A recent version of the view that aesthetic experience is based in empathy as inner imitation explains aesthetic experience as the automatic simulation of actions, emotions, and bodily sensations depicted in an artwork by motor neurons in the brain. Criticizing the simulation theory for committing to an erroneous concept of empathy and failing to distinguish regular from aesthetic experiences of art, I advance an alternative, dynamic approach and claim that aesthetic experience is enacted and skillful, based in the recognition of (...) others’ experiences as distinct from one’s own. In combining insights from mainly psychology, phenomenology, and cognitive science, the dynamic approach aims to explain the emergence of aesthetic experience in terms of the reciprocal interaction between viewer and artwork. I argue that aesthetic experience emerges by participatory sense-making and revolves around movement as a means for creating meaning. While entrainment merely plays a preparatory part in this, aesthetic engagement constitutes the phenomenological side of coupling to an artwork and provides the context for exploration, and eventually for moving, seeing, and feeling with art. I submit that aesthetic experience emerges from bodily and emotional engagement with works of art via the complementary processes of the perception–action and motion–emotion loops. The former involves the embodied visual exploration of an artwork in physical space, and progressively structures and organizes visual experience by way of perceptual feedback from body movements made in response to the artwork. The latter concerns the movement qualities and shapes of implicit and explicit bodily responses to an artwork that cue emotion and thereby modulate over-all affect and attitude. The two processes cause the viewer to bodily and emotionally move with and be moved by individual works of art, and consequently to recognize another psychological orientation than her own, which explains how art can cause feelings of insight or awe and disclose aspects of life that are unfamiliar or novel to the viewer. (shrink)

Since Husserl, the task of developing an account of intentionality and constitution has been central to the phenomenological enterprise. Some of Merleau-Ponty's descriptions of ‘the flesh’ suggest that he gives up on this task, or, more strongly, that the flesh is in principle incompatible with intentionality or constitution. I show that these remarks, as in Merleau-Ponty's earlier writings, refer to the classical, early Husserlian interpretations of these concepts, and argue that the concept of the flesh can plausibly be understood to (...) advance a refined account of intentionality and constitution. Instead of a first-personal, unidirectional act or embodied motor project, intentionality is a latent openness to things, where the roles of subject and object are reversible. Whereas the view of constitution as meaning-bestowal is untenable, the flesh has a constitutive role, which is supported by a ‘constitutional passivity’ from the subject. On this reading, Merleau-Ponty's later work aims to develop basic tenets of his earlier thought, albeit at a critical distance, an attempt he thought was continuous with the central problems that Husserl claimed a phenomenological philosophy must grapple with, even if Merleau-Ponty's answers to these problems are not Husserl's. (shrink)

The chiasm is usually considered the key notion for Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy. I argue against a common conclusion, namely that ‘the chiasm’ is equivalent to ‘reversibility’. Even when the two terms are not taken as interchangeable, the precise nature of their relation has not been adequately established. Focusing exclusively on ‘reversibility’ has implications for a range of philosophical issues, including relations between self and other. The danger of substituting one term for the other is that existential relations are construed as (...) inversions, rather than as genuine exchanges. I examine two trajectories that can be discovered in ‘The Intertwining—The Chiasm’. The first is the inclusion of difference within a peculiar, extended sense of ‘reversibility’. The second is the development of a plurality of expressions, among which ‘reversibility’ is necessary but not sufficient. I go on to argue that Merleau-Ponty secures difference within the chiasm by supplementing the notion of reversibility with ‘imminence’, the idea that something has not yet occurred. I also propose that the figure of a threshold illuminates how the chiasm operates as a transition where both joining and differentiation occur. (shrink)

