Recently published by SUNY Press, American Aesthetics: Theory and Practice explores the distinctive contribution to philosophical aesthetics made by the American philosophical tradition, including especially philosophical pragmatism and process philosophy. What follows is an abridged transcription, lightly edited to increase clarity, of David Rohr’s interviews with the volume’s editors, Walter Gulick and Gary Slater. An abridged video of the interviews can also be viewed below.

Dave Rohr:

So I’m here with Dr. Walter Gulick, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Montana State University, Billings, and we’re here to discuss this volume that just came out, American Aesthetics: Theory and Practice, which he edited with Gary Slater. So thank you so much for being here and being a part of this interview. I want to start with a very broad question. A lot of people who see this interview might not have any background for understanding what this book is all about. So, could you say a little bit about your understanding of philosophical aesthetics? What’s its purpose? How does it relate to art, art creation, and going to museums and whatnot?

Walter Gulick:

So my understanding of aesthetics then tries to integrate it with what art historians or art critics do, but also has a broader sense about what philosophers do. And I think that’s part of this tradition going back to [Charles Sanders] Peirce, and to [William] James – it’s not recognized very much in James’s writing explicitly, but it’s really important to his thought. And he influenced Dewey a lot. And Dewey is kind of the person in terms of aesthetics. But also of course, [Alfred North] Whitehead contributes a lot. So it’s these great figures followed up by people like Suzanne Langer and others who really exemplify what I’m calling American aesthetics. And what I’m claiming is that there’ve been many different artists that have a kind of American focus in their thought. But there are not many people who are talking about American aesthetics as a unique approach right now.

I think that the person who has done that most effectively is Richard Schusterman. He has an article included in this book on the pragmatist aesthetics of William James, and he’s been a pioneer in this area that I really want to give credit to. But he doesn’t take it in a more systematic, broader sense the way this book does. What I like about the book is that I’ve set forth this general conception of what American aesthetics is in an introductory essay. And some people pick up on that, but others just kind of exemplify it in a way in what they’re writing. They’re not necessarily tying to that central article, but, gee, they are showing how this concept gets exemplified in actual practice. So that’s why it’s called American Aesthetics: Theory and Practice. I think that makes it kind of unique. So many philosophical aesthetics are very narrowly philosophical. This tries to look at the broad sense of aesthetics, which involves us as social beings, as people with histories that influence how we create art, that influence how we judge art. All that should be included, in my view, in aesthetics. And I think American aesthetics is a tradition that does that.

Dave:

And do you think that in the distinctively pragmatist American philosophical tradition there’s something about pragmatism that makes it more grounded in that way, more embracing of the broader aspects of life, the social aspects and the lived aspects of aesthetics?

Walt:

Yeah, I think for sure, in terms of the whole pragmatist approach of starting from the ground up rather than maybe from some grand kind of thesis. It’s not the kind of Hegelian approach, which has its own benefits, too, but it’s a much more looking at how it gets exemplified in culture itself, how it’s embedded in all that we do. So, yes, I definitely do think that pragmatism has a key influence.

Dave:

You’ve touched on this a little bit already, but if you had to name a couple features that distinguish the American aesthetic tradition from other philosophical aesthetics, what would you pick out?

Walt:

Well, first of all, I’d say that Kant has a fairly broad understanding of aesthetics that unfortunately was neglected in some respects. That is, his idea of aesthetical ideas are basically kind of imagery that cannot be reduced to any kind of simple linguistic explanation. So he understands how life is much more than about language. And yet what happened is that the first part of his book on aesthetics – his third critique, Critique of Judgment – was picked up and has formed a tradition in aesthetics to an unfortunate degree, because it’s all about beauty and about how beauty is understood and exemplified in art. I would say that American aesthetics includes the whole comprehensive approach of Kant, and more. It’s distinguished, for instance, from analytic aesthetics, because analytic aesthetics is pretty narrowly focused on individual works of art or different traditions without really getting into the kind of social conditions out of which the art is formed. It doesn’t think it’s important to look at, say, motivation of artists or their intentions, that sort of thing. Well, I think the biographical and autobiographical aspects of artists and people who are thinking using aesthetic concepts is really important. That distinguishes this volume very much from the narrower kind of focus on arguments about what is art or how is this particular piece showing beauty. It looks at broader, comprehensive notions like coherence or proportion or harmony which influence so much of the way that we’re embedded in the world, how we think, how we perceive and so forth. So that’s a very broad difference from what has oftentimes been seen as aesthetics. And that’s what I think really distinguishes this work from some other works.

