Qualitative Wholes: Aesthetic and Religious Experience in the Work of John Dewey

Abstract

What John Dewey's theory of art and aesthetic experience has to contribute to an interpretation of religion and religious experience remains an open question. Admirers of Dewey have proclaimed the possibility and called for such a contribution. Proceeding on the conviction that a recapturing of Dewey's thought in a number of areas would be of solid value in the present theological context, I would like here to point up some of the promise and limits of his work: by arguing that praxis is the context for a proper interpretation of Dewey's theories of religion and art; by suggesting that the concepts quality and whole are basic to his theories and that they link both art and religion with ordinary experience; by noting Dewey's own scattered explicit connections between art and religion, and his failure to carry those connections forward in his work on religion; and by commenting on how Dewey's theories of art and the aesthetic experience correct his theory of religion, and how they might contribute to our own understanding of religion and the religious experience.