There is no unique and definitive definition of phenomenology. It is rather a method and an experience always open and always renewing itself. Phenomenology involves a change in the "sense of the world": everything acquires its sense and value only when it becomes the content of the lived experience of the subject correlated to his intentional acts. This is the main thesis of the phenomenological method aiming at overcoming the traditional opposition between rationalism and empiricism. Starting from Husserl, the father (...) of this approach, the history of phenomenology undertook different and unexpected developments which in some cases were rather far away from Husserl's original thought. In the U.K. attention has been given to an analytical-epistemological phenomenology focused on the relationship between intentionality and logical semantics. In France it is mainly an anthropological-existential phenomenology. In Germany an hermeneutic phenomenology was developed, mainly by Heidegger and Gadamer. Regardless of these raw distinctions, a big question is so far unresolved: how to reconcile the phenomenological/ existential stance claiming for the irreducibility of each lived experience and the scientific paradigm? Is it possible to imagine brain mechanisms and physiological systems explaining the endless mysteries and manifold paradoxes of the human being? Phenomenology claims that a human being can never be considered as an object, as if he was a natural thing; rather the task is to understand him as the focus of a relationship linking subjective attitudes to the objects showed by the experience. In this sense, an important contribution was Merleau-Ponty's view that man is not something psychic joined to an organism, but a sort of fluctuation of the existence that sometimes is a bodily one, sometimes refers to personal acts. Consequently, he proposes to reinstate in the existence both its "physiological" and "psychic" sides both being intentionally oriented towards a world. (shrink)

La noción de sistema de equivalencias adquiere en la fenomenología merleaupon-tyana un lugar central, puesto que allí subyace una función general de transposición tácita. Se trata de un principio de comprensión sin explicación analógica, una síntesis sin análisis, tal como puede observarse, por ejemplo, en la plasticidad, la transferi-bilidad y la analogicidad que caracteriza a los hábitos. Sobre esta base, este artículo seguirá un camino regresivo a fin de desvelar que el sentido de las equivalencias y transposiciones está latente en (...) "las matrices simbólicas", que ofrecen una clave para comprender que los fenómenos de expresión, que tienen lugar en el mundo a través del cuerpo, del lenguaje, de la historia y del arte, deben ser vistos como nudos, emblemas de sentido en los que se hace visible una dimensión temporal. Las matrices simbólicas son "centros organizadores" y, por lo tanto, "centros de significación" que se retoman una y otra vez. The notion of a system of equivalences comes to have in Merleau-Ponty's phe-nomenology a central place because lying under there is a general function of tacit transposition. It is a principle for understanding without analogical explanation, i.e., a synthesis without analysis, as can be seen, for example, in the plasticity, transferability, and likeliness that characterizes habits. On this basis, the article will follow a regres-sive way in order to show that the meaning of the equivalences and transpositions is latent in "the symbolic matrixes" that offer a clue to understand that the phenomena of expression, which occur in the world by means of the body, language, history, and art, should be seen as nodes or emblems of meaning in which a temporal dimension shows itself. Symbolic matrixes are "organizing centers", and thus "centers of signi-ficance" that are taken up over and over again. (shrink)

I argue that we find the articulation of a problem concerning bodily agency in the early works of the Merleau-Ponty which he explicates as analogous to what he explicitly calls the problem of perception. The problem of perception is the problem of seeing how we can have the object given in person through it perspectival appearances. The problem concerning bodily agency is the problem of seeing how our bodily movements can be the direct manifestation of a person’s intentions in the (...) world. In both cases what, according to Merleau-Ponty, obscures a recognition of the phenomenon in question is a conception of our bodily capacities, i.e. our sensibility and our motility, which reduces these to the workings of mechanisms that are blind to meaning. I argue that both the problem concerning perception and the problem concerning bodily agency can be properly called transcendental. The problem of perception is transcendental because it concerns the very intelligibility of appearances and judgements with empirical content. The problem of bodily agency is transcendental in the sense that it concerns the very intelligibility of our bodily capacity to carry out intentions and by implication the intelligibility of our intentions as such. (shrink)

It is argued that the theory of situated cognition together with dynamic systems theory can explain the core of artistic practice and aesthetic experience, and furthermore paves the way for an account of how artist and audience can meet via the artist's work. The production and consumption of art is an embodied practice, firmly based in perception and action, and supported by features of the local, agent-centered and global socio-cultural contexts. Artistic creativity and aesthetic experience equally result from the dynamic (...) interplay between agent and context, allowing for artist and viewer to relate to the artist's work in similar ways. (shrink)

