Dewey's aesthetic theory.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityDewey's aesthetic theory represents the culmination of his general philosophy of experience, and might best be interpreted as the final statements of his socio-ethical theory and his metaphysical world-view. Art As Experience is not only Dewey's explicit statement about art and aesthetic experience, but a further enrichment of his crucial concept of experience. This enriched focus upon experience enhances its significance and meaning only at the expense of certain distinctions and ambiguities with respect to terminology and method. In making a fundamental distinction between any ordinary process of experiencing and an aesthetic experience, Dewey seems to violate what, for him, is a basic methodological principle. To distinguish is to make an unnatural bifurcation; moreover, to select one thing as more meaningful and valuable than another is to commit the fallacy of artificial simplification, or to tear something out of context and give it an unnatural superiority over all else. [TRUNCATED