Dewey’s Notion of Aesthetic Experience. A Comparative Approach

1 John Dewey’s Notion of Aesthetic Experience. A Comparative Approach My doctoral dissertation argues an interpretation of John Dewey’s aesthetics, presenting in his Later Works, and particularly in Art as Experience. Dewey’s proposal, ahead of his time, tries to restore the continuity between art and life, laying the foundations of an everdyday phylosophy and defining the notion of aesthetic experience as an harmonic interaction between living creatures and surroundings. Thus, aesthetic experience is not a special attitude or a distinct encounter with works of art, but a previous phase of knowledge; the kind of experience which emerges in the inmediacy of situations. Today, his considerations offer fresh insights into the field of aesthetics, which has been extended to include objects and experiences traditionally ignored. However, due to his terminology (he uses notions from traditional philosophy but with new meanings) and his forms of expression, Dewey’s aesthetics has been misunderstood and criticized in some cases. My approach attempts to contribute the nature and scope of Dewey’s aesthetic, through a comparative methodology, which brings Deweyan notion of aesthetic experience into dialogue with the concept of harmony that Confucian philosophy suggests. Drawing on the comparative approach which current scholars have developed 1 , I will present a conversation which recongizes commonalities and differences as a means of enriching the understanding of aesthetic experience. The method, thus, seeks to overcome misconceived assumptions about Dewey’s philosophy, promoting suggestive interactions, which tries to offer a more accurate view of Dewey’s thought in his late period, and particularly after his stay in China. In reference to this point, his daughter asserts: “Whatever the influence of Dewey upon China, his stay there had a deep and enduring influence upon him.” 2 In this presentation, I will briefly explore this dialogue in two phases: firstly, I consider the resonances between Dewey’s emergentism and what Roger Ames and 1 See the articles from the Symposium “A Dialogue between East and West”, The Journal of Aesthetic Education 43 (1) (2009): 1-58. Also see the monographs , R. Ames and D. Hall (1998), Democracy of the Dead. Dewey, Confucius and the Hope for Democracy in China, Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company; J. Grange (2012), John Dewey, Confucius and Global Philosophy, AlbanY: SUNY; and J. Wang (2007), John Dewey in China. To Teach and to Learn, Albany: SUNY. 2 Jane M. Dewey (1939), “Biography of John Dewey”, en P. A. Schilpp (ed.) The Philosophy of John Dewey, New York: Tudor Publishing Co, 42. 2 David Hall names Confucian ontology of events 3 ; secondly, I try to clarify the notion of experience and dào (道), from Deweyan and Confucian thought, by means of a comparative analysis. 1. DEFINING OUR TERMS DEWEY’S EMERGENTISM AND CONFUCIAN ONTOLOGY OF EVENTS To begin, I would like to introduce a common background of Dewey’s and Confucius philosophy. Both authors seem to share the central philosophical concern about “where is the way?” In other words, they do not seek universal principles or theories, but the way of action that promotes harmonious existence. According to Dewey and Confucius, we live in an immanental world which does not have an established order, but needs to be constantly achieved by creating new patterns or modes of interaction. In his later works and particularly in Experience and Nature (LW1:17), John Dewey proposes a new method in philosophy called denotative method (also empirist method). Through this, Dewey tries to overcome the intellectualisms which has placed experience as subordinate to knowledge. According to Dewey, philosophy has been wrongly considered refined or secoundary objects, that is, reflective objects, building from primary experience, as real objects. Thus, it has led philosophy to despise and condemn primary experience. “We get the absurdity of an experiencing which experiences only itself, states and processes of consciousness, instead of the things of nature” (LW1:20). In contrast, for Dewey, we primarily observe things, not observations, and criticize that those “mental attitudes or ways of experiencing were treated as self-sufficient and complete in themselves”. In contrast, despite the fact that Dewey recognizes the main role of subjects in experience, he extends experiences beyond representations or interpretations. We find potentialities which could not be reduced to mere knowledge and include other human aspects as love, desire or fight. The matter is that philosophers have denied the capacity of ordinary experiences to develop methods of creating inherent standards of judgment and value (LW1:41). He points out that there are two methods in philosophy: one of them starts with “experience in gross”, “experience in its primary and crude forms” and the other one starts with “refined selective products” and “work from them back to the primary facts of life” (LW1:366). Each way has its advantages and disadvantages. The 3 R. Ames and D. Hall (1987), Thinking through Confucius, Albany: SUNY, 15. 