Dewey's Early Aesthetics

Experience and Nature.

Dewey begins to develop both an aesthetic theory and a theory of art in his 1925 Paul Carus
lectures, Experience and Nature (Dewey 1925a). However this needs to be teased out through
close reading and is not evident in chapter titles or even in the index. Early in the book, he
emphasizes the importance of direct enjoyment of song, dance and story-telling in human
experience, noting how even philosophers who stress pleasure, such as utilitarians, have failed to
address this domain (p. 78). He observes that early humans were more interested in direct
satisfaction than in prudence. Thus bodies were decorated first, and clothed later. Similarly,
early men made a game of fishing and hunting. In general, useful labor was transformed by
ceremony into enjoyable art. Although the activities of play and ritual were intended to have
practical effect, their aesthetic impact was even more important.
Dewey uses these historical claims to support a broadening of the field of aesthetics today.
Although some would see popular fiction and other sources of mass entertainment as a travesty
of art, these, as well as even more elementary things, such as jokes, beating drums, and blowing
whistles, have the same quality of immediate finality as things generally called aesthetic.
A nascent aesthetic theory can be found in Dewey's fifth chapter, Nature, Communication and
Meaning. Here he presents an aestheticized theory of language and of essences. The heart of
language is not expression of something that comes before. Rather, it is participation in
communication. Thus meaning is not private. In the process of cooperative action through
language the thing referred to gains both meaning and heightened potential. Whereas animism
refers this to the immediate relation of thing and person, poetry gives it a legitimate form. The
potential of a thing is its essence, and to perceive a thing is to acknowledge that potential.
Essence, or pronounced meaning, is the object of aesthetic intuition. Here, feeling and
understanding are one (Dewey 1925a, p. 183). The essence of a thing is identified with the
consummatory consequences and emerges from the various meanings attributed to it.
In communication, then, things reveal themselves to men. Within human experience all natural
events are adapted to meet the needs of conversation. The arts are forms of communication.
Communication is enjoyed for its own sake in dance, song and drama, where it is both
instrumental and final. Art is critical of life because it fixes standards of enjoyment, and thus
determines what should be desired. Moreover, the level of the arts in a community determines its
direction.
Dewey has the most to say about aesthetics in Chapter Nine, Experience, Nature and Art. The
structure of the argument is unfortunately, vague when compared to his later masterpiece, Art as
Experience (1934). He begins with the Greeks who saw experience as exemplified in technical
skill, and hence as equivalent to art, but who unfortunately downgraded experience when
compared to reason. For them, everything in experience, and in art, was contingent. Modern
thought sees art as simply an addition to nature, although it eulogizes artespecially fine art.
Like the Greeks, it denigrates the practical, but it does so because it considers it subjectively
distorted.
Dewey has two main points in this chapter: that science is an art, and that art is a practice. The
only distinction between modes of practice should be between those that are intelligent and give
immediate enjoyment through charged meaning, including fine art, and those that do not (Dewey

