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journal of speculative philosophy, vol. 27, no. 2, 2013
Copyright © 2013 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
abstract: This article examines the importance of John Dewey’s visit to China in
1919–21 to his general philosophy of meliorism. I will argue that Dewey’s view of the
economic realities in China, as well as his well-known work on the U.S. educational
system, points to an underlying problem—that of mindless work activity. Extending past
research on Dewey’s notion of artful activity, I will argue that one cannot completely
understand Dewey’s advice to his Chinese and American audiences without reference to
his theory of aesthetic experience and its relation to everyday conduct. Art as Experience
then becomes an important point of departure for endeavors that seek to constructively
determine what workers can do to make occupational experience more meaningful or
artful. Additionally, I will argue that Dewey’s reticence to explore the aesthetic in the
early 1900s does not entail that this concept was not present. To the contrary, one can see
his work in the 1910s and 1920s—including his experience in China—as a precursor for
the account of aesthetic experience in everyday life that he finally explicates in the 1930s.
In this sense, one can detect a further emphasis on the Chinese conceptual overlay of
spontaneity in his evolving thought on artful activity.
The American pragmatist John Dewey was no stranger to the problems of
economics and their effects on the quality of work experience. Indeed, in
Economic Experience as Art? John Dewey’s
Lectures in China and the Problem of Mindless
Occupational Labor
Scott R. Stroud
university of texas at austin