The Qualitative Description of Human Experience: The Aesthetic Dimension

Abstract

This article asks the question: What kind of qualitative descriptions of human experience produce a feeling of understanding in the reader? The answer to this question may involve not only issues about truth (validity) but also issues about beauty (aesthetics). The themes discussed include the relationship between the structure and texture of an experience, the relationship between the concrete and abstract uses of language, and the relationship between the individual and general levels of description. The article draws on the thought of Dilthey, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Hillman to articulate the need for using language in a way that serves the qualitative dimensions of experience. This tradition would ask for a way of communicating our descriptions that can retain their concrete and embodied occasions; it wishes to return texture to structure and thus involve readers in forms of understanding that cannot be separated from aesthetic participation.

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