Pragmatic Naturalism: An Introduction

16. Philosophy of Art

PRAGMATIC NATURALISM r60 piness is involved in the welfare of others. The intimate connection of the individual and the social means that one ought to have a part in the planning of programs affecting one's own life and interests. This is what Dewey means by a "planning society/' a society in which purposes and goals are proposed and explored in thought and judged acceptable or unacceptable by all who are involved in their consequences . Since the problems of individuals and groups are always changing, and since valuings and evaluations are always on the move, there can be no absolute blueprint for society. A planning society, which Dewey advocates, is different from a planned society; the latter is imposed by a hierarchy of authority, often indifferent to the desires and interests of individuals.46 An intelligent society, like an intelligent individual, is one in which inner forces such as desires and interests are carefully evaluated and the external conditions (the environment) are cautiously managed to bring about the common good of all. 16. Philosophy of Art Peirce says that he worked "with intensity for many hours a day every day for long years" to train himself to the study of feelings.47 On one level of experience Peirce holds that feelings are primary, and he designates these as belonging , in his terminology, to the category of Firstness. When the aesthetic is limited to these primary feelings, however, confusion may occur unless it is clear that the term lIaesthetic " may refer to constructed and refined meanings which are a synthesis of primary feelings, interactions, and continuities of experiences lived through and consum- VALUE 16r mated. Toward the end of his life Peirce said that he had not worked out an adequate theory of the aesthetic, although it was a topic to which he gave a large amount of study. The idea of linking the constructed and refined objects of art with the primary experiences out of which they arise is a common theme of all pragmatic naturalists. William James observes that the emotional, which serves as the original material of the aesthetic, is found in the stream of experience .48 Dewey says in Art as Experience that there has been a wall built between art objects and the experiences out of which these works have arisen. He thinks that one of the contemporary tasks is "to restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience."49 Human feelings and emotions are those aspects of experience which the artist seeks to transform, intensify, and express. At first, feelings are mere feelings, gross and undifferentiated . These perceptual feelings then become differentiated and refined through interactions (transactions ) and continuities of experience. Some of these perceptual feelings emerge into sensations, some into concepts, some into desires, and some into emotions. Sensory and conceptual feelings are basic to knowledgej desires are basic to moralsj and emotions are basic to art. Emotions are nurtured by the kinds of experiences each undergoes in one's early transactions with one's world. Adults around a child teach it that certain kinds of activities and feelings are called "fear," or "anger," or "love," or the like, because of the consequences to which they lead. Fear is an activity and feeling related to other parts of experience, an instance of which would be the fear of a rattlesnake. Love is related to certain objects or persons, an example of which is the love of family. The specific objects feared or loved may vary from culture to culture, but emotions are generic aspects of all human experience. PRAGMATIC NATURALISM 162 When we look into our own experiences, we find that much of our everyday existence is permeated with feelings of fear, love, hate, anxiety, elation, and many other emotions . No exhaustive list of human emotions can be compiled , for there is always the possibility that new feelingstates will emerge from the stream of experience. This does not mean that emotional meanings are purely subjective states of feeling, for experiences which take on emotional meanings arise from responses to objects which have certain qualities; thus an emotionalized object is the result of an interaction of organism and environment. For instance, the fear of a rattlesnake is not a bare feeling locked in some individual 's private experience and consciousness. Qualities of...