Although better known for his phenomenology of perception and the perceived world, Merleau-Ponty’s writings also contain the outlines of a rich and unique account of the imagination and the imaginary. In this paper, I explicate the phenomenology of the image that Merleau-Ponty develops throughout his work. I show how Merleau-Ponty develops this account of the image in critical response to Sartre and in a way that follows from his own descriptions of what painters do when they paint and of what (...) we experience when we look at their paintings. The investigation of the particular mode of being of images leads to a consideration of the body and Merleau-Ponty’s later ontology. (shrink)

The article will attempt to show that Velasquez's Las Meninas can be viewed as an allegorical enactment of some of the current debates and controversies in the philosophy of cognition and self-representation. I will focus on two very different philosophical trajectories, to which the allegory of the painting can be linked. The first, analytic, trajectory relates Las Meninas to the notion of representation and self-representation in the work of philosophers David Rosenthal, Robert Van Gulick, Uriah Kriegel and Bruce Mangan, and (...) neurologists Bernie Baars and Rodolfo Llinas. The second, continental, trajectory begins by relating to the painting Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological 'embodied self-representation'. This trajectory, which can be further linked to John Ziman's 'second person view' of reality, proceeds to relate Las Meninas to Lacan's 'object gaze' and the 'unbearable fragility of representation', ending with Bataille's (non)concept of 'sovereignty' as essential yet non-representable losses in representation. I will conclude by suggesting that the evolution of the cognitive state experienced by an observer of Las Meninas can be viewed as an 'ontogenetic' recapitulation of the more 'phylogenic' progression of the philosophical history of representation and self-representation alluded to by the canvas. (shrink)

Different explanations of color vision favor different philosophical positions: Computational vision is more compatible with objectivism (the color is in the object), psychophysics and neurophysiology with subjectivism (the color is in the head). Comparative research suggests that an explanation of color must be both experientialist (unlike objectivism) and ecological (unlike subjectivism). Computational vision's emphasis on optimally prespecified features of the environment (i.e., distal properties, independent of the sensory-motor capacities of the animal) is unsatisfactory. Conceiving of visual perception instead as the (...) visual guidance of activity in an environment that is determined largely by that very activity suggests new directions for research. (shrink)

Nous remercions Julie Perrin de nous avoir autorisé à reproduire cet article. Il a déjà paru dans le n° 3 d'Ambiances. Revue internationale sur l'environnement sensible, l'architecture et l'espace urbain – Animer l'espace public? Entre programmation urbaine et activation citoyenne, en 2017. Résumé : Dans Walk, Hands, Eyes, l'artiste chorégraphique Myriam Lefkowitz propose à un spectateur à la fois une balade urbaine silencieuse, les yeux fermés. Cet article examine la dimension spatiale, - Urbanisme.

