Telvin Harrell: Artistic Perception

The reading stated that we can view scenes in art that would otherwise disgust us in real life.

Art has a way of deminishing the effects of reality. An example of this dulling effect is when someone sees murder scene, other then people who are use to the image, they are taken by shock, emotions of sadness, and fear. But when observed in a movie p.eople are calm when they see the image; content with the graphic content.

I have witness some people who play games so much that when they see a crisis on the news, instead of being concerned with the issues of the current cirsumstance, they are recalling a game they played, and even go as far as saying these crises are cool; ignorant to fact that the report is live and in real time.

While people enjoy art and all of uniqueness some experience a negative side effect.

Telvin Harrell: Art as Redemption

Friedrich Nietzsche view art as an escape of the world. Art he sees as soemthing to makr life, which is terrible, bearable.

Others would agree that yes life can be terrible and is all to often filled with things that are not right and crimes that go unpunished. But some people would disagree that the escape of such a thing is art. Earlier today I was visited by two Jehovah's witnesses in front of my house. The watch tower magazine that I was given asked the question what is the key to a meaningful life; the answer is Jehovah.

Athough nietzsche would disagree wtih the fact that religion could be the key to a meaningful life and the escape of the horrors of reality, being that he is an atheist; is he replacing the religious aspect of his life with Art?

Vincent - Hegel's Aesthetics

I liked Hegel when we first got to know him because of his theory that there is much more going on, and it begins with the sensuous. Eventually that sensuous speaks to our soul because of this endorphin-driven sort of ecstasy where we lose ourselves. I was going to do my original project on hegel and how music is a purely sensual experience that beckons the soul to something greater, but I found it difficult for me to work with just sounds and nothing mental like words or images. I think this sort of sentiment on music and the soul has been held widely for a very long time, so Hegel’s theory could hold true for many people throughout many generations.

Vincent- Heidegger's On the Way to Language

While looking up theories for my final paper I was suggested to look at Heidegger’s book On the Way to Language. It sounded quite complicated to me when I first heard it and indeed it was when I first read it. And the second, third fourth, so on and so forth. I had a lot of problems working through it before I decided it wasn’t for me.  He seemed to  be constructing a theory of language as the very nature of being because of his famous phrase “Language is the house of Being.”  But how can Language be the house of Being? This sort of reading left me with more questions than answers, but perhaps that is for the best.

 

Vincent- Ingenium and Grassi

I really like the lecture we had on Ernesto Grassi and his notion of ingenium, so I read outside of class a little more. His book “The Rhetoric of Philosophy” meshed well with the way I approach things because he Rhetoric is often separated from Philosophy. As a communications major, I felt somewhat obliged to agree with him on this sentiment. He referenced an Italian humanist philosopher named Vico and brought up the idea of ingenium. Ingenium, as I understood it, portrayed the concept that shows how humans learn about and create nature through discovering or seeing something. It is more of a revelation of truth which I found interesting, and perhaps sheds light on the creative process of some poets and artists. 

Vincent- Heidegger

Heidegger sees art as holistically as possible. He believes it is not just the object, but the representation of that object, creator of the object, co creators and everything there. The way I interpret it, in viewing art in this way, it encompasses the spectator much more and shows, in my opinion, a more modern view of art. In the Digital age, sharing is a major part of creation, and therefore to view art as a communal function and process would be accommodating to the nature of sharing in today’s society. I think this theory on art is a useful way for people to see objects of art in a manner they would not typically, that means including all the context, all the creators, and all of the message that comes with it.

Vincent - Nietzsche

Nietzcshe saw art and the quality of an object of art to be subject to the perspective of who ever is in observation.  This conception of art offers a much wider variety of possibilities than some of the others we have seen. In a Nietzcshian understanding, art can be found more commonly because man is then creator and appreciator of art.  I like this sort of thinking because it is more empowering to the population, and most likely encourages more of a widespread expression of art. We are all artists.  This is an idea that I think should be spread more widely and perhaps

Vincent - Heidegeer holistic view at a concert

Heidegger looked at Art holistically and then continued with the audience. I am gonna throw this out there and if you don’t like it you can send it right on back. I thin k Heidegger would hae thoroughly enjoyed going to a live performance, possibly Beyonce (pronouncd BAY-auns) but more likely I think a more traditional one such as Bruce Springsteen. These are performers who are creating in the moment an art, and engage the audience as they are doing so. The whole experience is beautiful and I don’t think there are many people who leave Bruce Springsteen concerts upset about it.  It’s unique especially in the sense that an artist and audience are doing something new every single time and it can be a different experience regardless of how often you have been to that concert or seen that artist.

Vincent - Poetry

I’m choosing poetry as one of my reflection blogs because of the role it has played throughout my life. For much of my life I didn’t pay much attention to it. Poetry always seemed boring, and frivolous to me. Too much work for no real reason. I suppose the reason was for some sort of “moral understanding” or some kind of “Inner revelation,” but these things didn’t interest adolescent Me. But now as I reflect on it in the context of this class, I really enjoy the potential poetry has on our lives, and how important it really is. It reveals the commonalities of man and truths unseen to most. Studying poetry and different poets also teaches about different modes of thinking and unique ideas, somethings that are often missing in our popular culture.

Vincent - Artistry in Sport

We argue very often that dance is a form of art, and there is no doubt about that. And for that reason  I think there is also artistry to be found in sports. Perhaps that’s because I like Nietzcshe  or I’m just a guy who likes sports. But applying some thought of beauty and how it can be subject to Man’s perspective- there is artistry in it. The highly calculated movement with minimal communication as they compete for one objective is wholly unique every time its created. Creativity in sports is artistry. A creative player sees what is not seen by most and acknowledges the wide scope of possibility in order to outwit the opposition. When several players are creative on one pitch, court, rink, or field, there is synergistic beauty in that. 

Vincent - Hegel and Poe

                I ended up changing the topic of my research paper because I grew restless with it. I realized that I needed some kind of more literal communicative property and I could find that in words, so I turned to a poet. The only collection of poems I own in my house is this massive Edgar Allan Poe collected works because I always thought he was cool in this deranged unique way. And He’s from the East Coast. When I was studying him and deciding what theory it would be interesting to apply to him I was surprised to find much of his writings about the actual creative process and his philosophies on it.  Most importantly, Poe wrote exclusively for his audience and proclaimed very often that his aim was to make something beautiful in its ornate detail and artistry. 

Taylor Macina - Class Discussion 5

Class Discussion: Co-Creators

In class we discussed how the artist is the creator who makes the artifact which in turn becomes the co-creator. The audience then views the artifact and act as spectators and co-creators. How are they co-creators? For example, a comedian changes sets based on audience reaction. Performers tap into the audience to influence both pieces and themselves. The way a spectator views something can give it added meaning through interpretation. The artifact itself can take on a life of its own by becoming a co-creator. It has an effect on both artist and audience. The symbolic action or art creates the second world which supersedes the primary world. 

Taylor Macina - Class Discussion 4

Class Discussion:  I-You and I-It

In class today we discussed the difference between I-You being the basic word as a world of encounter with you not being an object . I-it was the basic word as the objective world and as a world of experience. We also discussed the idea of the “other” being both object and being. In I-You, “I” represents the human and “You” represents the other; in I-It, “I” represents the human whereas “It” represents the extra-human or not human element. An artist creates an artifact that is then viewed by an audience. How does an artifact take on a life of its own? For example in the movie “Lincoln”, what did the director/author intend? Other actors bring something different to the movie. The intentions and points that both director and actor are trying to get across may not be what the audience grasps. 

Taylor Macina - Class Discussion 3

Class Discussion: Ritual to Art

In class today we watch a clip of Englishmen watching natives dancing. The Englishmen simply stared at the native women who were dancing while completely immersed in the ritual of the dance. After watching the clip we discussed the difference of watching an art form versus performing the art form. What happens when the Natives perform a dance for tourists? Does it change the meaning of the performance? Does paying natives to perform something, such as hula, mean that the ritual loses meaning? If tourists are watching a spectacle does that still mean it is art? 

Taylor Macina - Class Discussion 2

Class Discussion: Phenomenology

Phenomenology is the study of the structures of consciousness as experienced by someone in the first person view. In class we discussed examples of phenomenology. One example we discussed is the difference between explaining how a car works versus what it means to you. For example to mechanics cars are their life. Cars can also be an identity for a person or a sentimental gift. We discussed how we look to returning to things such as concrete experiences rather than abstract ideas. We long to have intentionality so that we are able to have consciousness of something. 

Taylor Macina - Class Discussion 1

Class Discussion: Symbolic Action

In class we discussed regular versus symbolic action. Symbolic action means that the action itself stands for or means something. An example to help define this is washing hands to clean versus Pilot in the Bible washing his hands to be done of persecuting Jesus. Symbolic action leads to abstraction as well. For example ritual dance is often symbolic of the hunt. As soon as you forget the symbolic action it is just a dance. For example hula dancing is just a dance to most people but it is symbolic action for Hawaiians. 

Taylor Macina - Outside Source 5

Outside Source: Leonardo da Vinci

Here is a quote that spoke to me:

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”

― Leonardo da Vinci

I find this quote to mean that an artist has a story in their mind which elicits the painting to be created. By viewing the painting, one can imagine the story being told. It is similar to the famous phrase “a painting is worth a thousand words”. Poetry, on the other hand, is words that paint a picture in your mind. It allows the viewer to be creative and engage the use of their imagination. 

Taylor Macina - Outside Source 4

Outside Source: Thomas Merton

I found this quote I really enjoyed:

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”

-          Thomas Merton

This quote really spoke to me because this is how I feel when I dance. Dance is a way for me to express myself because it takes over my body. The music and the movement captivate me and I am unable to concentrate, focus, or think about anything else that may possibly be going on in my life until the routine is over or the song ceases to play. Van de Leeuw says that, “dance is the expression of all emotions of the spirit, from the lowest to the highest” (Leeuw 12). Dance is a part of me and I would use it to help define who I am. My love of dance comes from somewhere deep within me. 

Taylor Macina - Outside Source 3

Outside Source: Oscar Wilde

I found another quote that I really enjoyed:

” No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”

-          Oscar Wilde

I found this to be really interesting because it follows the belief that art is simply a copy of a copy. When artists create objects of art they are unable to do so in a realistic sense because they incorporate their own emotions and feelings into the art piece. Therefore they do not actually present art in the way that it is in its purest form. This quote makes sense to me completely. When I think of an artist I think of someone who is incredibly creative and imaginative. If it was possible for artists to draw something just as it is then that would eliminate their creativity and imagination. Imagination would cease to exist and therefore so would the artist. 

