John Dewey and the Artful Life: Pragmatism, Aesthetics, and Morality

Chapter 7. Practicing the Art of Living: The Case of Artful Communication

7 Practicing the Art of Living The Case of Artful Communication I have argued that a Deweyan take on aesthetic experience is an expansive, wide-ranging reading of what is connected to the aesthetic and the artful. I have also claimed that aesthetic experience connects to moral value in immediately being an instance of the absorbed, engaged endpoint of moral cultivation . The previous chapter has introduced the more general project of orientational meliorism, the attempt to improve the quality of our experiences through the adjustment of our orientation toward the world, self, others , and action. While I emphasized the notion of growth in that chapter, the linkages with the aesthetic should be clear—both represent a unified, consummatory, and absorptive engagement of a live creature with its present situation. The vitally important part of my account is the sort of mental habits that guide, shape, and tone this transaction between a creature and its environment. These mental habits are what I have labeled ‘‘orientations,’’ and they are what can be meliorated to increase one’s chances of growth. Practicing the Art of Living 169 From the aspect of subjective quality of experience, orientations are what make the difference between conduct being artful or being fragmented drudgery. I concluded the previous chapter with some ways that one can imaginatively rethink one’s activities in order to render them more aesthetic in quality . I will continue this practical side to my Deweyan account of how life can be artful by examining another common part of our lives—the case of everyday communicative activity. While many writers focus their analysis of Dewey ’s theory of communication on the rather mundane point of taking the position of one’s interlocutor, I want to explore a tantalizing and unexplored question—can ordinary instances of everyday communication be made more artful and consummatory? In other words, can one’s meliorative project extend to the rectification and enlivening of everyday communication? Why should one even subject communication to this test? First, we have good reason to from Dewey’s own writings. At various places Dewey includes tantalizing sections of praise of the power of communication. He notes in Experience and Nature, for example, that ‘‘of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful’’ (132), and in The Public and Its Problems that communication plays an important part in the individual’s attempt ‘‘to learn to be human’’ (332). Some scholars who study communication have sensed the important but undeveloped role that communication plays in Dewey’s thought and have attempted to use his work in analyzing rhetorical practice, cultural studies, and the role of journalism in society.1 Although such studies strive to clarify the value and process of communication in Dewey’s thought, they fall short of explaining one seemingly simple point that is also implied by Dewey—that communication can be experienced as aesthetic or artful. Nathan Crick identifies such a lacuna in the literature and notes that ‘‘beyond its utility as an argument against elite forms of academic criticism, the value of Dewey’s aesthetic theory for communication studies remained underdeveloped .’’2 While he does an admirable job of tracing the relation of aesthetics to communication in Dewey’s evolving thought, Crick comes no closer than others in answering the fundamental question of how communication can be artful or aesthetic—he simply argues for the general point that ‘‘communication , whether it occurs in an oration, a conversation, or a television, is best understood as a form of art that has the potential to bring about aesthetic experience in its participants and open their eyes to the world of possibility embodied within each of us.’’3 How exactly does this aesthetization of communication occur? Crick concludes with the interesting claim that ‘‘in its 170 John Dewey and the Artful Life aesthetic form communication becomes rhetorical. It turns communication into an art whose goal is a presentation that unites form and rhythm in a manner that can reach down into the experiences of the audience and literally transform them into something new.’’4 How exactly does communication meet such standards? Does such a high art of communication fit everyday communication, the vast majority of human communicative practice? Second, everyday communication provides a useful test of one of the main points of this book—that any activity can be made more artful. If everyday communication can be rendered artful, then one has successfully...