The Development of Contextualistic Aesthetics

Abstract

U One of the achievements of the pragmatic or contextualistic movement was the development of an aesthetic view peculiar to itself. Not that there were no anticipations of this view long before contextualism consolidated into a well-rounded world theory. But these were attached somewhat loosely to other philosophies. Most notable of these is Baumgarten's aesthetics which emerged in the eighteenth century as an offshoot of Cartesian rationalism. Two features of Baumgarten's aesthetics are central features of the mature contextualistic aesthetics-namely, that of fusion which Baumgarten called confused thought as distinguished from the Cartesian clear and distinct idcas, and that of regarding aesthetic experience so conceived as a sort of cognition. It was admittedly low-grade cognition, but it had a value all its own not to be disparaged solely because it lacked rational clarity. A detailed comparison of Baumgarten's aesthetics with Dewey's would be interesting. But this is not the place to do it. The official origin for a contextualistic aesthetics is much later. It would be found among the early pragmatists, Charles S. Peirce, William James, and Henri Bergson around the break of the twentieth century. At that time the principal concern of these men was with the problem of truth (that is, with cognitive value) in science and logic and ordinary human experience. These studies culminated in