Dave:

In your introductory essay, you also talk about how American aesthetic practice manifests a kind of egalitarianism, there’s a democratic aspect to it. There’s also an intense appreciation for aesthetics in the experience of nature, perhaps related to the whole pioneer history of the United States. Do you want to say anything about that aspect of the American aesthetic tradition, not necessarily the philosophical tradition, but aesthetics in American art and the aesthetic that’s developed in this country.

Walt:

Sure. Well, you’ve done a nice job hitting some highlights there about the democratic aspect.  Another important aspect is that aesthetics is deeply embedded in religion and of course our country in many respects is founded upon religious principles. So it gets expressed in that way, whereas that would be suspect in a lot of philosophical aesthetics. The whole idea of the American pioneer spirit that you’ve mentioned, I think is really important. The idea that novelty is so important in understanding the criteria for judging art is a very American kind of idea – that we are tinkerers and that we can do things that other people haven’t done. There’s a kind of freedom that’s involved in this. And this egalitarianism – we can include vernacular art, we can include folk art, we can include all these things that people are involved in creating. Creation is a broad concept. And I see aesthetic concepts as very much involved in the whole process of discovery and creation. So that aspect again is embedded in this.

Dave:

Yeah, that makes me think of Dewey’s Art as Experience. He’s talking about sitting around a campfire watching the sparks, about people developing crafts and products like shields that have practical functions, but investing the time to make everyday objects aesthetically pleasing. That to me seems well representative of what you’re talking about, the sort of the pervasive aspects of aesthetic experience, which is not just limited to when you go to an art museum.

Walt:

Right. Yeah, and, you know, people like Emerson who have understood that kind of American quality are pioneers to this whole process. Even though I’ve mentioned the great American philosophers, there’s a background there that very much informs this whole tradition. So, I guess I want to say that American aesthetics is not a clearly defined approach with you gotta do this or do that, or otherwise you’re not an American aestheticist. But as looking at this broader tradition that doesn’t really have a name as such, but it’s really important. It needs to be contrasted not only with analytic approaches, but I think with postmodern approaches, too. I think the tradition I’m talking about is closer to postmodernism than it is to analytic aesthetics. I’m not trying to claim that there’s no use to either of those two traditions. No, they have their own uses, but they’re narrower uses. We need to reclaim the broad scope. That is that aesthetics is important in all of our thought and our perception.

Dave:

So you mentioned your introductory essay here, but you also co-wrote two other essays, one with Leann Gilbertson focusing on Harold Rosenberg, the art critic, and then another one that’s sort of a dialogue with Corey Drieth, an artist based in Colorado. How did those essays come about? Is there anything that you think is especially important that they contribute to the volume?

Walt:

Sure. Let’s talk about the one with Harold Rosenberg first. My colleague at Montana State University, Billings, Leann Gilbertson, I asked if she was doing anything that would be relevant to this volume. And she said, well, maybe thinking about Harold Rosenberg. She had some ideas there that I kind of took. Then I did some more research on him and I saw, yeah, he really is a critic who understands the importance of art as in dialogue with the historical and cultural media in which it arises. It’s not just about aesthetics in a narrow sense of, ooo, this is pretty, or all these narrower concepts. So I was really happy to read a lot of his stuff, and see how he represents this kind of approach as an art critic. I think that’s really the only article among the twenty in the book that really focuses on upon criticism. And I thought it was really important to have something there. So that’s where I went in that direction.

In terms of the interview with Corey Drieth, that’s a kind of a chancey thing in some respects, as Corey is not a well-known artist. I love his stuff. And so that gave me the first thought about it. But, talking with him, he was a philosophy major, which influences what he does. And he’s able to articulate a lot of the things that many artists can’t. They say, “Well, look at my art. It speaks for itself.” Well, it’s nice to be able to talk to somebody who really has thought through a lot of why he does what he does. So I don’t want to say that his art is particularly American in some sense. But the conversation with him in terms of how he creates fits our approach. The book is American aesthetics, both theory and practice. Well, he’s practicing art in a very thoughtful sort of way. So I wanted to bring that out. There is no other interview with an artist in the book. That helps compliment the whole structure of the book, making sure that a number of things are covered. A lot of course isn’t covered in the book, which I’d love to have covered. I mean, I’d love to have dealt with photography. But the book’s too long as it is.

Dave:

The book is remarkable in terms of its breadth, with people giving metaphysical accounts of value, people talking to actual artists and art critics, dealing with the practice of performing music, doing sort of classical history of philosophy – James’s perspective, Peirce’s perspective, etc. It really has quite a broad spectrum of essays, which reflects what you’re describing as an American sense of aesthetics that is really inclusive. I think this volume represents that well.

