Some of the big names in western philosophy have focused on human nature as primarily rational. In identifying the self with the logical mind, as Plato, Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant have done, a dualism results whereby the body, along with its senses and emotions, becomes de-centralised and often de-valued when we reflect on our human experience.
Historically, there have been philosophers who have contested this rationalist conception of what it means to function well as a human being. Existentialist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the phenomenologists Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jan Patočka are three such theorists who reclaim the role of the body and emotions alongside our rational capacity in order to paint a picture of the human life as embodied and creative.
If we recognise street art as public art, we have the opportunity to form a feeling of connection to the spaces that surround us.
One way in which we do this is though art. In Nietzsche’s first major work, The Birth of Tragedy, published in 1872, the idea of living life creatively is embodied in his idea of living life as an artist. Nietzsche refers to two conflicting creative energies: the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
The Apollonian is the cool rational intellect, while the Dionysian is the passionate emotional aspect. Nietzsche worried that the society of his time only emphasised Apollonian energy and neglected the role of the Dionysian. Theorists like Plato, Descartes and Kant emphasise the rational aspect of humans, yet Nietzsche thought it was important to balance our rationality with our passionate experience of life, and he saw this balance best depicted in ancient Greek tragedies.
Nietzsche insists that Greek tragedy achieves greatness through the inclusion of both Apollonian creative energy, responsible for the dialogue, and Dionysian energy, which inspires the music or chorus. In the plays, the two work together as the meaning of the words are enhanced by the accompanying melody. Using Greek dramatic artworks as an example, we can learn from great art to see the beauty in life. For Nietzsche, life without emotion, art and the creative energy of the Dionysian is bleak.
The criticism of Nietzsche’s idea is how subjective it is. If I am the artist creating my life to be a masterpiece that suits my taste, there doesn’t seem to be anything stopping me from being selfish, which erodes any sense of morality. It certainly doesn’t help that Nietzsche’s later works were said to have influenced right wing German militarism.
The beautiful life must not restrict the freedoms of others, who are also free-willed subjects trying to create their own beautiful lives. I would argue that an authentic life fails to be beautiful if it denies the freedom of other people.
Through art and in life we witness the transformative power of ‘the intoxications of passion’. Such passion can be either constructive or destructive, and therefore needs to be supported by rationality. In this way, the fusion between the Apollonian and the Dionysian can transform the self, creating an artist and a lover of life.
The key focus of Nietzsche’s ideas in The Birth of Tragedy is on the creation of a life that is full of possibilities that may be realised only if we are courageous enough to do so. This potentiality of a human life for realisation is a concept that also resonates with the phenomenologists.
Phenomenology is a movement in philosophy that peaked in the 20th century. Phenomenologists consider a philosophy of doing or being that acknowledges the lived experience as embodied. In this way, phenomenology critiques the rationalist approach to knowledge as pure mental contemplation. Our experience in the world is sensory and emotional as well as logical, and to deny this as a way to understand ourselves and the world is too reductionist, they argue.
Thinking about ourselves as embodied rather than simply as isolated cogito (as Descartes suggested) definitely changes the way we consider ourselves. For phenomenologist Jan Patočka, the human life is never static. Rather, it is full of potentiality. ‘How does Descartes forget that the dreamer also has a body?’ asks Patočka. Even when we are asleep and dreaming we are linked to a physical state that is constantly changing. For the phenomenologist, humans are connected in an important sense to each other and the world we live in.
The danger in this kind of thinking is going too far the other way and imagining an idealised, womblike space where everyone is un-individualised. The key here again is the idea of balance: we are of the world, not the other way around. Granting this, though, we have our freedom and we are free in a way that other creatures are not. Taking this freedom seriously, we realise that we have the potential—and the responsibility—to seek truth. Patočka speaks about lived experience as realisation.
Seeking truth (or wisdom) is a key tenant in philosophy. With this freedom and potentiality to seek the truth, both the existentialist and the phenomenologist remind us that we are responsible for our action in the world. We are also responsible for our understanding of the world and the way we relate to others, as well as how we view ourselves.
Freedom and truth seeking lead us to the idea of transformation, which is exciting but also scary. Change can be for better or worse. Yet transformation—of ideas as well as of our bodies and the spaces we occupy or move through—is a very creative process. In transforming, we are always creating something new, even if that necessarily means that old things must pass away.
One way we can creatively transform the spaces we occupy is through public art or street art. A powerful on the ground example is underway in my home state of Western Australia. PUBLIC, an initiative developed by non-profit arts group FORM, explores approaches to creatively shaping WA. The project is driven by an exploration of creativity as a public good and applies to a number of areas, including ‘creative placemaking’, social housing, regional cultural tourism and dialogue on shaping the wellbeing of cities and communities.
PUBLIC has its roots in the original Latin definition: ‘Of the people; of or done for the state.’ Philosophically speaking, this is a key concept to understanding ourselves as members of a community—our individual identities are connected to others, to spaces and places that we come from or move through. Public or shared spaces can influence our individual experience in the world either positively or negatively.
The example of beautifying public spaces with street art can be understood on a phenomenological framework as finding the possibility and potentiality of those spaces, and the realisation that we tap into them as creative embodied beings. Street art uses bold colour and patterns to raise an emotional response from those walking past. In turn, we experience that space differently. If we recognise street art as public art, we have the opportunity to form a feeling of connection to the spaces that surround us. We become custodians of our cities, heightening our sense of belonging and opening our eyes to the beauty therein.
We again see the importance of balancing the rational mind with the emotions in order to live life creatively and encourage positive change that reminds us that although we are the artists creating our own individual lives, as Nietzsche would claim, we are also members of a community.
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