This thesis wrestles with the normativity of language, its usage and its practices while questioning the signifié-signifiant reality. A structural reading of language designs its translational practices within the source-target framework, thereby essentialising its relationship en passant: everything has meaning as long as we accept the hidden framework of a universal language. Therefore, language outlined as a system of signs is a product of transcendental considerations and consequently it renders practice into a hermeticrealm in which the distinction between eidos and (...) eidolon, right and wrong, familiar and unfamiliar, grammar and gibberish makes perfect sense and in which the translation from A to B is simply a matter of transferring identities. Linguistic power neutralises through its transcendental conditioning ephemera in life and world. We will discover that a phenomenological reading of language is open to layers which questions the dialectic setting of linguistic knowledge production. Phenomenology proposes to study life-world relationships by reducing the power of dialectical denomination to the power of gazing or to the lenses of ambiguity. Theorising language and translational practices within the phenomenological realm follows the concept of being oriented towards body-life-world while laying bare the phenomenon language. This revealing method supersedes empirical considerations since phenomenological methodology questions permanently our very own positioning. Hence, the transfer from A to B will be challenged by possibilities which are temporary: it is about a transfer zone featuring A as A’ to B or A’ in B / C. However, the phenomenological possibility reveals that the price for ephemera is tamed by the condition of its possibilities: indeed, the aporia of linguistic identity in polyvalence requires not only phenomenological brackets but also a transcendental backup. Chapter I and II study the translational practice of language and phenomenology by explaining its analysis via dynamised transcendental conditions. The disillusion of the phenomenological inquiry will be yield by radicalising phenomenological reading of language towards a phenomenographical practice of language. Chapter III goes to the extremes in exposing a language without content. The introduction of the trickster figure Narcissistgrotesque Face will be the anti-metaphor in which the grotesque line up forces us to learn bearing A with B and in which the non-content materiality of linguistic practices resemble le bas matérialisme. Not explanation, understanding and rendering things plausible is the movens for language but it is all about the spur of its enactment, its style and its story telling that renders translational practice visible. Chapter III is a performative practice in which we turn the text into texture. Translation happens then when your are perplex and the translational void enacts you and me. (shrink)

Borrowing conceptual tools from Bergson, this essay asks after the shift in the temporality of life from Merleau‐Ponty's Phénoménologie de la perception to his later works. Although the Phénoménologie conceives life in terms of the field of presence of bodily action, later texts point to a life of invisible and immemorial dimensionality. By reconsidering Bergson, but also thereby revising his reading of Husserl, Merleau‐Ponty develops a nonserial theory of time in the later works, one that acknowledges the verticality and irreducibility (...) of the past. Life in the flesh relies on unconsciousness or forgetting, on an invisibility that structures its passage. (shrink)

Em Le Philosophe et son Ombre, Merleau-Ponty agencia uma lapidar metáfora no intuito de circunscrever certo domínio de experiência, em rigor, pré-reflexiva, que estaria presente, particularmente, nos últimos trabalhos de Husserl: a sombra. Afinal, o que, mais propriamente, teria permanecido à “sombra” do filósofo? Ora, o pathos corolário do saber ocidental: “a tradição como esquecimento das origens”. Husserl então entrevê outra tarefa cara à fenomenologia, aquém e além de seu idealismo transcendentalmente professo: o retorno à Lebenswelt como horizonte pré-teorético. Trata-se, (...) arqueologicamente, de escavar uma camada de evidência originária, isto é, um mundo bruto, em estado barroco ou selvagem como ainda não pensado. É essa zona de sombra como emblema concreto do Eu puro que não pode mais ser “posta entre parênteses”. (shrink)

Este artículo indaga y reflexiona en torno a la «ontología del sentir» elaborada por Maurice Merleau-Ponty, especialmente sobre su noción de carne. Se procurará hacer evidente que la noción de carne es un intento radical de Merleau-Ponty para desarmar las nociones autónomas de sujeto elaboradas tanto por la modernidad filosófica como por la fenomenología, proponiendo en su lugar una noción «pasiva» de sujeto que está fundada en una primacía ontológica de la sensibilidad: en un Sensible en sí al que entiende (...) como «presencia originaria» y como «el trasfondo a partir del cual puede ser pensada toda donación de sentido». Igualmente, se pretende mostrar cómo esa «ontología del sentir» da lugar tanto a un «horizonte de invisibilidad» que subyace a toda representación como a una idea corporal, expresiva, gestual y creadora del lenguaje. (shrink)

Several contemporary interpretations of quantum mechanics use the concept of information as a tool for addressing and explaining the quantum world. In the article, I focus on Zeilinger-Brukner's informational foundations of quantum theory. I propose that with a phenomenological approach—which, unlike most of the contemporary interpretations of quantum mechanics, exceeds the mere dichotomy between realism and anti-realism—we can address the epistemological questions re-opened by IFQT and the parts of the interpretation that are recognized as problematic by its critics. After the (...) phenomenological supplementation IFQT can provide both, ontic and epistemic answer to the question "Why quantum?" As we apply Husserl's concept of the world as our common objective ground to the IFQT explanation, we can make a justifiable step away from the solipsism/subjectivism, which is, according to the critics, the main problem of IFQT. Thus, I propose in conclusion, a phenomenological approach to quantum physics can offer a background for the much needed dialog between realists and anti-realists as well as for a comprehensive contemporary interpretation of the quantum world. (shrink)