Taylor Macina - Outside Source 2

Outside Source: Hula

Art can be described as many different things. It can be more than an understanding but a part of your body. This particular art, the art of dance, speaks to me. Society as a whole often allows their body to be taken over by the sound of music and by continuing to listen to music their body continues to move to the rhythm and the beat. Certain music can provoke certain memories which elicit particular feelings which influence the way in which a person dances. Hula dancing is a prime example. The art of Hula dance has morphed into more of a source of entertainment for tourists, however it was not always that way. Hula dancing is a type of poetic text called Mele. All the movement, expressive hand and arm gestures are interpreted and performed to rhythmic twisting and swirling on the basis of this text. Each move has a specific meaning and is performed at a specific time of day or time of year. Tourism however changes the uniqueness of the dance. It allows and expects the Hula dancers to in turn become performers rather than honor the memory of their ancestors. Tourism changes the ritual art of a dance to modern art which is then viewed as a spectacle. 

Taylor Macina - Outside Source 1

Outside Source: Aristotle

I stumbled upon this quote the other day that I thought was interesting and I would like to share:

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance”

 - Aristotle 

I found this quote to be interesting because it follows his philosophy that art is a representation of something. This representation allows us to experience pleasure. I find this similar to a tattoo. Yes of course tattoos are artistic in their design. There are so many complex and intricate tattoos that they are often really cool to look at. However, most people decide to get a tattoo in order for it to represent something that is significant to them. A lot of the time the meaning has nothing to do with the physical appearance of the tattoo. My best friend was diagnosed with an eating disorder and had to be admitted to a treatment facility. After successfully graduating the treatment facility, she tattooed a symbol of a heart with a line extending on the side. The heart itself is a really amazing design however the reason she got it was not because the design was intriguing but rather because it was a symbol to her to remind her of the hell she went through during treatment and the success she acquired by completing her treatment program. 

Taylor Macina - Reading 5

Book: Art as Revelation: Arthur Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer believes that art reveals the nature of reality and by doing so gives access to metaphysical truths about existence. He says that world revealed to us every day is purely representation governed by individuation being that each person or object is purely distinct from each other. Unlike Kant’s claim that reality is unable to be known by humans, Schopenhauer believes that we are able to access reality through our own wills. This idea emphasizes that reality consists of nothing but persistence in striving for something and that the actual world around us is a mere illusion. He believes that at the center of art is genius. This genius is necessary for both artistic creation and appreciation. He believes that, “the art object cannot represent things in their usual mode of existence”. All art presents ideas rather than things, with the exception of music. 

Taylor Macina - Reading 4

Book: Art as Communicable Pleasure: Immanuel Kant

Kant believes that all acts of mental cognition are essentially judgments. That saying something like “the sunset is beautiful” does nothing to enhance your understanding of it but simply just explains your feelings and interpretation of something. By making statements like this it shows our perception of how the object or situation is affecting us. Kant questions how this judgment about our feelings can have objective validity. He further explains this by arguing that saying “the sunset is beautiful” is “saying more than it appeals to me, claiming also in effect that the sunset’s beauty is there for all to see” (Wartenberg 47). Unlike Hume’s belief that certain qualities elicit pleasure in all humans, Kant argues that this does not justify the belief in objects have normative force. He says that by saying the sunset is beautiful we not only expect people to agree with us but rather believe that they should. 

Taylor Macina - Reading 3

Book: Art as Object of Taste: David Hume

Hume grounds his argument in two ways. One way he says that people believe it is possible to make critical judgments of the quality of a work of art. On the other hand, he also says that his idea of antimony is what grounds these judgments. Wartenberg used an example of the Mona Lisa itself compared to an illustration by Rockwell. The general agreement is that da Vinci’s original is significantly better. Hume then reasons that a critical judgment of something is nothing more than an idiosyncratic reaction to a work. This contradicts his first conclusion that there needs to be a standard in order to judge a work. He explains this contradiction of his conclusions can happen because certain elements of art are pleasurable to everyone. 

Taylor Macina - Reading 2

Book: Art as Cognition: Aristotle

Aristotle was taught by Plato and therefore grasped onto some of his theories. Such as the conception of art as imitation; however, Aristotle also introduced a new term entitled representation. He describes poetry to be a literary representation. He sees all art such as music, dance, literature, painting and sculpture as being representations. He believes that poetry represents not the actual world but things that could be in the world. By representing something we find pleasure in the art. He believes that we find pleasure because the art is not reality and we are therefore not disgusted. For example, Wartenberg uses Oedipus and his eyes being gouged out. If that had been reality, we would find disgust rather than pleasure watching the spectacle. We learn from Oedipus and therefore can take in pleasure. He emphasizes arts ability to teach. 

Taylor Macina - Reading 1

Book: Art as Imitation: Plato

Plato’s theory of art states that art is an imitation of an imitation. However, it also depends on his theory of forms. His philosopher-hero Socrates believed that, “artistic creations – paintings and poems – stand triply removed from the real; that is, there are two realms of existence more real than art objects, the Forms themselves, and the things of daily life” (Wartenberg 13). He believed that the goal of art was to imitate something. Artists are less attuned to reality than craftsmen. Craftsmen are copying the form whereas artists are copying the copy. By arguing that art is simply the copy of a form it distracts the viewer from the reality. When an artist paints the picture of a landscape they are not only copying the landscape but incorporating their own feelings so the painting cannot be seen as a reality. 

Brian Koonce: Playing Sports as an Art

Nietzsche's category of art that he calls Apolline most certainly applies to the skill with which it takes to play sports.  Apolline art is characterized by a higher sense of truth or consciousness, and although usually pertaining to static forms of art, I believe it can apply to performing athletic feats as well.  In practices and games, a player must clear their head of all else but the ins and outs of the game; what they need to do, what their teammates will be doing, what the other team will be doing; an example of the higher consciousness about which Nietzsche writes is the ability of an athlete to know all these things while at the same time controlling their body while it performs athletic feats about which most people can only dream.

Zakiya Cummings- Beauty of Our Friendship Poem

Beauty of Our Friendship

---

Friendship is a Priceless Gift
that cannot be bought or sold,
But its value is far greater
than a mountain made of Gold.

For gold is cold and lifeless,
it can neither see nor hear
And in the time of trouble
it is powerless to cheer--

it has no ears to listen
Nor heart to understand,
It cannot bring you comfort
or reach out a helping hand

So when you ask God for a gift
be thankful if HE sends
not diamonds, pearls or riches
But The Love of Real True Friends.
- Helen Steiner Rice -

Zakiya Cummings-THE SENSE OF BEAUTY BEING THE OUTLINES OF AESTHETIC THEORY by GEORGE SANTAYANA

 This is the introduction of a book that I read.. it talks about some things that we've talked about in class