3 dangerous matter is the oversight that science is an art, and philosophy has built on scientific facts and goals. Therefore, philosophy has tried to follow this avenue, focusing on those objective aspects and rejecting immediate facts of experience in gross. This has lead to “suicide of philosophy” (LW1:367). The goal of denotative method is to study general features of experienced things and to interpret their significance for a philosophic theory of the universe in which we live (LW1:13). This method does not focus on secondary objects or knowledgeable objects but in which we experience. Experience is not limited to conscious or knowledge, but “the whole wide universe”. “Experience as we are here told to conceive it, includes just everything and anything, actual or potential, that we think of and talk about” (LW1:371). Thus, the denotative method shows how denotation comes first and last (LW1:371), that is, we mean the universe and solve the problems through experience. Hence, Dewey asserts that this method shows human humility because we can not have absolute certainty in knowledge of things and absolute security in the ordering of life. Our experiences are not only cognitive but also moral and aesthetic. The denotative method implies a new approach to philosophy which emphasizes in change and creative response of human beings. However, Dewey does not only propose a new method for philosophy, but a new metaphysics which is not free of criticism. With Rorty words “for better or worse, he wanted to write a metaphysical system” 4 . Many scholars have harshly criticized Dewey’s attempt to construct a metaphysics, from Croce (contemporary with Dewey) to Rorty (who denied Dewey’s metaphysics as bad Dewey, as Thomas Alexander sais 5 ). This briefly presentation does not deal with a century of criticism, but, like authors as Alexander, Sleeper, Thayer, Bernstein, Hickman or Mougan, I defend that his metaphysics is a key aspect of his philosophy and aesthtetics, in spite of the vague and troublesome spot in Dewey’s metaphysics, particularly in the issue of “generic traits”. Therefore, I wish to draw attention to this new ontology which has been called emergentism in order to deal with the dimensions of nature and experience. The roots 4 R. Rorty (1982), Consequences of Pragmatism, Hassocks: Harvester Press, 73. 5 “Rorty’s Dewey was a deeply bifurcated person; tehre was a ‘good Dewey’ who engaged in cultural criticism and a ‘bad Dewey’ who frequently succumbed to the siren song of ‘Hegelian’ metaphysics” [T. Alexander (2013), “Introduction”, The Human Eros. Eco-Ontology and the Aesthetics of Existence, New York: Fordham University Press, 3]. 4 of the notion of emergency needs to be found, as Eames sais 6 , in the darwinism. “For Dewey, new forms or species emerge out of old ones. Where nature is ongoing, that is, where new forms have survival value and do not pass into extinction, these new forms make new demands upon other parts of nature.” 7 Darwin presents nature in continuous change, a place where emerges new forms. However, similar to the rest of pragmatist (with the exception of Joseph Margolis 8 ), although Dewey uses the term in his philosophical project, he does not deal with it. This fact hinder its understanding because of its use in different contexts, as artificial life, studies about consciousness, or the philosophical reflection about realism and the emergence of knowledge 9 . Dewey, rejecting the realism, presents a new ontology based on the continuity of living creature and surroundings in the immediacy of situations 10 . This ontological proposal can be revitalized, establishing a dialogue with confucian philosophy, understood as ontology of events, not of substances, as Roger Ames and David Hall say 11 . Thomas Alexander, in the organized discussion about the potential dialogue between East and West highlights the importance of this dialogue to rethink pragmatism itself. The aesthetic dimension of Deweyan pragmatism, with Alexander words “not very well understood even on its home ground”, can be enriched by an opening to Asian schools of “the art of life” 12 , and particularly, I defend by an opening to Confucian tradition. Returning to the ontology of events we can ask: what does it mean an ontology of events? According with Ames and Hall, Confucius does not develop a philosophy about qualities, attributes or charateristics, but “an explication of the activities of specific people in particular contexts” 13 . Thus, confucian philosophy can be denominated contextualistic philosophy. This is the proposal of Lewis E. Hahn, who introduces some 6 “Dewey is an emergent naturalist, that is, he sees nature as evolving in the manner indicated by Darwin over one hundred years ago” [S. M. Eames (2003), op. cit., 25]. 7 Morris Eames (2003), “Primary Experience in the Philosophy of John Dewey”, en Experience and Value. Essays on John Dewey and Pragmatic Naturalism, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 25. 8 Charbel Niño El-Hania y Sami Pihlström (2002), “Emergence Theories and Pragmatic Realism”, Essays in Philosophy 3(2), 19. 9 Ibid., 2. 