Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious

Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious PDF Author: Bethany Henning
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793620229
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
John Dewey was the most celebrated and publicly engaged American philosopher in the twentieth century. His naturalistic theory of “experience” generated new approaches to education and democracy and re-grounded philosophy’s search for truth in the needs of life as it is shared and lived. However, interpretations of Dewey after the linguistic turn have either obscured or rejected the considerable role that he gives to the non-discursive dimension of experience. In Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious: The Vital Depths of Experience, Bethany Henning argues that much classical American philosophy implicitly recognizes an unconscious dimension of mind that is distinct from Freud’s theory. Although the unconscious that emerges within American thought has never been treated systematically, it found its fullest expression in Dewey’s work, particularly in his theory of aesthetic experience. This dimension of mind illuminates the continuity between nature and culture, and it provides us with an account of why artwork is often successful at communicating meanings from the ecological and intimate dimensions of life, where discourse often fails. If the relationship between the human and the organic world has emerged as the definitive question of twenty-first century life, then the aesthetic unconscious stands as a resource for our ecological and intimate well-being.

Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious

Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious PDF Author: Bethany Henning
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793620229
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
John Dewey was the most celebrated and publicly engaged American philosopher in the twentieth century. His naturalistic theory of “experience” generated new approaches to education and democracy and re-grounded philosophy’s search for truth in the needs of life as it is shared and lived. However, interpretations of Dewey after the linguistic turn have either obscured or rejected the considerable role that he gives to the non-discursive dimension of experience. In Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious: The Vital Depths of Experience, Bethany Henning argues that much classical American philosophy implicitly recognizes an unconscious dimension of mind that is distinct from Freud’s theory. Although the unconscious that emerges within American thought has never been treated systematically, it found its fullest expression in Dewey’s work, particularly in his theory of aesthetic experience. This dimension of mind illuminates the continuity between nature and culture, and it provides us with an account of why artwork is often successful at communicating meanings from the ecological and intimate dimensions of life, where discourse often fails. If the relationship between the human and the organic world has emerged as the definitive question of twenty-first century life, then the aesthetic unconscious stands as a resource for our ecological and intimate well-being.

Music and the Aesthetic Unconscious

Music and the Aesthetic Unconscious PDF Author: Bethany Henning
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Aesthetics
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
John Dewey's "Art As Experience" represents an unprecedented aesthetic theory insofar as it provides the reader with a way to think of aesthetic experience, not as relegated to a specialized realm of activity that one might denote as "the art world," but as the primary mode through which human beings come to terms with the environment. This is one aspect of Dewey's "cultural naturalism," through which we can see how his philosophy intends a non-separation between the body, the mind, and the environment. This project aims to reveal the notion of the unconscious that is implicit within Dewey's later work, particularly his aesthetics and metaphysics. This is a uniquely American unconscious with properties and functions that differ from the unconscious that was articulated by the tradition of psychoanalysis in Europe. I also make the pragmatic argument that when we treat the aesthetic and the unconscious as essentially linked, we benefit from a stronger hermeneutic for diagnosing culture, and we are better prepared to restore our connection with sensuous, immediate experience. This dual rehabilitation of the aesthetic and the unconscious serves to strengthen our capacity for eros, which, I will argue, is the need to live a shared aesthetic reality.

John Dewey's Theory of Art, Experience, and Nature

John Dewey's Theory of Art, Experience, and Nature PDF Author: Thomas M. Alexander
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791494446
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Thomas Alexander shows that the primary, guiding concern of Dewey's philosophy is his theory of aesthetic experience. He directly challenges those critics, most notably Stephen Pepper and Benedetto Croce, who argued that this area is the least consistent part of Dewey's thought. The author demonstrates that the fundamental concept in Dewey's system is that of "experience" and that paradigmatic treatment of experience is to be found in Dewey's analysis of aesthetics and art. The confusions resulting from the neglect of this orientation have led to prolonged misunderstandings, eventual neglect, and unwarranted popularity for ideas at odds with the genuine thrust of Dewey's philosophical concerns. By exposing the underlying aesthetic foundations of Dewey's philosophy, Alexander aims to rectify many of these errors, generating a fruitful new interest in Dewey.

John Dewey's Aesthetic Philosophy

John Dewey's Aesthetic Philosophy PDF Author: Philip M. Zeltner
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789060320297
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description


John Dewey and the Artful Life

John Dewey and the Artful Life PDF Author: Scott R. Stroud
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271074612
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Aesthetic experience has had a long and contentious history in the Western intellectual tradition. Following Kant and Hegel, a human’s interaction with nature or art frequently has been conceptualized as separate from issues of practical activity or moral value. This book examines how art can be seen as a way of moral cultivation. Scott Stroud uses the thought of the American pragmatist John Dewey to argue that art and the aesthetic have a close connection to morality. Dewey gives us a way to reconceptualize our ideas of ends, means, and experience so as to locate the moral value of aesthetic experience in the experience of absorption itself, as well as in the experience of reflective attention evoked by an art object.

The Aesthetic Unconscious

The Aesthetic Unconscious PDF Author: Jacques Rancière
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745646433
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 103

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Book Description
This book is not concerned with the use of Freudian concepts for the interpretation of literary and artistic works. Rather, it is concerned with why this interpretation plays such an important role in demonstrating the contemporary relevance of psychoanalytic concepts. In order for Freud to use the Oedipus complex as a means for the interpretation of texts, it was necessary first of all for a particular notion of Oedipus, belonging to the Romantic reinvention of Greek antiquity, to have produced a certain idea of the power of that thought which does not think, and the power of that speech which remains silent. From this it does not follow that the Freudian unconscious was already prefigured by the aesthetic unconscious. Freud's 'aesthetic' analyses reveal instead a tension between the two forms of unconscious. In this concise and brilliant text Rancière brings out this tension and shows us what is at stake in this confrontation.

John Dewey and the Lessons of Art

John Dewey and the Lessons of Art PDF Author: Philip Wesley Jackson
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300082890
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Annotation In this provocative book, Philip W. Jackson examines John Dewey's thinking about the arts and its implications for educational practices. Jackson discusses Dewey's aesthetic theory, considers the transformative power of the experience of art, and shows in specific instances how the application of Dewey's view of the arts would improve learning experiences.

Art as Experience

Art as Experience PDF Author: John Dewey
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399531971
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Based on John Dewey's lectures on esthetics, delivered as the first William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1932, Art as Experience has grown to be considered internationally as the most distinguished work ever written by an American on the formal structure and characteristic effects of all the arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature.

John Dewey, Robert Pirsig, and the Art of Living

John Dewey, Robert Pirsig, and the Art of Living PDF Author: D. Granger
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137122528
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This book explores the writings of philosopher and educator, John Dewey, in order to develop an expansive vision of aesthetic education and everyday poetics of living. Robert Pirsig's best-selling book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , provides concrete exemplifications of this compelling yet unconventional vision.

Aesthetic Conflict and the Evolution of a Riot

Aesthetic Conflict and the Evolution of a Riot PDF Author: B. Marie Brady-Whitcanack
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1456735608
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
The text is a hermeneutic and field theory analysis of events that occurred during the first of two doctoral degree programs at a major state university. The study considers challenges to traditional curriculum in higher education and possible links to conflicts occurring at some major university campuses.