In order to understand the lived experiences of physicians in clinical practice, we interviewed eleven expert, respected clinicians using a phenomenological interpretative methodology. We identified the essence of clinical practice as engagement. Engagement accounts for the daily routine of clinical work, as well as the necessity for the clinician to sometimes trespass common boundaries or limits. Personally engaged in the clinical situation, the clinician is able to create a space/time bubble within which the clinical encounter can unfold. Engagement provides an (...) account of clinical practice as a unitary lived experience. This stands in stark contrast to the prevailing notion, referred to as a dual discourse, that describes medicine as the addition of humanism to science. Drawing on Aristotle’s notion of phronesis and Sartre’s definition of the situation, we illustrate how this novel perspective entwines clinical practice, the person of the clinician, and the clinician’s situation. (shrink)

This paper deals with Parmenides of Elea’s way of inquiry about reality and the opposition emerging from it. In more detail, it analyses how Parmenides’ concepts of logos and doxa present some analogies with Bergson’s thoughts about duration and Time and how these theories influenced the understanding of visual media, especially the cinematographic camera. This survey will allow us to demonstrate that some scientific theories about space that accompanied the development of the cinematographic camera progressively allowed for the birth of (...) a new understanding of this device. In the last section of this study, we will then focus on the way through which the film camera - understood as an intelligent device - passes from the sphere of doxa to the sphere of logos. (shrink)

Comparo o poeta Charles Baudelaire e o filósofo Maurice Merleau-Ponty como críticos sociais da modernidade a partir do interior da sociedade moderna. Exploro a influência não reconhecida de Baudelaire sobre Merleau-Ponty como uma forma de reler a fenomenologia de Merleau-Ponty. Também examino a poesia de Baudelaire assim como seu ensaio “O pintor da vida moderna”. Embora o ensaio afirme ser uma análise da importância do pintor C. Guys, sustento que pode ser lido como autobiográfico - revelando uma consciência do poeta (...) enquanto crítico social da modernidade. Da mesma maneira, as caracterizações de artistas feitas por Merleau-Ponty revelam muito sobre a sua visão do papel do filósofo como crítico social. Pode-se ler a fenomenologia de Merleau-Ponty como uma arte em vez de como uma ciência das ciências. Finalmente, exploro as implicações políticas dessa fenomenologia baseada na estética. Sustento que há uma profundidade histórica revelada por essa arte fenomenológica do julgamento político que seria negligenciada por qualquer ciência política.I compare poet Charles Baudelaire and philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty as social critics of modernity from within modern society. I explore Baudelaire’s unacknowledged influence upon Merleau-Ponty as a means of re-reading Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. I examine Baudelaire’s poetry as well as his essay, The Painter of Modern Life. Though the essay claims to be an analysis of the significance of the painter C. Guys, I argue that it can be read as autobiographical - revealing a sense of the poet as social critic of modernity. Likewise, Merleau-Ponty’s accounts of artists reveal a great deal about his own view of the role of the philosopher as social critic. One can read Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology as an art rather than as a science of sciences. Finally, I explore the political implications of this aesthetic-based phenomenology. I argue that there is an historical depth revealed by this phenomenological art of political judgment that would be neglected by any political science. (shrink)

My purpose is to suggest and open a dialogue between Plato and Adorno, and for this I have chosen the concept of mimesis, a concept that plays a central role in both thinkers both epistemologically and aesthetically. While Plato uses the term in order to expel the poets from Kallipolis, to be more precise certain kinds of poetry such as tragedy and comedy, Adorno uses the term to show the relationship between art and natural beauty, the somatic dimension of knowledge, (...) and the importance subversive poets and artists. For Plato, poets are three times removed from the truth and for Adorno, by contrast, the work of art is a vehicle of truth. This dialogue between an ancient and a modern intends to show not only the presence of the old in the new, but the valuable present and the fruitful transformation that an old concept can have. (shrink)

