then takes the form of an artwork.
But it is not a work of art! This is another fine, subtle difference Dewey makes: the work of art is never an object. For as Dewey speaks of interaction, he inevitably stresses both doing and undergoing, and art, being not beyond the pale of experience, cannot escape this in any way. The work of art is the act of perceiving the artwork: literally the work that is needed for the aesthetic experience to take place.
In the work of art, the perceiver perceives the artwork and judges it according to the organisation of its media, ultimately deeming whether the perceived intention has been achieved in harmony with the raw material. First of all, the intention principle is at play: if something that seems man-made appears later to be a natural artifact, for Dewey it becomes a curiosity in light of the information. There is no need to be able to know a priori whether there is a specific intention or not—the views can be corrected later on, no rush. Secondly, the perception needs to be of a certain kind in order to fulfill the criteria of Dewey’s “aesthetic experience”, and before I launch into a description of this beautiful concept, let me just state one thing: Dewey does not insist that this experience is the dog’s bollocks. He is describing a type of experience, he is not forcing down a standard down anyone’s throat. This approach is the best one there is, since the beauty and even usefulness of the concept shines through best when it is not served to you under duress.
Aesthetic experience, then. What is it? It is a mode of experience, in which a live creature perceives an intentional artwork and progresses through consummative steps towards an even greater consummation—something that never can truly end. This is a bit abstract, but it means that aesthetic experience is not simply looking at a painting with quick curiosity: it is a progression of steps, where every step (ideally) includes the previous step within it, always working towards a fuller appreciation of the artwork as a whole. For someone like me, who is quick to catch details and can find “shinies” wherever he goes, this is an essential reminder not to overlook the relations and the rhythm of the composition (whether a piece of music, painting, poem, building etc.)—the whole should not be left outside at the expense of details. Through these consummative steps, one begins to form a judgement upon the success of the work in expressing what it seems to express.
But this “seems to express” does not mean, for Dewey, that the perceiver is merely imagining things or simply associates stuff according to their own peculiar whims. First of all, Dewey is loth to employ the term “association” due to the idea that, in association, the engendered ideas are somehow separate from what caused them. The artwork brings about those ideas and emotions through itself, not simply through a whim of the brain—it is because of the artwork that the person received the ideas. Dewey takes a bold step to unite the perceivers of art with the artist: the expressed things in artworks are there in actuality, not simply by “association”. Art is pure communication, since the medium from which art has been made has been shaped in accordance with the emotional impulsions and turmoil of the artist. These things are brought to the perceiver, who then can detect them through aesthetic experience. (I cannot express how powerful this idea is for me, who finds it very easy to succumb to the confines of his own body, mind and soul from time to time.)
But now it needs to be said that aesthetic experience is not intellectual, nor is it a verbalisation of one’s admiration or even a verbalisation of the impressions one has received from the artwork. Aesthetic experience is immediate. This does not mean that Dewey frowns upon the intellectual side of art or these wordings: they help the intuition to detect things in the upcoming aesthetic experiences, acting as sort of signposts towards a more meaningful consummation. But to be there, perceiving the artwork, and—like I sometimes do—forming finely-wrought sentences inside one’s head about a stellar painting means that the immediacy is lost, and more layers are added between the perceiver and the artwork. This idea, this idea of immediate consummative steps is ineffably brilliant: it does away with the mocking idea that “being present” by an artwork is just dumbly staring at it or taking it in without any effort, simply for pleasure. Dewey is incisive enough to point out that a work of art (mind, not an artwork) is always an absolutely unique experience into which we all arrive with our unique accumulations of experiences, thoughts, whims and itches. These cannot be avoided, and should not be avoided, but it does not mean that consummation cannot be achieved through admirative silence.
The examples that are instances throughout the book show that the author is no charlatan or an abstracted thinker. The way he speaks of Cézanne and van Gogh, Keats and Browning, Shakespeare and Milton, Dante, Beethoven et cetera, shows the reader that Dewey has had his fair share of meaningful aesthetic experience as well as intellectual stimulation from the works of the artists he admires. Not only is this book an inimitable tour de force of philosophy, it also teaches the reader through personal example, just like Socrates. I for one really would not mind reading a compendium of critical reviews or even personal musings of Dewey the individual.
