Aesthetic Experience: From Dewey To Shusterman

After more than half a century, pragmatic aesthetics has developed from the classical pragmatism to the new pragmatism. This paper selects Dewey,who is the founder of the classical pragmatist aesthetics, and Shusterman, who is on behalf of a new generation of aesthetic of the new pragmatism , does a comparative study between them, and explores the development and evolution of the tradition of pragmatic aesthetics from Dewey to Shusterman.In view of aesthetic experience becoming the center of the modern aesthetic and the problem of contemporary aestheticization becoming increasingly serious, this paper focus on the view of aesthetic experiences to study the pragmatic aesthetics of John Dewey and Shusterman, with a view to find out beneficial parts that can solve the problem of aestheticization and provide some theoretical and practical guidance to consider.The first part of the paper analyze Dewey's theory of aesthetic experiences. Dewey's aesthetic experiences is object to the traditional self-discipline as represented by Kant's aesthetic experiences. Dewey's aesthetic experiences emphasis heteronomy, but at the same time maintain a certain degree of self-discipline. It is organic integration of self-discipline and heteronomy. This part elaborates the philosophy background of Dewey's of aesthetic experiences - monistic naturalistic empiricism philosophy, analyzes the definition of aesthetic experiences and its characteristics– heteronomy, dynamic and continuous, and points out that the elements of aesthetic experience include: perception, emotion, reason, imagination, practice, and so on. Finally elaborates the relationship between aesthetic experiences and civilizations.The second part of the thesis analyze the aesthetic experiences of Shusterman. It is mainly divided into three parts: First, an analysis of the philosophical background- including sexual "position disjunction" of pluralism; Second, it discusses three levels of the theory about Shusterman's aesthetic experiences: the field of aesthetic experiences has developed from the Art area to the Living area, for example, living art; aesthetic experience has been as the guiding principles to smooth the boundary of popular art and advanced art; emphasize the dimension of the body in the aesthetic experience, from the modern aesthetic of "heart" to "physical" combination. Finally analyze Shusterman's "The End of Aesthetic Experience," which has the double meaning: on the one hand, it means the traditional self-discipline aesthetic experience is end, on the other hand, he wants to find out the seeds of aesthetic rejuvenation at the ruins.The main thesis of the third part analyze the development and evolution of the aesthetic experience of pragmatism from Dewey to of Shusterman. Although Shusterman emphasis the heteronomy of aesthetic experiences, he has lost the the border situation of self-discipline to meet the aestheticization and gone to the extreme. The reasons of the development and the evolution include: time and environmental factors , their own factors.