The Entanglement: How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are

by Alva Noë

Why human nature is an aesthetic phenomenon―and why we need art and philosophy to understand ourselves

In The Entanglement , philosopher Alva Noë explores the inseparability of life, art, and philosophy, arguing that we have greatly underestimated what this entangled reality means for understanding human nature.

Life supplies art with its raw materials, but art, Noë argues, remakes life by giving us resources to live differently. Our lives are permeated with the aesthetic. Indeed, human nature is an aesthetic phenomenon, and art―our most direct and authentic way of engaging the aesthetic―is the truest way of understanding ourselves. All this suggests that human nature is not a natural phenomenon. Neither biology, cognitive science, nor AI can tell a complete story of us, and we can no more pin ourselves down than we can fix or settle on the meaning of an artwork. Even more, art and philosophy are the means to set ourselves free, at least to some degree, from convention, habit, technology, culture, and even biology. In making these provocative claims, Noë explores examples of entanglement―in artworks and seeing, writing and speech, and choreography and dancing―and examines a range of scientific efforts to explain the human.

Challenging the notions that art is a mere cultural curiosity and that philosophy has been outmoded by science, The Entanglement offers a new way of thinking about human nature, the limits of natural science in understanding the human, and the essential role of art and philosophy in trying to know ourselves.

Genres: Philosophy, Art, Nonfiction, Audiobook

288 pages, Hardcover

Published June 27, 2023

About the author

Alva Noë (born 1964) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. The focus of his work is the theory of perception and consciousness. In addition to these problems in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, he is interested in phenomenology, the theory of art, Wittgenstein, and the origins of analytic philosophy.

Reviews

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is an intellectual feast in the sense that it is composed of lines upon lines of word salads. It is a beautiful example of very bad writing. From the book description, you can tell what the book is about and it is good enough to get you excited. But, my goodness, fleshing it out in the book is done in the most circuitous, verbose, jargon-laden way possible.
Absolutely not recommended.

[Nat]

It's rare in the circles of philosophers that I hang out with for someone to come out and directly say that the human sciences are impossible, but Noë does it on p. 200:

Science is in good order as it is. The problem...is that we have not yet come to grips with the fact that we ourselves are not a fitting subject for this thing that we do called science.

Why not? Because "We are a dynamic locus of entanglement. We are a problem to ourselves. We are the one thing that admits no fixed points of any kind" (p. 200). To explain this claim, Noë sometimes uses Hacking's notion of "looping", whereby a concept that we use to understand humans (Hacking gives as examples childhood, gender, youth homelessness, danger, deafness, disaster, illness, madness, lesbianism, literacy, authorship) comes to be a subject of awareness by the people we're trying to use it to study, and thereby changes their behavior. So there's not a stable object of study in the human sciences.

Reading this gave me Hegel flashbacks! (Not necessarily a bad thing, but a slippery thing.)

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Noe argues the entanglement of biology and culture means life and ethics are aesthetic. Key ideas are recycled from his Strange Tools.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

First thing first: I'm an artist who has had minimal exposure to philosophy outside of a few classes in college a decade ago.

I found this book to be really applicable to my trade and easy to understand. Even though I haven't read the majority of authors/texts referenced in this book, I don't feel lacking in knowledge to apply what I've read to my creative practice. If you are a creative type, I'd encourage you to pick up this philosophy book.

It's funny to think about painting as a way of organizing my experience in life. That when I'm making a strange tool, I'm giving the viewers of my work the opportunity of critique and judgement- that in turn gives them the opportunity to flourish more in The Entanglement. My artwork sometimes feels like it has deep meaning, sometimes not, after reading this book I feel more confirmed that the meaning of my art has nothing to do with me once it's released out into the world. That takes off some pressure off me as a creative.

I've always felt that being judgemental and critical of art to be a good thing, ever if it can come across as negative. This books has helped me put into terms why. I can now dismiss my doubts of being too critical in the future. It's exciting!

This book touches on why AI will never make true art, how writers & composers have slight differences in creation than visual artists, and how art & philosophy are bound.

I listened to the audiobook and really liked the narrator.

For a more thorough review, listen to the Brush Work Podcast episode released on 4/16/24

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book examines how art and philosophy are integral to being human, as well as how those activities are linked to each other. Drawing on the fields of dance, graphic arts, and poetics, the book presents a different way of thinking about aesthetics and of understanding what constitute aesthetic entities and activities.