Nor does Dewey the philosophers stop at the individual. He already has averred that art is pure communication that enables people to commune through expressed feelings, and he has also pointed out the perks of such enhancements of experience and imagination. After all, art is an enhancement of experience, the added direction or rhythm that seeks to consummate itself—this is how it differs from normal experience. And what beautiful benefits does this not hold? But as the drab everyday experience, which Dewey terms as the prime motivation towards seeking such enhancement, is made better and imagination thrives more and more, more understanding and moral good is created on a societal level. Mind—moral good is not created through Tolstoian ideas of edification through art: the sheer enhancement of experience and imagination is by definition morally edifying. Thus the aesthetic experience is even more broadly wholesome, and what’s even more significant, it allows us to connect with long past civilisations with actual knowledge. It is not through historical accounts that we know everything: it is through the feelings and experiences that the past civilisations have left behind in pure form. Through art, their ways of experiencing the world can be integrated into ours—precisely how we form friendships not through propositions but through sympathy.
There is so much that could be said, yet I find it difficult to construct the review to add everything here, without turning it into a difficult jumble. I could have said more about the more objective qualities in aesthetic experience (debunking the idea that art is just subjective), the impossibility of copying in art, the conditions of the emergence of new art and new ways of creating experience (a powerful statement against eccentricity and obscurantism), how the juxtaposition of object and subject is done away with in aesthetic experience, what constitutes proper criticism (guiding the senses of the perceiver, not focusing on the ideological / intellectual side of things), the absolutely necessary concept of rhythm… I suppose I’ll reserve those topics for later, to be whispered gently in honeyed words into the sleeping ear of my dear lady. So I must content myself with one more, rather menacing mention: The humanity’s alienation from art, whatever the cause, has grave consequences for Dewey, for he states: “As long as art is the beauty parlor of civilization, neither art nor civilization is secure.”
What might seem quaintly fay or turgid in my writing is fortunately much more beautifully expressed by Dewey, a Messiah of beauty. While he would gainsay the usefulness of the concept of beauty due to its ambiguity, I am more free to use it in my encomia: Dewey is just the kind of master who helps us slow down, stop and behold the world in glorious fire.
March 6, 2017
Dense. I love reading through this, taking time and careful reflection.
June 15, 2019
عجزت عن إتمامه.. ربما أعود إليه في وقت أكون فيه أكثر اس��عدادا له.
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بعد محاولة أولي مع هذا الكتاب قررت العودة له من جديد، وتأتي العودة _ بالصدفة _ بعد مرور عام كامل علي المرة الاولي.الكتاب صعب وممل جدا فعلا، جون ديوي تحدث في 600 صفحة حديثا كان في الإمكان اختصاره في 100 صفحة وربما أقل.
الفن مخلوق حي، ناشيء طبيعي عن بيئة وفنان يشعر ببيئته المحيطة به، وكان الفن في أول نشأته مرتبطا بأغراض بعيدة تماما عن غرض التذوق الجمالي، لكن الفن تدريجيا اختلف موقعه في المجتمع، تخلي عن خدمة الدين، ثم انفكت العلاقة بينهخ وبين الأغراض الوظيفية الاجتماعية، وأصبح مكانه محصور بين قاعات العرض والمتاحف، وأصبح غرضه الوحيد هو الغرض الجمالي فقط.
الفنان يمارس التفكير بل يري المؤلف أن الفنان يفكر أكثر مما يفكر العالم، فإدراك العلاقات بين الأشكال والألوان علي النحو الذي يمارسه الفنان يعتبر مهارة عقلية عليا.
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بعد محاولة أولي مع هذا الكتاب قررت العودة له من جديد، وتأتي العودة _ بالصدفة _ بعد مرور عام كامل علي المرة الاولي.الكتاب صعب وممل جدا فعلا، جون ديوي تحدث في 600 صفحة حديثا كان في الإمكان اختصاره في 100 صفحة وربما أقل.
