This essay is an attempt to add to the argument that beauty matters in education through offering a reciprocal but interconnected point: if the dynamic harmony and deep connectedness of beauty need to be taken seriously, so must their aesthetic converse--the disharmony and estrangement of failure. While the discourse of philosophical aesthetics…

This essay investigates the special way in which a spectator might engage imaginatively with one work of art when the work is experienced in light of other works by the same artist. In particular, it addresses the idea that we might imaginatively identify with an unrepresented spectator in the picture after we have experienced others in which the…

Recent decades have seen a flattening of the playing field in terms of the arts. The rise of popular culture programs in universities is one of the by-products of this attitude, which rejects the traditional hierarchical status of arts by genre. However, something vital is lost in that little attention is paid to the experiential aspects of…

The connection between humor and aesthetic experience has already been recognized by several thinkers and aesthetic educators. For instance, humor theorist John Morreall writes that "humor is best understood as itself a kind of aesthetic experience, equal in value at least to any other kind of aesthetic experience." For Morreall, both humor and…

The ultimate aim of artistic exploration is to explore the claim that objects are different from experience and beauty is just a by-product of the exploration. In other words, the truth in the eyes of each person may quite literally not be the same. This indicates that differences in the visual apparatus influence the viewing body's mastery of the…

The year 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of John Dewey's birth and also the 75th anniversary of the publication of his aesthetic masterpiece "Art as Experience"--a book that has been extremely influential within the field of aesthetics, not only in philosophical aesthetics and aesthetic education but also in the arts themselves. In this essay,…

Beardsley's "Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism" continues to provide a valuable resource for those of one who takes questions about value and evaluation to be central to the philosophical enterprise, even if one chooses to focus on the philosophy of art more or less independently of the aesthetic. Nevertheless, Beardsley's…

This article develops an understanding of Dewey's aesthetics by connecting it to a project that can be extracted from his overall pragmatist approach--orientational meliorism. As I will argue, Dewey emphasizes the effect that one's mental habits or orientations toward experience and activity has on the quality of one's experience. Orientational…

In consulting on or creating a Web site designed to use works of art for teaching purposes, it is extremely important to be aware of the differences between seeing an artwork "in the flesh" and in reproduction. Museum educators are highly aware of this disparity and are therefore eager to have students visit museums to experience authentic works…

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Rembrandt Project was designed to apply state-of-the-art digital technology to the development of the multiple competencies needed for understanding and appreciating Rembrandt and his time. As educational consultant to the project, the author was given the assignment of conceptualizing a framework…

Constructivist theories of learning and recent research into aesthetic experience suggest that most people actually benefit by instruction in various means of engagement with art, and that engagement is most fulfilling when it actively challenges, builds on, and extends the knowledge, aptitudes, and abilities of the museum visitor. This in turn…

John Dewey's aesthetic has been invoked in recent discussions because many have realized that it resists the pull toward conceptualism that characterizes a great deal of aesthetic theory. Further, Art as Experience--Dewey's chief work on the philosophy of art--is rich with ideas that call for development. Richard Shusterman's work does just this…

The "raw data" that aesthetics is meant to explain is the aesthetic experience. People have experiences that they class off from other experiences and label, as a class, the aesthetic ones. Aesthetic experience is basic, and all other things aesthetic--aesthetic properties, aesthetic objects, aesthetic attitudes--are secondary in their importance…

Author devoted himself primarily to a discussion of Beardsley's view of aesthetic experience and attempted to see what conclusions about aesthetic experience could be drawn as a result of reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of Beardsley's theory. (Author/RK)

In Danny DeVito's film "Matilda," Harry Wormwood berates his young daughter, the title character, when she insists on reading. He tells her, "There's nothing you can get from a book that you can't get faster from television." Matilda's would-be visionary father, however, is blind to crucial habits of mind fostered by reading books that are not…