INTRODUCTION
The sense of beauty has a more important place in life than aesthetic theory has ever taken in philosophy. The plastic arts, with poetry and music, are the most conspicuous monuments of this human interest, because they appeal only to contemplation, and yet have attracted to their service, in all civilized ages, an amount of effort, genius, and honour, little inferior to that given to industry, war, or religion. The fine arts, however, where aesthetic feeling appears almost pure, are by no means the only sphere in which men show their susceptibility to beauty. In all products of human industry we notice the keenness with which the eye is attracted to the mere appearance of things: great sacrifices of time and labour are made to it in the most vulgar manufactures; nor does man select his dwelling, his clothes, or his companions without reference to their effect on his aesthetic senses. Of late we have even learned that the forms of many animals are due to the survival by sexual selection of the colours and forms most attractive to the eye. There must therefore be in our nature a very radical and wide-spread tendency to observe beauty, and to value it. No account of the principles of the mind can be at all adequate that passes over so conspicuous a faculty.
That aesthetic theory has received so little attention from the world is not due to the unimportance of the subject of which it treats, but rather to lack of an adequate motive for speculating upon it, and to the small success of the occasional efforts to deal with it. Absolute curiosity, and love of comprehension for its own sake, are not passions we have much leisure to indulge: they require not only freedom from affairs but, what is more rare, freedom from prepossessions and from the hatred of all ideas that do not make for the habitual goal of our thought.
Now, what has chiefly maintained such speculation as the world has seen has been either theological passion or practical use. All we find, for example, written about beauty may be divided into two groups: that group of writings in which philosophers have interpreted aesthetic facts in the light of their metaphysical principles, and made of their theory of taste a corollary or footnote to their systems; and that group in which artists and critics have ventured into philosophic ground, by generalizing somewhat the maxims of the craft or the comments of the sensitive observer. A treatment of the subject at once direct and theoretic has been very rare: the problems of nature and morals have attracted the reasoners, and the description and creation of beauty have absorbed the artists; between the two reflection upon aesthetic experience has remained abortive or incoherent.
A circumstance that has also contributed to the absence or to the failure of aesthetic speculation is the subjectivity of the phenomenon with which it deals. Man has a prejudice against himself: anything which is a product of his mind seems to him to be unreal or comparatively insignificant. We are satisfied only when we fancy ourselves surrounded by objects and laws independent of our nature. The ancients long speculated about the constitution of the universe before they became aware of that mind which is the instrument of all speculation. The moderns, also, even within the field of psychology, have studied first the function of perception and the theory of knowledge, by which we seem to be informed about external things; they have in comparison neglected the exclusively subjective and human department of imagination and emotion. We have still to recognize in practice the truth that from these despised feelings of ours the great world of perception derives all its value, if not also its existence. Things are interesting because we care about them, and important because we need them. Had our perceptions no connexion with our pleasures, we should soon close our eyes on this world; if our intelligence were of no service to our passions, we should come to doubt, in the lazy freedom of reverie, whether two and two make four.
Yet so strong is the popular sense of the unworthiness and insignificance of things purely emotional, that those who have taken moral problems to heart and felt their dignity have often been led into attempts to discover some external right and beauty of which, our moral and aesthetic feelings should be perceptions or discoveries, just as our intellectual activity is, in men's opinion, a perception or discovery of external fact. These philosophers seem to feel that unless moral and aesthetic judgments are expressions of objective truth, and not merely expressions of human nature, they stand condemned of hopeless triviality. A judgment is not trivial, however, because it rests on human feelings; on the contrary, triviality consists in abstraction from human interests; only those judgments and opinions are truly insignificant which wander beyond the reach of verification, and have no function in the ordering and enriching of life.
Both ethics and aesthetics have suffered much from the prejudice against the subjective. They have not suffered more because both have a subject-matter which is partly objective. Ethics deals with conduct as much as with emotion, and therefore considers the causes of events and their consequences as well as our judgments of their value. Esthetics also is apt to include the history and philosophy of art, and to add much descriptive and critical matter to the theory of our susceptibility to beauty. A certain confusion is thereby introduced into these inquiries, but at the same time the discussion is enlivened by excursions into neighbouring provinces, perhaps more interesting to the general reader.
We may, however, distinguish three distinct elements of ethics and aesthetics, and three different ways of approaching the subject. The first is the exercise of the moral or aesthetic faculty itself, the actual pronouncing of judgment and giving of praise, blame, and precept. This is not a matter of science but of character, enthusiasm, niceness of perception, and fineness of emotion. It is aesthetic or moral activity, while ethics and aesthetics, as sciences, are intellectual activities, having that aesthetic or moral activity for their subject-matter.
The second method consists in the historical explanation of conduct or of art as a part of anthropology, and seeks to discover the conditions of various types of character, forms of polity, conceptions of justice, and schools of criticism and of art. Of this nature is a great deal of what has been written on aesthetics. The philosophy of art has often proved a more tempting subject than the psychology of taste, especially to minds which were not so much fascinated by beauty itself as by the curious problem of the artistic instinct in man and of the diversity of its manifestations in history.
The third method in ethics and aesthetics is psychological, as the other two are respectively didactic and historical. It deals with moral and aesthetic judgments as phenomena of mind and products of mental evolution. The problem here is to understand the origin and conditions of these feelings and their relation to the rest of our economy. Such an inquiry, if pursued successfully, would yield an understanding of the reason why we think anything right or beautiful, wrong or ugly, it would thus reveal the roots of conscience and taste in human nature and enable us to distinguish transitory preferences and ideals, which rest on peculiar conditions, from those which, springing from those elements of mind which all men share, are comparatively permanent and universal.
To this inquiry, as far as it concerns aesthetics, the following pages are devoted. No attempt will be made either to impose particular appreciations or to trace the history of art and criticism. The discussion will be limited to the nature and elements of our aesthetic judgments. It is a theoretical inquiry and has no directly hortatory quality. Yet insight into the basis of our preferences, if it could be gained, would not fail to have a good and purifying influence upon them. It would show us the futility of a dogmatism that would impose upon another man judgments and emotions for which the needed soil is lacking in his constitution and experience; and at the same time it would relieve us of any undue diffidence or excessive tolerance towards aberrations of taste, when we know what are the broader grounds of preference and the habits that make for greater and more diversified aesthetic enjoyment.
Therefore, although nothing has commonly been less attractive than treatises on beauty or less a guide to taste than disquisitions upon it, we may yet hope for some not merely theoretical gain from these studies. They have remained so often without practical influence because they have been pursued under unfavourable conditions. The writers have generally been audacious metaphysicians and somewhat incompetent critics; they have represented general and obscure principles, suggested by other parts of their philosophy, as the conditions of artistic excellence and the essence of beauty. But if the inquiry is kept close to the facts of feeling, we may hope that the resulting theory may have a clarifying effect on the experience on which it is based. That is, after all, the use of theory. If when a theory is bad it narrows our capacity for observation and makes all appreciation vicarious and formal, when it is good it reacts favourably upon our powers, guides the attention to what is really capable of affording entertainment, and increases, by force of new analogies, the range of our interests. Speculation is an evil if it imposes a foreign organization on our mental life; it is a good if it only brings to light, and makes more perfect by training, the organization already inherent in it.
We shall therefore study human sensibility itself and our actual feelings about beauty, and we shall look for no deeper, unconscious causes of our aesthetic consciousness. Such value as belongs to metaphysical derivations of the nature of the beautiful, comes to them not because they explain our primary feelings, which they cannot do, but because they express, and in fact constitute, some of our later appreciations. There is no explanation, for instance, in calling beauty an adumbration of divine attributes. Such a relation, if it were actual, would not help us at all to understand why the symbols of divinity pleased. But in certain moments of contemplation, when much emotional experience lies behind us, and we have reached very general ideas both of nature and of life, our delight in any particular object may consist in nothing but the thought that this object is a manifestation of universal principles. The blue sky may come to please chiefly because it seems the image of a serene conscience, or of the eternal youth and purity of nature after a thousand partial corruptions. But this expressiveness of the sky is due to certain qualities of the sensation, which bind it to all things happy and pure, and, in a mind in which the essence of purity and happiness is embodied in an idea of God, bind it also to that idea.
So it may happen that the most arbitrary and unreal theories, which must be rejected as general explanations of aesthetic life, may be reinstated as particular moments of it. Those intuitions which we call Platonic are seldom scientific, they seldom explain the phenomena or hit upon the actual law of things, but they are often the highest expression of that activity which they fail to make comprehensible. The adoring lover cannot understand the natural history of love; for he is all in all at the last and supreme stage of its development. Hence the world has always been puzzled in its judgment of the Platonists; their theories are so extravagant, yet their wisdom seems so great. Platonism is a very refined and beautiful expression of our natural instincts, it embodies conscience and utters our inmost hopes. Platonic philosophers have therefore a natural authority, as standing on heights to which the vulgar cannot attain, but to which they naturally and half-consciously aspire.
When a man tells you that beauty is the manifestation of God to the senses, you wish you might understand him, you grope for a deep truth in his obscurity, you honour him for his elevation of mind, and your respect may even induce you to assent to what he says as to an intelligible proposition. Your thought may in consequence be dominated ever after by a verbal dogma, around which all your sympathies and antipathies will quickly gather, and the less you have penetrated the original sense of your creed, the more absolutely will you believe it. You will have followed Mephistopheles' advice: —
     Im ganzen haltet euch an Worte,
     So geht euch durch die sichere Pforte
     Zum Tempel der Gewissheit ein.
Yet reflection might have shown you that the word of the master held no objective account of the nature and origin of beauty, but was the vague expression of his highly complex emotions.
It is one of the attributes of God, one of the perfections which we contemplate in our idea of him, that there is no duality or opposition between his will and his vision, between the impulses of his nature and the events of his life. This is what we commonly designate as omnipotence and creation.  Now, in the contemplation of beauty, our faculties of perception have the same perfection: it is indeed from the experience of beauty and happiness, from the occasional harmony between our nature and our environment, that we draw our conception of the divine life. There is, then, a real propriety in calling beauty a manifestation of God to the senses, since, in the region of sense, the perception of beauty exemplifies that adequacy and perfection which in general we objectify in an idea of God.
But the minds that dwell in the atmosphere of these analogies are hardly those that will care to ask what are the conditions and the varieties of this perfection of function, in other words, how it comes about that we perceive beauty at all, or have any inkling of divinity. Only the other philosophers, those that wallow in Epicurus' sty, know anything about the latter question. But it is easier to be impressed than to be instructed, and the public is very ready to believe that where there is noble language not without obscurity there must be profound knowledge. We should distinguish, however, the two distinct demands in the case. One is for comprehension; we look for the theory of a human function which must cover all possible cases of its exercise, whether noble or base. This the Platonists utterly fail to give us. The other demand is for inspiration; we wish to be nourished by the maxims and confessions of an exalted mind, in whom the aesthetic function is pre-eminent. By responding to this demand the same thinkers may win our admiration.
To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be. The poets and philosophers who express this aesthetic experience and stimulate the same function in us by their example, do a greater service to mankind and deserve higher honour than the discoverers of historical truth. Reflection is indeed a part of life, but the last part. Its specific value consists in the satisfaction of curiosity, in the smoothing out and explanation of things: but the greatest pleasure which we actually get from reflection is borrowed from the experience on which we reflect. We do not often indulge in retrospect for the sake of a scientific knowledge of human life, but rather to revive the memories of what once was dear. And I should have little hope of interesting the reader in the present analyses, did I not rely on the attractions of a subject associated with so many of his pleasures.
But the recognition of the superiority of aesthetics in experience to aesthetics in theory ought not to make us accept as an explanation of aesthetic feeling what is in truth only an expression of it. When Plato tells us of the eternal ideas in conformity to which all excellence consists, he is making himself the spokesman of the moral consciousness. Our conscience and taste establish these ideals; to make a judgment is virtually to establish an ideal, and all ideals are absolute and eternal for the judgment that involves them, because in finding and declaring a thing good or beautiful, our sentence is categorical, and the standard evoked by our judgment is for that case intrinsic and ultimate. But at the next moment, when the mind is on another footing, a new ideal is evoked, no less absolute for the present judgment than the old ideal was for the previous one. If we are then expressing our feeling and confessing what happens to us when we judge, we shall be quite right in saying that we have always an absolute ideal before us, and that value lies in conformity with that ideal. So, also, if we try to define that ideal, we shall hardly be able to say of it anything less noble and more definite than that it is the embodiment of an infinite good. For it is that incommunicable and illusive excellence that haunts every beautiful thing, and
          like a star
     Beacons from the abode where the eternal are.
For the expression of this experience we should go to the poets, to the more inspired critics, and best of all to the immortal parables of Plato. But if what we desire is to increase our knowledge rather than to cultivate our sensibility, we should do well to close all those delightful books; for we shall not find any instruction there upon the questions which most press upon us; namely, how an ideal is formed in the mind, how a given object is compared with it, what is the common element in all beautiful things, and what the substance of the absolute ideal in which all ideals tend to be lost; and, finally, how we come to be sensitive to beauty at all, or to value it. These questions must be capable of answers, if any science of human nature is really possible. — So far, then, are we from ignoring the insight of the Platonists, that we hope to explain it, and in a sense to justify it, by showing that it is the natural and sometimes the supreme expression of the common principles of our nature.

Zakiya Cummings-Yoga

 I love to watch people do yoga...in a non creepy way...it looks so relaxing and beautiful

 

The Beauty of Yoga

by Amanda on September 5, 2012

Camel Yoga Pose, CC uplaod by Odysseyfx

The world is endlessly fascinated with yoga. Over thousands of years, countless scholars and spiritual seekers have attempted to define yoga. While these definitions differ widely in some ways, they all share one thing in common: the belief that yoga is always more than an exercise, a series of stretches, a 90-minute class, a sequence of poses, a philosophy, a lifestyle, or a religion.  The beauty of yoga is that it can be all, none, or some of these things for each practitioner.

The beauty of yoga is that it is 100% inclusive of anybody who steps forward with a willing and open heart. No expensive equipment, no minimum physical fitness, no restrictions on geography, no previous experience necessary. The only requirement in yoga is to simply show up. Wherever you are with your physical body, no matter how tattered you feel inside, just come to the mat and simply practice.

Yoga will meet you wherever you are.

The beauty of yoga is that it encourages you to turn inward as you listen to your own body, finding that perfect sweet spot in a challenging pose. It gently reminds you to set your intention as you embark upon your journey, and to continually return to mindfulness. Yoga beckons you to explore its enduring philosophy and apply this timeless wisdom to the modern world.

