Must We Name Our Experiences Aesthetic ? : Rethinking Dewey's Aesthetic Theory in the Light of His Vision for Philosophy

In Dewey's mature naturalism, humans are, foremost, organisms that live not only in nature but of it. Within this biological matrix, aesthetic experience is the cultivation of meanings which enrich the respective immediate moments. Inspired by Alexander (1987) and Shusterman (1992), many scholars have come to take up Dewey's aesthetic theory to be central in understanding his entire philosophy. In this essay, I argue that, while Dewey's aesthetic theory provides detailed descriptions of his distinct view on experience, reducing his philosophy into the aesthetic leads to 'the philosophic fallacy' in which direct interactions in experience are undermined for the sake of a cherished idea. I first trace how Dewey views the conditions and development of experience. Based on this, in line with Dewey's original intent, I point out that the culminating moments of 'an experience' are considered to be aesthetic only after they are intellectually qualified. This indicates that experience does not necessarily need to be called aesthetic because qualifications will differ depending on the context. Claiming that the aesthetic exhausts the scope of all human experiences commits 'the philosophic fallacy' because the context from which meanings arise is undermined. I then turn to examine his aesthetic theory in the light of his vision for philosophy. Seen from this view, Dewey's aesthetic theory is a call for an attitude toward existence that keeps loyal to the movements of direct interactions in nature. Negatively, it functions to criticize the uncritically inherited intellectual divisions which do not agree to the occurrences of nature, and positively, it becomes a guiding ideal for the readers to discover new meanings in experience. Therefore, I conclude that, although Dewey makes sweeping statements concerning aesthetic experience, insofar as one keeps loyal to the direct interactions in experience, we do not need to call our experiences aesthetic.