10 W. Savery (1939), “The Significance of Dewey’s Philosophy”. In: P.A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of John Dewey, 2nd ed., Tudor, New York, 479-513 11 R. Ames y D. Hall (1987), op. cit., 15. 12 T. Alexander (2009), “The Music in the Heart, the Way of Water, and the Light of a Thousand Suns: A Response to Richard Shusterman, Crispin Sartwell and Scott Stroud”, Journal of Aesthetic Education 43: 1, 41. 13 R. Ames y D. Hall (1987), op. cit., 15. 5 parallelisms between contextualistic philosophy of John Dewey and Confucius 14 . Hahn explains how, according to contextualists the single most distinctive mark of the real is change; and, in the same way, the Confucian Book of Zhou tells us that change is great and comprehends all “”. Contextualistic philosophy is a philosophy of change which deal with happenings or occurrences, viewed not as something past and done with but rather as dynamic, living presences, affording an important way of making comprehensive sense of our world 15 . For that reason, Santayana, who calls himself a naturalistic philosopher, criticizes Deweyan thought, to be limited to a point of view, a particular perspective. Santayana sais: “in the nature there is no foreground or background, no here, no now, no moral cathedra, no centre so really central as to reduce all other things to mere margins and mere perspectives” 16 . Thus, as Larry Hickman 17 has emphasized, Santayana charges Dewey with advancing a ‘‘half-hearted’’ and ‘‘short-winded’’ naturalism, arguing that Dewey was only interested in ‘‘foreground,’’ and that consequently the rest of nature is reputed to be intrinsically remote or dubious or merely ideal. Santayana accuses Dewey of ignoring or idealizing nonhuman nature, however, in this interaction of human beings and surroundings, the living creature is an element which builds and is built in that relationship. Likewise, Confucius characterizes people in terms of events, rejecting the consideration of agency or isolated actions. “The agent is as much a consequence of his act as its cause.” 18 . Thus, this ontology puts its emphasis in the immanental cosmos, in which human beings interact with their surroundings. What is more, Ames and Hall stress two significant implications of this ontology: the idea of order and creativity in an immanental universe 19 . Acquiring an order does not imply a logical or rational order, but an aesthetic. In contrast to Judaeo-Christian notion of creatio ex nihilo, confucian 14 L. E. Hahn (1998), Enhancing Cultural Interflow Between East and West: Collected Essays in Comparative Philosophy and Culture, Thome H. Fang Institute, 37. 15 Ibid., 74. 16 G. Santayana (1925), op. cit., 373. 17 L. Hickman (2007), Pragmatism as Postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey, New York: Fordham University Press, op. cit., 133. 18 R. Ames y D. Hall (1987), op. cit., 15. 19 Ibid., 16-17. 6 terms allude to creative actions within the world of natural events. Therefore, in the Yi Jing, we can find 20 : It is heaven and earth that furnish models and patterns. It is Time that changes and evolves. It is the sun and moon that are the most bright. It is wealth and nobility that are the most exalted. It is the sages that prepare things for practical use, and invent instruments for the benefit of the world. They (the sages) all understand the ways of nature and know the needs of man. They thus made the skillful things for the use of the people 21 . This approach, in spite of being different philosophies, implies two key common characteristics: the principle of continuity and the notion of situation. According to Morris, Dewey follows the darwinism and how there is a line of continuity from the less complex to the more complex forms and functions of life 22 . However, Dewey does not only follow darwinism, but also the influence of Hegel. The growth of a seed into a plant is an example of this continuity. And although the principle of continuity can be found throught all Dewey’s work, particularly in his reflections about education, nature, research and methodology 23 , Dewey never gives a clear definition about that. A posible definition can be considered it as the growth which merges in the situation, which implies a creative theory of human existence. The reality is the growth-process itself; childhood and adulthood are phases of a continuity, in which just because it is a history, the later cannot exist until the earlier exists (‘mechanistic materialism’ in germ); and in which the later makes use of the registered and cumulative outcome of the earlier –or, more strictly, is its utilization (‘spiritualistic teleology’ in germ ). (EN, LW 1:210). Thayer has asserted few characteristics as unification, growing, progress or integration, in oppostion to the discontinuity which implies brokes, pauses, interruptions, 20 Some scholars, as Feng Youlan, has attributed these commentaries to Confucius, but due to the controversy about that, I quote the Yi Jing because it is the main source and book, as well as The book of Poetry, for Confucius. 21 Yi Jing, trad. James Legge, 22 S. E. Morris (2003), Essays on John Dewey and Pragmatic Naturalism, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 18. 