2.1 - An introduction to Dewey and Greene

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From the course by Yale University

Music and Social Action

67 ratings

Yale University

Music and Social Action

67 ratings

What is a musician’s response to the condition of the world? Do musicians have an obligation and an opportunity to serve the needs of the world with their musicianship? At a time of crisis for the classical music profession, with a changing commercial landscape, a shrinking audience base, and a contraction in the number of professional orchestras, how does a young musician construct a career today? Are we looking at a dying art form or a moment of reinvigoration? In this course we will develop a response to these questions, and we will explore the notion that the classical musician, the artist, is an important public figure with a critical role to play in society. The course will include inquiry into a set of ideas in philosophy of aesthetics; a discussion about freedom, civil society, and ways that art can play a role in readying people for democracy; discussion on philosophy of education as it relates to the question of positive social change; and an exploration of musical and artistic initiatives that have been particularly focused on a positive social impact. Guiding questions for this course inquiry will include: - How can classical music effect social change? - How has music made positive change in communities around the globe? - What can the field of classical music learn from other movements for social change? - How have educators and philosophers thought about the arts and their connection to daily contemporary life? Each class will explore one critical question through lectures, discussions, interviews, or documentaries.

From the lesson

What is Art and How Do We Experience It?

In this module, we will discuss philosophers John Dewey and Maxine Greene, and their respective views on the possibilities contained within aesthetic experiences. How can aesthetic experience meaningfully contribute to public life?

2.1 - An introduction to Dewey and Greene4:11

Meet the Instructors

Sebastian Ruth
Visiting Lecturer in Community Engagement
Yale School of Music

We opened this course with two American philosophers, John Dewey, whose work and

writing comes from the first half of the 20th century, and Maxine Greene,

who was actively writing and teaching until her death in 2014 at the age of 96.

Both Dewey and Greene deal with the topic of aesthetic experience and

the possibilities contained within experiences of art.

Dewey was part of a group of philosophers in the early 20th century that considered

their practice to be different from the previous philosophical traditions.

Instead of deriving their theories from abstract principles, doing this group

focused on the common experiences that people have, and use these examples

to build theories that could be directly relevant to the world around them.

Because he felt there was this ongoing relationship between ideas and

experience, Dewey felt that certain dichotomies were unhelpful and

unnecessary, like that between knowledge and action or theory and practice.

For Maxine Greene and Dewey, a discussion about art and its meaning therefore goes

beyond this idea of art for art's sake, and instead, considers how

art is a component of human experience, essentially knowable and accessible.

As people, both Maxine and Dewey immersed themselves in art and artistic activity.

Their theories come very significantly from their own lived experience.

In Dewey's case, he was profoundly influenced by his relationship with

Albert Barnes, this deep friendship where Barnes was an art collector and

also a physician and entrepreneur.

And they shared these artistic experiences,

both of sort of the European masters and Barnes' collection included the first

major African American art collection, and the museum's programming

included this regular series of concerts by African American singing groups.

So his theories of art emerged from this premise that we need to understand art

not simply as an intellectual pursuit, but for the possibility that art can be

as Dewey and Barnes would say in their letters, soul thrilling.

We're completely engaging from an emotional and intellectual and

spiritual perspective.

As I'll discuss in this class, Maxine picks up on a lot of Dewey's threads,

including this clear conviction that we can't attend to a work of art passively.

But then in order to fully experience the soul thrilling quality,

the person perceiving it needs to bring an energy, an awake energy and

an open receptiveness to the possibilities that might be contained within the work.

In her book, Releasing the Imagination, Maxine says, Aesthetic experiences

require conscious participation in a work, a going out of energy, an ability

to notice what there is to be noticed in the play, the poem, the quartet.

Knowing about, even in the most formal academic manner,

is entirely different from constituting a fictive world imaginatively and

entering it perceptually, affectively, and cognitively.

Maxine as a person really brought this to life.

To speak with her about an arts experience that she had was a marvel.

She was always voracious in her appetite for all kinds of artistic experiences

in different genres, in different forms, from different time periods.

And her descriptions and her writing and in speaking with her really reflected

both this sort of learned, but also very personal response to every work of art.

So we start the course with these philosophers in part because Dewey and

Greene eloquently bring art into the realm of being accessible to everyone.

They both define aesthetic experience in ways

that suggest it can be transformative.

And therefore set us up for

an inquiry into how we may eventually take social action through the arts.

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