Seeing and Subjectivity

Seeing and Subjectivity is a search for the emergence of subjectivity within our ability to see. If we are to make sense of ourselves as subjective creatures, the notion of presentation, which undergrids all our perceptual commerce with the world we inhabit, is more complicated than has hitherto been realized. On the basis of a distinction between what is presented as-present and what is presented as-absent, Jonardon Ganeri distinguishes between two types of perceptual consciousness^—^"animal" perception and "reflective" perception. As opposed to animal perception, reflective perception is a sophisticated and advantageous variety of perception, a sort of perception requiring subjectivity in the perceiver and whose most minimal form is the perception of absence. A recognition of the fundamentality of the notion of reflective perception is key to understanding our place as subjective beings in the world. Its existence is most prominently witnessed in our perception of artworks, in poetic experience, and in aesthetic emotion.

This book draws on Indian theories about the nature of perceptual consciousness, on insights into aesthetic subjectivity from Sanskrit aesthetics, and from the ideas of twentieth-century Indian philosophers. The philosophical method employed in the book is an avowedly cosmopolitan one, the cosmopolitan philosopher claiming that it is essential to consider theories from a plurality of philosophical cultures if one's ambition is to discover a fundamental theory true of ourselves as human beings.