This book exists in an awkward space between the highly readable and entertaining pop-philosophy books and the jargon-laden drudgery of scholarly philosophy books. That is, it's not difficult reading and requires no special background to follow its message, but it's also not intensely engaging for a neophyte reader.

If the topic interests you, you'd definitely pick up some food-for-thought from reading this book. That said, if you're interested in some light reading that draws you in, this is not it.

[GJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a lot of fun. No clue why other reviewers are saying there’s jargon in this book. I found at least a dozen ideas in this book to be provocative and stimulating. I’d recommend it.

[Erick Forsyth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Noe synthesizes works from Heidegger to Dewey; seamlessly deploying thinkers like Iris Murdoch, Merleau-Ponty, and Ian Hacking to give us a fresh and useful perspective on Art and Philosophy. While not relying on speculative evolutionary biology or anthropology he pulls from our ancient roots to give some insights into how the human experience is one of creativity, experimentation, and a "looping" of concept and cultural practice. This work was the focus of my recent reading group and it brought out an incredibly rigorous and deep discussion. We had everyone from professors to filmmakers and blacksmiths engaging in one of the best conversations I've ever experienced.

[Pranjal Awasthi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alva Noë makes the reader rethink their relationship to the self in this deeply introspective book on the effects of art and philosophy on the human consciousness. While the prose can become a word soup sometimes, it is a fairly coherent and readable book. Noë, undoubtedly makes some compelling points about our relationship with the arts and philosophy but the prose itself didn't hold me down.

I would have loved some more instances of Art and Philosophy affecting our lives but that's not to be found. Examples from psychology or behavioral sciences could have made the contentions of entanglement more robust. However, this is a philosophical treatise and wears all the characteristic obfuscations of the discipline with aplomb. I guess my expectations might have to be tempered the next time I pick this up.

[K.A. Ashcomb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alva Noë argues that art and philosophy elevate us, that they set us free from biology in a sense. The author draws examples of dance, poetry, and philosophy and how they interplay with who we are, what we do, and how we do things. Dance becomes more when you add a choreography to it. It is an interplay with the dancer, composer, and the watcher. I think you could sum up Alva Noë's argument with that why he proposes that art and philosophy set us free and make us who we are. He also writes that humanities don't fit into science because we humans are not a fitting subject to it. We are already a complex mystery with an eternal question of why we exist and why we have consciousness. It is not something science has a ready answer. It is something we search for through art and philosophy. However, we have sorrily given our meaning to science and quantity rather than poetry and the perfect movement of dancers.

This was an odd book to read. While the prose and argumentation were easy to follow, sometimes the words just slipped off, and you couldn't catch them. They became like this babble you are not meant to incorporate—words for words' sake. Still, I found the book entertaining and inspiring. It made me think about why we do what we do and what gives us meaning. More than ever, I feel like we have been rendered into nothing, that you and I are nothing more than numbers to fill the slot of our societies demands from us, and there's no meaning behind it, no purpose. We are to consume and destroy, not create and build. And that's why I find this book important. It reminds us where we can find meaning and who we are. It doesn't have to be dance, poetry, or philosophy. It can be the art of discussion with a friend and the meaning created between the dialogue. To be pointed out, it is not the new dress, computer, or car that is the end goal. They can be part of the performance of our existence: theater play, typing a book, and the love of racing. In art and philosophy, we find ourselves. That, at least, has happened to me.

The trouble is that Alva Noë robs that away from us mere humans. He gives more meaning to the art created by the professionals, giving breadcrumbs to us mere mortals by stating in a sense that art imitates life and life imitates art. There is more to the ordinary craft than just that. The projects we do define who we are and want to be. It is our contribution to the world and our surroundings. Knitting wool socks to a loved one is like that dance. It has a design and function; it becomes an interplay between the user and the maker and is full of aesthetics. So I'm afraid I have to disagree with Alva Noë. Art is more than the definition of some art lecturer. In my opinion, art and philosophy can be found in the ordinary.

The book is an inspiring intellectual argument with flaws. It is the writer's feast on the subject, both in good and bad—words for words' sake—nevertheless, worth one's time.