Yoga, as outlined by the ancient sutras, has little to do with poses and everything to do with self-awareness, self-improvement, and self-study.  Practicing yoga invites us to show kindness & grace to ourselves, to be flexible with our minds and bodies, and to be more fully present in our lives on and off the mat.

THAT IS THE BEAUTY OF YOGA.

Here at Grow Soul Beautiful, we are passionate about the power of yoga to transform not just physical bodies, but entire lives. A rich, nurturing yoga practice can heal the wounded spirit and calm the racing mind.  We use yoga not only as a tool to spotlight the awesome power and grace of the human body, but also as a path toward holistic health–body, mind, and soul.

Tomorrow: The Beauty of Photography

Brian Koonce: Viewing Sport as an Art

In Nietzsche's Dionysiac definition of art, experiencing sports event from the stands as a fan definitely falls under this category.  Dionysiac art is characterized by a loss of self; a completely sublime experience, as Schopenhaur would describe it; in which one has no control over their emotions.  Music and the performing arts often have the same effect on spectators; take concerts for instance.  Concert-goers, although often influenced by alcohol and other more hallucinogenic drugs, are seen dancing, swaying, even gyrating in an uncontrollable fashion.  At a sports event, especially in tense moments, the spectator is completely in the control of the outcome of the game; if the shot goes in, elation will overcome them and all others around them, and if it bangs off the rim, disappointment  and frustration will haunt them until the next season.

Zakiya Cummings-Plato

 http://fotios.org/files/fotios.cc/papers/phil/Plato_Theory_of_Art.htm

 

Plato’s Theory of Art         

Plato’s theory of art is not included in the favorite subjects of study for modern philosophy scholars and there are some very specific and good reasons for that. On one hand his theory may be considered weak considering the fact that in his various works he does not present us with a satisfactory scientific account of his views on the subject. On the other hand, his views change considerably as he matures. This latter fact justifies the differences of opinion on the matter that one may find comparing works completed in different periods of his life. In his attempt to make Art fit in his general philosophical framework he suffocates it under his “hard-core” reasoning. Platonic “Ethics” mutilate Art into what may be called “Educative Art” which is the only kind of Art that gains the privilege of being accepted in his “Ideal State”.

            This account of Plato’s theory of art will be based on his dialogues : “Ion”, “Phaedrus” and “Symposium”, which although were written in different periods1 they provide a relatively coherent - but not entirely devoid of contradictions - idea of his conception of Art.

            In “Ion” one can understand that there is a rather prominent distinction between what is generally considered as art and what he considers to be art. For Plato, Art is or ought to be a very specific system or mode of thought that submits to reason.2 It is important to stress at this point that the whole portion of the dialogue does not treat poetry as some kind of art.3 In fact poetry is considered by him as a kind of “Oracular Testament” given through the poet by divine authority.4 Artistic inspiration is not considered a normal, well integrated in the human mental pattern, process but is perceived as a state of “possession” by the Muse. According to Plato, in poetry the rational element is absent.5

            In Plato’s opinion this theory of poetry is upheld by the fact that poets, generally considered as bad, have from time to time produced excellent poems. To him there is little doubt that this way the gods demonstrate their intervention in poetic creativity.6

            In my opinion, Plato’s views as I presented them above show some degree of insensitivity to the sentimental nature of man. It seems that at the time this dialogue was written, he considered such qualities as beauty and inspiration alien to the human soul and as a consequence of that he tried to explain any trace of them that he would find by considering it of divine origin. This is the main difference between this dialogue and the other two in account.

            In “Phaedrus” one can notice again Plato’s distinction between Art and Philosophy. They both share the presence of “Reason” but they appear as two quite distinct entities, probably by virtue of knowledge.7Plato’s conception of Art is again presented in a sketchy and unclear manner but in this dialogue there are two major factors that help the modern scholar understand his theory. Namely these factors are his use of “Symbolism” as an efficient tool to reach the desired result1 and the introduction of “emotion” in the general pattern of the human soul.

            The element of symbolism is well demonstrated in his description of the nature of the human soul as a “pair of winged horses and a charioteer” but it is also prominently present throughout the dialog’s portion. This use of symbolism may well be interpreted as a recognition from Plato’s part that there are certain cases where “poetical figures” are more efficient in describing or even explaining an object or an “Idea”2. By expanding this notion we can fairly say that Plato considered “symbolism” and in turn Art as part of the reasoning process. This in turn would mean that he would have to include art as a whole in his “republic”, but it is unclear if he finally did so. In fact it seems that he did not and that may serve as another example of his incapability to form a sound theory of art.

            Plato’s vivid description of the soul introduces the emotional part of its nature which exists by virtue of “beauty”.3 If such a notion is to be introduced through poetry then it is fair to say that Plato should conclude that any “emotional” situation is best expressed by poetry or art in general. Thus art becomes a necessity as long as it is a fact that the human soul possesses an emotional side.4

            At the start of the portion of “Symposium” in account, Plato views art as a lowly kind of wisdom and he matches that wisdom with that of handicrafts.5 One may comment here that, if viewed from a utilitarian point of view, arts can be found to be even lower in “virtue” or “goodness” than the handicrafts and in fact this is done by Plato in some other dialogues.6

            The views that are expressed in the rest of the portion are quite incongruent to the notion he presents at the start. Specifically he kind of apologetically7 generalizes the notion of art to include any kind of practice that realizes or creates8 what is envisioned.9 Plato then proceeds with further puzzling the reader by admitting that wisdom and virtue in general are conceived by artists (!)10. More specifically he theorizes that the creativity in the inventor’s soul is expressed by art (poetry).

            It is important to mention here that as it seems - especially in his dialogue - there is a close connection in Plato’s mind between “Beauty” and “Art”. Beauty is reached and grasped through reason.11 This knowledge of beauty is the “Science of Beauty”.12 On the other hand beauty is also found and appreciated in art. Now the major problem here is: Did Plato consider the process of art making a rational process (a process involving the use of reason) or not ? If he did then everything in this dialogue makes sense. If not then we have a major contradiction here; for how can beauty (which is a Form) be realized or conceived and amply expressed by that which is irrational ? I believe that somehow he understood that shortcoming and that is why his explanation of the rational or irrational nature of art is very fuzzy.

            In the last two dialogues in account Plato - being more mature philosophically - does not use the divine element to explain human creativity or drives in general. Instead he tries to generalize his principles and provide complete human-centered explanations of everything.

            The Platonic philosophy overstates and overemphasizes the rational element of the human nature. Emotion and more specifically emotional pleasure detached from reason has little or no place in his theories. This creates a major barrier that blocks the way to a clear understanding of Art; a barrier that Plato never really passed. Although Plato can be considered an artist himself he finally fails to provide a framework of thought about art that is solid.

           

---

1 Ion is written in the “Socratic period” of Plato while “Phaedrus” and “Symposium on his period of maturity.

2 “No one can fail to see that you speak of Homer without any art or knowledge”, “rules of art”.

3 I  must make clear here that by the term “Plato’s theory of Art” I mean his theory on what is generally considered Art today.

4 “The gift which you possess of speaking excellently about Homer is not an art, but, as I was just saying, an inspiration; there is a divinity moving you”

5 “so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains”.

6 “these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God;”.

7 Philosophy aims at knowledge while Art not necessarily.

1 “I  have made and paid my recantation, as well and as fairly as I could; more especially in the matter of the poetical figures which I was compelled to use”.

2 The Sensible and the Intelligible.

3 “the beauty of the beloved meets her eye and she receives the sensible warm motion of particles which flow towards her, therefore called emotion”.

4 Although this seems a quite reasonable conclusion, it is never clearly mentioned by Plato.

5 “all other wisdom such as that of arts and  handicrafts, is mean and vulgar”.

6 At some point Plato theorizes that a painting of a bed is less “real”  than  an actual bed since it is merely a picture of it . To him that means that  Painting is less “virtuous”  than Carpentry.

7 At this point  he  probably  realizes that his previous understanding of art was kind of shallow. This kind of  radical changes in opinion show that  there was a great deal of difficulty by Plato to conceive a proper definition or description of art.

8 Becoming.

9 “All creation or passage of non-being into being is poetry or making, and the processes of all art are creative”.

10 “And what are these conceptions? - wisdom and virtue in general. And such creators are poets and all artists who are deserving of the name inventor.”.

11 For Plato beauty is another “Form” which is fully realized in the world of  “Ideas”.

12 “and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere.”.

Zakiya Cummings- Aristotle

http://www.essortment.com/aristotles-theory-art-64150.html

Aristotle, the greek philospopher views art as an imitation of life. He develops ways to categorize and evaluate art in his writings.

Many people would look at one of Jackson Pollock's canvases and question whether the wild splashes of paint constitute a work of art. If you were standing next to Aristotle as you viewed the canvas, he might tell you that Pollock's work is not true art because it doesn't reflect any aspect of natural life. Aristotle was the first to introduce the theory that art imitates nature. He considered the origin of art as a basis for his argument. Throughout his theory, he developed a method for evaluation and classification of art.

Aristotle attributed the origin of art to the human affinity for imitation. From childhood, imitation is the primary method of learning. Aristotle concluded that it is natural for humans to "delight in works of imitation." In modern society this theme is demonstrated in the general fascination with horrific news stories such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the crash of Flight 800.
Aristotle presented three methods for classifying art based on the idea of art as imitation. The first method involves a difference in the means of imitation. In the first chapter of Poetics, Aristotle wrote, "Just as color and form are used as means by some . . .and the voice is used by others; . . .the means with them as a whole are rhythm, language, and harmony." These three elements, whether they are combined or employed separately, constitute the means of imitation. This definition provides a way to distinguish among music, poetry, dance, and drama.

