What Is Art?

Public Lecture by Professor Alva Noë from the University of California, Berkeley, on December 14, 2016

‘ 424/2016 from Dec 01, 2016

What is art? Why is it important for people? And what does the fact that we regard art as important reveal about human beings’ Alva Noë, a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, will address these issues in a Dahlem Humanities Center Lecture entitled ‘Art and Entanglement’ on December 14, 2016. He will discuss the complex entanglements between life and art. The event is being held within the framework of a recently formed strategic partnership between Freie Universität and UC Berkeley. Professor Noë will give his lecture in English. The event is public, and admission is free.

Alva Noë studied philosophy at Oxford and Harvard. He has been a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, since 2003. Noë’s main fields of research include human perception, consciousness, and the theory of art. Many of his works are based on the thesis that consciousness does not simply take place within us, but is created by humans, or "performed." His publications include Out of Our Heads (Piper 2010), Action in Perception (2014), and Strange Tools (2015). In his books, he deals with the essence of art as a philosophical practice.

Scholars from Germany and abroad provide insights into their research within the framework of the Dahlem Humanities Center Lectures (DHCL). The lecture series is aimed at other members of the university as well as a wider public, and admission is free. Each year the Dahlem Humanities Center (DHC) organizes up to ten lectures. DHC is a platform for internal as well as international networking of humanities research at Freie Universität Berlin. In cooperation with numerous research institutes and cultural institutions in the region as well as international partner universities, DHC creates and organizes different types of event programs and discussion formats at the interface between university and practice.