1925a, p. 358). If this distinction was maintained art would then be seen as the culmination of
natural processes, and science (improperly so called) as merely a helpful means for achieving
this end. The various dualisms of nature and experience, art and science, and so forth, would
disappear.
Dewey believed that art unifies the necessary and the free aspects of nature, and thus that artistic
acts are both inevitable and spontaneous. Unexpected combination is required for art: order and
proportion are not the whole story. The more extensive the uniformities of nature in art, the
greater the art, as long as they are fused with our wonder for the new.
Dewey reiterates that there is no real distinction between useful and fine art. The merely useful
is not really art, but routine. Also, those arts that are only final are mere amusements. There are
of course activities, including much of what we call labor, that have no immediate enjoyable
meaning. We call such activities useful, but they are really detrimental to human well-being.
Humans have a great need to appreciate the meaning in things and this is hindered by labor as it
is structured in our society.
Dewey thinks that what is generally called fine art includes self-indulgent self-expression
without regard to communication, experimentation in new techniques that produce bizarre
products, and production of commodities for the wealthy. True fine art produces an object that
gives us continuously renewed delight. A genuine aesthetic object is not only something that
gives consummatory experience but also helps to produce further satisfaction. Any activity that
does this, even if not found within the traditional list of arts, is fine art.
Fine art is not just an end in itself: it improves apprehension, enlarges vision, refines
discrimination, and creates standards. Both the artistic and the aesthetic involve perception in
which the instrumental and the consummatory intersect. Art gives us the object replete with
meaning. Aesthetic experience, unlike sensual gratification, is informed with meaning. Artistic
sense involves grasping potentialities. And artists are gifted persons who integrate focused and
defined perception with skill in a progressive way.
For Dewey, both useful and fine arts involve interpenetration of means and ends. Things are
only called useful because they are thought to belong to menial arts, or are related to common
people. Things called fine are often decorative or ostentatious. One might think that things are
merely useful when perception of meaning is incidental. However, this may not be helpful, for in
art perception is always used for something beyond itself. Moreover, such useful things as pots
may be intrinsically enjoyable. The basic distinction is between good and bad art: good art
requires interpenetration of fulfillment and usefulness, and bad art fails in this.
Dewey holds that thinking itself is an art. Propositions that express knowledge are as much
works of art as statues and symphonies. Conclusions are matters of condensed meaning, while
premises result from analysis of conclusions into their grounds. Scientific method is the art of
constructing true perceptions. Science is not seen as art in our society because it is artificially
protected, is limited to a particular class of persons, and is seen as brutal and mechanical. This is
coupled with the view that criticism a pedantic expression of merely personal taste. Dewey
believes that this dichotomy needs to be overcome, and that to do this we need discriminating
judgment.
Dewey rejects the theory that art is a mere medium for emotion. This does not mean he believes
that emotion is irrelevant to art. Emotion is evoked by objects, and is a response to an objective
situation. The origin of artistic creation is in emotional response to a situation. Contrary to Clive
Bell (1914), he holds that significant form can only refer to forms that give significance to
everyday subject-matters. Art does not create these forms. The forms that give us pleasure do so
because of their structure. Dewey was not anti-formalist, however. Although formalist art-works

can be sterile or pedantic, they may also enlarge and enrich our world by way of training our
perception.
The following and final chapter, Existence, Value and Criticism, develops Dewey's theory of
criticism. There, he argues against putting values in a separate realm from nature, and against
understanding nature in simply mechanistic terms. Instead, he advises a return to Greek concepts
of potentiality and actuality, although without the Greek tendency to see natural ends as
perfections. He thinks it important to develop a theory of criticism that would allow us to
discriminate amongst goods. This theory would not be limited to the arts. Criticism is also found
in morals and in religious belief. Philosophy, he argues, is a form of criticism too: it is criticism
of criticism. Indeed, as soon as one begins to talk about values, and to define them, one is doing
criticism. Criticism requires inquiry into the conditions and consequences of the object valued. It
is needed to enhance perception and to allow for appreciation of the same thing over time. It
accomplishes this by uncovering new meanings.
Dewey insisted that criticism is not just a matter of formal writings. It happens every day in
every aspect of our experience. Formal criticism simply develops the element of criticism found
in appreciation. Philosophy shows that there is no difference in principle between scientific,
moral and aesthetic appreciation. Each involves a transition from natural goods to goods
reflectively validated.
Dewey rejects the idea that values, including aesthetic values, are merely personal affairs. There
is no consensus in aesthetic theories because aesthetic phenomena have been segregated from
other aspects of life. Standards may be used to judge immediate goods, but standards are just
likings on the part of specific creatures, and it is meaningless to ask which of them is stronger.
Common sense tells us that there are immediate goods and that there are principles by which
they may be judged. It does not accept a rigid separation of knowledge and aesthetic
appreciation. But it fails to see that system is needed for adequate judgments. Aesthetic criticism
allows us to choose knowingly, for it reveals conditions and consequences, and it allows our
likings to be expressed in an informed way.
Dewey has two main points in this chapter: that science is an art, and that art is a practice. The
only distinction between modes of practice should be between those that are intelligent and give
immediate enjoyment through charged meaning, including fine art, and those that do not (Dewey
1925a, p. 358). If this distinction was maintained art would then be seen as the culmination of
natural processes, and science (improperly so called) as merely a helpful means for achieving
this end. The various dualisms of nature and experience, art and science, and so forth, would
disappear.
Dewey believed that art unifies the necessary and the free aspects of nature, and thus that artistic
acts are both inevitable and spontaneous. Unexpected combination is required for art: order and
proportion are not the whole story. The more extensive the uniformities of nature in art, the
greater the art, as long as they are fused with our wonder for the new.
Dewey reiterates that there is no real distinction between useful and fine art. The merely useful
is not really art, but routine. Also, those arts that are only final are mere amusements. There are
of course activities, including much of what we call labor, that have no immediate enjoyable
meaning. We call such activities useful, but they are really detrimental to human well-being.
Humans have a great need to appreciate the meaning in things and this is hindered by labor as it
is structured in our society.
Dewey thinks that what is generally called fine art includes self-indulgent self-expression
without regard to communication, experimentation in new techniques that produce bizarre
products, and production of commodities for the wealthy. True fine art produces an object that

