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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

J.S. Mill + aesthetic education « Previous | |Next »
April 9, 2007

In Australia John Stuart Mill is best know for his essays on liberty and his utilitarian ethics in which right and wrong action is determined by the principle of utility. Running through Mill's work is a concern about the kinds of lives we should lead--experiments in living--- and the kinds of dispositions---character---we should strive to develop.

This reviewHenry R. West of Colin Heydt's Rethinking Mill's Ethics: Character and Aesthetic Education highlights the role of aesthetics:

Heydt claims that a stimulus for Mill's focus on aesthetic education was his concern about the tendency of industrialism and urbanization to homogenize culture and to alienate people from one another. Another stimulus was his reaction to his own education, which focused so much on intellectual development that it ignored the development of emotions. Mill concluded that a broader education was necessary for a sense of fulfillment in life. And in his critique of his education, he came to the conclusion that a utilitarian should not focus exclusively on the ultimate goal of happiness but on other goals with happiness achieved as a by-product.

The overall theme of the book is Mill's theories of aesthetics and aesthetic education broadly conceived.

The concept of aesthetic education is commonly associated with Schiller's Letters Upon The Aesthetic Education of Man, (1794) which was a response to Kant’s theories about the nature of aesthetic experience and its relation to moral freedom. Schiller’s basic idea is that, rightly understood, aesthetic experience is not a matter of merely private taste or feeling but has a civilizing function as well.

The argument is that we find ourselves torn between conflicting impulses, between reason and desire, duty and inclination, our purposes as individuals and as members of a community. Modernity, Schiller argued, exacerbates those conflicts. The progress of science has encouraged our analytical powers at the expense of our sensuous powers, whilst the demands of specialization make it increasingly difficult to achieve a sense of wholeness in life. The aesthetic encouraging the “enlarged mode of thought” that Kant spoke of, and aesthetic experience promises to heal these rifts and provide a vision of wholeness.

This text championing of the humanizing power of aesthetic experience influenced John Ruskin and then J.S. Mill. If we come back to Mill, West says that:

Heydt claims that Mill's later aesthetic views, although not sharing the metaphysical and theological components of Ruskin's theory, reflected these points. For Mill, in this later theory, the experience of beauty takes us outside of ordinary life, connecting us to ideals, and the culture of the individual -- our ennoblement -- depends upon our rising above known reality. Heydt ties these views in with Mill's conception of life as art. Life is not something merely to be enjoyed, but is capable of different kinds of perfection.

I guess we have the roots of social liberalism's ethical development, the separation of art from industry and commercialism, linking aesthetic to beauty etc.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:24 PM |