Pragmatist Aesthetics Research Articles

What is Wrong with Using Textbooks in Education?

In this article, it is argued that the inordinate amount of time and attention given to the use of textbooks in education inadvertently leads to deadening miseducative experiences and creates a learning environment where what Dewey calls ‘consummatory experience’ is thwarted. In order to unpack this thesis, Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics is engaged, and in particular, his concept of consummatory experience is defined and its temporal nature is elucidated by referring to two modes of time: chronological and phenomenological. Subsequently, the relation between teaching and consummatory experience is elucidated to uncover the reason why using textbooks is counterproductive.

Pragmatic Aesthetics and the Autistic Artist

Abstract There are many prominent examples of artists with autism. However, even when confronted with evidence of these accomplished autistic savants, pragmatic aesthetic theories cannot adequately account for the work of these accomplished artists as artists. This article first examines the nature of autism and explores a prominent psychological theory that purports to explain autistic symptoms. This prominent theory, the theory of mind thesis, holds that autistic symptoms are the result of the failure of persons with autism to make certain types of secondorder propositional attitude attributions. Second, the article describes the work of three visual artists with autism. There can be no doubt that these individuals are in fact artists. Third, the article examines pragmatic aesthetic theory and demonstrates why the pragmatic theory fails to adequately account for the accomplishment of autistic artists. The unique psychological deficits that characterize autism present a challenge to pragmatic aesthetic theories in particular. The conclusion is that the pragmatic theory’s inability to accommodate the artist autistic artist is a profound shortcoming. A revision of the pragmatic theory is called for, as is embracing of the development of the special talents of persons with autism.

Grounding Aesthetic Preference in the Bodily Conditions of Meaning Constitution

Mark Johnson’s work The Meaning of the Body presents John Dewey’s pragmatism and pragmatist aesthetics as the forerunners of the anti-Cartesian embodied enactive approach to human experience and meaning. He rejects the Kantian noncognitive character of aesthetics and emphasizes that aesthetics is the study of the human capacity to experience the bodily conditions of meaning constitution that grows from our bodily conditions of life. Using Mark Johnson’s view as a starting-point, this paper offers the beginning of an enactive approach to aesthetic preference contributing to bringing human aesthetic behavior research closer to the enactive approach to human experience. Following enactive studies on bodily sense-making and embodied emotions, I identify the bodily conditions of meaning constitution in which aesthetic preference is grounded with the subject’s self-regulatory visceral embodied constitution of viable degrees of value of the environmental factors according to her bodily structure. Unlike mainstream aesthetic preference research in empirical aesthetics, I claim that the subject’s aesthetic preference constitution requires the lived experience of the bodily conditions of meaning constitution through the conscious experience of the subjectively aroused lived body. The implausibility of the mind/body dichotomy of current aesthetic preference research is highlighted.

Can Deweyan Pragmatist Aesthetics Provide a Robust Framework for the Philosophy for Children Programme?

In this paper, I argue that Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics, and in particular, his concept of consummatory experience, should be engaged anew to rethink the merits of the Philosophy for Children (PFC) programme, which arose in the 1970s in the US as an innovative educational programme that aims to use philosophy to help school children (aged 6–18) improve their ability to become more conscious of and make judgments about the aspects of their experience that have ethical, aesthetic, political, logical, or even metaphysical meaning. Although an international success, the PFC programme has attracted many criticisms from a variety of directions. I claim that Deweyan concept of consummatory aesthetic experience is broad and flexible enough to provide a robust framework to make sense of the pedagogical horizon of PFC and therefore fruitfully engage the various critics of the movement coming from religious and social conservatives, educational psychologists, critical theorists, postmodernists/posthumanists, and professional philosophers themselves. The goal of this paper is to offer in a preliminary fashion the basic elements of Deweyan pragmatist aesthetics, which was principally elucidated in his Art as Experience, to defend PFC as a viable pedagogy.

Pragmatist Aesthetics, Twenty Years Later

Pragmatist Aesthetics was published in 1992, by now twenty years ago. Through his book Richard Shusterman was able to revitalize a debate in the aesthetic field, which tended to stagnate. But its claims, implications and consequences went beyond the narrow limits of aesthetics, understood as philosophy of art according to a traditional modern approach. His reinterpretation of pragmatist aesthetics, expressly derived from Dewey’s work, was able to show not only that those defining anxieties ch...

