THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE and ARTFUL PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION JUSTIN THOMAS PICCORELLI Bachelor of Arts in Political Science Loyola

THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE AND ARTFUL PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION JUSTIN THOMAS PICCORELLI Bachelor of Arts in Political Science Loyola Marymount University December 2004 Master of Public Administration Cleveland State University May 2009 Submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree: DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN URBAN STUDIES & PUBLIC AFFIARS at the CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY August 2014 ©COPYRIGHT BY JUSTIN THOMAS PICCORELLI 2014 We hereby approve this dissertation for Justin Piccorelli Candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree for the department of Urban Studies and Public Affairs And CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY’S College of Graduate Studies by Dissertation Chairperson, Camilla Stivers, Ph.D. Department & Date Nicholas C. Zingale, Ph.D. Department & Date Robert C. Zinke, Ph.D. Department & Date August 5th, 2014 DEDICATION To Annie and Isaac ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Throughout my life there have been many people to lend their support in the overall pursuit of knowledge, and growth as an individual. I would like to thank Chris Curry for his philosophical help. For the past eleven years you have brought forth such philosophical depth and really helped me by recommending a reading of Merleau-Ponty based on my interests. Camilla Stivers, my dissertation chairperson, for being “never closed for business” during the effort to conceptualize this dissertation. You translate complex concepts into plain language better than any student or scholar could hope for. Nicholas Zingale, thank you for teaching me phenomenology as a form of inquiry, and mentoring me over the years—your immense effort has been life changing. Robert Zinke, thank you for keeping rationalism alive and helping to balance the world out, so to speak. Thank you Cleveland State University faculty for your effort and patience in the classroom. In particular, I would like to thank Michael Spicer, William Bowen, Helen Liggett, Larry Keller, and Sylvester Murray. My wife Annie has been particularly encouraging during this long road—I am indebted to you in many ways. I would like to thank all of the people that have been kind enough to lend their time to my research. Although I cannot, in good form, mention your names I am in debt to you for sharing your experiences with me in my effort to understand what artists, administrators, or hybrids do. Lastly, I would like to thank the Public Administration Theory Network and the Institute of Applied Phenomenology in Science and Technology, for the Ralph P. Hummel doctoral scholarship award that covered a portion of this project’s research related expenses. Thank you for helping to keep theory alive. To all of you, I sincerely hope that my research will meet your expectations. THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE AND ARTFUL PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION JUSTIN THOMAS PICCORELLI ABSTRACT As Maurice Merleau-Ponty pointed out, a work of art allows us to explore our sense for meaning in the world. It not only allows us to translate our perceptions, but it allows our perceptions to speak to us through what he called a “respiration in being” (Merleau-Ponty, 1964). In this process of respiration, artists and artful public administrators alike are inspired by what they see, and expire that which is seen (Merleau-Ponty, 1964). This research suggests that what Merleau-Ponty described is an element of the aesthetic experience that enables a person to explore the world and what it means to be in it. After Dwight Waldo argued that all ways of knowing are value laden in the field of public administration, he left the field without a prescribed way to know, and this is a problem, given that public administrators are often required to act while in a crisis. If public administrators lack a form of inquiry to understand the world, then how are they to act? This dissertation asks whether administrators, in fact, base their administrative discretion on aesthetic judgment and what they find pleasing or displeasing, their taste (Kant, 2001), to discern what to do and which type of understanding to employ (Arendt, 1992; Hummel, 2006; Stivers, 2011). Through a set of phenomenological interviews the dissertation attempts to access, or pull on the understanding(s) of artists, artful administrators, and hybrids, to better understand administrative discretion by examining the aesthetic experience more deeply and hopefully contribute to how we think about the role of the expert in public administration. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT………….………………………………………………………………..…vi LIST OF FIGURES…………………..………………………………………...………...ix LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………...…………….……..x CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION……………….