These notes are summaries of significant points from some sections of Dewey’s Art as Experience, found in the selections from John Stuhr's anthology of Classical American Philosophy, first edition, that we used in our Phi 381 class, fall 1999. Pages references are to that edition.

Dewey: Aesthetics Terminology

Dewey-Live Creature

  • Art product- an artifact of fine art
  • Cold spectator- one who observes, but does not interact with an art product

Dewey-Having an Experience

  • Experience- “the interaction of live creature and environing conditions” p519
  • An experience p519- “we have an experience when the material experienced runs its course to fulfillment”
  • “real experiences”p519 – “. . . situations and episodes . . . [that are] complete in [themselves], standing out because [they are] marked out from what went before and came after.”
  • Thought Experience

-Thoughts: “They are phases, emotionally and practically distinguished, of a developing underlying quality; they are moving variations, not separate and independent” p520

-Premise: “in an experience of thinking, premises emerge only as a conclusion becomes manifest” p 521

-Conclusion: “a movement of anticipation and circumulation, one that finally comes to completion. A “conclusion” is no separate and independent thing, it is the consummation of a movement.”

[Ideas are the forming components of thoughts; as they are strung together they form thoughts. Thoughts are to be seen as the noun form of the verb thinking. There is no such thing as a thought, thought is a process. A Conclusion is the end result of a thought process and results in a premise, it is the most dominant feature of what people think of as “a thought”. ]

  • Anesthetic experience- p 521 “ [an] activity [that] is too automatic to permit a sense of what it is about and where it is going. . . There is no interest in it that controls attentive rejection or selection of what shall be organized into the developing experience . . .”
  • Non-esthetic experience p521: lies within two poles

-“[it] is the loose secession that does not begin at any particular place . . . proceeding from parts having only a mechanical connection with one another

-ends—in the sense of ceasing—at no particular place

They are the humdrum; slackness of loose ends; submission to convention in practice and intellectual procedure.

  • Esthetic experience

­p522- involves reconstruction [of past/present] experiences

­p524: in its limited sense, is thus seen to be inherently connected with the experience of making

­p524: sensory satisfaction [comse about] because it does not stand by itself but is linked to the activity of which it is the consequence . . .

­p526: [sensory organs] are but instruments through which the entire live creature, moved and active throughout, operates. Hence the expression is emotional and guided by purpose.

  • Emotion p522: is the moving and cementing force . . . [of experience] thereby giving qualitative unity to materials externally disparate and dissimilar. It thus provides unity in and through the varied parts of an experience. P523

­Experience is emotional but there are not separate things called emotions in it . . . emotions are qualities. . . of a complete experience that moves and changes . . .

­[They are not automatic reflexes] Emotions belong to the self that is concerned in the movement of events [and their outcome], [hence they are not] automatic reflexes [to experiential stimuli, [thus] . . . they must become parts of an inclusive and enduring situation that involves concern for objects and their issues

  • Conditions of Experience:

­every experience is the result of interaction between a live creature and some aspect of the world in which he lives. P523

­Experience is limited by the causes which interfere with perception of the relations between undergoing and doing p523

­Some decisive action is needed to order to establish contact with the realities of the world and in order that impressions may be so related to facts that their value is tested and organized. P524

  • Process of Experience p523- continues until a mutual adaptation of the self and the object emerges and that particular experience comes to a close
  • Content of Experience

­P524- The action and its consequences must be joined in perception. This relationship is what gives meaning; to grasp it is the objective of all intelligence. The scope and content of the relations measure the significant content of experience.

­P528- It is not possible to divide in a vital experience the practical, emotional, and intellectual from one another and to set the properties of one over against the characteristics of the others.

­Phases of Existence P529

  • The emotional phase binds parts together into a single whole
  • “intellectual” simply names the fact that the experience has meaning
  • “practical” indicates that the organism is interacting with events and objects which surround it.
  • Art p524: denotes a process of doing or making. This is as true of fine as of technological art.
  • Esthetic P524 – experience as appreciative perceiving, and enjoying. It denotes the consumer’s rather than the producer’s standpoint.
  • Artistic p524:

­ craftsmanship [that is] “loving”, it must care deeply for the subject matter upon which skill is exercised

­Esthetic- framed for enjoyed receptive perception

  • Artistic Process/ Art production

­Esthetic perception, p526: until the artist is satisfied in perception with what he is doing, he continues shaping and reshaping. The making comes to an end when its result is experienced as good.

  • Recognition, p527: is perception arrested before it has a chance to develop freely . . . [it] serves as a cue for bare identification … because a proper tag or label is attached.
  • Receptivity, p 527: is a process of consisting of a series of responsive acts that accumulate toward objective fulfillment … this act … involves the cooperation of motor elements … as well as cooperation of all funded ideas that may serve to complete the new picture that is forming.
  • Perception:

­p528 is an act of the going-out of energy in order to receive

­p528 to perceive a beholder must create his own experience. And his creation must include relations comparable to those which the original producer underwent … without an act of recreation the object is not perceived as a work of art.