Remarks On Richard Shusterman’s Pragmatist Aesthetics

Owing largely to his influential work on pragmatist aesthetics and somaesthetics Richard Shusterman is one of the most renowned aestheticians in the world. The release of Pragmatist Aesthetics in 1992 greatly influenced the scholarly landscape; judging by the outpouring of translations, reviews, conference papers, MA and PhD theses written on related topics, indeed, one might say that the book inaugurated a new chapter in aesthetics. Shusterman’s training as an analytic philosopher, and prior...

Pragmatist Aesthetics by Richard Shusterman

When the first edition of Pragmatist Aesthetics came out in 1992, it was immediately perceived as an important new step in Anglo-American philosophy. The aesthetics of the English language were clearly dominated by the analytic current, and the ties with the “continental” debate at that time were quite tenuous. Shusterman, however, reconnected with the pragmatic tradition, and in particular with the aesthetics of John Dewey, thus breaking with many consolidated schemes of thinking, which was ...

Enjoying the Doubtful On Transformative Suspensions in Pragmatist Aesthetics

Richard Shusterman’s pragmatism is an important voice in the pluralist choir of pragmatist philosophers and has crucially contributed to refine some of the most important pragmatist concerns, particularly those of Dewey. While he, like Dewey, criticizes the compartmentalization of the art-sphere and shows in detail the entanglement of the aesthetic and the ordinary, adopting and further developing his critical insights, Shusterman also detects some flaws in Dewey’s vision. Rather “than pursui...

Reviewing Pragmatist Aesthetics

Grateful to the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy for organizing this symposium to mark the twentieth anniversary of Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (Oxford, Blackwell, 1992), I should begin by explaining why the European context for discussing this book seems especially pertinent. Although known as an American philosopher, I was not academically trained in America; my philosophical education was more European in style – first at the Hebrew University...

The holism of aesthetic knowing in nursing

In 1978, Carper identified 'four fundamental patterns of knowing' that became largely foundational to subsequent epistemological discourse within the nursing discipline. These patterns of empirical, personal, aesthetic, and ethical knowing were presented as conceptually distinct yet related patterns of knowing. In order to provide an alternative conceptualization of aesthetics in nursing, the main tenants of Carper's discussion of aesthetic knowing will be revisited, and the foundations for her arguments will be examined. Specifically, Dewey's Art as Experience will be examined in relation to the 'holism' of nursing, and an alternative position on pragmatic aesthetics in nursing will be offered. A preliminary reintegration of the four patterns of knowing will then be presented as will an example of a potential cultivation of aesthetics in nursing, through an example of Rodin's 19th century sculpture, the Burghers of Calais.

Limited Horizons: The Habitual Basis of the Imagination

This essay on pragmatist aesthetics explains how imagination extends the environment into the possible. While there is no lack of pragmatic theories claiming that imagination extends the environment, few explain how in the scholarship on John Dewey. After discussing the incompleteness of Mark Johnson's scholarship on this question, I expand upon Thomas Alexander's work to construct a Deweyan-pragmatic view of the dynamic structure of imaginative function that emphasizes continuity, temporality, and the emergence of meaning. Pragmatist scholars must address the question of how , else they are blind to the limitations of imagination while making promises on its transformative power. Though the present work is rooted in historic scholarship, it promises to flower in contemporary debates in aesthetics, realist phenomenology, and reconciling naturalism and phenomenology.

예술작품으로서 디지털 게임의 도덕적 기능에 대한 연구

현대사회에서 게임의 영향력은 점차 확대되고 있지만 게임의 도덕적 정체성에 대한 사회적 불신은 줄어들지 않고 있다. 본 연구에서는 게임을 새로운 예술장르로 인식하고 예술과 도덕 간의 관계에 대한 미학적 입장들을 정리함을 통해 사회에서 수용가능한 게임의 도덕적 정체성에 대해 고찰하였다. 이를 바탕으로 새로운 예술형식으로써 게임이 독자적으로 갖고 있는 매체적인 특성에 내재된 도덕적 이슈들을 가상현실성, 상호작용성, 그리고 시뮬레이션의 측면에서 지적하고, 이러한 문제점을 해결하기 위한 가장 효율적인 방안으로 존 듀이의 예술교육론을 반도덕주의적 관점에서 적용한 도덕적 피드백 시스템을 제안하였다.

