Nathan Jacobs - Art and the Philosophy of Religion

Can art inform topics in philosophy of religion? Can the existence and varieties of art address or affect theological questions about God, faith, belief, worship?


Nathan A. Jacobs is a philosopher, artist, and filmmaker. He is a Visiting Scholar of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky.


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[cagdasozgun]

Here is the question: Are works of art discoverd or created? I am in between, and do not know the difference as well, without the concept of god and religion or of faith things.. when making art, are we playing with the objects in the world (to create concepts, or when to creating concepts) or are we wheeling out the invisible, to make it burnish, or to make it visible? Do you know what I mean? Work of art is related with perception and bodily awareness, we should connect with phenomenology, I guess, that how are we experiencing consciusness and perception in the world with the objects.. what can we consider other than the religion and god when considering arts, painting, photography, cinema especially, theatre, literature? we should not also forgetting about the creative moment.

[sullym]

I’m a believer and follower of Christ and from my personal experience, the internal feeling surrounding trials (weight, darkness) and rest (lite, light) seem remarkably different from anything else I have experienced. Even more, it seemed to have come on suddenly and has continued to grow. But I have to ask myself questions surrounding my faith and desire to know how our minds and bodies contribute to spiritual perception.

I’m really curious how others experience the feeling, with and without sacred objects.

[xspotbox]

We can perceive art only in our minds, whatever we do, information can reach our awareness only trough our senses. Art can be categorized in 3 major principles, artificial, natural and spiritual. Last category seems to be most interesting, because it is not created by hands or by natural processes but can be envisioned only by an individual dreamer. What our inner eye perceive is mostly electromagnetic noise, interferences of dark and light bands never stop because brain always produce some signals. And if we come our minds, we wake up in inner reality called dreams. So consciousness and art are somehow the same thing, art can observe only art.

[uremove]

IMO art and music get closer to religion, in that they are more direct experiences, ie. often ineffable, rather than being codified linguistic representations. One problem with language is it can name, without necessarily having a shared understanding, so for experiences that are uncommon, but profound, it can be very clumsy. Hence I think, the futility of trying to reason your way to the existence or non-existence of God. We can only reason our way about concepts of God. My belief is that any direct transcendent experiences can only be had by stilling the mind, by silencing the continuous conceptual chatter. This is more obvious in Eastern traditions eg. Buddhism, but is also part of the Judeo-Christian mystical tradition: “Be still and know that I am God” etc. As mentioned by Prof. Jacobs, this is a lifetimes work to achieve, and even then it seems, relies not on will, but ‘grace’. How can any such experience be proven as ‘real’... perhaps only by the profound effect it has on the experiencer.

“There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.” ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein