Abstract

There is a discussion in the final chapters of this dissertation of the problem of what art is and how are we to judge it. Additional issues are the claim made by Merleau-Ponty that a privileged place must be given to philosophy of art and why he felt this must be so. Just as Merleau-Ponty was most interested in clarifying the interworld between man's consciousness and the lived world, so too is the artist. Merleau-Ponty sees the artist as a fellow searcher for truth. Finally, both philsopher and artist are attempting the same clarification. Therefore, it seems that Merleau-Ponty's philosophical interests are methods more suited to a philosophy of art than any other philosophical speciality. ;The writings of modern artists from Cezanne to the abstract and non-objectivist artists, including Kandinsky, Klee, Mondrian and Pollock, are quoted to illustrate how the correspondence of their understanding of creativity relates to that of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his to theirs. ;In order to elucidate that point, Merleau-Ponty's works have been carefully examined, starting with The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception and ending with his last published writing, "Eye and Mind." The works of other modern aestheticians, reaching in a continuum of thought from those who least understand the modern artist to those more cognizant of the creative efforts of the abstract and non-objectivist artists, have been studied. This list includes Jacques Maritain and Andre Malraux through William James to R. C. Collingwood, D. W. Prall, and Susanne K. Langer. Martin Heidegger's philosphy of art has been discussed as a phenomenological grounding for Merleau-Ponty's views. ;This study is made with the basic assumption that Maurice Merleau-Ponty as a phenomenologist is better able to understand the creative activities of the modern abstract and non-objective artist than are the majority of aestheticians