Expression, Imagination, and Organic Unity: John Dewey's Aesthetics and Romanticism

by David Granger

Introduction

We are presently witnessing a renewed interest in the aesthetics of philosopher and educator John Dewey. And it would seem that this interest marks a significant intellectual reorientation and not simply a passing fad. The publications Educational Theory, Studies in Philosophy and Education, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, and the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, among others, have for some time now been seeing articles which look to accentuate Dewey's aesthetics while tempering his oft-cited and criticized scientism.1 Many of them take their lead from Thomas M. Alexander's acclaimed John Dewey's Theory of Art, Experience and Nature or Richard Shusterman's Pragmatist Aesthetics.2 Two recent books by noted educators, Jim Garrison's Dewey and Eros and Philip W. Jackson's John Dewey and the Lessons of Art, offer ideas on how the fruits of Dewey's more poetic side might be used to enhance his relatively prosaic writings on education.3 I have come to find my own work of late pursuing a similar path.