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Is There Any Room for Immediate Experience? Looking for an Answer in Dewey (and Wittgenstein) via Peirce and James
Full text linkThe paper investigates the prospect of dealing with “immediate experience” from a pragmatist perspective. The issue at stake is the possibility of speaking in a deflationary yet tenable way about the direct character of our common experiences of the world, given that the human environment is profoundly characterized by linguistic, inferential and interpretative practices.
The author explores John Dewey’s answers to the above-mentioned problem. These can be seen to reflect a sort of tension within classic pragmatism between the young Peirce's lesson about the semiotic and mediated structure of human cognition and James’s mature claim for immediate experience.
Not least by means of a comparison with Wittgenstein’s approach, the thesis arising from the paper is that Dewey was able to solve the apparent divergence by considering experience in close connection with life and through a complementary understanding of cognition as a specific form of experience, as well as by emphasizing the role of the qualitative or aesthetic aspect of primary experience. Moreover, Dewey’s non-foundational and circular conception of the relationships between qualitative and reflective experience is identified as a decisive step
Emozioni pragmatiste
No full textThe period from 1884 to the first decade of the 20th century may be viewed as an open theoretical laboratory in which William James, John Dewey and George Herbert Mead sought to develop new approaches to the issue of human emotions. The suggestions and unresolved difficulties presented by James were first discussed and elaborated by Dewey and then, immediately afterwards, reconsidered and further articulated by Mead.
The paper highlights some of the most relevant theses derived from the pragmatist debate, such as the continuity between bodily and mental aspects, the possibility of articulating the discourse by distinguishing betweeen the aesthetic, qualitative and affective aspects of our experience and emotions, and the social dimension of emotions conceived as basic forms of conversation or gestures.
The paper suggests that the resulting non-dualistic approach to emotions – which completely rejects the dychotomy between mind and body, emotion and cognition, private and social – is still significant for present-day philosophical debate, which often continues to confine our affective life to an alleged private or mental sphere, while seeking to develop a purely cognitively oriented theory of the minds of others.
Furthermore, the author suggests that the natural-culturalistic or bio-social approach to emotions can help avoid a new sort of polarization between a reductive naturalistic stance inspired by the cognitive sciences – or, better, their stiffer philosophical versions – and the radical constructivistic approach to emotions now prevalent in the social sciences (from sociology to cultural studies), as well as in economics
Geniali individui. Crisi di un mito e nuove possibilità
No full textChe ne è del genio nell'epoca della sua riproducibilità economica e finanziaria? Il saggio parte dall'attuale disorientamento rispetto all'opportunità di parlare ancora di geni artistici nella società contemporanea per riconsiderare criticamente alcuni aspetti di fondo della figura del genio elaborata dall'estetica filosofica ed evidenziarne le implicazioni problematiche, in particolare in riferimento al tema dell'individualità. Invece di considerare la crisi dell'ideologia del genio come un fenomeno del tutto negativo, l'autore propone di intenderla come uno stimolo a ripensare in modi alternativi l'individualità dell'artista. Nel pragmatismo di John Dewey sono rintracciati strumenti concettuali e argomenti di critica, ma anche possibilità diverse per comprendere la produzione artistica e il suo ruolo.
Where is genius to be found in the age of its economic and financial reproducibility? Ingenious individuals. Crisis of a myth and new possibilities sets out by considering the present uncertainty as to whether one may still speak of artistic geniuses in contemporary society, in order to critically examine some basic aspects of the traditional figure of the genius, as this has been developed in the aesthetic field, and to highlight some of its problematic implications, particularly in relation to the issue of individuality. The author suggests to approach the crisis of the ideology of genius not as a completely negative phenomenon, but as a stimulus for rethinking the individuality of the artist from alternative perspectives. In John Dewey's pragmatism the author finds some useful conceptual tools and critical arguments, as well as different ways of understanding artistic production and its role
Understanding rules as habits. Developing a pragmatist anthropological approach
Full text linkBy taking Wittgenstein's well-known reflections on following a rule as its starting point, the paper suggests that what the Austrian philosopher meant by rule could better be understood in terms of habits, as these have been theorized by the classical pragmatists – and by John Dewey in particular. This kind of interpretation reinforces both the rejection of the intellectualistic approach to the issue of following rules, and the emphasis on their primarily social dimension. On the other hand, this reading also forces us to clarify what the anthropological consequences might be of Wittgenstein's leap from the dichotomy between the alleged a priori norms and their alleged empirical actualizations to our already meaningful ordinary practices. Consequently, the paper articulates the basic anthropological assumptions characterizing the pragmatist approach to habits by stressing their natural and social implications. Finally, the author outlines what the consequences might be of this interpretation of rules in terms of habits for the question of normativity
Aesthetic Issues in Human Emancipation. Between Dewey and Marcuse
Full text linkIn his early essay on the affirmative character of culture, dating back to 1937, Marcuse states that the whole sphere of material production is generally regarded as being tainted by misery and injustice, and in principle alien to beauty, enjoyment and happiness. In the 1920s Dewey had made a similar point, noting that our understanding of work as a synonym for mere labour – something uninteresting and toilsome, which leaves no legitimate room for pleasure – is the result of a regressive habit, connected to an exclusive emphasis on profit.