الفن مخلوق حي، ناشيء طبيعي عن بيئة وفنان يشعر ببيئته المحيطة به، وكان الفن في أول نشأته مرتبطا بأغراض بعيدة تماما عن غرض التذوق الجمالي، لكن الفن تدريجيا اختلف موقعه في المجتمع، تخلي عن خدمة الدين، ثم انفكت العلاقة بينهخ وبين الأغراض الوظيفية الاجتماعية، وأصبح مكانه محصور بين قاعات العرض والمتاحف، وأصبح غرضه الوحيد هو الغرض الجمالي فقط.
الفنان يمارس التفكير بل يري المؤلف أن الفنان يفكر أكثر مما يفكر العالم، فإدراك العلاقات بين الأشكال والألوان علي النحو الذي يمارسه الفنان يعتبر مهارة عقلية عليا.
June 6, 2014
Super verbose to the point where he'd spend pages to get to a single point. The author's writing style was also very dry and hard to wrap my head around. I had to read this for a class, and I was reading it early and I'm glad I did because I could not be able to finish this quickly. I often could only read a few pages a day and call it major progress. If I wasn't reading this for a class, I'd never ever read this book and do not recommend it.
June 28, 2017
I slogged through this text, but after reading am thoroughly entrenched in Dewey's philosophy and theory about art as experience. Her writes in a manner that is accessible, but this material is dense and not exactly riveting. If you are reading Dewey with an academic or theoretical framework in mind, then you won't be disappointed.
November 5, 2008
"Mountain peaks do not float unsupported; they do not even just rest upon the surface. The ARE the earth in one of its manifest operations."
August 21, 2022
Dewey nicely ties art to everyday life. But he muddies evolution with a desire for integration, adopting a soft teleology with art as intended source of fulfillment.
September 24, 2020
Dewey, el gran filósofo del pragmatismo americano, debería ser más tenido en cuenta las carreras de arte; su claridad, su lucidez y su capacidad para demostrar las teorías en una variedad inmensa de experiencias dispares, como aquella que sentimos al leer un poema, al escuchar una canción y hasta aquellas más fútiles e insignificantes como el placer que sentimos luego de hacer nuestra cama u ordenar nuestro cuarto, o luego de haber ejecutado satisfactoriamente alguna tarea manual, experiencias anodinas que los grandes filósofos de la estética han ignorado por estar muy concentrados en los Rembrandt, Beethoven, Velázquez, Stravinsky o Picasso; es un lujo considerando que, por regla general, lo que se escribe en el terreno de la estética y filosofía del arte tiende a ser oscuro e impenetrable, destinado a un público elegido que posee los códigos culturales para hacerse paso en sus arduos senderos terminológicos y densa abstracción ininteligible. Quizás necesitamos un poco del pragmatismo de Dewey para repensar el arte contemporáneo hoy más allá de los franceses posmodernos y considerar que la misma sensibilidad que actúa en los grandes nombres del arte y la música de la historia de la humanidad, también actúa en cada uno de nosotros, simples mortales, día tras día.
December 25, 2019
I believe it is a highly over-appreciated work. Dewey’s optimism (sometimes even naivety) about and appreciation of “science” and “scientific approach” and technology, his limited/biased review of philosophy literature, and reduction of definition of art to western art and most of the times only painting, cannot be easily ignored. The middle chapters are specifically more like an average art critic’s book!
November 16, 2023
From the guy who brought you "nothing from the past matters" and "religion is for babies, and particularly stupid babies at that" comes "blah blah blah art I guess." If you're looking for endless, endless pap, contradictory bloviate pseudo-discourse that inspires you never to look at or think about art again, this is the life-wasting sack of piffle for you. I would dearly love to see the attendance records as this series of talks progressed. But if you are choosing to read Dewey, surely you know what to expect.
July 24, 2018
I was always going to give this book 5 stars from reading bits and pieces before actually now finally reading it front to back. It is an astounding accomplishment in aesthetic theory written with two feet placed firmly on the ground, in the true pragmatist style that Dewey involved himself with. In summation, I feel, it takes or removes the magic from art and leaves only the essence, and essence is all that is ever needed to make and/or view art.
August 26, 2022
Zeer scherpe en genuanceerde visie op kunst en de plaats die kunst inneemt of zou kunnen innemen in het leven. Bovendien ook leesbaar, zonder aan doortastendheid in te boeten. Bijna honderd jaar later nog zeer relevant vind ik.