Rapport d'expériences portant sur la reconnaissance, dans des photogrammes, des photographies ou des dessins, d'une action humaine filmée. Les résultats sont analysés à la lumière de certaines interprétations psychologiques de ce que l'on appelle le mouvement dans l'image. La reconnaissance ne pouvant pleinement rendre compte du phénomène perceptif en question, il est proposé d'y voir une forme de perception dans laquelle la dimension temporelle serait dominante.

This article clarifies Merleau-Ponty’s enigmatic, later concept of reversibility by showing how it is connected to the theme of the genesis of sense. The article first traces reversibility through “Eye and Mind” and The Visible and the Invisible , in ways that link reversibility to a theme of the earlier philosophy, namely an interrelation in which activity and passivity reverse to one another. This linkage is deepened through a detailed study of a passage on touch in the Phenomenology ’s chapter (...) on “Sensing,” which shows how reversibility is important to the genesis of sense, not from some already given origin, but through a creative operation within being, beyond the perceiver, wherein the field of perception internally diverges into active and passive moments. The article connects this point about the genesis of sense to themes in Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on institution and passivity. Altogether the article shows how reversibility is a sign of a divergence and thence of a sort of gap or excess in being that allows for a genesis of sense within being itself. (shrink)

A arquitetura fenomenológica não possui talvez a solidez e a homogeneidade de uma escola ou de um movimento em sentido estrito, mas representa, no entanto, um vetor notável do pensamento arquitetônico contemporâneo. Juntamente com as obras de Heidegger, as obras de Merleau-Ponty são utilizadas com frequência por aqueles que se reconhecem como representantes de uma arquitetura de inspiração fenomenológica. Neste artigo será analisado o papel que o pensamento de Merleau-Ponty desenrola nas obras e no pensamento de Juhani Pallasmaa e Steven (...) Holl, autores que se destacam pela força de seus trabalhos e pela determinação de suas posições teóricas. Particular atenção se prestará à dupla oposição que caracteriza a arquitetura fenomenológica, que se distancia com igual firmeza tanto do modernismo como do pós-modernismo. Estes autores, na reivindicação da primazia do corpo vivido e da experiência perceptiva, consideram ter encontrado um “antídoto” à ossificação produzida pela racionalidade moderna, com seus espaços funcionais e inabitáveis, como também à celebração da autorreferencialidade de um certo pós-modernismo, com seus edifícios destinados essencialmente a serem contemplados pelos apreciadores. A partir dessa dupla oposição, a arquitetura fenomenológica parece procurar um plano mais sólido numa forte acentuação da positividade da experiência corpórea e perceptiva, quando Merleau-Ponty parece empenhado, pelo contrário, em uma progressiva revisão destes aspetos. (shrink)

Resumen: Siguiendo la inspiración de Merleau-Ponty, B. Waldenfels se ocupa de la corporalidad y pone énfasis en su dimensión responsiva, es decir, en modos de comportamiento y experiencia corporales que responden a interpelaciones de lo extraño. Desde esta perspectiva, este trabajo aspira a elucidar el entrelazamiento cuerpo-Naturaleza con la intención de mostrar que la Naturaleza entendida como otro aspecto del hombre implica una alteridad que no se reduce ni a la lógica de la intencionalidad ni a la lógica de la (...) comunicación. La interpelación que proviene de la Naturaleza tiene, por una parte, el significado de una apelación, comprendida como alocución a alguien, y, por otra, el de una pretensión, en el sentido de una interpelación a algo. Con base en estos presupuestos, la segunda parte de la exposición apunta a ilustrar la manera como a través de la pintura se pone en marcha un actuar responsivo, que se orienta por los caracteres singularidad, ineludibilidad, posterioridad, asimetría e innovación que caracterizan a la lógica de la respuesta.: Following Merleau-Ponty´s inspiration, B. Waldenfels deals with embodiment emphasizing its responsive dimension, i.e., modes of bodily behavior and experience that respond to interpellations of the strange. From this view, the article aims to explaining the intertwining of body and nature with the intention of showing that nature, understood as another side of human being, implies an alterity that cannot be reduced to the logic of intentionality nor to the logic of communication. The interpellation that arises from Nature has, on the one hand, the meaning of appeal in the sense of an address to somebody, and, on the other, of pretention as an interpellation to something. Based on these presuppositions, the second part of the article tries to show how, by means of painting, a responsive action is set in motion. The features of singularity, unavoidableness, subsequence, asymmetry, and innovation that characterize the logic of the answer guiding this action. (shrink)

