Dewey's Theory of Expression

Abstract

One of the most distinctive features-reaching the level of preoccupationof aesthetic analysis in the United States during the past four decades has been an intense, critical, self-conscious, yet constructive attempt to explore the meaning and possibility of the concept of art: what is the essential nature of art in general and the artwork in particular? Can we define 'art' or 'artwork'?1 During the first half of the twentieth century most aestheticians almost took it for granted that providing an answer to this question was the central task of aesthetic theory: to theorize about art meant to seek an understanding of the essential nature of art and to articulate this understanding in a concept or definition, so that if one grasps this concept or definition, one would then know what it means for an object to be a work of art. This knowledge is useful in (1) identifying an object or event as a work of art, (2) explaining the structure of aesthetic experience, and (3) providing a basis for aesthetic interpretation and evaluation.2 But this view was challenged by analytic philosophers like Paul Ziff, Morris Weitz, and William Kennick in the mid-1950s. Weitz, whose essay The Role of Theory in Aesthetics proved to be very influential and left a lasting impact upon the way we now do aesthetics in the United States, has argued that aesthetic theory is not in principle possible: Art, as the logic of the concept shows, has no set of necessary and sufficient properties; hence a theory of it is logically impossible and not merely factually difficult.3 Traditional aesthetic theory labored on the assumption that the concept of art is closed. This is why it sought to capture the essential nature of art in a well-defined formula. But this is a false assumption, Weitz argued, primarily because 'art' is an open concept: there is no essence or a denominator common to all the objects that compose the realm of art. Moreover, by its very nature art is a creative adventure; it is expansive, adventurous; Its ever-present changes and novel