SOURCE: "Some Questions on Dewey's Esthetics," in The Philosophy of John Dewey, Northwestern University, 1939, pp. 371-89.

In the following excerpt, Pepper examines Dewey's writings on esthetics, which he finds are often contrary to Dewey's purported allegiance to Pragmatist tenets.

A personal item may more quickly reveal the grounds of certain issues I sense in Dewey's esthetic writings than anything else I could offer to the same end, and will also perhaps furnish him with a more direct focus for reply than the customary impersonal and more distant modes of statement. About 1932 I came to the point in a manuscript, which I was preparing on types of esthetic theory, where I wished to give an exposition of the pragmatic esthetics. I was not aware of any well considered work on the subject, and accordingly dug the matter out for myself, taking most of the details from scattered remarks on...