 Especially outside of philosophical circles, Dewey is best known for his work in education. One of his major works in this area, Democracy and Education (1916), also includes reflections on aesthetic themes, particularly on the imagination, which Dewey regards “as the sole way of escape from mechanical methods in teaching” (DE: 245) that he, in general, opposes. Anticipating the naturalism of Art as Experience Dewey argues that there is no essential gap between aesthetic experience and other forms of experience. The function of the fine arts is not to provide an escape from ordinary life. Rather, it is the enhancement of qualities that make ordinary experiences appealing. The arts are the main means of achieving “an intensified, enhanced appreciation” (DE: 246). Their purpose, beyond being enjoyable, is that they fix taste, reveal depth of meaning in otherwise mediocre experiences, and concentrate and focus elements of what is considered good. In the end the fine arts are “not luxuries of education, but emphatic expressions of that which makes any education worthwhile” (DE: 247). Dewey is also critical of the Aristotelian distinction between useful labor and leisure, where the second is privileged over the first, and believes this prejudicial distinction is still dominant. He comes back to this issue in Art as Experience, where he suggests a new understanding of the relationship between means and ends as a way of improving the quality of people’s daily experience. Means should not be seen as mere disposable preliminary stages, which can be thrown away like a ladder once the end is reached, but as integral parts of the ends that they help to fulfill. This reversal, Dewey believes, will infuse people’s everyday experience with a sense of direction and meaning.