March 13, 2024
I read this for the first time years ago (7 years, I can't believe it!) and remember loving it, but have trouble recollecting the details of what in it struck me. I’ve reread some of its sections recently and would like to mark down my thoughts now. Dewey’s central idea is that art is continuous with life because the capacity an artist uses in making a work of art is just an instance of the basic capacity we humans bring into everyday experience of figuring out what has happened to us and what we can do. This basic capacity can be understood in terms of our impulse to tell narratives.
According to Dewey, when our consciousness comes to be organized as episodes of experience, these episodes involve the following structure: a setting, a tension, and a resolution of this tension. Artists do the same. Whether it is music, painting, or literature, there is some tension that begs for resolution, and this resolution is provided. Dewey’s picture makes for a nice thought: we are artists of our experiences.
I find his claim that we have this basic narrativizing impulse compelling insofar as all animals, to survive, must undertake actions vital to their needs. Over the duration of an undertaking, it is never guaranteed that the desired outcome will be achieved. That’s the tension. It is resolved by achieving that outcome, or not and making sense of the world or self anew in light of this violation of expectation or effort.
I think the truth in the idea that we are artists over our everyday experiences is very delicate to extract. Dewey presents it too simply, although it is great that he presents it at all (he precedes Sartre and I can imagine partly inherits this from Nietzsche). In making art, we are making-believe. We enter a world of imagination alone, where the objects conjured aren’t real. We are not concerned with existence and reality. The pressures and inhibitions that drive us in real life are lifted. I’d imagine that this has implications for the possibilities of how we make meaning when we’re making art. It’s an interesting question to ponder, of how significantly changed this meaning-making capacity is, once all the stakes of real life are lifted. For example, a minimal intuition is that in the absence of real-life stakes, we’re not as emotionally and motivationally reactive to whatever we imagine forth. So we’re freer and can forge connections that wouldn’t be accessible in real life.
This makes me wonder, also, what the differences in engaging with real life via representations (thinking or writing) and in making-believe via the same representations. Some of the differences made upon our basic meaning-making capacity from the shift from real life to make-believe seem to overlap with those from the shift from real life live-time to real life accessed reflectively, or mediated through representations we fashion in earnest. But also it’s intuitive to me that making meaning via real-life representations and make-believe representations still significantly differs.
If anyone else gets interested in questions like this, I strongly recommend Sartre’s The imaginary: a phenomenological psychology of the imagination. He asks similar questions and offers fascinating answers. I think this work can nicely supplement Dewey’s ideas.
According to Dewey, when our consciousness comes to be organized as episodes of experience, these episodes involve the following structure: a setting, a tension, and a resolution of this tension. Artists do the same. Whether it is music, painting, or literature, there is some tension that begs for resolution, and this resolution is provided. Dewey’s picture makes for a nice thought: we are artists of our experiences.
I find his claim that we have this basic narrativizing impulse compelling insofar as all animals, to survive, must undertake actions vital to their needs. Over the duration of an undertaking, it is never guaranteed that the desired outcome will be achieved. That’s the tension. It is resolved by achieving that outcome, or not and making sense of the world or self anew in light of this violation of expectation or effort.
I think the truth in the idea that we are artists over our everyday experiences is very delicate to extract. Dewey presents it too simply, although it is great that he presents it at all (he precedes Sartre and I can imagine partly inherits this from Nietzsche). In making art, we are making-believe. We enter a world of imagination alone, where the objects conjured aren’t real. We are not concerned with existence and reality. The pressures and inhibitions that drive us in real life are lifted. I’d imagine that this has implications for the possibilities of how we make meaning when we’re making art. It’s an interesting question to ponder, of how significantly changed this meaning-making capacity is, once all the stakes of real life are lifted. For example, a minimal intuition is that in the absence of real-life stakes, we’re not as emotionally and motivationally reactive to whatever we imagine forth. So we’re freer and can forge connections that wouldn’t be accessible in real life.
This makes me wonder, also, what the differences in engaging with real life via representations (thinking or writing) and in making-believe via the same representations. Some of the differences made upon our basic meaning-making capacity from the shift from real life to make-believe seem to overlap with those from the shift from real life live-time to real life accessed reflectively, or mediated through representations we fashion in earnest. But also it’s intuitive to me that making meaning via real-life representations and make-believe representations still significantly differs.
