Embodied Perception and Harmonious Unity: Aesthetic Experience in Merleau-Ponty’s Theory of Painting and Chinese Song Dynasty Landscapes

Abstract

This paper explores embodied perception and its relation to aesthetic experience based on French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of painting. The discussion draws cases from both Western art, post-impressionist Paul Cezanne (1839–1906) and non-Western art, Chinese landscape paintings from the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127). As I argue, their general vision for the primacy of embodiment in perception is similar; artists in both practices aim at a balance between representing visible forms of nature and interpreting their invisible, yet deeper meanings for human existence. Further, I will argue, a focus on Chinese aesthetic thought helps us recognize the aesthetics of moral existence and hence contributes significantly to self-cultivation. Influenced by Chinese philosophical traditions, Chinese landscape paintings, compared with Cezanne’s works, exemplify more strongly the indispensable role of the human body and indicate more explicitly a link between embodiment and moral ethics. The latter suggestion of the moral underpinnings in aesthetic perception and experience is particularly significant since Merleau-Ponty has not elaborated upon this point in any explicit manner.