The Pragmatist Aesthetics of William James

The Pragmatist Aesthetics of William James

The aesthetic turn in sonification towards a social and cultural medium

The public release of datasets on the internet by government agencies, environmental scientists, political groups and many other organizations has fostered a social practice of data visualization. The audiences have expectations of production values commensurate with their daily experience of professional visual media. At the same time, access to this data has allowed visual designers and artists to apply their skills to what was previously a field dominated by scientists and engineers. The ‘aesthetic turn’ in data visualization has sparked debates between the new wave and older more scientifically grounded schools of thought on the topic. Sonification is not as well known or commonly practiced as visualization. But sound is a naturally affective, aesthetic and cultural medium. The extension of the aesthetic turn to sonification could transform this field from a scientific curiosity and engineering instrument into a popular mass medium. This paper proposes that a design approach can facilitate an aesthetic turn in sonification that integrates aesthetics and functionality by dissolving divisions between scientific and artistic methods. The first section applies the design perspective to the definition of sonification by replacing the linguistic concept of representation with non-verbal concept of functionality. The next section describes applications of the TaDa design method that raised aesthetic issues particular to sonification practice. The final section proposes a pragmatic aesthetics that distinguishes sonification from the auditory sciences and sonic arts. A design perspective may lead to a future where the general public tunes into pop sonifications for listening enjoyment as well as useful information about the world.

Naturalism and Metaphors

This paper outlines a pragmatist aesthetic theory on the basis of themes relating to naturalism, metaphor, and solidarity found in Richard Rorty’s neopragmatism. A central part of this attempt is to show that some previous readings of Rorty’s work in aesthetics are misguided. I begin by raising aspects of Rorty’s work that have been previously largely overlooked in aesthetics and philosophy of art, and which I believe undermine particularly Richard Shusterman’s critical reading of Rorty. I shall then move on to discuss the social role Rorty assigns to metaphors in his postmetaphysical liberalist culture and argue that the social and cultural view of art and the aesthetic Rorty’s philosophy of literature contains overlaps in some significant respects with some central points of John Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics. I close by outlining some new set of issues for pragmatist aesthetics that emerge from the discussion of Rorty’s work presented in the paper.

An exploration of the aesthetics of an oral history performance developed in the classroom

This paper aims to explore a range of aesthetic aspects involved in the devising and production processes of oral history performance in a classroom setting. It touches upon the ethical dimension of aesthetics employing the Confucianist Wang Yang Ming's aesthetic philosophy and Buber's theories of relation as the theoretical frames. The devising process realises the concept of aestheticisation of ethics by fulfilling the ‘I–You’ relations through the constructed dialogues formulated by the teacher-facilitator. The paper is divided into six parts to illustrate the whole aesthetic system – from aesthetic framework to reception. I apply Ricoeur's narrative theory to analyse the cycle of re-interpretation and reception process of the personal narratives. Deleuze's theories in ‘Signs and Memory’ have been employed to decipher how the signs of art have been distilled from personal memories. Bachelard's poetics of space and Lefebvre's theories of the subversive power of space have been employed to demonstrate the possibility of the presentation and subversion of body and space through performance. In conclusion, I apply Shusterman's pragmatist aesthetics to argue that oral history performances put ethics into action by re-negotiating personal and collective identities through dialogical process and re-interpreting the past.