If anyone else gets interested in questions like this, I strongly recommend Sartre’s The imaginary: a phenomenological psychology of the imagination. He asks similar questions and offers fascinating answers. I think this work can nicely supplement Dewey’s ideas.
June 17, 2011
"Art celebrates with peculiar intensity the moments in which the past reinforces the present and in which the future is a quickening of what now is." (17)
"'Spontaneity' is the result of long periods of activity, or else it is so empty as not to be an act of expression." (75)
"There are values and meanings that can be expressed only by immediately visible and audible qualities, and to ask what they mean in the sense of something that can be put into words is to deny their distinctive existence." (77)
"In other words, art is not nature, but is nature transformed by entering into new relationships where it evokes a new emotional response." (82)
"Every work of art 'abstracts' in some degree from the particular traits of objects expressed. Otherwise, it would only, by means of exact imitation, create an illusion of the presence of the things themselves." (98)
"But whatever path the work of art pursues, it, just because it is a full and intense experience, keeps alive the power to experience the common world in its fullness." (138)
"Significant advances in technique occur, therefore, in connection with efforts to solve problems that are not technical but that grow out of the need for new modes of experience." (147)
"For art is a selection of what is significant, with rejection by the very same impulse of what is irrelevant, and thereby the significant is compressed and intensified." (216)
"Time as empty does not exist; time as an entity does not exist. What exists are things acting and changing, and a constant quality of their behavior is temporal." (218)
"Language comes infinitely short of paralleling the variegated surface of nature. Yet words as practical devices are the agencies by which the ineffable diversity of natural existence as it operates in human experience is reduced to orders, ranks, and classes that can be managed." (224)
"For, as we have already seen, the more a work of art embodies what belongs to experiences common to many individuals, the more expressive it is." (297)
"For masterpieces themselves can be critically appreciated only as they are placed in the tradition to which they belong." (323)
"He then misses the point of all art, the unity of form and matter, and misses it because he lacks adequate sympathy, in his natural and acquired one-sidedness, with the immense variety of interactions between the live creature and his world." (326)
"'Spontaneity' is the result of long periods of activity, or else it is so empty as not to be an act of expression." (75)
"There are values and meanings that can be expressed only by immediately visible and audible qualities, and to ask what they mean in the sense of something that can be put into words is to deny their distinctive existence." (77)
"In other words, art is not nature, but is nature transformed by entering into new relationships where it evokes a new emotional response." (82)
"Every work of art 'abstracts' in some degree from the particular traits of objects expressed. Otherwise, it would only, by means of exact imitation, create an illusion of the presence of the things themselves." (98)
"But whatever path the work of art pursues, it, just because it is a full and intense experience, keeps alive the power to experience the common world in its fullness." (138)
"Significant advances in technique occur, therefore, in connection with efforts to solve problems that are not technical but that grow out of the need for new modes of experience." (147)
"For art is a selection of what is significant, with rejection by the very same impulse of what is irrelevant, and thereby the significant is compressed and intensified." (216)
"Time as empty does not exist; time as an entity does not exist. What exists are things acting and changing, and a constant quality of their behavior is temporal." (218)
"Language comes infinitely short of paralleling the variegated surface of nature. Yet words as practical devices are the agencies by which the ineffable diversity of natural existence as it operates in human experience is reduced to orders, ranks, and classes that can be managed." (224)
"For, as we have already seen, the more a work of art embodies what belongs to experiences common to many individuals, the more expressive it is." (297)
"For masterpieces themselves can be critically appreciated only as they are placed in the tradition to which they belong." (323)
"He then misses the point of all art, the unity of form and matter, and misses it because he lacks adequate sympathy, in his natural and acquired one-sidedness, with the immense variety of interactions between the live creature and his world." (326)
May 5, 2020
I wanted this to change my life.. not yet sure if it did or not. At least I am now aware that my life is lacking esthetic quality?
May 16, 2019
to review later
July 17, 2012
What a wonderful book! Aesthetics, as perceived by John Dewey, is more than just philosophy; is, as Baumgarten stated, the science of perception, while Art is perhaps the most sublime expression of human aesthetics. Moreover,Dewey reminds us that art is not exclusive to art galleries, museums, or expensive collections but is born in our daily experiences. A brilliant work, written in an elegant, dynamic style!
