Experience as art: aesthetics in everyday life PDF
Preview Experience as art: aesthetics in everyday life
Experience As Art : Aesthetics in Everyday title: Life author: Kupfer, Joseph H. publisher: State University of New York Press isbn10 | asin: 0873956931 print isbn13: 9780873956932 ebook isbn13: 9780585090016 language: English subject Experience, Aesthetics. publication date: 1983 lcc: BH301.E8K86 1983eb ddc: 111/.85 subject: Experience, Aesthetics. Page i Experience as Art Page ii SUNY Series in Philosophy Robert C. Neville, Editor Page iii Experience as Art Aesthetics in Everyday Life Joseph H. Kupfer DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY State University of New York Press Albany Page iv For my students Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 1983 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Kupfer, Joseph H. Experience as art. 1. Experience. 2. Aesthetics. I. Title. BH301.E8K86 1983 111´.85 82-19258 ISBN 0-87395-692-3 ISBN 0-87395-693-1 (pbk.) 10 9 8 7 6 5 Page v Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Chapter One Educating Aesthetically 9 Chapter Two An Aesthetics of Contemporary Violence 41 Chapter Three Aesthetic Experience As Moral Education 67 Chapter Four Sexuality: Good, Deficient, and Perverse 87 Chapter Five SportThe Body Electric 111 Chapter Six The Drama of Decision-Making 141 Chapter Seven Death and the Time of Our Lives 169 Conclusion 191 Notes 195 Index 213 Page vii Acknowledgments I to thank my good friend and colleague, John Elrod, who WOULD LIKE encouraged me to write this book and advised me wisely in its preparation. I also benefitted from Iowa State University's generosity in providing me with a leave of absence during which a first draft was written. That first draft was substantially reworked in response to two trenchant critics: my wife, who urged me to be more concrete and colloquial; and John McDermott, whose insight into the project's potential was matched only by his patience in counselling me how to realize it. Page 1 Introduction The serious matter is that philosophies have denied that common experience is capable of developing from within itself methods which will secure direction for itself and will create inherent standards of judgment and value . . . . [They have failed] to realize the value that intelligent search could reveal and mature among the things of ordinary experience. John Dewey* Most of us readily acknowledge that art in particular and aesthetic values in general enhance the quality of life, making it more pleasant. Harmonious color combinations of food on our plates or well- proportioned eaves on our houses are certainly a nice added touch, but few think them as important as the nourishment or shelter we derive from them. It seems fair to say that we view aesthetic detail and form in everyday life as decorative lagnappe, far from the core of our interests and our urgent concerns. In books on "aesthetics" we expect and usually find discussions about art and the artistic properties of commonplace things like food combinations and housing architecture. They rarely address moral, social, or personal concerns. Appropriately enough, aesthetics has come to be regarded as the pretty accessory to the more momentous normative disciplines, not to be taken too seriously by the majority of philosophers. In what follows, I depart from this common understanding, arguing that aesthetic values permeate everyday life and ought not to be thought of as the exclusive province of museums and concert halls. Now one way to show this is to emphasize how "artful" everyday objects such as clothing, furniture, utensils, apples, and sunsets may be. This is to demonstrate how much like works of art working artifacts or natural objects in our environment are. But while it's a *Experience and Nature (New York: Dover, 1958), p. 38. Page 2 worthwhile task, this is not the approach that will be taken here. Rather, art and the "artful" are to be subordinated to the overarching perspective that aesthetic relations and qualities inform our personal and social development in very powerful ways, and they exert this influence through their presence in our daily undertakings, such as making decisions, playing and working with others, or engaging in sexual activities. What is here emphasized, then, is the basic importance and pervasiveness of the aesthetic in various spheres of life, not just in the obviously artistic. This approach runs counter to the popular view which tends to place aesthetic ingredients in the everyday on the periphery of human interests. To loosen the grip of such a tendency of thought I try to exhibit the importance of the aesthetic within everyday activities by focusing on certain normative themes. These themes are not themselves "aesthetic" in the traditional sense in which "expression," "representation," or "meaning" are. Rather, such moral and social themes as personal development, responsibility, and community are worked out through the varieties of aesthetic experience. My interest in aesthetics is therefore part of a larger concern for the quality of the ins and outs of so-called ordinary experience. For it is in and out of our ordinary commerce with the world that the "good life'' is led. This is not, then, a book "in" aesthetics in the usual sense, but an aesthetic investigation of the human interests and activities which comprise daily living. Discussions of artistic theories of expression, beauty, representation, and the like are important, as are analyses of critical discourse about such matters. But this sort of work in aesthetics does not deal very much with the everyday material out of which art grows, with all its beauty and expression. We need to move the philosophical discussion back to the workaday world lest our analyses and theories, arguments and counterproposals, speak only to intellectual formulations of
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