Music Education as Aesthetic Education

Supplementary Notes – Kant, Dewey, Langer, Meyer, Reimer

Ast/Prof Leonard Tan, PhD

“Aesthetic”
• Sense of the beautiful; philosophical study of beauty and fine art
• Derived from Greek aisthesis: sense experience / perception
• 1735, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten used it to mean sense of beauty or “taste.”
 Rise of nouveau riche → purchase of art → “what is good art?”
 Philosophical theory to unite the 18th century European conception of “fine art”
(music, poetry, painting, sculpture, etc . . . )

Key questions
• What is art? What is good art? What is beauty? What is taste?

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Critique of Judgement (1790)

• “Pure aesthetic judgement”
 What does it mean to delight or to take pleasure in the beautiful?
 Kant was looking for a theory of aesthetics applicable to all of humanity.

• Disinterested pleasure
 “Everyone must allow that a judgement on the beautiful which is tinged with the
slightest interest, is very partial and not pure judgement of taste.” (p. 132)
 Art / craft: Craft: product should be useful; Art: purposive without a final end to it.
 Art is art because it has no utility except for its own sake.

• Agreeable art vs. fine art (entertainment versus contemplation)

 “Agreeable arts are those which have mere enjoyment for their object. Such are all
the charms that can gratify a dinner party . . . Fine art, on the other hand, is a mode of
representation which is intrinsically final, and which, although devoid of an end, has
the effect of advancing the culture of the mental powers in the interests of social
communication.” (p. 149)
 Agreeable arts: Pleases sensuously, not enduring material for later reflection, e.g.
table music; shallow music that is not meant for contemplation.
 Fine arts: Intended for contemplation (not entertainment), though it can also be used
in other ways. It is for its own sake. Kant puts the fine arts on a pedestal.
 Contemplate what? Answer: Form

• Disinterested contemplation of form

 “In painting, sculpture, and in fact in all the formative arts, in architecture and
horticulture, so far as fine arts, the design is what is essential. Here it is not what
gratifies in sensation but merely what pleases by its form, that is the fundamental
prerequisite for taste.” (p. 140)

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• Subjective universality
 “It would be ridiculous if . . . someone who prided himself on his taste were to justify
himself thus ‘This object . . . is beautiful for me.’ For he must not call it beautiful if it
pleases merely him. Many things may have charm and agreeableness for him, no one
will be bothered about that; but when he puts a thing on a pedestal and and calls it
beautiful, he demands the same delight from others . . . He rebukes them if they judge
otherwise, and denies that they have taste, though he nevertheless requires that they
ought to have it; and to this extent it is not open to men to say: Everyone has his own
taste. This would be equivalent to saying that there is no such thing at all as taste, i.e.
no aesthetic judgement capable of making a rightful claim upon the assent of all
men.” (p. 135)
 Pure aesthetic judgement, being aesthetic, is subjective. But it is also universal.
 Where does Kant expect us to find beauty that is completely pure, where subjective
universality is possible? Answer: Nature.

• Nature
 “Flowers are free beauties of nature” (p. 141)
 Paradigm case: This rose is beautiful to me.

• Fine art must look like nature

 “Fine art is an art so far as it has at the same time the appearance of being nature.”
 “ . . . art can only be termed beautiful, where we are conscious of its being art, while
yet it has the appearance of nature.” (p. 150)
 Work of art is an intentional human product of human imagination and skill; nature is
not. The rose is completely pure, but the work of art is not. Art is intentional, but
must seem unintentional – unconscious and unforced, cannot be learned.
 How then, is fine art possible? Answer: Genius.

• Genius
 “Fine art is the art of genius.” (p. 150)
 That is why fine art has representational, deep, ineffable content

• “Art for art’s sake”

 We judge art based on the subject matter’s lack of a practical purpose.
 However, after separating morality from art, Kant eventually brings them together
again. For Kant, beauty is a symbol of morality (Section 59, CAJ).

