 Okay, hi everyone. I just want to say again, welcome to the class. I'm excited to be discussing Art of Experience with you. Today I'm going to talk for a few minutes about the first chapter and some of the background of the book to help get our discussion started. This is going to be a little bit longer than our typical pre-recorded lecture, but I want to get us all oriented to the material. So, as we said before, John Dewey lived from the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. He was a philosopher of education, a philosopher of science and technology, political philosopher, and the foremost philosopher of American pragmatism. And he actually wrote pretty much on every area of philosophy you can think of. He was a naturalist in orientation. He was also a defender of the notion of participatory democracy. He thought both education and science were governed or were a form of problem-solving inquiry. And he also developed a moral theory based in problem-solving, lived experience, and moral imagination. Now, in 1925, Dewey published a book, Experience in Nature, the first edition of it, and it was his major work of metaphysics, a work that heralds the beginning of the so-called later works. Dewey surprised many of his readers by devoting the penultimate chapter of this book to art, the discussion of art. He ends up arguing for an enormous philosophical significance to art, which he follows up on fully almost a decade later with art as experience. In that earlier work, Dewey ends the discussion of art by writing, Experience in the form of art, when reflected upon, we conclude by saying, solves more problems which have troubled philosophers and resolves more hard and fast dualisms than any other theme of thought. Art demonstrates the gratuitous falsity of notions that divide overt and executive activity from thought and feeling, and thus separate mind and matter. Well, as you start to look at the book, you'll notice what we mentioned before, the indebtedness of Dewey to Albert Barnes in both the dedication and the preface. Dewey drew a lot on the ideas of Barnes and his personal friendship with Barnes. Now, art has experienced the book, began life, so to speak, as the William James Lectures at Harvard in the spring of 1931, I guess winter and spring. Now, because of Dewey's close philosophical relationship to William James, the Harvard Department of Philosophy decided to give Dewey the honor of being the first person invited to give the William James named Lectures. In between that time, it took him about two and a half years before he published them in early 1934 as artist experience. You can actually read a lot about that in the notes to the past master's version of the book. Okay, so let's get straight to it and talk about chapter one of the book, The Live Creature. And this chapter, I think, begins with a really interesting passage. Dewey says, by one of the ironic perversities that often attend the course of affairs, the existence of the works of art upon which formation of an aesthetic theory depends has become an obstruction to theory about them. For one reason, these works are products that exist externally and physically. In common conception, the work of art is often identified with the building, book, painting or statue in its existence apart from human experience. Since the actual work of art is what the product does with an inexperience, the result is not favorable to understanding. The Dewey's saying here that the existence of works of art, which presumably is the subject matter of philosophy of art, actually is an obstruction to producing a theory of art, to producing a philosophy of art. That's quite a striking claim for Dewey to make. The reason he thinks that is because in common conception, as he says, we think of works of art as the physical things, the building, the book, the painting, in their existence apart from human experience as an object in a gallery or on the wall. But, and this is a key advertisement for what's going to be so different about Dewey's theory, the actual work of art is what the product does with and in experience. So because of this ironic feature of the role of the physical artifacts in art, Dewey thinks we need to take a detour to examples of the aesthetic, not in art, but in everyday experience. So for example, with respect to a fire truck racing by or men working on skyscrapers high above the city, to a simple thing as looking at a fireplace or a campfire and poking at the fire. These are everyday elements of experience that have an aesthetic quality. The woman in her garden or the man, Dewey's references are a little gendered unfortunately, or the mechanic who takes particular care with their tools or what they're doing. Also the so-called low arts, movies, what he calls jazzed music, or the comic strip are all examples for Dewey of places in our everyday life where something of the artistic and the aesthetic actually plays a significant role. These are examples of art that we're not likely to think of as art per se. What we are likely to think of as art is something that's quite removed from everyday life. This is what Dewey calls the museum conception of art, and the chapter brings a kind of central critique towards this