Ronald Moore

Aesthetics and Education

What is the appropriate content of aesthetics for students of art at different age levels? How can it best be taught?

Aesthetic Experience: Its Revival and Its Relevance to Aesthetic Education

Oddly enough, in the last half century the most battered and beaten notion in the lexicon of philosophical aesthetics has been its own central concept, aesthetic experience. On the one hand, there is something simple, obvious, and perfectly familiar about this notion. Any fair poll would surely show that citizens of the Western world in general are confidently familiar with aesthetic experience as a concept and as part of their lives. On the other hand, there is something about the notion that defies easy analysis, a vagueness or looseness in its application that has drawn persistent critical fire. We are likely to be much more confident in identifying paradigmatic instances of aesthetic experience than in marking the borders of what should count as aesthetic experience in general.

Aesthetics for Young People: Problems and Prospects

The major players on the arts education scene can be likened to the members of a newly formed string quartet. No matter how skilled each of the players may be individually, successful performance as an ensemble remains a formidable challenge. While realizing their individual parts properly, the players must lear to listen to one another, to pick up subtle cues of timing, attack, phrasing, etc., to arrive at the same-or at least concordant-interpretations of a piece and to blend these in a performance which makes sense not only to the players themselves, but also to their wider audience.