Reimagining John Dewey for the 21st century: the art of living - praxis for social utility and wellbeing

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the rich parallels and connections between John Dewey's pragmatic theories involving aesthetics, education, and experience and the aspects of the Compassion Project that center upon participant's physical and imaginative engagement in the experience of creating an artifact expressive of their thoughts and feelings. As human beings inhabit the world, we participate in shared universes of meaning and value that have been realized through human activity. This transformation of the powers of nature into expressive media, or an "artifact", gives shape and significance to human life. Art, in other words, is nothing more than the quest for concretely embodied meaning and value in human existence. Embodied aesthetic experience fluidly incorporates thinking, feeling, and making which produces experiences of the most meaningful sort. This research realizes the importance of this type of mindful, creative, compassionate engagement in developing resilient communities for the Twenty-First Century. By reimagining John Dewey's ideas, I examine the importance of aesthetic experience for our everyday lives as a means for communication and unity across diverse perspectives. The artifact is iconic of that nexus of dynamical change and emblematic of Dewey's theories as they find expression in the Compassion Project. It is a retrofitting of theory to practice. In the process, both Dewey's theories and the Compassion Project's practices may be better illuminated. As this research has progressed, the notion of artifact creation has advanced into the idea of habit formation within ourselves, our actual bodies and minds becoming the artifact of our making, applying pragmatic intelligence as the art of living.