Aesthetic Education between Judgment and Experience: Dewey in <i>The Radical Aesthetic</i>

Abstract This essay analyzes Isobel Armstrong's use of John Dewey's aesthetic theory in The Radical Aesthetic (2000), paying particular attention to how she stages a confrontation between Dewey and John Guillory. I argue that Armstrong's admirable emphasis on experience leads her to overreach in her opposition to judgment and to fumble the question of how traditional art practices (like poetry) might contribute to a democratized aesthetic education.