Abstract

Dewey's Art as Experience should be read as a sustained rejection of "Compartmentalism" in art--i.e., of the notion that because art and ordinary life have little direct pertinence to each other, interpretation and exhibition of art objects should occur irrespective of practical context ). Dewey however does not make explicit any real argument for the rejection of Compartmentalism. Accordingly, my first general aim is to reconstruct that argument by indicating how praxis is relevant to aesthetics, and I do this by making essential use of the concepts of 'organic unity', 'immediacy', 'fusion', 'critical control', and 'expression'. I argue in Chapter I that aesthetic experience has significance for the practice of artistic creativity, and in Chapter III ) that practical interests have significance for aesthetic experience. My second general aim is to show why this argument retains any current interest for us. This involves showing how for Dewey aesthetics is relevant to praxis, and specifically to moral deliberation, and how this claim fits into contemporary discussion. I do this by suggesting how certain other key terms are applicable to Dewey's account--'intentionality', 'activity', 'method', 'context-sensitivity', 'virtue', 'vitality', 'representation' and 'the end of art'. In Chapter II I attempt to show that Dewey provides a plausible account of moral deliberation that exhibits a structure similar to the process of artistic creativity, and in Chapter IV I indicate how Dewey's understanding of the social function of art provides an intriguing story about the educative use of art criticism in the development of a unified self. My reading of Dewey takes as central a broad notion of "intelligence" as a univocal concept defined in terms of the qualitative end-states it promotes, and this calls into question some prominent interpretations of Dewey -- especially the reading offered by Richard Rorty. Rorty regards Dewey as a proto-deconstructionist, and if my argument here is correct, that is at the very least an incomplete view.