John Dewey was the most celebrated and publicly engaged American philosopher in the twentieth century. His naturalistic theory of "experience" generated new approaches to education and democracy and re-grounded philosophy's search for truth in the needs of life as it is shared and lived. However, interpretations of Dewey after the linguistic turn have either obscured or rejected the considerable role that he gives to the non-discursive dimension of experience. In Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious: The Vital Depths of Experience, Bethany Henning argues that much classical American philosophy implicitly recognizes an unconscious dimension of mind that is distinct from Freud's theory. Although the unconscious that emerges within American thought has never been treated systematically, it found its fullest expression in Dewey's work, particularly in his theory of aesthetic experience. This dimension of mind illuminates the continuity between nature and culture, and it provides us with an account of why artwork is often successful at communicating meanings from the ecological and intimate dimensions of life, where discourse often fails. If the relationship between the human and the organic world has emerged as the definitive question of twenty-first century life, then the aesthetic unconscious stands as a resource for our ecological and intimate well-being.
Bethany Henning is the Besl Chair for Ethics/Religion and Society in the Philosophy Department at Xavier University.
Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter One: The Aesthetic Confrontation with Nature Chapter Two: The American Unconscious Chapter Three: The Feel of the Flesh, the Emergence of Mind Chapter Four: Eros and the Primacy of the Aesthetic Chapter Five: Uncomfortable Art and American Trauma Chapter Six: From the Organic Plentitude of Being Bibliography Index About the Author
"Bethany Henning explores a rarely treated-but fundamental-dimension of Dewey's thought: the aesthetic unconscious. She does so with deep insight and nuanced care, producing a work that must be counted at the forefront of a new generation of scholarship on this complex and often misunderstood philosopher." -- Thomas Alexander "Henning finds words for the wordless, touching the live depths of Dewey-and of art, love, and nature." -- Richard Polt, Professor of Philosophy, Xavier University
