American Aesthetics: Theory and Practice

This essay reviews the pioneering anthology, American Aesthetics: Theory and Practice (2020) , conceived, introduced, and edited by Walter Gulick-an active member of the Polanyi Society-with co-editor Gary Slater. With contributions by twenty highly qualified scholars and writers, the book takes its origin from a conference on aesthetics and American thought organized by Gulick and Slater. At the conference, the insight emerged that there is a pattern of significant relationships between the arts in America and aesthetic reflections by classic American philosophers. These include Alfred North Whitehead, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey. In the course of reviewing the book, I argue that there is another aspect to the pattern of connections between the disciplines of art and philosophy described by Gulick and colleagues. The American philosophers brought out a revolutionary concept of "experience" recognized by the authors but not central to the books' thesis. This concept-called by such terms as "integral experience" and "pure experience"-reveals that experience at its core involves more than the sense data and reflection of modern empiricism. For the Americans, it involves creative agency, experiment, and discovery in its ongoing work of building coherence in the contexts of experience. The concept of integral experience-departing from the dualistic framework of modern philosophy and traditional empiricism-forms a center around which philosophic texts and works of art in the American scene revolve. The idea of experience as inherently creative, made explicit in American philosophy, is also a central principle found implicitly in American art. The innovative nature of this idea may be more clearly understood when viewed through the lens of Michael Polanyis' account of the process of discovery, including the principles of indwelling, breaking out, and the tacit dimension of experience.