Examination of the object being represented is another way to classify art. Aristotle made a distinction about the motive of the action being imitated. He wrote in Poetics, "It follows, therefore, that the agents represented must be either above our own level of goodness, or beneath it, or just such as we are;" In this way, Aristotle introduced the idea of virtue as a factor in the object of imitation. The object or action being represented is the main difference between a comedy and a tragedy. Both can be presented using the same means and with the same dramatic manner, but the actions being imitated in a comedy are positive like love and humor while a tragedy brings out the darker side of human nature.
The manner in which the object is presented is the final way to evaluate the arts. Aristotle outlined three ways an object may be presented: "one may either speak at one moment in narrative and at another in assumed character . . . or one may remain the same throughout . . . or the imitators may represent the whole story dramatically." This description deals mainly with poetry, but it can be modified to apply to other art forms.
Aristotle's theory on art examines art as a productive science. The quality of the object produced determines the merit of the art. The art is found within the product not within the mind of the artist. This theory promotes critical evaluation because the evaluator doesn't need to consider the message or intent of the artist when evaluating the object. The message of the artist may be absent or unclear, but if the object itself is a nearly perfect imitation, it could be considered a wonderful piece of art. The circumstances or history behind the work are also insignificant during the assessment of its artistic value.
The perspective of art as a productive science raises questions about trades such as medicine, architecture, and cobbling. These sciences certainly have a product-a healthy patient, a building, or a shoe. In what way could these objects be considered imitations? Should these objects be considered art in the same way a song or a play would be considered art? In response to the first question, I propose that we examine specific examples for their imitative quality. The architectural style of Frank Lloyd Wright is an illustration of the way a building can imitate nature. The color, shape, and materials utilized in his buildings were chosen to mirror the natural landscape of their location. The most recognizable aspect of a shoe is its resemblance to the form of the human foot. In this way, a shoe could be seen as an imitation of the wearer. These examples indicate that some productive sciences would meet the criteria in Aristotle's definition of art. Historically, a major criticism of Aristotle's theory on art has been his failure to differentiate between mechanical and fine arts.
Another difficulty with the idea of art as imitation is the fact that each person who is viewing, hearing, reading, etc. comes from a different perspective. This person may never have experienced the object of imitation, and therefore would not consider the piece to be art. It would also be difficult to evaluate art if the person had never seen or heard what is being imitated. A person who had spent his or her entire life in a remote part of Alaska could look at a painting of a palm tree and not consider it to be an imitation of nature. A counterpart in the Caribbean may recognize the painting as an excellent imitation of a palm tree. This inconsistency represents a major flaw in Aristotle's theory.
If art were viewed solely as an imitation of life, a whole class of abstract works would not be considered art. Cubism and Pop Art are two types of art that have many valuable characteristics, but are not realistic imitations of nature. The creativity and social implications demonstrated in many works of art are not considered in Aristotle's theory. The imitation theory rewards those who copy nature. Imagination and creativity aren't given the credit they deserve. The originality of an idea should be considered in evaluating its artistic merit.
Aristotle's theory of art as imitation provides a basis for classification of art forms. This theory appeals to human nature, but lacks more refined ideas about viewer response and abstract art forms.

Zakiya Cummings- Kant

 This quote by Kant summarizes his view on Art. (in my opinion)


"Nature was beautiful if at
the same time it looked like art; and art can
only be called beautiful if we are conscious that
it is art and yet it looks like nature to us"


http://www.jstor.org/stable/431427

Zakiya Cummings- Phenomenological Approach

We talked about the phenomenological Approach in philosophy I thought it be interesting to look at it in a different form.

 

 

Keywords:

• phenomenology;
• Merleau-Ponty;
• perception;
• intentionality;
• embodiment;
• nursing research

Abstract

Abstract  Phenomenology has proved to be a popular methodology for nursing research. I argue, however, that phenomenological nursing research could be strengthened by greater attention to its philosophical underpinnings. Many research reports devote more page space to procedure than to the philosophy that purportedly guided it. The philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty is an excellent fit for nursing, although his work has received less attention than that of Husserl and Heidegger. In this paper, I examine the life and thought of Merleau-Ponty, with emphasis on concepts, such as perception, intentionality and embodiment, which have particular relevance to the discipline of nursing.

How remote from their clumsy pride was the task which they considered insignificant and left in dust and must – the task of description – although the subtlest fingers and senses can scarcely be subtle enough for it. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Phenomenological research methodology is devoted to that ‘task of description’ of which Nietzche spoke. When well written, the report of a phenomenological study can move readers to tears. Such a report can take clinicians into the lifeworld of their patients in a deeper way, often producing astonishment as well as empathy and compassion. Nursing studies conducted from a phenomenological stance have yielded compelling descriptions of the lived experience of diverse disease conditions (e.g. addiction, anorexia, arthritis, cancer) and symptoms (e.g. air hunger, chronic pain, urinary incontinence), as well as more elusive phenomena such as courage and caring (Koch, 1995; Carpenter et al., 1999). I argue, however, that phenomenological nursing research could be strengthened by greater attention to its philosophical underpinnings. The work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty provides an excellent philosophical base for advancing nursing research, and I seek to kindle excitement about it among other scholars. I begin by describing my personal odyssey as a researcher.

Discarding the mechanistic lens

For much of modern nursing's history, medicine's mechanistic lens for seeing phenomena also was nursing's lens. Patients’ bodies were viewed as malfunctioning machines and their complaints as problems to be solved using a linear hypothetico-deductive thought process. Likewise, nursing research proceeded from specifying a ‘problem’ to operationalizing discrete, measurable variables such as ‘stress’, to statistical testing of the null hypothesis (Thomas & Pollio, 2002). I became dissatisfied with this approach when my programme of research began to focus on women's stress and anger. For example, no questionnaire measures women's vicarious stress, which proved to be the stressor of greatest magnitude for women in a study by my research team (Thomas, 1993). Study participants had completed a well-validated and reliable stress instrument, but an open-ended question ultimately revealed the shortcomings of this instrument. The open-ended question, added almost as an afterthought, permitted the women to describe their greatest distress in their own words.

What most troubled my study participants were events happening to their significant others, such as the impending divorce of a son, job problems of a husband, illness of a sister or friend. In these stressful circumstances the women suffered empathically along with their loved ones but had little or no control over what was transpiring. Vicarious stress was not amenable to traditional stress management strategies directed toward marshalling personal resources and gaining mastery. It fuelled a chronic, impotent anger. I realized that the nature of this stress, and the concomitant anger, of these women would not have been revealed by any of the commonly utilized instruments. To understand what they felt, I needed to plumb the complexities of their relational commitments to partners, friends, and extended families. I needed to invite them to describe their experience in an unfettered manner, telling their stories of emotional distress with all the inherent messiness that cannot be neatly operationalized and factor-analysed.

Experiences such as this led me to phenomenological methodology. Before the ink was dry on my first book about women's anger (Thomas, 1993), based largely on quantitative research data, I had formed a new research team and plunged into phenomenological investigation. I was soon stunned by the realization that the quantitative project had completely missed an essential dimension of women's anger experience: the intermingling of deep hurt with their anger. Women often said, ‘I don’t know if I’m more angry or hurt; I’m hurt and angry.’ (Thomas et al., 1998) The hurt emanated from violations of an implicit relational contract that women understood to be present between themselves and their significant others. What women expected was reciprocity in their close relationships. When others let them down, their emotional response was an amalgam of painful feelings –  feelings  that  were  often  suppressed  for fear of alienating intimates or causing relationship termination. These research findings had significant implications for extant cognitive-behavioural anger management interventions, none of which addressed these complexly interwoven aspects of women's anger. None of the ‘valid and reliable’ anger instruments had permitted discovery of these findings.

So I became a ‘convert’ to phenomenology, but well aware of my limitations and hungry for greater knowledge. Long a reader of existential philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Camus, and Sartre, I felt comfortable with existential tenets. But I had been trained solely as a quantitative researcher. What did I know about qualitative research methodology? What did I know about phenomenology? It is said that when the learner is ready, the teacher will appear. I had actually taken a course in existential phenomenology as a doctoral student and enjoyed my first dabbling in the work of Merleau-Ponty (Merleau-Ponty, 1945), but at the time I was thoroughly captivated by beta weights, Bonferronis and significant Fs. As the years passed, sometimes I would see my teacher around campus. He would ask what I was studying, and he would gently suggest that phenomenological interviews might be revelatory. Finally, I heard what he was saying. One day, 15 years after the first course, I enrolled in his class again, and Merleau-Ponty now made so much more sense. I experienced an epiphany. I was home. I have been immersed in existential phenomenology ever since, at first a mere novice in my professor's weekly research group, then a collaborator, and finally a coleader. Our interdisciplinary group has been meeting weekly for 12 years now. There is something very special about our Tuesday afternoon meetings. About 15–20 faculty and students from nursing, education, psychology, geography, exercise science and other disciplines gather together for the reading of phenomenological interview transcripts. Enthusiasm about our approach has been kindled in dozens of colleagues and students, some of whom contributed to our 2002 book, Listening to Patients (Thomas & Pollio, 2002).

Why choose phenomenology for the study of emotion?

I contend that only within existential phenomenology has emotion been given a central place in human existence (Heidegger, 1927; Sartre & Frechtman, 1939). Earlier philosophies tended to view emotion as inferior to reason; being ‘emotional’ led to mistakes, madness and sin. Within existential phenomenology, the various forms of being emotional are viewed as diverse ways of being-in-the-world (Fischer et al., 1989), and the phenomenologist is interested in their meanings. Sartre was one of the first to offer an account of emotion, proposing that emotion is the way consciousness changes the world from deterministic to magical (Sartre, 1939). For example, an emotion like anger could be used strategically, to achieve one's ends when faced with the struggles and difficulties of a deterministic world. Emotions are gestalts that move us to action; they cannot be reduced to physiological alterations or motor behaviours (Sartre, 1939). Yet much contemporary research focuses on discrete aspects of emotion such as changes in facial musculature or neurotransmitters. Pribram has commented on this trend, ‘It was not so very long ago that I attended a symposium on “emotion” at an international congress in Madrid. The participants discussed factor analysis, limbic neuroanatomy, and operant conditioning. Somewhere in the agenda emotions were hidden from view, lurking in the dark alleys of our ignorance. No one even dared used the term’ (Pribram et al., 1980, p. 246). It is time to uncover the meanings of anger, stress and depression from the first-person perspective of individuals experiencing these feelings. Perhaps they have value and purpose. Existential phenomenology offers a way to engage in respectful dialogue with people and glean richly nuanced and contextualized descriptions of their emotions. While other qualitative approaches employ a dialogical method, what is unique here is the specific philosophical lens.

Choosing the specific philosophical lens for the study of emotion

To enable me to see emotional phenomena freshly, I chose a new lens derived from the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Merleau-Ponty, 1945). I liked his antireductionist and antipositivist stance. I liked his explicit rejection of Cartesian mind–body dualism. He contended that the ‘I’ which thinks is inseparable from his body and his lived situation; a person is an indissoluble unity. In contrast to Heidegger, whose focus was on the abstract nature of being, Merleau-Ponty was concerned with a science of human beings (Cohen, 1987). The specific aim of his phenomenology was to give a direct description, not a causal explanation, of experience. Merleau-Ponty exhorted us to examine the immediacy of experience before it is objectified by science. He believed that true philosophy is relearning to see the world. Thus, he urged us to be astonished by the world, to see it with open and wondering eyes.

