Aesthetic Experience and Music Education

Bennett Reimer presents quite explicitly the guiding principles that he has followed in writing his book on the philosophy of music education: “It will be necessary to identify an aesthetic position which includes major thinkers and which also has an identifiable structure of ideas which can be handled without being overwhelming in complexity.”1 Reimer has certainly succeeded in writing an easily comprehensible book about philosophy of music education, but the attempt to avoid complexity may be dangerous in discussing philosophical issues. The notion of aesthetic experience, or at least its biological or “natural” basis (quotes by Reimer), is claimed to be “very strongly based on the thought of John Dewey and Susanne K. Langer.”2 From this the reader might conclude that Reimer’s notion of aesthetic experience has something to do with John Dewey’s corresponding notion, but this is not, strictly speaking, the case. Reimer has taken one feature from Dewey who frequently discusses the role of emotions in aesthetic experience and man as a living creature in his Art as Experience. The rest of Dewey’s philosophy is, however, simply ignored. The philosophical frameworks of Reimer and Dewey are completely different. Heidi