Thank you for reading the review! I have a wonderful weekend <3

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been saying for a long time to the few people I know who will listen to me before nodding off that art and philosophy are part of an overarching continuum that connects back to ordinary life and to many other fields of endeavor so that they are just extensions of what all of us do all the time. I tell people what what I do as a lawyer is a form of art and a form of philosophy. One of my other hobbyhorses is the idea that art is essentially a way of making us see the world differently; philosophy does that too. Art may mean something different for some people than others or even something different for the same person at different times, but that's OK because its job is more to jog your perception than to create any particular new impression. Mr. Noe covers all of this and more. I feel vindicated that a respectable professional philosopher is articulating the same ideas as I had.

My biggest gripe is really a minimal one - Mr. Noe sees the ordinary practice of art in everyday life as being something different from Art executed by a professional though he also says that they are "entangled" because they reflect back on each other - art imitates life and life imitates art. For me it's more of a continuum where the art of ordinary life is essentially the same as professional art; it's just a different expression of the same phenomenon. Maybe there's not that much of a difference, though I think that Mr. Noe's approach leaves him still a tiny bit too reductionist, too hung up on categories and definitions.

[AJ Torres · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really heavy. I dog-eared and margin-scribbled this book to hell and back. It did a really good job at solidifying and putting an idea I’ve had for a while into words: the human condition is a form of art making. Taking the incomprehensible (circumstances or images or whatever) and disrupting them, questioning them, framing them, remaking them, hopefully to a point of higher understanding. Taking ourselves and rebuilding them in our own image, over and over and over.

Science, and philosophy, and art, are entangled. The “scientific” desire to know more, to understand, is an aesthetic one. We are doing ourselves a disservice shoving these things into different drawers.

I’ll definitely be reading more by Noë when I have the brainpower. I fear I won’t, for a while.

One of those books that found me at the right time, like “I Am A Strange Loop.” And, similarly, one I probably wouldn’t recommend. If you’re not already halfway to where the author is at, I can imagine this being a pain in the ass.

[Grimm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I was a big fan of the ideas presented within the text, from a philosophical standpoint I think Noë actually fails to construst a valid argument. He presents many premises which we are just meant to accept as true and while attempting to prove them, he fails to do so.

Though I agree with the idea that aesthetics and art are a natural part of the human condition, I do not think that Noë constructs an argument that proves this. It's actually rather upsetting when looking at this from a Philosophical perspective, because I wanted him to prove it.

That being said, the book is well written, though at times a vulgar and quite full of itself.

[Hayden Finkelshtain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of neat ideas (admittedly a bit above my grade level). I can't help but feel like it's a touch convoluted, I grant that maybe I need to revisit it, and that my knowledge of philosophy is very basic by comparison, but I still question whether things could have been communicated in a slightly more straightforward manner.

Aesthetic work being an attempt at 'achieving' art -- reorganizing ourselves such that the art reorganizes and we make discoveries -- is interesting framing. I like his descriptions of art and philosophy as emancipatory and entangled with each other.

[Alok · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book in a bookstore on my first trip to NYC and after nearly an hour of browsing through I picked this book and read few pages of it there and on my way back to Boston, I could see the promise of this book and what I can discover with high hopes, towards the end I realized there is still more missing here and would be great to have another expedition into this topic which this particular book did not conquer.

[E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Noe has been one of the more interesting and insightful contemporary philosophers, and this book takes that work to the next level with a rich and profound understanding of how the aesthetic is what makes us human. His earlier work focused more specifically on experience and philosophy of mind, and this work is a richer exploration of his concepts of the mental and how we best understand the mind as an aesthetic phenomenon.

[Cooper Napoles · Rating 4 out of 5]

The entanglement was very thought provoking. The writing itself could be convoluted at times(with a tad too many interjections) but it was generally very well-written and contained some fantastic ideas that sat with me for a while. Would recommend to anyone who reads philosophy and has familiarity with concepts of phenomenology and Wittgenstein.

[ouliana · Rating 3 out of 5]

five stars for art and one star for philosophy is three stars for the book :)

[John Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is very good, full of interesting ideas about art and consciousness. But written in a style that is difficult to follow at times.

[Ryan Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got kind of lost in the sauce here, but some interesting points

[Henrik · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*

[Roy Kenagy · Rating 4 out of 5]

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