Digital Commons@RISD Home > Division of Liberal Arts > Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive) > Vol. 12 (2014)
Abstract
John Dewey is frequently mentioned as an important forerunner of everyday aesthetics. In this article, I attempt to provide an updated view of Dewey’s place within everyday aesthetics by drawing attention to aspects in Dewey’s own work and in contemporary interpretations of his philosophy that have not been thoroughly discussed in the context of everyday aesthetics. In the first part, I offer a reading of Dewey’s notion of aesthetic experience that unties its content through noting the important position Dewey ascribes to imagination in aesthetic experience in the later parts of Art as Experience. The second pillar of the pragmatist theory of everyday aesthetics developed in this paper is formed by recent Deweyan-inspired views in pragmatist ethics on the vital role of imagination in moral life. I will place the view of everyday aesthetics emerging from these pragmatist sources within current developments of everyday aesthetics and defend it over other positions on offer.