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Note: Collected in Art & its Significance, ed. Ross, pp.204-220. Dewey uses the term “esthetic,” this is merely an alternate spelling of “aesthetic” The Live Creature
| John Dewey (1859 - 1952) |
In essence, this text is telling us:
- ~~~neither is the human the 'measure of all things' (the sole assigner and determiner of what something is and means), nor is the human the mere passive reader of pre-given, inherent meanings of things themselves (as if everything is what it is and means what is means objectively and independent of all experiencing) ...
- ~~~instead: grasp the 'quality' that pervades all experience, thereby refusing to artificially distinguish the ever-on-going rawness of experience from the neat and tidy wrapped up wholeness of an experience ...
- ~~~and realize esthetic experience as 'appreciating, perceiving, enjoying,' a dynamic, cooperative interrelation of 'subject & object,' seer-seen, listener-listened to ...
- ~~~for: “In short, art, in its form, unites the very same relation of doing and undergoing, outgoing and incoming energy, that makes an experience to be an experience” (208) ...
- ~~~art expresses meaning ... and this means not 'telling' a meaning, but actually actively, ~constituting~ meaning cooperatively in the live engagement of the who-what, audience-art ...
- ~~~thus, one who perceives esthetically ~~creates~~ an experience ... the 'already-is,' given subject matter of the art becomes ~new~ ...
- ~~~for “A work of art no matter how old and classic is actually, not just potentially, a work of art only when it lives in some individualized experience” (212).
- ~~~and, thus, it is our human obligation to exercise this engaged 'seeing' of experience and it is our obligation as philosophers to engage intensely committed studies of aesthetics because this revelation of esthetic experience holds true for all human experience.
| "Photographs to primitive folk have, so it is said, a fearful magical quality. It is uncanny that solid and living things should be thus presented. There is evidence that when pictures of any kind first made their appearance, magical power was imputed to them" (215). |
“Puppchen” (543): reference’s best guess: Püppchen, du bist mein Augenstern [Doll, you are the apple of my eye] 1912/29 operetta by Jean Gilbert (1879-1942; German Jew, operetta composer, 1933 flees Germany to Madrid, settles in Argentina); story (by Georg Okonkowski & Alfred Schönfeld, based on French comedy Fils à papa by Antony Mars & Maurice Descallières, plays off Bible’s chaste Susanna in her bath. Scholars question why Adorno calls it a ‘prewar children’s song’ (i.e., pre-1914); . . . | . . . for the Püppchen referenced above is not for children and possibly only premiered in 1929; but likely “children’s song” is evaluative not literal, and other sources cite 1912 creation. |
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