January 10, 2009
Another text that has changed my understanding about art and living. This text helped me to continue to emphasize the importance of the arts and the imagination in school. Dewey clearly demonstrates how art is a natural and important part of life.
March 6, 2018
So, so so wonderful. This is a work of genius and beauty.
For me this book has to be read with a pencil. I appreciate it FAR more when I read a chapter in an evening and then write notes on it. There’s a lot to integrate, enjoy, and just appreciate on an aesthetic level.
Yeah, reading this is itself an aesthetic experience for me. Again and again, reading this book takes me into flights of sublimity - actual intellectual climaxes I’ve only experienced with a few speakers and writers in my life. It’s not like this is the most brilliant philosophy book ever written, but it is pretty damn brilliant - showing me that Pragmatism has a lot more to it than I credit it for because I tend to think American philosophers are brutish and lack cosmopolitan education. (Admittedly other Dewey books I've read bored me to tears....)
But this book strikes such chords of truth with me that it produces these actual peak moments of yes. I am SO happy reading it and long to share it with others who might share the joy of it. I think part of the resonance is because I read the book once 20 years ago and sort of understood it, and over the past two decades have experienced experience in a way that was only somewhat consciously shaped by this work. Additionally, my minimalist metaphysical/ epistemological position on the nature of reality and experience - which comes from a combination of yoga and pragmatism (pragmatism itself being a step ahead of phenomenology in some ways, as well as being deeply influenced by certain elements of Advaita Vedanta) resonates so strongly with what Dewey articulates here. So he’s just saying what I feel to be true, both in his joyful, holistic comments on the aesthetic AND in his critiques of dualistic, internally contradictory modes of thinking.
A lot of new “spiritual” teachings about spiritual bypassing and “deep materialism” are articulated here. More than a hundred years ago. And articulated far better than anywhere else I’ve seen in modern spiritual writings.
The poverty of lived experience - if it is not fully integrated with the senses and objects and the world - is a big theme for Dewey. Accordingly I fear that the capacity to enjoy this work - on a purely AESTHETIC level - will be lost. It presumes a level of concentration, and ability to become absorbed into a world of sheer abstraction. The payoff is really significant - kinds of aesthetic thrill that far surpass “entertainment” of any sort I know. But damn, it’s a big investment of time, background and concentration to be able to have this reading experience.
On that point, just for a taste of this nearly hundred-year-old prose, here’s a passage I used for a blog post a few months ago, something that highlights the poverty of lived experience at times, and is a very good example of Dewey putting the Radical Empiricist doctrines of William James into practice.
From page 45 - 47 in Chapter 3, Having an Experience:
"An experience has pattern and structure, because it is not just doing and undergoing in alternation , but consists of them in relationship. To put one’s hand in the fire that consumes it is not necessarily to have an experience. The action and its consequence must be joined in perception. This relationship is what gives meaning; to grasp it is the objective of all intelligence. The scope and content of the relations measure the significant content of an experience. A child’s experience may be intense, but, because of lack of background from past experience, relations between undergoing and doing are slightly grasped, and the experience does not have great depth or breadth. No one ever arrives at such maturity that he perceives all the connections that are involved. There was once written (by Mr. Hinton) a romance called “The Unlearner.” It portrayed the hole endless duration of life after death as a living over of ethics’s incidents that happened in a short life on earth, in continued discovery of the relationships involved among them.”
"… nothing takes root in the mind when there is no balance between doing and receiving. Some decisive action is needed in order to establish contact with ethical realities of the world and in order that impressions my be so related to facts that their value is tested and organized. Because perception of relationship between what is done and what is undergone constitutes the work of intelligence, and because the artist is controlled in the process of his work by his grasp of the connection between what he has already done and what he is to do next, the idea that the artist does not think is intently and penetratingly as a scientific inquirer is absurd…. Any idea that ignores the necessary role of intelligence in production of works of art is based upon identification of thinking with the use of one special kind of material, verbal signs and words. To think effectively in terms of relations of qualities is as severe a demand upon thought as to think in terms of symbols, verbal and mathematical. Indeed, since words are easily manipulated in mechanical ways, the production of a work of genuine art probably demands more intelligence than does most of the so-called thinking that goes on among those who pride themselves on being ‘intellectuals.'"