………………………..…….…...……1 Statement of Research Question……………..………...….………7 II. LITERATURE REVIEW……….……………………….……….…….....8 ART OF ADMINISTRATION………………………….………...8 Chester Barnard the Aesthetician…………………………9 Charles Goodsell and the Need for a “Value System” in Public Administration………………………….……...…12 Geoffrey Vickers and “Appreciative Judgments”………..13 Camilla Stivers and the Explorers of the American West.14 ADMINISTRATIVE DISCRETION AND THE ROLE OF THE EXPERT……………………………………………….…….…..16 Carl Friedrich and Herbert Finer and the Role of the Expert………………………………………….…………17 The Waldo-Simon Debate……………..……...………….19 Preserving Individual Ethics…………………………..…22 LITERATURE ON AESTHETIC JUDGMENT……...…………28 Immanuel Kant: Taste and the Supersensible……………29 Hannah Arendt and the Need for Aesthetic Judgment…...38 Ralph Hummel and What Cannot be put into Scientific Terms…………………………………………………….43 Camilla Stivers and Employed Aesthetic Judgment……..45 LITERATURE RELATED TO MAURICE MERLEAU- PONTY’S PHILOSOPHY OF VISION AND ONTOLOGY.......46 MARY PARKER FOLLETT ON EXPERTISE AND INTEGRATION.…………………..……………………..……...50 vii III. METHODOLOGY……..………………………………………………..58 INTRODUCTION………….……………………………………58 PILOT INTERVIEWS……….………………….……………….66 INTERVIEWS WITH ARTISTS AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATORS……………………………………………67 Questions for Artists……………………………………..68 Questions for Public Administrators………………....…..69 ILLUSTRATION AND EXPLANATION OF RESEARCH DESIGN………………………………………………………….70 Artists………………………………………………….....71 Hybrids………………………………………………...…74 Administrators…………………………………………....76 Description of the Analysis………………………………77 IV. ANALYSIS………………………………………………………………81 PART ONE - INTERVIEWS WITH ARTISTS…………………81 PART TWO - INTERVIEWS WITH HYBRIDS……………...116 PART THREE - INTERVIEWS WITH ADMINISTRATORS..151 SUMMARY OF ANALYSIS OF INTERVIEWS……………..176 V. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION…………………………...……..182 FINDINGS………………………………………………….…..182 DISCUSSION…………………………………………....……..186 CONCLUSION……………………………………….….……..195 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………...………………………………….……197 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page I. Three Faculties from Immanuel Kant……...……………………..……….…33 II. Theoretical Links behind Research Design………..……………...…...…….59 III. Illustration of Research Design...…………..……………………...…..…….70 ix LIST OF TABLES Table Page I. Framework of Analysis………………………………………..……………..79 II. Summary of Interview with Sketch Artist/Art Teacher………….…………..97 III. Summary of Interview with Musician/Lyricist……………………………..108 IV. Summary of Interview with Painter/Musician/Writer…………………...…116 V. Summary of Interview with Director of Development Entity/Cartoonist.....126 VI. Summary of Interview with Director of Local Library/Poet……………….140 VII. Summary of Interview with Director of Various Public Agencies/Painter...151 VIII. Summary of Interview with Grade School Teacher………...……………...157 IX. Summary of Interview with Child Support Case Worker…………….........169 X. Summary of Interview with Director of Finance for Local Government…..176 x Chapter I INTRODUCTION “Hurray for positive science! Long live exact demonstration!…Gentleman, to you first honors always! Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling, I but enter them to an area of my dwelling” (Whitman, 1881). “I would be hard pressed to say where the painting is I am looking at. For I do not look at it as one looks at a thing, fixing it in its place. My gaze wanders within it as in the halos of Being. Rather than seeing it, I see according to, or with it” (Merleau-Ponty, 1964). Ever since Carl Friedrich and Herman Finer engaged in a debate as to how to best maintain a sense of administrative responsibility in the 1940’s, the field of public administration has been struggling to determine the role or rightful place of the public administrator. While Friedrich believed the administrator was in a unique place to interpret and act on the best interests of the public, Finer, much like the founders of the U.S. constitution and their belief in the separation of powers, believed public administrators would pursue their own interests at the expense of the peoples’ interests, if they are left un-checked (Friedrich, 1940; Finer, 1941). Essentially, Finer believed that public administrators must be held accountable to the law. Since their debate, our scientific understanding can be considered to have evolved. Perhaps, if for no other reason than our desire for objectivity (Follett, 1926), science and measurement, i.e. “yardsticks” (Arendt, 1992), have gradually sought to fill in these conceptual gaps in our understanding concerning whether administrators should be able to exercise their discretion, whether ethics, Gaus’ “inner check,” legislation, or the public might serve to keep administrators acting in the interest of the public, rather than what many fear— acting in line with their own financial gain and material pursuits, or other aspirations like 1 prestige, or even power. Science has taken over, for example, in the form

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