Alva Noë on how art allows us to see everyday things anew

In his 2023 book The Entanglement, UC Berkeley philosopher Alva Noë argues that human nature is not a fixed phenomenon, and that art acts as a kind of “strange tool” that actively changes us. 

“Life and art are entangled,” says Noë, who spoke about his research at a Berkeley event in June 2023. “To say that life and art are entangled is to say not only that we make art out of life, all the habits and systems and meanings and certainties, but that art then works these raw materials over — art works us over, art makes us new. Art makes us.”

In this Berkeley Talks episode, Noë discusses how humans are in a constant state of becoming, and that art works to unveil us to ourselves in ways that empirical inquiry common in scientific fields cannot. By removing an object, like a photo, from its normal setting, he says, it allows us to reflect on what we normally take for granted about the object and presents an opportunity to make new meaning from it. 

“We are makers,” he continues. “We are put together, literally made up, by the habits and skills of making that constitute us. So by making, and thus exposing what our lives as makers take for granted, art puts us on display … in ways that hold out the opportunity of changing us, of liberating us. Liberating us precisely from the bonds of habit which our activities consist in.”

Noë’s lecture was part of the 2023 Berkeley Art, Law and Finance Symposium, presented by the Berkeley Center for Law and Business. 

Watch a video of Noë’s talk on UC Berkeley Law’s YouTube page.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcast/berkeley-talks).

Music by HoliznaCC0.

Photo via Unsplash.

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