• Critique
 Disinterested contemplation of form: detached, distanced.
 May not be the only way one appreciates art.
 Ethnocentric; not alive to cultural differences (Kant was a product of his times).
 Notion of genius critiqued, e.g., “Romantic cult of genius” (Richard Shusterman).
 How pure? Many experiences of beauty, and even Kant will agree, are not pure.
 Still, is Kant’s philosophy useful / insightful? Did he make useful distinctions?
 Highly influential.
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John Dewey (1859–1952): Art as Experience (1934)
• “We have no word in the English language that unambiguously includes what is signified
by the two words ‘artistic’ and ‘esthetic.’ Since ‘artistic’ refers primarily to the act of
production and ‘esthetic’ to that of perception and enjoyment, the absence of a term
designating the two processes taken together is unfortunate.” Note: aesthetic spelled as
“esthetic.”
• “By one of the ironic perversities that often attend the course of affairs, the existence of
the works of art upon which formation of an esthetic theory depends has become an
obstruction to theory about them.”
• “When an art product once attains classic status, it somehow becomes isolated from the
human conditions under which it was brought into being and from the human
consequences it engenders in actual life-experience . . . a wall is built around them . . .
remitted to a separate realm . . .”
• The philosopher ought “to restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of
experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are
universally recognized to constitute experience.”
• “In order to understand the esthetic in its ultimate and approved forms, one must begin
with it in the raw . . . the fire-engine rushing by; the machines excavating enormous
holes in the earth . . .”
• “Everyday aesthetics.” Richard Shusterman continues as Pragmatist Aesthetics (2000).
• Differs from Kant: less of art as object, but art as experience; art should not be placed on
a pedestal. Dewey’s philosophy often used as justification of popular music in schools.

Susanne Katherina Langer (1895–1985): Problems of Art (1957)

• “A work of art is an expressive form created for our perception through sense or
imagination, and what it expresses is human feeling.”
• “A work of art presents feeling (in the broad sense I have mentioned before, as
everything that can be felt) for our contemplation, making it visible or audible in some
way perceived through a symbol . . .”
• “The most astounding and developed symbolic device humanity has evolved is language
. . . This use of language is discourse; and the pattern of discourse is known as discursive
form . . . Yet even the discursive pattern has its limits of usefulness.”
• Art functions like an “expanded metaphor of feeling,” a kind of symbol that can take a
person beyond what he or she experiences first hand. It is non-discursive.
• Through art, life is understood and probed beyond the rational, intellectual level.
• The arts are not cultural frills; they have existed in all cultures since the dawn of
civilization. To neglect its education is to neglect the education of feeling.
• Direct impact on the notion of music education as the education of feeling (Reimer).

The above philosophies provide a basis for the notion of –

“MUSIC EDUCATION AS AESTHETIC EDUCATION”

• It is an “education of feeling” (Reimer, 1970, p.39).
• To enable the “aesthetic experience” (Reimer, 1970, ch. 6).
• A non-utilitarian philosophy: music itself should be the focus (Reimer, 1970, p. 111).
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Leonard Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (1956)
• Major treatise on music by a Western music theorist
• Relies heavily on psychological insights and psychologically-based arguments in
describing music.
• Draws on the work of Koffka (one of the main proponents of Gestalt psychology), and
Susanne Langer.
• Addresses the problem of musical meaning and the manner of musical communication.

Absolutist versus referentialist views

• Absolutist: “musical meaning lies exclusively within the context of the work itself”
• Referentialist: “musical meanings refer to the extramusical world of concepts, actions,
emotional states, and character.
• Meyer acknowledges the existence of both types of musical meanings.

Formalist versus expressionist views

• Formalist: “the meaning of music lies in the perception and understanding of the musical
relationships set forth in the work of art and that meaning in music is primarily
intellectual”
• Expressionist: “the expressionist would argue that these same relationships are in some
sense capable of exciting feelings and emotions in the listener
• Meyer proposes a compromise position that claims both “intellectual” and “emotional”
meanings.

Meyer’s Position
• Leans towards the absolute expressionist perspective.
• Meyer regards referential meanings to be somewhat secondary, and his emphasis on
emotion implies a more expressionist than formalist view.
• Reimer adopts an absolute expressionist position as well.

