The Entanglement: How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are

· Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Christopher Douyard
Audiobook
7 hr 32 min
Unabridged
Eligible
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More
Want a 49 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline. 
Add

About this audiobook

In The Entanglement, philosopher Alva Noë explores the inseparability of life, art, and philosophy, arguing that we have greatly underestimated what this entangled reality means for understanding human nature. Life supplies art with its raw materials, but art, Noë argues, remakes life by giving us resources to live differently. Our lives are permeated with the aesthetic. Indeed, human nature is an aesthetic phenomenon, and art is the truest way of understanding ourselves. All this suggests that human nature is not a natural phenomenon. Neither biology, cognitive science, nor AI can tell a complete story of us, and we can no more pin ourselves down than we can fix or settle on the meaning of an artwork. Even more, art and philosophy are the means to set ourselves free, at least to some degree, from convention, habit, technology, culture, and even biology. In making these provocative claims, Noë explores examples of entanglement and examines a range of scientific efforts to explain the human. Challenging the notions that art is a mere cultural curiosity and that philosophy has been outmoded by science, The Entanglement offers a new way of thinking about human nature, the limits of natural science in understanding the human, and the essential role of art and philosophy in trying to know ourselves.

About the author

Alva Noë is a writer and philosopher living in Berkeley and New York. He is the author of Out of Our Heads and Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, among other books.

Christopher Douyard took the backroads to audiobook narration, though he is no stranger to performing. Christopher has nourished a passion for books and storytelling since his youth, when he would devour Tolkien and the Encyclopedia Britannica with equal abandon. He records from his studio in central Connecticut.

Rate this audiobook

Tell us what you think.

Listening information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.