23 “The growth and development of any living organism from seed to maturity ilustrates the meaning of continuity” [L, LW 12: 30]. “The educative process is a continuous process of growth, having as its aim at every stage an added capacity for growth” [DE, MW 9:59]. 7 dualisms or fragmentation 24 . The important aspect for this presentation is the idea of growth in our lives, which supposes an endless process. This led us to the second notion, the situation. Dewey employs it with specific characteristics and, although he uses the term along his works, he does not consider it carefully until his later work Logic. The Theory of Inquiry. Nonetheless, this notion is not only important to understand his ontological project, but also is the basis of his aesthetic thought. For Dewey, the process of life implies a series of events in which organisms are in cotinuous interaction with their surroundings. Living creatures tries to restore the harmony with these interactions because of the necessity of equilibrium (L, LW 12:34). And Dewey does not exclusively attribute this caracteristic to human beings, but to all the living beings. Capacity for maintenance of a constant form of interaction between organism and envirornment is not confined to the individual organism. It is manifested also,in the reproduction of similar organisms... As long as life continues, its processes are such as continuously to maintain and restore the enduring relationship which is characteristic of the life-activities of a given organism. (L, LW 12:33). The succession of activities in life is teleological, the order implies series, although this continuous interaction is marked by rhythms with disequilibriums. For Dewey, every living creature has the necessity to restore the equilibrium, and the higher the organism, the more elevated will be the disruptions and the more energy will be required to achieve the harmony. The higher the organism, the more serious become the disturbances and the more energetic (and often more prolonged) are the efforts necessary for its reestablishment. The state of disturbed equilibration constitutes need. The movement toward its restoration is search and exploration. The recovery is fulfillment or satisfaction. (L, LW 12: 34) The restoration of harmony can be considered as an aesthetic dimension of human beings and this approach will be enriched from a dialogue with Confucian thought. Similarly to Dewey, Confucius also asserts the necesity of restoring the equilibrium through the notion of harmony ( 和) , which pressuposes the existence of multiple and diverse posible relationships. As Chenyang Li 25 has asserted, the Confucian insight of the World does not present the world as an isolated element, but as a myriad of thing in 24 H. S. Thayer (1968), op. cit., 174. 25 Chenyang Li (2006), “The Confucian Ideal of Harmony”, Philosophy East & West 56: 4, 589. 8 interaction. Thus, the personal growth is a fundamental aspect of human lives, characterized because of its creativity, that is, “realizing oneself as a person is an art” 26 . Dewey shares with Confucian thought the belief in the continuity of beings, as an esencial element of his ontology, but also an esential element of his aesthetic. As Roger Ames and David Hall asserts in reference to Confucian thought, “aisthesis as praxis require a world composed of the termini of aesthetic acts. Praxis as aisthesis is fundamentally to be understood in terms of processes of self-creativity grounded in perspectives defining the forms of preoccupation with the world.” 27 . Moreover, some scholars have also emphasized how chinese philosophers do not have a myth of a created and fixed world, but a belief in the becoming. Thus, F. W. Mote sais: “the Basic point which outsiders have found so hard to detect is that the Chinese, among all peoples ancient and recent, primitive and modern, are apparently unique in having no creation myth; that is, they have regarded the World and man as uncreated, as constituting the central features of a spontaneously self-generating cosmos having no creador, god, ultimate cause, or will external to itself” 28 Therefore, this approach can help to clarify the emergentism of Dewey, through which he proposes the creative and aesthetic capacity of man to interact harmoniously with the world. 2. DEWEYAN NOTION OF EXPERIENCE For Dewey, every human activity is the result of interaction between organisms and their surroundings, between to experience and to make, which implies a reorganization and fusion of energies. That is, living creatures are continuously suffering rhythmic alternations between disunity and unity, between harmony and chaos in their lives and this is not simply a passive activity, but a meaningful creative process which joined a combination, a movement and culmination, of breaks and re-adjustments. Nevertheless, Dewey distinguishes between the experience which is developed in the continuos living process from aesthetic experience. The aesthetic quality emphasizes those experiences which imply a meaningful way of interaction. With Dewey words: “Aesthetic is no intruder in experience from without, wether by way of idle luxury or trascendent ideality, but that it is the clarified and intensified development of traits that 26 R. Ames y D. Hall (1987), op. cit., 66. 