References
• Leonard B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1956).
• http://www.music-cog.ohio-state.edu/Music829D/Notes/Meyer1.html

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 Reimer’s A Philosophy of Music Education
Select quotes compiled by Leonard Tan

First Edition, 1970

• “If music education is to become music education, and if at the same time it is to be
aesthetic education, it must proceed from a clear understanding of the aesthetic nature
and aesthetic value of music” (p. 10)
• “Freudian aesthetics and Oriental aesthetics and Medieval aesthetics . . . can not be the
foundation on which our philosophy is to be built” (p. 14)
• “use of art as propaganda – no matter whether for good or bad causes – perverts the
nature of the artistic impulse” (p. 23)
• “the beauty or truth we find in art has some relation to the beauty or truth of life as lived
and known.” (p. 24)
• “the enrichment of the quality of people’s lives through enriching their insights into the
nature of human feeling” (p. 39)
• “aesthetic experience is not a means toward non-aesthetic experience and serves
nonutilitarian purpose” (p. 75)
• “the entire music education enterprise is built on the assumption that musical tastes can
be improved, that musical experiences can be deepened, that musical enjoyment can be
refined . . . these assumptions, all of which are very healthy and beyond criticism, do
imply a movement toward ‘better’ musical experiences of ‘better’ music.” (p. 103).
• “Aesthetic education lies at the core of a humane society” (p. 164)

Second Edition, 1989

• “The idea that the arts have a special relation to feeling – the Absolute Expressionist
position – is pervasive in all cultures” (p. 33).
• “Because the forms of human feeling are much more congruent with musical forms than
with the forms of language, music can reveal the nature of feelings with a detail and truth
that language cannot approach.” Langer (p. 50) discursive versus non-discursive
• Art is “the practice of creating perceptible forms expressive of human feeling” Langer (p.
94)
• Aesthetic perception x aesthetic reaction = aesthetic experience (p. 107)

Ethics and aesthetics

• “What then is morality in art? Simply put, it is the genuineness of the artist’s interaction
with his materials . . .” (p. 138)
• Discipline is not “forcing oneself to do tedious work, such as practicing.” Nor is it
“morality in the superficial sense of acting in accordance with society’s rules and
regulations.” Rather, it is an “inner self-control, freely exercised to serve larger ends . . .
doing what is needed because that is what it is inherently right to do.” (p. 139-140)
• “Music educators do not provide discipline or teach morality. Music does.” (p. 140)

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Third Edition, 2003
• “experience-based philosophy of music education”
• “The ongoing debate within music education as to whether we should make the case for
our value on aesthetic/artistic bases or utilitarian bases is fruitless and self-defeating. It is
never a case of one or the other.” (p. 65)
• “music offers ethical and life-enhancing values just as numberless other endeavors do,
but in the the distinctive way characteristic of music . . . Its very particular way . . . of
putting ethics to work, is the ultimate value of music . . . those values and learnings, in
their uniqueness, contribute powerfully to the sum total of a good life . . . accounting for
the existence and importance of music in all cultures” (p. 127)

Conflation of Kant and Dewey’s Theory of Aesthetic Experience

• Creates problems? Or is it a strength?

I: Intrinsic or instrumental?
• Intrinsic: “serves no utilitarian purpose,” “experience for the sake of experience in and of
itself.” “‘Disinterested’ – not lacking in interest, but lacking in concern about pragmatic
outcomes.” (R 1970, p. 75-6; R 1989, p. 103).
• Instrumental: Experience of art enables humans to realize important values such as
Dewey’s “self-unification,” Abraham Maslow’s “self-actualization,” Susanne Langer’s
“personal identity,” Leonard Meyer’s “individualization,” Carl Jung’s “individuation,”
and Paul Tillich’s “integration of the personality.” (R 1970, p. 26).

II: Distanced or immediate?

• Distanced: music teachers and students can become so preoccupied with technique that
they do not have the “psychical distance” to experience music aesthetically; “quiet
contemplation”
• Immediate: “doing” and “undergoing” // “aesthetic perception” and “aesthetic reaction” =
aesthetic experience. (R 1970, p. 80-81).

III: Apart from life or a part of life?

• Apart from life: art that is for “contemplation of the museum or concert hall” (1989, p.
113)
• A part of life: “art is intimately connected to life rather than totally distinct from it.”
(1970, p. 23)