Resumen Mi intención es sugerir y abrir un diálogo entre Platón y Adorno, para lo cual he elegido el concepto de mímesis, un concepto que juega un papel central en ambos pensadores tanto gnoseológicamente como estéticamente. Mientras que el término le sirve a Platón para expulsar a los poetas de Kallipolis, más exactamente ciertos tipos de poesía como la tragedia y la comedia, Adorno lo usa para mostrar el lazo entre el arte y la belleza natural, la dimensión somática del (...) conocimiento, y la importancia subversiva de los poetas y los artistas. Para Platón los poetas están tres veces alejados de la verdad y para Adorno, por el contrario, la obra de arte es un vehículo de la verdad. Este diálogo quiere mostrar no sólo la presencia de lo antiguo en lo moderno, sino la valiosa actualidad y la fructífera transformación que puede padecer un concepto antiguo.My purpose is to suggest and open a dialogue between Plato and Adorno, and for this I have chosen the concept of mimesis, a concept that plays a central role in both thinkers both epistemologically and aesthetically. While Plato uses the term in order to expel the poets from Kallipolis, to be more precise certain kinds of poetry such as tragedy and comedy, Adorno uses the term to show the relationship between art and natural beauty, the somatic dimension of knowledge, and the importance subversive poets and artists. For Plato, poets are three times removed from the truth and for Adorno, by contrast, the work of art is a vehicle of truth. This dialogue between an ancient and a modern intends to show not only the presence of the old in the new, but the valuable present and the fruitful transformation that an old concept can have. (shrink)

This essay aims at an elucidation of the performative relation connecting artistic mimesis with the living body. Encompassing art theory and phenomenology of the body, the scope is to evince a crucial link between aesthetic interpretation, body motion, and mimetic creativity, with general implications for reflection on the body, as well as a deeper understanding of a major element of ancient Chinese culture. By mainly analyzing Chinese texts on ink brush writing, as well as some testimony taken from 20th century (...) European philosophy, this essay, from a transcultural stance, tries to show how ink brush writing may be interpreted as a type of regulated body movement and body exercise. What appears as responsiveness within this phenomenal field is a specific form of mimesis, namely body mimesis. As a sort of imitative action, body mimesis runs through the bodily self, beyond consciousness, transforming it and shaping its behavior. (shrink)

A gestão da Covid no Brasil está entre as piores do mundo, com número de óbitos inaceitavelmente alto. É inclusive estranho que esses resultados não tenham sido capazes de disparar entre os brasileiros nenhuma mobilização social mais decisiva. Não obstante o reconhecimento da importância do debate mais estritamente político, o objetivo deste artigo é ensaiar uma reflexão fenomenológica sobre a respiração, tendo Heidegger como referência principal. A Covid é afinal uma doença respiratória, que nos convida – ou deveria convidar – (...) a pensar sobre a respiração sob perspectivas históricas, ontológicas e existenciais. São dois os temas a discutir: nossa empobrecida relação com o respirar, e a dificuldade de, mesmo diante de mais de 600 mil mortes direta ou indiretamente causadas no Brasil por asfixia – e mais de 5 milhões no mundo –, encontrarmos caminho para discutir o assunto com mais profundidade. (shrink)