Aesthetic Interaction: A Framework

The rise in the development of interactive electronic products has been accompanied by growing interest in the aesthetic aspects not only of the artifacts themselves but in the aesthetics of interactive systems. Petersen, Iversen, Krogh, and Ludvigsen5 point out that these two approaches to the aesthetics of design reflect Shusterman’s6 distinction between analytical aesthetics and pragmatic aesthetics, respectively. From an analytic perspective, aesthetics arise as a product property, as “added value” to an artifact. The focus of the design process here is on the aesthetics of appearance, on the creation of artifacts that are attractive and pleasurable. The pragmatic approach, on the other hand, is concerned with the aesthetics of use. According to this view, the aesthetics of an artifact emerge out of a dynamic interaction between a user and this artifact and is an integral part of what has been labeled an aesthetic interaction by some researchers7 in design and as a resonant interaction by others.8 At the same time the scope of design is changing from human/artifact interaction, mainly focused on opening up the functionality of a product, toward a broader approach that seeks to enhance interpersonal and societal values, including personal, aesthetic, and socio-cultural ones, through the application of intelligence (i.e., smart electronics) in artifacts. Much has been written concerning the factors that contribute to the aesthetics of human-artifact interaction. However, to our knowledge, no framework or conceptual model of the structure of the interactive aesthetic experience that incorporates these factors has appeared in the literature. In this paper we integrate an information-processing model of the nature of an aesthetic experience with visual art proposed by Locher and his colleagues9, 10 with a framework proposed by Wensveen11 that describes the coupling of a user’s actions (i.e., handling an artifact) and a product’s function; the result is the formation of a general theoretical framework for understanding the nature of a user’s aesthetic interaction with design products. Our hope is that the proposed conceptual framework will serve as a valuable basis for the development of experimental studies into the nature of aesthetic interaction to complement the experimental tradition of usability studies among designers. Before presenting the framework, it is important to note, as have Petersen and her colleagues,12 that the notion of aesthetic is used in ambiguous ways by theoreticians when it comes to answering the key question: What is the nature of the resulting

Dewey's <i>Art as Experience</i>: The Psychological Background

The year 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of John Dewey’s birth and also the 75th anniversary of the publication of his aesthetic masterpiece Art as Experience—a book that has been extremely influential within the field of aesthetics, not only in philosophical aesthetics and aesthetic education but also in the arts themselves.1 I am honored to commemorate this double Deweyan anniversary with an essay that reexamines Art as Experience by briefly tracing some of its major themes and clarifying its generative context of production and philosophical roots, while also suggesting, in passing, how some of these themes and roots contribute to its continuing philosophical relevance. Before going further, I should offer two preliminary cautions. First, Dewey’s aesthetic magnum opus is obviously too rich and masterful in ideas and influence for any brief commemorative essay to hope to do it sufficient justice. Second, as Dewey defined philosophy as “a criticism of criticisms,” so my remarks will include a critical dimension.2 This in no way denies my immense admiration for Dewey’s achievement in Art as Experience, just as my noting of some formative influences on this work is in no way meant to diminish the impressive originality of his contribution. Dewey’s Art as Experience first established pragmatist aesthetics on the philosophical map, yet his text makes no mention of pragmatism. There are good reasons for Dewey’s reluctance to highlight the term. The pragmatic is closely linked to the practical, precisely the idea against which the aesthetic has, since Kant, been traditionally contrasted and often oppositionally defined as purposeless and disinterested. To describe his new aesthetic

Roger Prim, Gentleman: Gender, Pragmatism, and the Strange Career of John Crowe Ransom

John Crowe Ransom’s early and mid-career writings on gender as well as the nature of the aesthetic object are both intimated related and more complicated than critics previously have acknowledged. Ransom’s early poetry, which often depicts strained and anxiety-ridden relationships between men and women, anticipates the strangely gendered rhetoric the critic later employs to engage with the pragmatic aesthetics of John Dewey. Illuminating Ransom’s longstanding intellectual engagement with the century’s pre-eminent social scientist as well as the more egalitarian aspects of the poet’s reflections on the roles of women in modern society, this essay corrects recent truisms concerning the New Critics while revealing the extent to which Ransom’s work contains the seeds of its own undoing by subsequent generations of critics.

Pragmatist Aesthetics, the New Literacy, and Popular Culture. A Response to Stefán Snævarr

The article is a critical response to Stefán Snævarr’s “Pragmatism and Popular Culture: Shusterman, Popular Art, and the Challenge of Visuality.”In its first part, I attempt to prove that several of Snævarr’s claims about popular culture and new media, which form the basic premises of his diagnosis of the alleged intellectual decline of the West, are either dubious or wrong. Moreover, in the context of this diagnosis, Snævarr levels some serious accusations against Richard Shusterman’s theory of popular culture, which, I believe, are ungrounded and do not do justice to the latter’s approach. Henceforth, the remainder of the article is devoted to explaining in which aspects Snævarr’s interpretation of Richard Shusterman’s theory is misguided.