Merleau-Ponty (1908–61) was a contemporary of philosophical luminaries such as Husserl, Sartre, and Heidegger. In early 20th century Europe, immersed in the horror of two world wars being fought in their own lands, it is not surprising that these German and French philosophers were grappling with issues of anxiety, death, freedom, responsibility and the very meaning of human existence. A remote and abstract philosophy could no longer be satisfying to them. Their personal experiences undoubtedly provided impetus for their philosophical musings. Thus, it is important to note that Merleau-Ponty served in the French army in World War II and suffered imprisonment and torture by the Germans (Thomas & Pollio, 2002). Just as we must seek to understand the situational context of our research participants’– and patients’– experiences, so also we must consider the writings of phenomenological philosophers in light of the war-torn lifeworld into which they had been thrust. For that reason, we will delve further into key events of Merleau-Ponty's life a bit later.

Origins and evolution of phenomenology

Phenomenology had originated in German philosophy but soon gained adherents in other European countries such as France, Belgium and Holland. The historical evolution of the phenomenological movement has been ably traced by others (Spiegelberg, 1981; Cohen, 1987; Reeder, 1987). The movement has been characterized as a ‘set of waves’ (Reeder, 1987) in a vast groundswell of ‘antireductionist and anticonstructionist’ thinking that had begun in the nineteenth century (Spiegelberg, 1981, p. xi). No unity was achieved within this European intellectual movement, although there was a common aversion to the prevailing mechanistic research paradigm of the behaviourists. Much of the European work was unknown for some time in the English-speaking world, including that of Merleau-Ponty, whose work was first translated into English relatively recently in 1962 (Merleau-Ponty, 1945).

Phenomenology in nursing

Articles on phenomenology began to appear in the nursing literature in the 1970s, with early treatises by Paterson & Zderad (1976), Parse (1981), Oiler (1982) and Omery (1983). Over the ensuing decades, phenomenology has become quite popular. Although a number of nurses now call themselves phenomenologists, there is considerable diversity amongst us. According to Caelli (2000), 18 different forms of phenomenology have been identified. Dominant within nursing literature have been Husserlian phenomenology, Heideggerian phenomenology and variants of the ‘Dutch school’. What nurses in America, Australia and other western countries are doing today under the putative umbrella of phenomenology is very different from the solitary reflections of twentieth century European philosophers. While Crotty (1996) accused contemporary nurse scholars of misinterpreting European phenomenological philosophy, Caelli (2000) contended that deliberate choices were made to develop new ways of applying phenomenological philosophy to inquiry. Drew (2001, p. 16), speaking of the legacy of Husserl's ideas, reminded us that it is the task of researchers to decide ‘how . . . philosophic ideas are put into action’. Silverman (1987, p. 6) commended the new generation of American phenomenological researchers who are marking out ‘clear and original paths’. But clarity regarding these ‘paths’ is lacking in many published reports of phenomenological nursing research. To wit, the link between procedural aspects of a study and its philosophical underpinnings is often unclear to the reader. Despite the lip service paid to Husserl, Heidegger and other philosophers by nurse researchers, many reports of phenomenological research devote more page space to procedure than to the philosophy that purportedly guided it (Porter, 1998). There is no mention of the underlying philosophical perspective in some research reports. For example, a researcher may speak of using Colaizzi's ‘steps’ (Colaizzi et al., 1978), making no reference to the Husserlian inspiration for his analytic scheme. Especially popular within nursing has been this set of steps developed by Colaizzi, a psychology graduate student, while doing his 1973 doctoral dissertation on learning at Duquesne (Colaizzi, 1973). Nursing's prolonged allegiance to Colaizzi is puzzling. Other than a book chapter in a 1978 text by Valle and Halling (Colaizzi et al., 1978), I find no evidence that Colaizzi ever published anything else. Apparently he did not remain active in phenomenological scholarship.

Six years ago, Porter (1998, pp. 26, 27) called upon nurse scholars to ‘demonstrate allegiance to our chosen philosophies rather than adherence to procedure’. She described her own experience of ‘being inspired’ by Husserl. I have been similarly inspired by the works of Merleau-Ponty. Elsewhere, with my mentor Howard Pollio, I have written about procedural aspects of the phenomenological research method that was developed at the University of Tennessee (Thomas & Pollio, 2002) and first introduced by Pollio et al. (1997). Here, I focus mainly on the philosophy that guides our work. I examine the life and thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, with emphasis on the material of particular relevance to my programme of research and to the discipline of nursing. My hope is that this introduction to the man and his ideas will stimulate other nurse scholars to seek additional information. We begin by examining biographical data regarding the key events and people who influenced his philosophy.

A brief biography of Merleau-Ponty

Curiously, given his international prominence, there is no book-length biography of Merleau-Ponty. The facts that follow were gleaned, bit by bit, from a variety of sources. Maurice Merleau-Ponty was born on the west coast of France in 1908. War touched his life early, as his father, an army officer, was killed in action during World War I. Despite the loss of his father, his childhood, spent living with his mother and one sister, was said to be idyllic (McBride et al., 2001). He was educated in the French lycee system and then studied philosophy at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, where he conducted postgraduate work on the nature of perception and met Sartre, a profound influence on his life (Priest, 1998). The remainder of his life was spent as a teacher in the lycee system and in various universities. Along with Sartre and other French philosophers, he began his career studying the work of Husserl (Moran, 2000). He heard Husserl lecture in 1929 and later travelled to the Husserlian Archives to examine unpublished papers. Although he ultimately rejected certain aspects of Husserl's thought, he retained Husserl's descriptive approach to phenomena and combined it with an existential ground, deriving, in part, from Heidegger (Thomas & Pollio, 2002). His existentialist ideas are also attributed to his close association with Sartre and Camus (Priest, 1998). The relationship with Sartre has  been  the  topic  of  numerous  essays.  According  to most accounts, the two men greatly enjoyed matching wits in long intellectual discussions. While in agreement about many points, Merleau-Ponty was more concerned with science than was Sartre (Cohen, 1987).

Although some say that Merleau-Ponty was himself a behaviourist – having once uttered kind words about  John  Watson  (Pollio et al.,  1997) –  his  first  book took issue with behaviourism. In The Structure of Behaviour (Merleau-Ponty, 1942), he asserted that no piece of behaviour may be reduced to its alleged parts. He pointed out the ambiguity of behaviour, contending that any behaviour may be given various interpretations from the perspective of the actor or the third person observer (Priest, 1998). Ambiguity was to become a continuing thread throughout his work. Later, he explained that ambiguity prevails both in perception and in self-knowledge. Time itself is not an objective dimension of the world, but is ambiguous.

In his most famous book, The Phenomenology of Perception (hereafter abbreviated as PP) (Merleau-Ponty, 1945), Merleau-Ponty devoted painstaking attention to everyday human activities and situations. This focus was divergent from traditional philosophy. In PP, he sought to refute both empiricism and what he called ‘intellectualism’, which is more commonly termed idealism. Empiricism is flawed because it ignores the subjective; intellectualism is flawed because things are only understood intellectually, and the world is reduced to ideas. In the words of Merleau-Ponty, ‘empiricism cannot see that we need to know what we are looking for, otherwise we would not be looking for it, and intellectualism fails to see that we need to be ignorant of what we are looking for, or equally again we should not be searching’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 28). We will have more to say about PP later.

The outbreak of World War II disrupted Merleau-Ponty's research and greatly affected his view of freedom and other people. He concluded that everyone is compromised in war (Moran, 2000). In his role as a second lieutenant in the infantry, he was required to call for artillery barrages or air attacks on enemy positions. As noted earlier, he was captured and tortured by the Germans. After the war, in Sense and Nonsense (Merleau-Ponty, 1948), he wrote movingly of the changes in his values that ensued from these experiences. In Humanism and Terror, he wrote about what it means to be a collaborator, a traitor, or a revolutionary (Merleau-Ponty, 1947). In the early postwar years, he became involved in radical politics. In 1945 Merleau-Ponty and Sartre collaborated in founding a journal. In Sartre's words, ‘We [were] hunters of meaning, we would speak the truth about the world and about our own lives’ (Moran, 2000, p. 397). Deploring capitalism's protection of privileged groups, the two philosophers sought answers in Marxism and Communism. But Merleau-Ponty began to view Sartre's support of Stalin with dismay. By 1952, significant differences between the two caused an acrimonious split, with Merleau-Ponty resigning from the journal staff. One bone of contention was the journal's propensity for taking what Merleau-Ponty called ‘on-the-fly’ positions about political events. He felt that the journal should maintain a more philosophical tone, i.e. ‘try to reach the reader's head rather than heart’ (Belay & Davis, 2001, p. 42). The immediate impetus for Merleau-Ponty's resignation, however, was Sartre's stated intent to prevent the journal from publishing one of his essays.

As Merleau-Ponty became increasingly disillusioned with both Marxism and Communism, withdrawing from the political fray, Sartre accused him of abdicating his responsibility. Recently translated letters are illuminating (Belay & Davis, 2001). In a 1953 letter, Sartre chided: ‘I blame you . . . for abdicating in the midst of circumstances where you have to decide as a man, as French, as citizen, and as intellectual – by taking your “philosophy” as an alibi’ (Belay & Davis, 2001, p. 35). In his response, Merleau-Ponty asserted, ‘I have never wavered on my wish to do philosophy, and I told you so, one day around 1948, when you asked me why I did not give up teaching. . . . I have decided, since the Korean War, to stop writing on events as they happen’ (Belay & Davis, 2001, p. 40). The split between the two men was emotionally painful for both, as shown in their 1953 letters. Merleau-Ponty deplored the ‘glacial tone’ and ‘irate tone’ Sartre used when making comments to him about his recent lectures and essays. Sartre defended himself by saying, ‘If I might have seemed glacial, it is because I have always had a sort of shyness when it comes to congratulating’ (Belay & Davis, 2001, p. 56) and he admitted that ‘I am unhappy that we disagree’ (Belay & Davis, 2001, p. 57). Interested readers may want to seek out this exchange of letters between the two philosophers, which provide not only some insight into what Sartre called the ‘emptying of the abscess’ in their strained personal relationship (Belay & Davis, 2001, p. 55) but also a glimpse of the tensions in the world in the first phase of the Cold War.

In 1953, at the age of 45, Merleau-Ponty achieved the distinction of being the youngest person ever to be elected the chair of philosophy at the College de France. During the 1950s he was rethinking much of his earlier work. According to Moran (2000), he had become especially interested in the problem of reciprocal relations and communications with others (intersubjectivity). In his last book, The Visible and the Invisible, published posthumously, he showed a new interest in ontological questions, such as the ‘subject–object question’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1964).

