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Merleau-Ponty and Nishida: Artistic expression as 'motor-perceptual faith'
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Date
2014
Authors
Loughnane, Adam
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University College Cork
Published Version
Abstract
This dissertation carries out a dialogue between Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Nishida Kitarō concerning their theories of artistic expression and faith. Both philosophers go through remarkably similar trajectories in their philosophic projects: In their early works they focus on the motor-perceptual body of the artist, and as they move towards the mature articulation of their ontologies, the concept of faith becomes central. I propose the term “motor-perceptual faith” to bring these seemingly diverse sets of concerns into a conceptual continuity. My study explores this connection, and argues that the artist’s motor-perceptual expressive body, as colourfully and sometimes poetically articulated in their early works, enacts the form of faith developed more abstractly in their later writings. Exploring these relations fosters a mutual expansion of the early by the later works, thus thickening the concept of faith by seeing it as enacted by the artist, while enlarging the concept of artistic expression by understanding it as a practice of motor‐perceptual faith. Framing these philosophers as putting forth a traditionally religious concept as illustrated by way of artistic expression, offers a new articulation of both of their writings, an important conceptual bridge between the two, while challenging un-ambiguous distinctions between art, philosophy and religion, and ultimately philosophy East and West.
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Keywords
Merleau-Ponty , Nishida Kitaro , Aesthetics , Faith , Artistic expression , Phenomenology
Citation
Loughnane, A. 2014. Merleau-Ponty and Nishida: Artistic expression as 'Motor-Perceptual Faith'. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.