Setting out from different points of departure, both scholars assert the possibility to enjoy richer forms of life here and now – ones sensuously, emotively and imaginatively more satisfying.
The present paper tries to distinguish the different meanings which Dewey and Marcuse attribute to the aesthetic aspects of our experiences, by stressing their common assumption that these aspects are one of the basic elements in our interactions with the surrounding world and that they play a decisive role in our lives.
Political emancipation, as defined by Marx, does not cover the sum of human emancipation in all of its complexity, particularly because the more anthropologically oriented meaning of the term also includes the satisfaction of some aesthetic needs which must be taken into account in order to attain “thicker” forms of freedom.
While for both Dewey and Marcuse at the beginning of the 20th century consumption remained the only recognized venue for pleasure, it must be acknowledged that political economy and marketing are now increasingly and pervasively exploiting the “esthetic hunger” of individuals in contemporary post-industrial societies.
Nonetheless, for both Dewey and Marcuse this circumstance neither means that we must pursue a purely negative form of culture and art nor that we have to look for completely rational agents, whose conduct exclusively stems from clear and distinct ideas and arguments, with no aesthetic or qualitative influence on their deliberations. The point is rather to suggest alternative ways of satisfying our aesthetic needs, but also of making subtler distinctions between different forms of consumption, pleasure and enjoyment
Sortir de la tour d'ivoire. L'esthétique inclusive de John Dewey aujourd'hui
No full textEn publiant L’Art comme expérience en 1934 (traduit en France en 2005, sous la direction de Jean-Pierre Cometti), John Dewey proposait une théorie continuiste de l’expérience : non seulement les expériences ordinaires ne sont pas essentiellement différentes des expériences artistiques mais, plus encore, c’est l’ensemble de notre vie quotidienne qui peut faire l’objet d’expériences esthétiques. Par là, Dewey formulait une esthétique pragmatiste dont les enjeux conceptuels et politiques restent d’une grande actualité.\ud
Roberta Dreon met en évidence la pertinence des positions du philosophe américain en les confrontant avec des réflexions plus récentes (Arthur Danto, Noël Carroll, Richard Shusterman), mais aussi avec les débats anthropologiques sur la nature du langage, de l’expérience et de l’art. Si les théories de Dewey ont été influencées par celles de Bronisław Malinowski et de Franz Boas, elles permettent, en retour, de reconsidérer certains travaux majeurs en anthropologie de l’art (Clifford Geertz, Alfred Gell).\ud
Sortir de la tour d’ivoire souligne ainsi la valeur inclusive de la philosophie de John Dewey : celle-ci nous permet de repenser nos conceptions de l’art et les oppositions binaires qui les structurent traditionnellement (beaux-arts vs arts populaires ; artistique vs utile ; art vs vie), mais aussi de comprendre le fonctionnement des œuvres d’art dans le réseau continu de notre expérience et de nos relations à autrui
Pragmatist Tools for Exploring the "Fabric of Experience". John Ryder's "Knowledge, Art, and Power. An Outline of a Theory of Practice".
