Before Art as Experience: Dewey’s theory of perception and qualitative thought between aesthetic and linguistic practices

In this paper I will present a fragment of a wider research project aimed at reconstructing John Dewey’s aesthetic theory of perception using and correlating writings spanning the end of the 19th and the first three decades of the 20th century, before the publication of Art as Experience. Specifically, I will analyze relevant aspects of the 1930 essay Qualitative Thought emphasizing aspects that bring to the fore Dewey’s interest in the relationship between aesthetic and linguistic practices through the lens of the core concept of ‘familiarity’.