Abstract
M.A. (Philosophy)
Setting the Scene
In the context of his paper on the highly contested concept of aesthetic experience, Gary Iseminger (2003:100) notes that experience in general is usually conceived of in two ways: first as something characterised essentially by “what it is like” to undergo it (the phenomenological concept of experience); and second as involving “direct or non-inferential knowledge” (the epistemic concept of experience). Iseminger (2003) explains that this distinctioncan be extended to the conception of aesthetic experience. Accordingly, a phenomenological conception of aesthetic experience, a conception of what it is like to have an aesthetic experience, is a view held by theorists like Clive Bell and John Dewey (ibid.). On the other hand, an epistemic conception of aesthetic experience is a conception of a non-inferential way of coming to know something, which deserves to be thought of as aesthetic (ibid.).1 The well-known Beardsley-Dickie debate illustrates the contested nature of the distinction, with Monroe Beardsley, who began by defending a phenomenological idea of aesthetic experience, eventually changing his view to an epistemic notion under pressure from George Dickie (ibid.).
More recently, contemporary pragmatist philosopher Richard Shusterman, influenced by Dewey, has defended the usefulness of the concept of aesthetic experience against its detractors (Shusterman, 1997:2006). As part of his argument, Shusterman (1997:30) explains that there are four features central to aesthetic experience. These features include: an evaluative dimension that entails aesthetic experience being valuable and enjoyable; a phenomenological dimension that involves the “vividly felt and subjectively savoured” dimension of aesthetic experience that makes it stand out from the general humdrum of other life experiences; the semantic dimension that makes aesthetic experience meaningful rather than mere sensation and lastly, the demarcational-definitional dimension that encompasses aesthetic experience’s distinctively close relationship with fine art and art’s...