Beyond Reason: Pre-Reflexive Thought and Creativity in Art

Our conception of how we come to know and understand things and act in innovative and creative ways is now undergoing critical change. Traditional views that conceive of the world as independent of the observer and conceive of perception as forming representations of pre-given properties of the world—much in the way that a camera records a picture of some object—are being challenged. It is now argued that perception and our knowledge of the world are generated by our interaction with the world, which takes on a specific form due to the nature of our bodies and our individual and social experiences in the particular culture in which we live. This article outlines the embodiment theory of perception and creativity proposed by the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty and describes the author’s in-depth research involving interviews with artists, which supports and develops this theory.