Presented to you through Paradigm Publishing Services

Princeton University Press

Visit our Partner Page See all our books
book: The Entanglement
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

The Entanglement

How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are
  • and
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2023

About this book

Why human nature is an aesthetic phenomenon—and why we need art and philosophy to understand ourselves

In The Entanglement, philosopher Alva Noë explores the inseparability of life, art, and philosophy, arguing that we have greatly underestimated what this entangled reality means for understanding human nature.

Life supplies art with its raw materials, but art, Noë argues, remakes life by giving us resources to live differently. Our lives are permeated with the aesthetic. Indeed, human nature is an aesthetic phenomenon, and art—our most direct and authentic way of engaging the aesthetic—is the truest way of understanding ourselves. All this suggests that human nature is not a natural phenomenon. Neither biology, cognitive science, nor AI can tell a complete story of us, and we can no more pin ourselves down than we can fix or settle on the meaning of an artwork. Even more, art and philosophy are the means to set ourselves free, at least to some degree, from convention, habit, technology, culture, and even biology. In making these provocative claims, Noë explores examples of entanglement—in artworks and seeing, writing and speech, and choreography and dancing—and examines a range of scientific efforts to explain the human.

Challenging the notions that art is a mere cultural curiosity and that philosophy has been outmoded by science, The Entanglement offers a new way of thinking about human nature, the limits of natural science in understanding the human, and the essential role of art and philosophy in trying to know ourselves.

Author / Editor information

Alva Noë is professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is a member of the Center for New Media, the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, and the Program in Critical Theory. His many books include Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature and Learning to Look: Dispatches from the Art World.

Reviews

"[An] interesting interdisciplinary book exploring the inseparability of life, art and philosophy in the context of an entangled reality… is an original and liberating phenomenological perspective in relation to existential self-making and world-making."---David Lorimer, The Paradigm Explorer --- "Alva Noë’s fascinating and expansive new book gives an account of what art does, what it and philosophy of philosophy have in common, and how these activities should be situated in our best account of the world."---Owen Andrew Wynn, Times Literary Supplement --- "For a half-decade, I’ve been puzzling through art’s functionless function with Alva Noë. . . . [The Entanglement] digs into the difference between the pictures and objects humans use every day, to shop on Amazon.com or to call on their gods, and the pictures and objects we use as works of art."---Blake Gopnik, New York Times --- "Art is at the heart of philosophy and the fusion of the two with a range of subjects can help us better understand what makes us human. . . . Alva Noë has introduced his thesis that is bound to generate enough debate on the antidote supplied by art and philosophy that 'makes us what we are,' a state where the people, surrounded by music, art, sculpture, poetry become creative enough to break out of the codified social organisation into a more liberated and an inspirationally fulfilling life infused with the aesthetic."---Shelley Walia, The Hindu --- "What Noë shows is how that essential act of ‘making’ art is more than just an act of pleasure. What it really encompasses is a radical act of inquiry into our entanglement."---Adam Frank, Big Think --- "Longlisted for the Nayef Al-Rodhan Book Prize, Royal Institute of Philosophy" --- "Winner of the Outstanding Monograph Prize, American Society for Aesthetics"

Topics

  • Publicly Available

    Frontmatter

    i
    Download PDF
  • Publicly Available

    Contents

    ix
    Download PDF
  • Publicly Available

    Preface

    xi
    Download PDF
  • Part I
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    1 Art in Mind

    3
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    2 Domestic Entanglements

    17
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    3 Dance Incorporate

    25
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    4 Styles of Seeing

    39
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    5 The Writerly Attitude

    72
    Download PDF
  • Part II
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    6 The Aesthetic Predicament

    97
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    7 Fragile Bodies

    117
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    8 Existential Style

    141
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    9 Toward an Aesthetics for the Entanglement

    161
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    10 Reorienting Ourselves

    186
    Download PDF
  • Part III
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    11 The Seepage Problem

    199
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    12 Nature after Art

    218
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Acknowledgments

    225
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Notes

    229
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Bibliography

    251
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Index

    263
    Download PDF

Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
June 30, 2023
eBook ISBN:
9780691239293
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
View content
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691239293
eBook ISBN: 9780691239293
Keywords for this book
Art; Aesthetic; Style; Language; Human; Philosophy; Dance; Entanglement; Nature; Speech; Habit; Consciousness; Visual; Artwork; Philosophical; Conception; Culture; Sex; Wittgenstein; Attitude; Relation; Phenomenon; Artists; Mere; Technology; Cultural; Focus; Mean; Activities; Appreciate; Perception; Structure; Pictorial; Gender; Aims; Organization; Encounter; Domain; Engagement; Standpoint; Bodies; Reflection; Linguistic; Perceptual; Character; History; Husserl; Law; Criticism; Space; Choreography; Knowledge; Access; Frege; Task; Perspicuous; Habitual; Rules; Cognitive; Skillful; Manner; Music; Merleau; Skills; Design; Ponty; Biological; Graphical; Existence; Biology
Audience(s) for this book
For a non-specialist adult audience
Downloaded on 15.4.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780691239293/html
Scroll to top button