Full text linkThe essay is a critical notice on John Ryder's book, "Knowledge, Art, and Power. An Outline of a Theory of Practice", published by Brill in 2020. Sharing Ryder's cultural naturalism as well as his relational ontology, the author considers some important issues at stake within the volume. A first claim is that Ryder's characterization of the aesthetic should be explicitly connected with affective, qualitative or “esthetic” significances as pervasive features of experienced situations, grounded in the bio-social dependence of human life on the environment. A second suggestion is integrating John Ryder’s conception of the political as a basic feature of experience through an explicit emphasis on the Pragmatists’ thesis of the essentially social character of human life. A final criticism regards Ryder's deflating strategy about the role played by language in human experiencence, denying it to be one of its structural dimensions together with the aesthetic, the cognitive, and the political
Jean Greisch, Ontologie et temporalité, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1994, Theodor Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’, University of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 1993
No full textDewey After the End of Art. Evaluating the "Hegelian Permanent Deposit" in Dewey's Aesthetics
Full text linkThis article explores the significance of Hegel’s aesthetic lectures for Dewey’s approach to the arts. Although over the last two decades some brilliant studies have been published on the “permanent deposit” of Hegel in Dewey’s mature thought, the aesthetic dimension of Dewey’s engagement with Hegel’s heritage has not yet been investigated. This inquiry will be developed on a theoretical level as well as on the basis of a recent discovery: in Dewey’s Correspondence traces have been found of a lecture on Hegel’s Aesthetics delivered in 1891 within a summer school run by a scholar close to the so-called St. Louis Hegelians. Dewey’s deep and long-standing acquaintance with Hegel’s Aesthetics supports the claim that in his mature book, Art as Experience, he originally appropriated some Hegelian insights. First, Dewey shared Hegel’s strong anti-dualistic and anti-autonomistic conception of the arts, resisting post-Kantian sirens that favored instead an interpretation of art as a separate realm from ordinary reality. Second, they basically converged on an idea of the arts as inherently social activities as well as crucial contributions to the shaping of cultures and civilizations, based on the proximity of the arts to the sensitive nature of man. Third, this article argues that an original re-consideration of Hegel’s thesis of the so-called “end of art” played a crucial role in the formulation of Dewey’s criticism of the arts and of the role of aesthetic experience in contemporary society. The author suggests that we read Dewey’s criticism of the removal of fine art “from the scope of the common or community life” (LW 10, 12) in light of Hegel’s insight that the experience of the arts as something with which believers or citizens can immediately identify belongs to an irretrievable past.This article explores the significance of Hegel's aesthetic lectures for Dewey's approach to the arts. Although over the last two decades some brilliant studies have been published on the “permanent deposit” of Hegel in Dewey's mature thought, the aesthetic dimension of Dewey's engagement with Hegel's heritage has not yet been investigated. This inquiry will be developed on a theoretical level as well as on the basis of a recent discovery: in Dewey's Correspondence traces have been found of a lecture on Hegel's Aesthetics delivered in 1891 within a summer school run by a scholar close to the so-called St. Louis Hegelians. Dewey's deep and long-standing acquaintance with Hegel's Aesthetics supports the claim that in his mature book, Art as Experience, he originally appropriated some Hegelian insights. First, Dewey shared Hegel's strong anti-dualistic and anti-autonomistic conception of the arts, resisting post-Kantian sirens that favored instead an interpretation of art as a separate realm from ordinary reality. Second, they basically converged on an idea of the arts as inherently social activities as well as crucial contributions to the shaping of cultures and civilizations, based on the proximity of the arts to the sensitive nature of man. Third, this article argues that an original re-consideration of Hegel's thesis of the so-called “end of art” played a crucial role in the formulation of Dewey's criticism of the arts and of the role of aesthetic experience in contemporary society. The author suggests that we read Dewey's criticism of the removal of fine art “from the scope of the common or community life” (lw 10, 12) in light of Hegel's insight that the experience of the arts as something with which believers or citizens can immediately identify belongs to an irretrievable past
Il discreto e il continuo nel linguaggio
No full textThis paper explores the possibility of adopting a conception of language as something primarily composed of discrete units, put together according to a series of compositional rules, based on the comparative analysis of three different approaches. Firstly, it considers Schopenhauer’s interpretation of language as the « telegraph of thought », essentially composed of discrete parts corresponding to concepts, and consequently unable to reach the allegedly noumenic bottom of the world that is supposed to be foreign to any kind of individualization. Secondly, the paper focuses on William James’ ambivalent observations on language in his The Principles of Psychology. Basically, radicalizing William Gavin’s interpretation, the author argues that James’ criticism is directed at our habit of conceiving language as essentially composed of names ; on the contrary in the chapter on the stream of thought, James provides many suggestions on the capacity of language to express the transitive parts of thinking, while also arguing that names involve an indistinct fringe of other words. Finally, the paper considers the recently debated hypothesis that language and music co-evolved for a long period in the pre-history of Homo sapiens, by drawing upon common prosodic and affective resources. This hypothesis seems to support an anti-dichotomic approach, insofar as it considers continuity and discreteness to be different phases of linguistic practices
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