27 Ibid., 133. 28 Frederick W. Mote (1971), Intellectual Foundations of China, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 17-18. 9 belong to every normally complete experience. This fact he takes to be the only secure basis upon which aesthetic theory can build” (AE: 52-53) This quotation aludes two key aspects: the aesthetic quality is not a luxury or a transcendental idea, that is, aesthetic has its roots in our everyday life; and, in contrast with modern aesthetic, Dewey assigns the aesthetic quality to the experience, to the proccess, not to the ojects or sujects. Both are parts of that process and “in such experiences, every successive part flows freely, without seam and without unfilled blanks, into what ensues” (AE, LW 10: 43). Next pages, I would like to consider main features of aesthetic experience in order to characterize it, but also to overcome recent criticisms 29 that assert that Dewey’s emphasis in the humdrum of ordinary makes aesthetic experience difficult to happen: Unity: Aesthetic experience has the unity which characterizes it. Dewey sais “an experience has a unity that gives its name, that meal, that storm, that rupture of frienship. The existence of this unity is constituted by a single quality that pervades the entire experience in spite of the variation of its constituent parts” (AE, LW 10: 44) Nevertheless, the unity is not constituted because of the anticipation of consummation through the experience, as Sherri Irvin has suggested. Through this pervasive quality, Dewey has indicated an organizative quality, the temporal quality of the events which are developed as a whole. With Dewey’s words, “because of continuous merging, there are no holes, mechanical junctions and dead centre when we have an experience There are pauses, places of rest, but they punctuate and define the quality of movement.”(AE, LW 10:46). Aesthetic experience is a process in which human beings are linked creatively with the world. Thus, “Such an experience is a whole and carries with it its own individualizing quality and self-sufficiency. It is an experience” (AE, 42). Rhythm: Dewey examined the notion of rhythm in the chapters seven and eight of Art as Experience (Natural History of Form and Organization of Energies). Traditionally, it has not paid enough attention to this term and its explanations rely on the notion of form. Nevertheless, rhythm roots aesthetic activity in the ordinary. Defining rhythm as a universal scheme of existence, underlying all realization of order in change 30 , Dewey characterizes it as a quality of life and nature. Human beings are affected and participate 29 I refer particularly to Yuriko Saito’s criticism, which accuse Dewey of presenting a notion of aesthetic experience too restricted and limited to certain isolated moments in our lives. Cf. Y. Saito (2010), Everyday Aesthetics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 44 30 Dewey, p. 154 16 coming to understand what is appropriate (yi 義) in the circumstances to fail to attend to it, and to be unable to reform conduct that is not productive – these things I worry over.” 57 It is necessary to question and judge our ways of interactions, it is inevitable examine our meanings in different situations; and new interpretations will be accepted when it will meet community’s approval. 4. CONCLUSION Dào represents an experiential path that is taken from our culture and context. “And at the heart of dao is the sensibility that takes in the community as the ultimate measure by which to judge one’s actions.” 58 Through my dissertation I defend that Confucian philosophy and, particularly, this character can help us to clarify some aspects of Dewey’s naturalism and notion of experience. As Joseph Grange has asserted dao succeeds in overcoming the dualisms that haunted Dewey’s vision of nineteenthand twentieth century culture 59 , but also the creative dimension of human beings that seems to be forgotten by scholars interested in Deweyan thought. In the second edition of Experience and Nature Dewey changes the term experience for culture and his argumentation for this modification resembles the features of Confucian notion’s of dao. Therefore, it can establish some conection between Confucian notion of dào and Deweyan notion of experience with care and moderation. The dialogue is complex and my approach does not try to consider exclusively similarities. Due to the limited time, I can not consider their distinctive features, but it is important that there are and these can not be omitted. My dissertation deals with this interaction from a detailled analysis of their elements and a careful study about their functions, contexts, characteristics and peculiarities. However, I can assert that both share the consideration of thought as a way to achieve a harmonious relationship between human beings and surroundings. 57 子曰：德之不脩，學之不講，聞義不能徙，不善不能改，是吾憂也。Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, VII, 3, p. 111. 58 J. Grange (2004), op. cit., 24. 59 Ibid.