conception. According to this conception, art exists in a kind of separate sphere from everyday life. A remote niche should not be literally in a museum, often that means artworks are collected in some place, independent from any context of the rest of our lives, displayed for pure, contemplative, reflective purposes, often literally on a just blank white wall. This is a conception of art which Dewey thinks makes art inaccessible and distant from our everyday lives. The museum conception of art for Dewey is connected with the idea of art for art's sake, a conception which might sound nice, art for art's sake, right? But Dewey actually sees it as detrimental to both art and to everyday life. When they're separated from one another, everyday life is unesthetic and art becomes unrelatable. And so also harms our ability to create an adequate theory or philosophy of art. He contrasts in this way modern civilization where the museum conception holds sway with prior historical periods and other cultures where such everyday items as masks or weapons or buildings of a political or religious significance, where things like ceremonial dress and ritual practices or even something so mundane as pottery, everyday utensils, as well as something or bowls or baskets, as well as the sort of spiritual surroundings that we find in religious spaces. All of these are examples of art that is closely enmeshed with the places where we spend our time and the activities of our daily life. And Dewey thinks that modern civilization has gotten away from this, has gotten kind of cut off from this relationship to art. In this chapter, Dewey tells us that in order to really understand aesthetic experience, and remember for Dewey the true work of art is what it does in experience, we actually have to better understand experience itself. So that's where he's going to take us next. And luckily for Dewey this is kind of the central, the central set of ideas that he has explored throughout his philosophical career is related to the nature of experience. So Dewey tells us that the nature of experience is determined by the essential conditions of life itself. And those are conditions that apply as much for the bird or beast. Here's a cute beast, as it does for human beings. Dewey already from fairly early work in the 1890s has developed a conception of experience, not as something that takes place in the mind or the brain of a separate individual, but as a product of the organism in close interaction with their environment. There's not a sort of sharp cut off between what happens underneath my skin and outside my skin or within my skull and outside my skull. There's a constant interchange of material and energy across those boundaries that constitute human life experience and thought. So that interaction for Dewey forms a kind of rhythm, a kind of dynamic tension between on the one hand disequilibrium or need or problems, and on the other hand equilibrium, satisfaction, unity. You might think of it as like this, right? Any organism will become hungry or have a need for nutrition of some sort and will engage in various activities of seeking or inquiring or trying to find or even make food in order to reach a situation of satiety. But that satiety, the lack of hunger, the satisfaction of a full belly is never permanent, right? There's always conflict or loss or decay or change that pushes the organism environment interaction out of that unified or equilibrated state. Now interestingly, Dewey tells us that this is a feature of all experience, of all life, but also that it is given a kind of new quality by becoming more intellectual in character for humans, right? The scientific inquirer for Dewey exists along this rhythm, right? And is particularly interested in, excited by, focused on the problems and the sort of upward slope of inquiry into how to find solutions, but is not sort of satisfied to stay there and is always kind of on to the next problem that arises. Whereas the artist tends to live for those moments of satisfaction, that kind of unified experience and although the artist does inquire, does engage in that intellectual activity, they really are giving more emphasis to that side. That said, both the scientist and the artist travel along this rhythm as much as anyone does. Now our world, Dewey tells us, is a mix of both flux and change and disorder on the one hand and form, stability and order on the other. Order can emerge from that chaos and it can be encouraged to do so by intelligent creatures. And it's only in a world where both of those forces exist that the tension between them can create an aesthetic experience. Indeed, all experience whatsoever or even the conditions of life depend on the tension between the two. In a world of total flux, random chance, no stability, there could be no experience, no art and no life, right? Likewise, in a universe that was finished, fixed, completely stable, again, the activities of life would not be possible and so aesthetic experience would not be possible. So that's just some of the background and the ideas from the chapter that I find important. I'm eager to hear what you think about chapter one and where it takes us and I look forward to our discussion. So I will see you in class.