Walt:

Well, thanks. That’s what I hope it does. Even though we can’t do all the kinds of things – I’d love to do something on dance, for instance, or also creative thoughts in science. Because, you know, aesthetics deals with all these kinds of disciplines.

Dave:

Right. Or even how aesthetics is a really crucial part of mathematics. When I think about Whitehead, that’s one of the things that really stands out to me about his thinking, his writing – it’s got a mathematician’s sensibility about aesthetics running all throughout it.

Walt:

Excellent point. Yep. I sure agree with you. Well, we’ll have do a second volume!

Dave:

Volumes two and three, you know?

Walt:

Yeah. That’s right. So yeah, there’s just a rich vein of material that other people can pick up and run with.

Dave:

Well, congratulations. It really is an impressive book, and I hope that it will gain the interest that it deserves. And I hope there’s a volume two and three too!

Walt:

Good. Good. Well, thanks so much, Dave. Appreciated the time to talk to you.

Gary

Dave Rohr:

All right, I’m here with Dr. Gary Slater, a good friend and colleague to talk about this recent book that’s just been published: American Aesthetics: Theory and Practice. So, Gary, thank you so much for being here and being a part of this interview. I wonder if you’d just start by telling us a little bit about yourself, your research, and where you’re located right now?

Gary Slater:

All right, well absolutely. Thank you for having me in this conversation, Dr. Rohr, and, yeah, good to catch up with you and to have this opportunity to talk about my own work and obviously this book in particular. So I am here in Muenster, Germany and I am about 25% of the way through a Humboldt Fellowship working on a project that is trying to develop an integrated ethics of migration and ecology – the assumption being that international migration and environmental devastation represent challenges which will only get more urgent in the decades ahead. I’m applying some of the logic of relations that I developed in my research on Charles Peirce to look at the relationship between religious traditions and these challenges as part of a common challenge. It is something that has definite connections with the work I did before, but it would really only be described as religious ethics as opposed to philosophy of religion, which is more of what I was doing in my doctorate and for the first few years afterwards.

But as a loyal member of the Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought (IARPT), and a staunch pragmatist myself, I do consider this to be in the fold, at least in some manner of speaking. And so as we were talking about before, I mean, it’s very much pragmatic in spirit, taking a set of lived values as part of a community and searching for ways to help communities solve problems and apply those values to new settings in a kind of hypothetical and abductive manner. Somewhere along the line there’s also a dilettante’s interest in American aesthetics as well. Not really related to this project, but yeah, you know, one can be a Renaissance man and write about different things.

Dave:

For any readers who might not have much of a context, I wonder if you could just say what philosophical aesthetics is? What is this book about in general? What’s the purpose of philosophical aesthetics?

Gary:

Well, aesthetics has a pretty venerable legacy in ancient Greece. It’s right there at the ground floor with ethics and metaphysics and all the other great Greek sub-disciplines of the life of the mind, philosophy. I think it’s almost so important and so ubiquitous that it’s easy to overlook. We’re obviously embodied creatures living in a world that exceeds ourselves, and our experience in this world is profuse with experiences that are laden with value. And with beauty, not just beauty, but some kind of almost indescribable visceral element in which you are experiencing something, but you can also apprehend patterns and forms. And there’s something to that that goes beyond a simple logical connection or even a simple ethical distinction between a right or wrong course of action.

I remember reading Musicophilia by the neurologist Oliver Sacks, and he was talking about what it would be like to try to describe music to some alien species that landed on earth. If you played them Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony they might be polite and acknowledge the repeating phrases or certain kinds of noteworthy patterns, but you wouldn’t be able to communicate what makes it so powerful as an emotional experience in conjunction with the arrangement of sounds. And so aesthetics is what tries to go into that elemental, really visceral aspect of experience. What this book is contributing to the understanding of aesthetics is it’s retrieving a tradition that comes out of the traditions that IAPRT is interested in – the American philosophical tradition, particularly the classical pragmatists and their successors – arguing that, even though these figures are not typically understood as estheticians primarily, they are developing philosophical ideas about meaning and value and experience and democracy and education and of course religion that can lend themselves to a relatively coherent aesthetic approach. And that isn’t something that had been talked about enough. So the book’s assembling the expertise that is present in IARPT – although, of course, others who aren’t in the group also contributed chapters – but it’s taking those who appreciate and understand American intellectual traditions to pull together a pretty convincing case that the American philosophical tradition has something to say about aesthetics.