gives us continuously renewed delight. A genuine aesthetic object is not only something that
gives consummatory experience but also helps to produce further satisfaction. Any activity that
does this, even if not found within the traditional list of arts, is fine art.
Fine art is not just an end in itself: it improves apprehension, enlarges vision, refines
discrimination, and creates standards. Both the artistic and the aesthetic involve perception in
which the instrumental and the consummatory intersect. Art gives us the object replete with
meaning. Aesthetic experience, unlike sensual gratification, is informed with meaning. Artistic
sense involves grasping potentialities. And artists are gifted persons who integrate focused and
defined perception with skill in a progressive way.
For Dewey, both useful and fine arts involve interpenetration of means and ends. Things are
only called useful because they are thought to belong to menial arts, or are related to common
people. Things called fine are often decorative or ostentatious. One might think that things are
merely useful when perception of meaning is incidental. However, this may not be helpful, for in
art perception is always used for something beyond itself. Moreover, such useful things as pots
may be intrinsically enjoyable. The basic distinction is between good and bad art: good art
requires interpenetration of fulfillment and usefulness, and bad art fails in this.
Dewey holds that thinking itself is an art. Propositions that express knowledge are as much
works of art as statues and symphonies. Conclusions are matters of condensed meaning, while
premises result from analysis of conclusions into their grounds. Scientific method is the art of
constructing true perceptions. Science is not seen as art in our society because it is artificially
protected, is limited to a particular class of persons, and is seen as brutal and mechanical. This is
coupled with the view that criticism a pedantic expression of merely personal taste. Dewey
believes that this dichotomy needs to be overcome, and that to do this we need discriminating
judgment.
Dewey rejects the theory that art is a mere medium for emotion. This does not mean he believes
that emotion is irrelevant to art. Emotion is evoked by objects, and is a response to an objective
situation. The origin of artistic creation is in emotional response to a situation. Contrary to Clive
Bell (1914), he holds that significant form can only refer to forms that give significance to
everyday subject-matters. Art does not create these forms. The forms that give us pleasure do so
because of their structure. Dewey was not anti-formalist, however. Although formalist art-works
can be sterile or pedantic, they may also enlarge and enrich our world by way of training our
perception.
The following and final chapter, Existence, Value and Criticism, develops Dewey's theory of
criticism. There, he argues against putting values in a separate realm from nature, and against
understanding nature in simply mechanistic terms. Instead, he advises a return to Greek concepts
of potentiality and actuality, although without the Greek tendency to see natural ends as
perfections. He thinks it important to develop a theory of criticism that would allow us to
discriminate amongst goods. This theory would not be limited to the arts. Criticism is also found
in morals and in religious belief. Philosophy, he argues, is a form of criticism too: it is criticism
of criticism. Indeed, as soon as one begins to talk about values, and to define them, one is doing
criticism. Criticism requires inquiry into the conditions and consequences of the object valued. It
is needed to enhance perception and to allow for appreciation of the same thing over time. It
accomplishes this by uncovering new meanings.
Dewey insisted that criticism is not just a matter of formal writings. It happens every day in
every aspect of our experience. Formal criticism simply develops the element of criticism found
in appreciation. Philosophy shows that there is no difference in principle between scientific,
moral and aesthetic appreciation. Each involves a transition from natural goods to goods
reflectively validated.

Dewey rejects the idea that values, including aesthetic values, are merely personal affairs. There
is no consensus in aesthetic theories because aesthetic phenomena have been segregated from
other aspects of life. Standards may be used to judge immediate goods, but standards are just
likings on the part of specific creatures, and it is meaningless to ask which of them is stronger.
Common sense tells us that there are immediate goods and that there are principles by which
they may be judged. It does not accept a rigid separation of knowledge and aesthetic
appreciation. But it fails to see that system is needed for adequate judgments. Aesthetic criticism
allows us to choose knowingly, for it reveals conditions and consequences, and it allows our
likings to be expressed in an informed way.