Dissatisfied with language that perpetuated dualism and dichotomies, he introduced new terms, such as intertwining, which described the inseparability of subject from world, and chiasm, which described the ‘place in the flesh of the world where the visible flesh also sees, where the tangible flesh also touches, and so on. . . . This only happens at the location in this fleshly element where there is a person. The sculpture does not feel or see itself or the other objects in the room around it. . . . Thus, perception and sensation are a kind of doubling of the flesh of the world upon itself. One could think of it as the wave when it breaks and curls over. It is the place in the wave where the water touches itself’ (Young & Davis, 2001, p. 114). Unfortunately, he did not complete this ambitious undertaking. Before his sudden death in 1961, he had finished only a few chapters of the book, although others were subsequently assembled from his notes. As McBride notes, ‘I am sure that Merleau-Ponty's thought would have developed in exciting new directions . . . that might well have complemented some of the new directions taken by Sartre during the years in which he outlived his former colleague’ (McBride et al., 2001, p. 73). In my searches of the literature, I have not found a cause of death for Merleau-Ponty. The event of his death is tinged with irony, as he collapsed while rereading Descartes in preparation for a class he was to deliver the next day (Priest, 1998). He was only 53.

Key tenets of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy with relevance to nursing

Perception

The nurse researcher who works within the Merleau-Ponty tradition seeks to discover study participants’/patients’ perceptions of their lived experience. Merleau-Ponty's philosophy was first and always a phenomenology of perception. He felt that traditional philosophy misunderstood the role of perception in the formation of awareness and experience. It is perception that opens us to reality, providing a direct experience of the events, objects and phenomena of the world. This direct experience is to be contrasted with thinking and language, which deal with ideas and representations of the world (Thomas & Pollio, 2002). All knowledge takes place within the horizons opened up by perception, and all meaning occurs through perception. Perception is learned in an embodied, communal environment. Humans are born into a particular sociohistorical and cultural milieu, and immediately embedded in what Merleau-Ponty called a ‘knot of relations’ that includes ‘all those we have loved, detested, known or simply glimpsed’ (Switzer & Davis, 2001, p. 283).

As children grow, they readily absorb the norms and practices of their culture. Because of shared cultural understandings, perception of a given entity cannot be fully understood without knowing something of the specific culture. For example, a Japanese wife may express her anger toward her husband by creating a disorderly flower arrangement. The husband's ability to perceive the symbolic meaning of that flower arrangement is predicated on his understanding of the culturally prescribed, precise way that flowers should be placed in their container and the proscription against direct expression of a disruptive emotion such as anger in Japanese society. An American husband seeing the same flowers would not perceive them in the same way.

Phenomena appear to us as meaningful wholes. But perceived things, according to Merleau-Ponty, are always perceived as having a certain figure or form against a background (Moran, 2000). To explain this principle, the familiar black-and-white illustration of the vase and two faces is often used, in which a focus on the white portion reveals the vase and a focus on the black portions on each side reveals two faces confronting one another (Thomas & Pollio, 2002). Similarly, figure and ground cocreate each other in human experiences: ‘There are no figures by themselves: All figural aspects of (perceptual) experience emerge against some ground that serves to delineate its specific experiential form’ (Pollio et al., 1997, p. 13). What stands out as figural or focal to a person cannot be fully understood without consideration of many different existential grounds. Thus, we must consider the major grounds: Body, Time, Other People, and World (Thomas & Pollio, 2002). Our research method seeks a complete and careful description of both the figural and background aspects of the phenomenon we are investigating. The emotion of anger, for example, cannot be understood without a grasp of both its relational and cultural context. It is an intense bodily experience as well. It is important to note, however, that the researcher does not use a structured interview protocol to probe for these contexts; instead, the angry person is asked, ‘What aspects of the experience stand out to you?’

The interviewee's narrative reveals what is figural to him. The bodily aspects of a phenomenon may compel the attention of some respondents while other aspects of the experience, such as Time or World, may be indistinct or fuzzy. In a study of chronic pain, for example, patients seldom talked about the World (Thomas, 2000). Pain had imprisoned them, creating separation from the world. They used terms such as locked off, roped off and caged off to depict this imprisonment that created distance from other people and the world. As one participant explained, ‘I feel like I’m on this island all by myself’ (Thomas, 2000, p. 692).

Figure and ground may ‘change places’ many times during repeated experiences of a phenomenon. In the aforementioned study of chronic pain, searing pain was sometimes figural, obliterating a patient's awareness of everything but the hurting body (Thomas, 2000). On other occasions, the pain receded to a dull ache; although constant, it did not dominate consciousness (i.e. was no longer figural). As the body became ‘ground’, the individual could emerge from the isolation of the pain, go out into the world and connect with other people again.

Intentionality

The literature indicates some confusion with the term intentionality as Merleau-Ponty used it.

What he was referring to was not plans or planning, as in common parlance, but relatedness to the world, the integral interconnectedness between humans and the lifeworld in which attention of humans is always directed toward specific events, objects and phenomena (Thomas & Pollio, 2002). We are never simply passive before the stimuli in the lifeworld. We are engaged ‘receptors’ of stimuli. All experience takes place in relation to something other than itself. ‘Understanding the meaning of some experience requires us to describe the intentional stance (or situated perspective) of the event from the point of view of the experiencing person’ (Pollio et al., 1997, p. 8). Thomas & Pollio (2002, p. 14) provide a maxim to help researchers grasp the concept of intentionality: ‘What I am aware of reveals what is meaningful to me. If, for example, I enter a room and notice only the furniture, I probably am a very different person from someone else who enters the room and notices only the children, the food, or the artwork.’Drew (2001) recommends that researchers consider our own intentionality (i.e. what we find meaningful, how we are connected to the topics that we study). We accomplish this through the process of bracketing (Thomas & Pollio, 2002), although Merleau-Ponty reminds that it is not possible to completely bracket all of our personal interests, assumptions and presuppositions. Bracketing is an ongoing process throughout the course of a study.

Embodiment

Of Merleau-Ponty's concepts, embodiment has attracted the most attention from nurse scholars. ‘Merleau-Ponty is possibly the single philosopher who has done the most to draw our attention to the pervasive importance of embodiment’ (Young & Davis, 2001, p. 101). As MacQuarrie (1973, p. 93) notes,

‘The reason for the neglect of the body in philosophy lies deep in the tradition of Western thought . . . From Plato to Descartes and modern idealism, the belief has been that the true self or the real man is somehow within, and that the body is an appendage or a framework of some sort’.

Descartes argued that

‘being able to think constitutes our essence; . . . that the mind is disembodied; and . . . therefore, that the essence of human beings, that which makes us human, has nothing to do with our bodies’ (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p. 400).

According to Lakoff & Johnson (1999), these Cartesian tenets influenced not only philosophy but education and popular culture, leading to the dissociation of reason from emotion and the downplaying and devaluing of emotional life. Much of the contemporary anger management literature exhorts readers to employ rational thought to control – even banish – the emotion of anger. Anger is branded as dangerous and irrational, especially for women. If enacted, this advice would require us to ignore the wisdom of the angry body. But anger is generated by significant violations of beliefs, values, or rights. The body's arousal is powerful, a call to movement and to words that will protect one's boundaries and defend one's rights. When silenced, the angry body remains in turmoil. Women in our study used terms such as simmering, stewing and festering to describe the agitation produced by anger. As noted by one research participant, the body hurts when anger is suppressed: ‘I can tell if I hold anger for a while . . . my anger takes the form of stress in my neck . . . it's hidden but my body knows’ (Thomas et al., 1998, p. 315). The suppressed anger builds over time in the body. One woman used the metaphor of ‘a big ball’ to describe its accumulation: ‘It's like you build up so much anger inside . . . without really sitting down and talking about the problem that it just rolls up into a big ball and you’re not even sure what it's really about’ (Thomas et al., 1998, p. 316). Study participants described a sense of powerlessness when they did not express their anger but confined it within the body. Our research suggests that instead of stifling anger, women must acknowledge the wisdom of their bodies and act on their anger to achieve conditions of justice and equity (Thomas et al., 1998).

To return to the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, the human body is not an appendage or a thing in the Cartesian sense. The body is the fundamental category of human existence; it exists before there is thought (Pollio et al., 1997). The body is, of course, the unwavering vantage point of perception. The body, however, not only perceives but also gestures and speaks. It moves through a world of objects that it can use for its various purposes. The body conveys qualities of objects, such as their weight. It gives meaning to the space around itself. As the body grows, the meaning of space becomes modified. What is high for a child is no longer high for an adult.

Of particular relevance to nurses is Merleau-Ponty's distinction between the ‘body object’, the body of medicine, and the ‘lived body’ or ‘body subject’, the body of personal experience. It is not surprising that medical students come to perceive the body as ‘object’, because they begin learning about it through dissection of cadavers. Watson (1999) relates that one medical school professor actually introduced his students to the human body by writing ‘dead mammal’ on the blackboard the first day of class. In contrast to this dehumanizing and objectifying stance, Merleau-Ponty reminds us of the sacredness of the body. If we view the body as sacred, ‘it [is] impossible for us to treat a face or a body, even a dead body, like a thing. They are sacred entities’ (Moran, 2000, p. 415).

When the relationship between body and world is disturbed, a person's existence is profoundly shaken. Merleau-Ponty illustrates this throughout PP with accounts of injured, disabled people, such as Schneider, who can no longer organize their world (Merleau-Ponty & Smith, 1945). Schneider, a World War I veteran, is unable to make certain arm movements in the research laboratory because of his wounds. However, he is able to move his arm while doing factory work. Merleau-Ponty takes the reader through a penetrating analysis of this paradox, showing that neither a rationalist nor an empiricist explanation will suffice. Merleau-Ponty's insights about the body are of great significance both to philosophy, which has been slow to devote attention to the body, and to nursing, which has intimate knowledge of the impaired body but seldom pauses for philosophical reflection about it.

