John Dewey on aesthetic experience and moral cultivation

This dissertation argues that an account linking aesthetic value and moral value can be extracted from the work of John Dewey. I begin by confronting the dilemma that faced many aesthetic experience and aesthetic attitude traditions---namely that their accounts result in art objects becoming replaceable with some other object of equal instrumental value. After detailing the problems that are created by philosophers reifying the internal/external and intrinsic/instrumental distinctions in aesthetic discourse, I use Dewey's theory of value to construct an experiential account of aesthetic experience. Such an account describes the moral value of aesthetic activity in terms of the experience that occurs between the auditor and an art object. I supplement this analysis by constructing a novel reading of moral cultivation based in Dewey's early work in ethics---his Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics and The Study of Ethics. Attentiveness to the situation is shown to be integrally connected to character development and moral activity. I argue that aesthetic experience is morally cultivating because it is an experience of such attentiveness and adjustment to particular situations. Such a reading leaves open the possibility of making more of life aesthetic in a deeply meaningful way. This study also approaches the morally edifying aspects of aesthetic experience from its reflective phase and focuses on how art objects can be used to evoke the reflective creation of values on the part of an audience member. I conclude this dissertation by examining a weakness of Dewey's aesthetic theory---its overlooking of the realm of formalized activity such as ritual. Dewey, like most western aestheticians, tethers his aesthetic theory to art objects. Much of the eastern world holds the contrary assumption---that art is closely tied to activity and that ritual activity is in some sense "living art." I examine how the ancient Chinese philosopher Xunzi accounted for ritual and musical performance as moral edifying and show how this can expand Dewey's theory of aesthetic experience to include ritualized activity as morally cultivating.