Aesthetic Experience, Subjective Historical Experience and the Problem of Constructivism
Journal of the Philosophy of History January 1, 2013 Jonathan Owen Clark
This article connects Frank Ankersmit's concept of subjective historical experience—a 'sudden obliteration of the rift between present and past'—with John Dewey's theory of art as experiential, which describes aesthetic experience as breaking down the polarization of subject and object. Drawing on phenomenology and philosophy of perception, the author builds an account of aesthetic experience emphasizing embodied, differential, and virtual aspects of perception. Disruption or enhancement of these 'aisthetic' aspects, together with self-conscious reflection, is proposed as a link between Ankersmit and other thinkers. The article critically reads Ankersmit's experience of a Francesco Guardi painting and aims to strengthen Ankersmit's critique of Oakeshott's radical constructivism.