Dave:

Great. I’m going to close my window real quick, cause apparently some neighbor is sawing things in half.

Gary:

Okay.

Dave:

I don’t know if you noticed that.

Gary:

I did not actually. I didn’t hear it.

Dave:

Something you just said connects to the next question I wanted to ask. I wonder, are there any distinctive themes in the American philosophical approach to aesthetics? Does it stand out against wider, more typical approaches to aesthetics? Are there any distinctive themes or methodologies or anything like that?

Gary:

Well, in terms of the kind of traditions and figures that we are drawing from primarily in this book – so again, classical pragmatism and its successors – you know, you have themes that are already commented upon pretty prevalently in conjunction with these figures. Things like egalitarian democratic ethos. I think aesthetics maybe particularly is notorious for being somewhat closed off or the province of some kind of Bloomsbury group, you know, elites, sensitive aristocrats of the mind. There’s very much a tendency in the American aesthetics tradition to push back against that and to argue that making and appreciating aesthetic objects is something that anyone can do. Being able to widen the parameters to encompass high art and low art and obviously a lot of different genres and mediums is something that actually enriches your appreciation for aesthetics. So that’s one thing. And then another thing which is very prominently associated with the pragmatic tradition is just the intimate link between experience and aesthetics. You get this most prevalently in John Dewey’s Art as Experience, which is a work that a lot of the contributors in the book comment upon, rightly so. But you see it in William James, you see it in Charles Peirce, you even see it in [Susanne] Langer who was another early 20th century philosopher who Walter Gulick really admires.

So what we tried to do in terms of bringing experience as a concept in American aesthetics to the fore is to provide a section on applied aspects of aesthetics. You get chapters that are provided by practitioners of art – Corey Drieth, for example, and there’s another one on choral performances. So we definitely try to show that this isn’t something that is purely contained in a theoretical conversation. It’s something that is both practical and theoretical. So, right off the top of my head, the democratic and the experiential are two things that I think are unique to this tradition that we’re talking about.

Dave:

Right, right. When you’re talking about the democratic aspect, it reminded me of passages in Dewey where he’s talking about just sitting around the fire watching the sparks flying up or people working on crafts as an integral part of what is relevant to aesthetics. So that sense that it’s not just about studying fine art, it’s about the aesthetic dimensions of our experience in a more pervasive sense.

Gary:

It’s true, well put. But if I might add, a third aspect that probably should be mentioned is the appreciation of our embeddedness in nature. You don’t get any kind of rigid boundary between a cultural world and a natural world. This includes works of art that are focused on nature, like the Hudson River school of painting, for example, as a famous case in the 19th century. But it isn’t just that. It’s also something that comes out of interest in Peircean semiotics, which also refuses to bifurcate sign-making and sign-appreciating between human and nonhuman actors. So you also get a lot of that – your own chapter in the book I think is doing some interesting things with that.

Dave:

One of the things that stands out to me about this book is just the breadth of what is included here. You have metaphysical accounts of value as such, you have normative accounts of aesthetic beauty and excellence, you have applied aesthetics, you have classic history of philosophy approaches – you know, the applicability of William James’s thought to aesthetics and whatnot. Do you think that’s intimately related to the American tradition, that breadth of valued approaches, or do you see that as more representative of IARPT?

Gary:

Well, yeah, of course, it’s certainly representative IARPT . . . and testifies to the richness of the conversations that have been happening for years at IARPT. My own chapter in the book happens to be slotted in with more theoretical, highly abstract, and sort of system-building approaches from Wesley Wildman’s axiological landscape theory to Bob Neville’s work on harmonies and Randy Auxier’s really intimidatingly work on process and persons. But then again there’s some that are doing really good excavation work in history. I believe Michael Raposa’s stuff on Jonathan Edwards and Peirce and Jacob Goodson on [Ralph Waldo] Emerson. And then you get to the more applied stuff later. I don’t know if I would be qualified to say, I suspect the answer is no, that this diversity that you see in the structure of the book is something that can be said to be uniquely American. I think if you did it in the right way, studying with enough patience and persistence, you would probably be able to find something similar in other traditions. But I certainly think the book and all the contributors to the book make a really strong case collectively that the American tradition works in this kind of format, this really diffuse, but also somehow coherent combination of different methodologies and genres and even modes of explanation.

……..

Dave:

I can see it’s getting dark there in Germany, so we’ll wrap this up quickly. I’m curious as I believe American Aesthetics is the first volume you’ve edited, what were some of the challenges and rewarding aspects of the process? Is there anything you learned as a young scholar editing your first book?