For me this book has to be read with a pencil. I appreciate it FAR more when I read a chapter in an evening and then write notes on it. There’s a lot to integrate, enjoy, and just appreciate on an aesthetic level.
Yeah, reading this is itself an aesthetic experience for me. Again and again, reading this book takes me into flights of sublimity - actual intellectual climaxes I’ve only experienced with a few speakers and writers in my life. It’s not like this is the most brilliant philosophy book ever written, but it is pretty damn brilliant - showing me that Pragmatism has a lot more to it than I credit it for because I tend to think American philosophers are brutish and lack cosmopolitan education. (Admittedly other Dewey books I've read bored me to tears....)
But this book strikes such chords of truth with me that it produces these actual peak moments of yes. I am SO happy reading it and long to share it with others who might share the joy of it. I think part of the resonance is because I read the book once 20 years ago and sort of understood it, and over the past two decades have experienced experience in a way that was only somewhat consciously shaped by this work. Additionally, my minimalist metaphysical/ epistemological position on the nature of reality and experience - which comes from a combination of yoga and pragmatism (pragmatism itself being a step ahead of phenomenology in some ways, as well as being deeply influenced by certain elements of Advaita Vedanta) resonates so strongly with what Dewey articulates here. So he’s just saying what I feel to be true, both in his joyful, holistic comments on the aesthetic AND in his critiques of dualistic, internally contradictory modes of thinking.
A lot of new “spiritual” teachings about spiritual bypassing and “deep materialism” are articulated here. More than a hundred years ago. And articulated far better than anywhere else I’ve seen in modern spiritual writings.
The poverty of lived experience - if it is not fully integrated with the senses and objects and the world - is a big theme for Dewey. Accordingly I fear that the capacity to enjoy this work - on a purely AESTHETIC level - will be lost. It presumes a level of concentration, and ability to become absorbed into a world of sheer abstraction. The payoff is really significant - kinds of aesthetic thrill that far surpass “entertainment” of any sort I know. But damn, it’s a big investment of time, background and concentration to be able to have this reading experience.
On that point, just for a taste of this nearly hundred-year-old prose, here’s a passage I used for a blog post a few months ago, something that highlights the poverty of lived experience at times, and is a very good example of Dewey putting the Radical Empiricist doctrines of William James into practice.
From page 45 - 47 in Chapter 3, Having an Experience:
"An experience has pattern and structure, because it is not just doing and undergoing in alternation , but consists of them in relationship. To put one’s hand in the fire that consumes it is not necessarily to have an experience. The action and its consequence must be joined in perception. This relationship is what gives meaning; to grasp it is the objective of all intelligence. The scope and content of the relations measure the significant content of an experience. A child’s experience may be intense, but, because of lack of background from past experience, relations between undergoing and doing are slightly grasped, and the experience does not have great depth or breadth. No one ever arrives at such maturity that he perceives all the connections that are involved. There was once written (by Mr. Hinton) a romance called “The Unlearner.” It portrayed the hole endless duration of life after death as a living over of ethics’s incidents that happened in a short life on earth, in continued discovery of the relationships involved among them.”
"… nothing takes root in the mind when there is no balance between doing and receiving. Some decisive action is needed in order to establish contact with ethical realities of the world and in order that impressions my be so related to facts that their value is tested and organized. Because perception of relationship between what is done and what is undergone constitutes the work of intelligence, and because the artist is controlled in the process of his work by his grasp of the connection between what he has already done and what he is to do next, the idea that the artist does not think is intently and penetratingly as a scientific inquirer is absurd…. Any idea that ignores the necessary role of intelligence in production of works of art is based upon identification of thinking with the use of one special kind of material, verbal signs and words. To think effectively in terms of relations of qualities is as severe a demand upon thought as to think in terms of symbols, verbal and mathematical. Indeed, since words are easily manipulated in mechanical ways, the production of a work of genuine art probably demands more intelligence than does most of the so-called thinking that goes on among those who pride themselves on being ‘intellectuals.'"
April 27, 2008
Profound and sensible.
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