Relationships with other people: the ‘knot of relations’

Many existential philosophers seemed to have a rather dark view of humanity, espousing individualism and writing disparagingly of the ‘crowd, the herd, the mass’ (MacQuarrie, 1973, p. 122). In contrast, Merleau-Ponty saw the benefits of connecting with other people. He reminded us that newborn infants are first orientated toward their mother's face, not toward objects in the world; the first ‘objects’ the infant sees are smiles (Moran, 2000). Life thereafter is spent in a ‘knot’ or network of relations. When referring to the Other, Merleau-Ponty used terms such as ‘my double’ or ‘my twin’, indicating an egalitarian stance. Unlike Sartre, who saw in the social world the potential for conflict ‘epitomized in the sweaty, mundane, empirically describable boxing match’ (McBride et al., 2001, p. 82), Merleau-Ponty saw the potential for dialogue, through which persons receive recognition and affirmation. Unlike Heidegger, who warned that other people distract from the pursuit of authentic being, Merleau-Ponty did not see others as impediments, rather as fellow travellers in life's journey (Pollio et al., 1997). He spoke of the intersections of his path, and the path of other people: ‘my own and other people's [paths] intersect and engage each other like gears’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. xx). Recently, the daily intersections of nurses and patients have commanded the interest of several members of our phenomenological research team and revealed some surprising – and disturbing – findings.

In one study, hospitalized patients longed for deeper connection with nurses and other caregivers, but more often they experienced disconnectedness. For example, a study participant commented on the timing and irrelevance of questions by a nurse when the participant was in active labour. The nurse, focused on her task of filling in all the blanks on an assessment form, was not attuned to the figural aspect of the patient's experience (her uterine contractions):

She stood on that side at one point during my labour and was asking me questions. And it was like, ‘Have you had any stress in your life?’ I’m having a baby! I think she meant have you moved recently or changed jobs, blah, blah, blah. It was funny, she would ask me questions, and I would be in the middle of a contraction and I’d say ‘Can I answer that in a minute?’ (Shattell, 2002, p. 225)

In this interaction between nurse and patient, common ground was not achieved. Dialogue, as described by Merleau-Ponty, did not take place. Merleau-Ponty asserted that ‘In the experience of dialogue, there is constituted between the other person and myself a common ground; my thought and his are interwoven into a single fabric. . . . We have here a dual being, where the other is for me no longer a mere bit of behaviour in my transcendental field, nor I in his; we are collaborators for each other in consummate reciprocity. Our perspectives merge into each other, and we coexist through a common world’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 354).

In contrast to the disconnectedness in the previous vignette, Benner (2001, p. 68) shared an example in which the nurse, despite her patient's initial belligerence, did persist in gaining the patient's trust and engaging her in dialogue:

I was making my rounds. And I walked in and I said, ‘Hi, I’m Sue. You must be Ann.’ And she said, ‘What the hell is it to you? I’m so goddamned mad.’ I . . . said, ‘Well, why don’t you tell me about it?’ I knew from the beginning that there was such pain under her vile language – such intensity, almost agony. And I didn’t even know her history. I didn’t know anything about her . . . and over the next month I found out about the agony and the pain.

These phenomenological studies provide brief but fascinating glimpses of the intersecting paths of nurses and patients. Further studies of the relational aspects of nursing care would be especially timely, given the emphasis on speedy execution of tasks in today's profit-driven health care delivery system. Current nursing literature is replete with articles about weary nurses burning out and frightened patients feeling abandoned. Much remains to be learned about the meaning-laden situations in which nurses and patients meet one another and establish a dialogic connection – or fail to do so.

Time

Earlier, we made reference to the ambiguity of Time in Merleau-Ponty's writings. Time is a subjective experience, not ‘a system of objective positions through which we pass but a mobile setting that moves toward and away from us’ (Pollio et al., 1997, p. 160). Awareness of time depends on events that happen; events are subjective, not objective (Priest, 1998). Merleau-Ponty spoke of the ‘bursting forth’ of time – by analogy with a flowering plant bursting from its pod. In much of everyday life, minutes and hours pass mindlessly; Time only periodically bursts into consciousness. For example, a patient hearing a physician pronounce the diagnosis of terminal cancer may have a sudden awareness of the brevity of the life span. From that point on, he may engage in a frantic struggle to ‘make the most’ of his remaining days or months. He may be acutely aware of the choices and limits inherent in this quantity of time. His focus may shift to a pain-free hour, or a few moments in the sunshine, and it is often the nurse who provides these comforts during the terminal illness. The unit of time most salient to Merleau-Ponty is the present. In a letter to Sartre, he explicated the differences between the two philosophers’ views of time: ‘You have a facility to construct and inhabit the future that is all yours. I tend to live in the present, leaving it undecidable and open, as it is. . . . My relationship with time happens mostly through the present’ (Belay & Davis, 2001, p. 48).

Morality

One can find pervasive references to ambiguity in Merleau-Ponty's work, suggesting that his philosophy could provide no guidance regarding the Truth or the Good. However, he once defined true morality as ‘actively being what we are by chance, establishing that communication with others and with ourselves for which our temporal structure gives us the opportunity and of which our liberty is only the rough outline’ (Watson & Davis, 2001, p. 201). I find this an astute guide for a moral and meaningful life. I find it directly pertinent to the daily practices of nurses in their local situations, wherever they may be.

I also find a distinctly moral tone in works such as Humanism and Terror (Merleau-Ponty, 1947), in which Merleau-Ponty pointed out the hypocrisy of democracy, noting that societies proclaiming respect for autonomy, dignity and property rights ‘were themselves created by violent conquests and insurrections . . . and maintained by ongoing violence against exploited classes on foreign soils’ (Young & Davis, 2001, p. 129).

Merleau-Ponty deplored all such violence, envisioning a humane social world in which dialogue would take priority over violence (Madison & Davis, 2001). As Madison has pointed out, Merleau-Ponty was an early critic of totalitarianism – two decades before that position became fashionable in France – instead espousing a politics of ‘mutual recognition and solidarity [that] was in fact the direct anticipation of the politics of civility championed in our times by Vaclav Havel’ (Madison & Davis, 2001, p. 174).

Assessment of Merleau-Ponty's contribution

If one is trying to pin down Merleau-Ponty, the task is much like the proverbial impossibility of nailing down jello. He rejects both historical determinism and absolute freedom. He rejects relativism and dogmatism as well. He rejects both realism and idealism. He tells us that meaning is ambiguous, mixed up with nonmeaning. In his opinion, no amount of investigation can dispel the ambiguity of the mysteries of nature, the world, or God. This stance may create discomfort in nurses who wish to have ‘right answers’ to their questions. On the other hand, how exciting it can be to thoughtfully consider diverse interpretations of clinical or research data, remaining open to the possibility of truly novel ways of perceiving the familiar. Adherents to the Merleau-Ponty view of human existence must approach the study participant/patient from the humble stance of perpetual learner, not authority figure. With a humility uncharacteristic of academics, Merleau-Ponty referred to himself as the ‘philosopher who does not know’. Whereas Husserl wanted to reduce scientific phenomena to their foundational prescientific essence, Merleau-Ponty believed that the original phenomena lie buried in darkness in such a way that they cannot be brought to light – although we can always erect pointers in the darkness. Our task as nurse researchers, then, is to erect these pointers. Porter (2000) likens the phenomenological researcher to a heliograph, a device for sending messages or signalling by flashing the sun's rays from a mirror. By sending participants’ messages to practising nurses, the researcher enables nurses to vicariously experience the lifeworld of patients with conditions such as chronic pain.

Many scholars, both within and outside philosophy, are discovering, or rediscovering, the work of Merleau-Ponty (Priest, 1998; Wilde, 1999; Benner, 2000; Moran, 2000; Davis, 2001) Some speculate that he never received the public attention accorded his contemporaries because of his retiring personality and difficult language (Moran, 2000). Priest (1998, p. 224) judged him to possess ‘neither the literary talent nor the political dexterity of Sartre’. Nor does it seem that he exhibited the charisma of Heidegger. Interestingly, given his emphasis on description of lived experience, he remained noncommunicative about his own life, revealing little about himself (Davis, 2001). For a time, his work was unfashionable in French intellectual circles, although now he is viewed more favourably: He is actually considered to have pre-empted some aspects of postmodern thought. Derrida, among others, urges reassessing Merleau-Ponty's work (Davis, 2001).

Perhaps it should not be surprising that it took a while for American scholars to develop appreciation of Merleau-Ponty's work, because of the time lag before many of his writings were translated. By the time PP was translated into English in 1962, Merleau-Ponty was already deceased. English translations of other books, such as Signs, Prose of the World and The Visible and the Invisible (Merleau-Ponty & Lingis, 1964; Merleau-Ponty & McCleary, 1964; Merleau-Ponty & Lefort, 1973), appeared even later. Lakoff & Johnson (1999, p. xi), in their recent book Philosophy in the Flesh, paid special tribute both to Merleau-Ponty and John Dewey: ‘Any book with the words “philosophy” and “flesh” in the title must express its obvious debt to Maurice Merleau-Ponty . . . For their day, Dewey and Merleau-Ponty were models of what we will refer to as “empirically responsible philosophers” ’.

Wilde (1999) noted that scholars from nursing, medicine, anthropology, education, psychology and sociology have been exploring embodiment as a new area for theory development. She predicted that phenomenological nursing research will reveal the embodied practices that enable the chronically ill to surmount the challenges of living with limitations and assistive technologies. I believe this potential already has been demonstrated in Wilde's (1999) study of individuals requiring long-term urinary catheterization and in recent phenomenological studies of ventilator-dependent children (Sarvey, 2001) and patients whose bodies have incorporated implanted defibrillators (Krau, 2002). In their day-by-day navigation of the lifeworld, such patients have acquired valuable knowledge and innovative skills for coping. As we tap the wisdom of their bodies, by asking them to describe their everyday embodied existence, we can generate new middle-range theories and nursing interventions to help other chronically ill patients manage their conditions (Wilde, 1999). Likewise, phenomenological studies of emotions such as anger are revealing the intelligence of emotions, thereby mandating a new stance on traditional therapeutic approaches that seek to medicate or banish them.

Conclusion

In writing this paper, I was once again reminded of the truth of Merleau-Ponty's observation that ‘writers experience the excess of what is to be said beyond their ordinary capacities’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1973, p. 57).

A sense of urgency drove me to put these words on paper at a time when my understanding is still incomplete. But, of course, my understanding will always be incomplete. I urge others to join the rejuvenated dialogue about the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Clearly, I believe that the ideas of Merleau-Ponty have abundant potential to advance nursing research. But phenomenology is not just for researchers. I believe that all nurses can practise it as ‘a manner or style of thinking’ (Merleau-Ponty & Smith, 1945, p. viii), learning to listen to patient concerns in a new way, alert to what is figural in the perceptions of their patients yet ever-mindful of their embeddedness in a particular sociocultural context. Being invited by a nurse to tell one's story surely benefits the patient, who often feels lost and alone in the juggernaut of the health care assembly line. Hearing the story enriches the nurse as well, filling him or her with awe regarding both the particularistic and the universal dimensions of human lived experiences of health and illness. I find that phenomenology is transformational for those who practise it.

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