Plasticity and Aesthetic Identity; or, Why We Need a Spinozist Aesthetics

Tom Sparrow

doi:10.7146/nja.v22i40-41.5199

Abstract

This essay defends the view that, as embodied, our identities are necessarily dependent on the aesthetic environment. Toward this end, it examines the renewal of the concept of sensation (aisthesis) in phenomenology, but then concludes that the methodology and metaphysics of phenomenology must be abandoned in favor of an ontology that sees corporeal identity as generated by the materiality of aesthetic relations. It is suggested that such an ontology is available in the work of Spinoza, which helps break down the natural/ artificial and human/nonhuman distinctions, and can thereby engender an environmental ethics grounded in aesthetic relations. An explication of body/ world dependence is provided via the concept of plasticity and a properly Spinozist aesthetics is invoked, but remains to be worked out.

Highlights

Sensation and Identity Among those interested in the history of phenomenology, and the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in particular, it is common knowledge that the phenomenology of the body articulated in Phenomenology of Perception owes an incredible debt to Edmund Husserl’s second volume of Ideas.[1]
I want to indicate a few of the positive ways that Levinas and Merleau-Ponty help us understand the aesthetic life of the body
“Those Ideas which are rais’d in the Mind upon the presence of external Objects, and their acting upon our Bodys, are call’d Sensations [...] We find that the Mind in such Cases is passive, and has not Power directly to prevent the Perception or Idea, or to vary it at its Reception, as long as we continue our Bodys in a state fit to be acted upon by the external Object.”[14]. Despite the fact that he refers to them as “ideas”, Hutcheson ascribes the delivery of sensations to external objects

Summary

Introduction

Sensation and Identity Among those interested in the history of phenomenology, and the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in particular, it is common knowledge that the phenomenology of the body articulated in Phenomenology of Perception owes an incredible debt to Edmund Husserl’s second volume of Ideas.[1].

Results

Conclusion