An Account Of The Indigenization Of Phenomenological Aesthetics In The United States

The "Americanness" of phenomenology and its aesthetic account is deeply problematic because neither American phenomenology nor American phenomenological aesthetics is native American.Instead,both of them were imported from Continental Europe by native American philosophers or immigrated with the European phenomenologists in exile during Nazi’s taking power in the second World War.Before 1960s,phenomenologists in the United States had suffered from not only the hard time of their own living and working condition in an entirely altered cultural circumstance,but also from their worries of the future of phenomenology as an "exotic"philosophy in the empirical-analytical world despite its institutional development.This description applies to American phenomenological aesthetics as it is based on its philosophical foundation.However,both approaches saw a thrive since the 1960s not only because of the post-modern condition,but also as a result of the increasing conversation and cooperation between the traditions of phenomenology and empirical-analytical philosophy.But what should be paid attention to is a distinct clue of cognitive tendency throughout the tradition of American phenomenological aesthetics.This dissertation is dedicated to figure out the tradition,the context,and the characterizations of this tendency by taking the philosophical history,the paradigm,the conversation and cooperation between the two fashions of aesthetics into account.Also,its merits and flaws will be examined and indicated during the process.The first chapter addresses the history of American phenomenology and its methodology mainly in terms of its cognitive tendency where the inner origin of this tendency in American phenomenological aesthetics would be found and analyzed.Two early waves of American phenomenology,the Husserlian and the Existential,would be exemplified by Cairns and Gurwitsch in respect of their phenomenology of perception,and Wild in terms of his cognitive thesis of praxis.The benefits and potential risks of their formulations will also be revealed.In the second chapter,an investigation into the post-modern condition in the United States will be committed in order to make clear the challenges and opportunities facing not just art and aesthetics,but the two aesthetic traditions of phenomenology and analytic philosophy,and this is where they find a context to have conversation and cooperation.Another competitive discourse is cultural criticism whose implication is,however,to reduce art and aesthetic experience to mere historical materials and political ideology,which rather contributes to the intensification of the crisis of art and aesthetics.Despite of different ends and methods,a cognitive tendency and its problematic are shared by analytic aesthetics and cultural criticism on topics of art and aesthetic experience.The third chapter is another account of American phenomenological aesthetic tradition,and Kaufinann’s and Schiitz’s aesthetics will be concentrated on in regard of their discussions about the metaphysical nature of aesthetic experience and the social structure of musical works.Two patterns of cognitive concern and their implications will be examined.The conversation and cooperation of American phenomenological aesthetics and analytic aesthetic would be brought to the foreground,and the focus is still on the issues of aesthetic experience and art.While Geiger ’s axiology of aesthetics criticizes and refuses the cognitive oriented aesthetic approaches,which appeals to Beardsley’s analytic interest of aesthetic experience,Brough implemented a phenomenological interpretation of Dickie’s institutionalism by virtue of Husserl’s theory of "life-world"in the question of "artworld".What seems to be controversial is that Brough’s theory of artworld is likely to fall under what has been criticized by Geiger.Our attention in the fifth chapter would be expanded to the competition and cooperation between American phenomenological aesthetics and cognitive science.Before we attend to Kelly’s perceptual theory of art and Arvidson’s Gestat phenomenological aesthetics,the basis,the facts,the concrete means,the profits and the weak points of the conversation would be measured carefully.Then the common sense and weaknesses shared by Kelly’s and Arvidson’s theories will be more likely to present themselves to us.Throughout the development of American phenomenological aesthetics,it has gradually abandoned the metaphysical dimension of aesthetics and epistemology,which serves to be a necessary condition for its conversation with the empirical-analytic world.However,this results in its suffering of losing ground as an aesthetics and of losing appeal to a sensible philosophy of perception.