Gary:

Thanks for asking. I have to really give Walter Gulick the lion’s share of credit for making this project a reality. It was his idea from the beginning. Honestly, for me, it was an example of the virtues of commitment and of holding fast and being patient and persistent and not wanting to give up on something that seemed worthwhile. In 2015 in Asheville I knew that Walt was interested in having the theme of the IARPT summer meeting be aesthetics. I had previously worked with Bill Hart as a program co-chair on taking the submitted proposals and turning them into a conference program. So I agreed to help Walt do that for the 2016 meeting. It’s one of those things, I’m sure you know, where you don’t want to say no to things that fall into your space and could help develop your relationships with other scholars in your orbit. So I’m like, all right, I want to do this. That familiarized me with a lot of the projects that became the chapters of the book.

That summer of 2016 and the weeks after the meeting, Walt and I had several conversations about what we hoped we could do with it. My understanding is that most summer meetings are not seriously looked at as an edited book. I know that my 2014 program co-chair experience was not. And so, I have to hand it to Walter for thinking, “Look, this really ought to be something that’s published as a book.” We thought about where it would go and SUNY Press was a contender from the beginning, just based on what their interests are and who they’ve published. It really just took a long time. It was Walt who really deserves the credit because he was so emotionally invested in making this thing happen. There were times when I thought he was on the verge of thinking, man, I don’t know if this is worth it given the things that they are asking of us or how long it’s taking.

Editing the book required the general skills involved in reading somebody else. I was reviews editor of AJTP [American Journal of Theology & Philosophy] for five years and now I’m the editor-in-chief. Anytime someone gives you a chapter or a manuscript and you have to read someone else’s work closely, it takes a certain kind of empathy without losing your critical sensibilities. And you also have to think of it in a context that the author themselves probably hadn’t thought about, which is what their project looks like alongside all the other ones that got submitted. And an edited book like this, I mean it’s just even bigger. Relative to any one issue of a journal, which is usually only four or five articles, this was so much bigger.

I think it’s one of the great strengths of the book, the way it’s arranged. And, again, I have to give Walt credit for that because, just taking all these really quite diverse essays – like you said, the different approaches, different historical interests, different genres, all of it – and putting it together, it’s really an interesting challenge. So it was challenging, but we worked together on it. We had a lot of back and forth with some of the authors and had to look at things that might not fit as well as others. And of course when the reviewer feedback comes in, you also have think about how you’re going to respond to that. And anybody who’s ever gone through that process with their own submitted stuff for a journal knows that can be a little frustrating. You always feel like the reviewer didn’t understand what you were trying to do. But you have to hope – and I think it’s an article of faith – that this is all a process of improvement, that the end result will be better as a result of this process of feedback. And I think it did. I think it’s better now having gone through all these years. I mean, gosh, it’s almost four years since that summer meeting in Manitou [Springs, CO].

So, I’m just glad that it exists. I haven’t actually got my copy. I haven’t held it in my hand. I love that feeling. You know, it’s funny, my older brother is a musician. They talk about aesthetics and – this goes to some of what you do in your chapter – there’s almost this process of artistic recognition, like the relationship you have with your own work and the desire to make it better and the relationship between taste and standards and how you look at your own work. You have a quotation from Ira Glass about how you’re not very good at first, but you have to be willing to get better. And so musicians sometimes talk about what it’s like to hear their own song on the radio for the first time and how exciting that is. I feel like that as somebody who helped bring the book together. The feeling of getting the book out of the box as an aesthetic object, looking at the cover, I just think it looks great. I mean, it’s really neat art. I love it. It’s really cool. And so I want to have that, man. I want to have it on my shelf, I want to hold it, I want to reread it. And then it’s not done, you know, the story continues because the book will age and it’ll evolve and what you do with it and how you think about it will change. I look forward to five years from now, ten years from now, rereading your chapter or Wildman’s chapter or anybody’s and seeing what I might discover that I didn’t discover before.

Dave:

Well, I think it’s a really excellent book and something you should be very proud of, Gary. So congrats on the book and thank you so much for being willing to sit and talk with me.

Gary:

My pleasure, Dave. Great to talk to you. Thank you for the kind words and I am proud of it. I think that it’s an accomplishment whenever a book gets published. The fact that it’s the result of so many different contributors I think is really fascinating. It’s a very collegial experience and so congratulations to everyone involved, including yourself. And thank you very much for taking the time and showing the interest to talk to me.